Free An Almost Perfect Moment by Binnie Kirshenbaum

emergency exit in a burning building, or looking for someone, someone not John Wosileski, but rather someone who would rescue him from John Wosileski. “Ah gee,” he said. “I can’t. Sorry.” No excuse was offered. No I’ve got a dentist appointment . No I have to drive my mother to the chiropractor . No I’ve got exams to grade . Not even I have other plans . Nor did it escape John Wosileski’s attention that there was no Perhaps some other time either.
    Lest Mark Ornstein be judged harshly, before it is said, Oh, how could he be so heartless? Couldn’t he just have a beer with the poor guy? —a truth, an ugly truth but a truth all the same, must be revealed: Everybody does it. Everybody shuns life’s losers, the weak, the unattractive, the poor, the dispossessed, the friendless, and not because we want to be cruel, but because we can’t bear the responsibility of them; they need more than we can give; we will fail them. No matter what we do, we will fail them.
    In the faculty dining room Mark Ornstein joined a group of hail fellows. John Wosileski took a seat at a table that was empty until Joanne Clarke came by. She set her tray down across from his and said, “Well, fancy meeting you here.”
    John Wosileski, someone you would think would be empathetic, closed his eyes to Joanne Clarke’s suffering.
     
    Talking with pins in his mouth, Mr. Kleinman told The Girls he’d be with them shortