Dear Grantham Community Members,
Welcome to the twenty-fifth year of the Grantham Adult
School! As in years past, we are delighted to offer a wide
range of classes to meet the needs and interests of the
community. Our instructors include noted scholars from
Grantham University, as well as artists, artisans and
business experts residing in the area. Above all, we at the
Adult School believe that education does not end with a
diploma. Hence, our motto: Education: the Wellspring of Life.
Iris Phox, President Grantham Adult School
Education: the Wellspring of Life! Ben tossed the thin
booklet on the coffee table in his living room. It joined a
stack of library books, fly-fishing paraphernalia and an
empty bag of Doritos. "What the hell is a 'well-spring'
anyway?"
"What was that? I wasn't listening," said Huntington
Phox, co-founder with Ben of Garden State Global Venture
Capital. He sat in a cracked leather armchair kitty-corner
to Ben's couch and was absorbed in reading a company
prospectus. "Reading" perhaps was stretching it,
given the way he kept bringing the report closer to his
aquiline nose before moving it farther away and then closer
again.
The nose, by the way, matched the rest of Hunt's lithe
patrician body, a body honed by generations of breeding for
playing polo or sailing in the America's Cup. Somehow Hunt
seemed blithely unaware of this fact, whereas Ben never
forgot it, especially in comparison to his own physique.
That could best be described as bruising, the kind of
hulking form fit for felling trees or working on the loading
docks. It was blond Mayflower vs black Irish. Day vs night.
"Oh, for the love of Pete!" Ben slid aside a stack
of magazines and uncovered the magnifying glass he used for
tying flies. "Here. If you refuse to wear reading
glasses, at least use this. Otherwise, it's too painful to
watch." He tossed the magnifying glass onto Hunt's lap.
Hunt lowered the report. "It's not that I refuse to wear
reading glasses, it's more that I refuse to believe that at
thirty-five I'm showing any signs of aging. I have to live
up to my image after all, and something like reading glasses
just doesn't fit the look." The tone of his voice was
self-deprecating.
"Well, I hate to tell you. Not only are you going blind
as a bat, you're also more tired these days. So much for
your theory of remaining an ageless golden boy," Ben teased.
"You've noticed that, too?" asked Hunt. He set his
jaw but after a pause, he settled his features into his
usual devil-may-care expression. "You know, Ben, you're
the only person I know who gets nastier in retirement. It's
a good thing you're my friend, not to mention a hell of an
investor," he said, effectively changing the topic of
conversation.
"I wouldn't exactly call you a slouch, ol' buddy. Just
because you didn't grow up a street fighter, doesn't mean
you don't know how to mix it up with the big boys."
"Such praise. Please, it'll go to my head, and it's
already filled to the brim with such trivia as how to tie a
full Windsor knot and the proper use of a finger bowl."
Hunt waited while Ben chuckled, then said more seriously,
"Let's just agree that we both know how to spot a
financial opportunity when we see one, and that Ribacoff
& Riley rued the day it lost us."
Ben shook his head. "R&R rued the day it lost you.
It rejoiced up and down the Street when I left." R&R
was considered the most aggressive mutual-fund company on
Wall Street.
"Says you," Hunt said.
"Says everyone else on the Street."
Hunt rested his hands on overstuffed arms of the chair.
"Ben, you and I both know that you didn't have to take
the fall for the rogue traders in your group. And anyone who
really knows you, knows you're completely honorable."
"Honorable, maybe, but not above fostering a climate of
cutthroat competition that encouraged people to do whatever
it took to make money."
"That's called capitalism. Now, can we get back to the
business of making us richer, and forget about the whole
rotten world out there?" Hunt grabbed for the magnifying
glass and for the first time noticed the flier that Ben had
been reading. "Is that what you were talking about
before?" He picked up the pamphlet and held the round
lens up to his eye, magnifying it to scary proportions.
Baby blues that perfect didn't need to be any bigger, Ben
thought. "Yes, that's it. And if the introduction to the
flier isn't ridiculous enough, you should see the attached
note."
Hunt lowered the magnifying glass. "Let me take a wild
guess. My mother?"
"Your mother." Ben picked up the corner of the
booklet with the tips of two fingers. "I should really
get the barbecue tongs to avoid direct contact."
"It can't be that bad."
Ben dipped his chin. "This is your mother we're talking
about."
"Please, what an accusation. After all, you're talking
about a woman who is both president of the garden club and
chairs the capital campaign for the new Grantham Hospital. A
woman so exalted by the local community she has won the
Rupert L. Phox Award, named after my grandfather by the way,
for being the outstanding Granthamite three years
in a row? Wait." He held up an index finger. "On
second thought, you're right. This is my mother you're
talking about. Get the tongs. Better yet, get a face mask
and bug spray." Then he flopped back in the chair and
chuckled heartily. "So what does my mother want now?"
Ben flipped open the pamphlet and peeled away a Post-it note
stuck to the page. "It seems Iris thought it would be
a… a—" he read from the message
"—'a nice gesture of community goodwill' to speak
at the first session of this class."
Hunt smiled. "I like that. 'Nice gesture.' Very ladylike
but also unmistakably insistent."
Ben frowned. "Ladylike my you-know-what. Imperial
command is more like it."
"So what class did she have in mind?"
"Well, she'd hardly pick flower arranging. No, it was
something to do with investing."
Hunt bent forward again and placed the magnifying glass atop
a pile of books on Etruscan art. He pursed his lips and
strummed his fingers on the edge of the table.
"What?" Ben asked.
"Now don't jump all over me. The sins of the mother
should not be visited upon the son, but—"
"But?" Ben didn't like the way this was going.
Hunt raised his hands on high, a definite save-me, save-me
gesture.
Ben wasn't buying it. "Speak quickly before I inflict
extreme pain."
"Hear me out," Hunt said. "Did you ever consider
that she might be trying to be helpful? Trying in her own
warped way to keep you from living the life of a hermit?"
"No."
Hunt sank back in the chair in exasperation. "My God,
Ben, except from playing piano after hours at some
neighborhood bar, you've just about cut yourself off from
civilization. Do you have any normal contact with the
outside world?"
Ben wet his lips. "I occasionally go grocery shopping
when I forget to put something on the list for Amada."
"C'mon. I'm serious. Look at you!"
Ben was dressed like a reject from an Army-Navy
store—worn jeans, overly washed T-shirt and scuffed
work boots held together by knotted shoelaces and duct tape.
Hunt swept his hand around the room. "And look at where
you live. In a cabin in the woods! It's… it's
practically Little House on the Prairie! This from
a man who had a loft in Tribeca that graced the cover of
Architectural Digest!"
"It's not a cabin. It's an eighteenth century stone
cottage."
Hunt looked around in disbelief. "So that's what they
call bastions of damp rot now?" He scratched his head.
Ben scowled and looked away.
"Okay, let's leave aside the discussion of real estate
and get back to what's really bugging you," Hunt said.
"Tell me, what's so bad about lecturing a bunch of
retirees? It's just one night, and they're probably hard of
hearing anyway."
Ben snapped the course booklet shut. "I don't care if
half the audience comes with their seeing-eye dogs. My life,
as you well know, has recently become complicated enough.
It's hard enough just trying to make it through one day at a
time, and I don't need the added hassle of lecturing a bunch
of strangers on, on—" he flipped open the booklet
to the page with the sticky note "—on the
'Fundamentals of Personal Investing,' this damn course your
mother's so hot on."
From beneath a pile of books on classic racing cars and
Civil War history arose the sound of a ringing cordless phone.
Ben stared at the ringing pile but didn't make a move.
"Aren't you going to get it?" Hunt asked.
"The phone hasn't been exactly kind to me of late."
Ben narrowed his eyes and finally dug it out.
"Yes?… Oh, Amada, what's up?… What do you
mean he wasn't there when you went to pick him up? I thought
you said he was going to his friend Vincent's house to
study?" Ben nodded as he listened. "Sorry, sorry.
Okay his friend, Verjesh. So where is he? Does Verjesh
know?"
He crooked his elbow to read his Breitling sports watch, one
of the few vestiges of his former high-flying lifestyle. To
his surprise, the time was already seven-thirty. "No, he
doesn't? Well, he couldn't have gotten far." He ran his
hand through his hair. "What's that? He's got his bike?
And Verjesh said his backpack looked full?" He paused.
"You don't think… All right, all right. I'll
handle it. You just go on home."
Ben rang off. "Sorry, Hunt, but we'll have to continue
this discussion later. I've got to head off on a search
party. What a day. First your mother. Now my
son!"
"You know, dear, it's only natural to be nervous,"
Lena Zemanova said to her granddaughter standing nearby. She
had to raise her voice to be heard above the torrential rain
that lashed at her stalwart frame. It was a dark, February
evening, making the downpour cold and menacing, a real
Horatio Hornblower moment in land-locked Grantham, New Jersey.
Katarina Zemanova wrestled with locking her grandmother's
ten-year-old Corolla while simultaneously trying to open her
own umbrella. Like clockwork, the over-the-shoulder strap of
her Coach briefcase chose the exact same moment to slip
down, thereby crushing her left wrist. She might never play
the violin again, Katarina ruefully acknowledged, not that
she ever did, mind you. Whatever. She pressed the small
button on the remote again—and again—but when
the car refused to lock, she gave up and bent forward to do
it manually. That meant her umbrella tilted back, which, as
fate would have it, allowed a sudden burst of wind to pop it
inside out. Oh, yeah.
Katarina closed her eyes and bit back a sigh. To think that
she had once been an accomplished multitasker. The only
thing more awkward that could possibly happen would be if
her headband slipped down over her eyes.
Her headband slipped down over her eyes.
Life was not meant for the faint of heart.
Katarina pushed it back on her already soaked head, and
blinked in despair, the raindrops beading on her lashes.
Once upon a time, she had had her two hundred dollar
coiffure professionally washed and blown dry before work
each morning. Once upon a time was a mere four months ago.
How quickly times change. Merely thinking "whatever"
was a little more difficult the second time around.
"Really, Babicka, I'm not a delicate flower,"
Katarina said to her grandmother.
As a young bride, Lena had left what was then Czechoslovakia
to come to live in New Jersey. Despite a passage of fifty
years, certain Old World connections, especially Slovak
phrases and vocabulary, lived on, including the Slovak word
for grandmother, babicka.
"Of course you're not a delicate flower. None of the
Zemanova women are delicate flowers," Lena said.
"Still, if you'd wear a proper hat instead of carrying
one of those overpriced gizmos, you wouldn't be soaked to
the bone." She tsked at Katarina's Burberry umbrella.
Unlike her granddaughter she wore a sensible, eye-popping
yellow rain slicker along with a pair of high Wellington
boots. With a few tweaks here or there, she could have
modeled for the figure on the Morton's salt container.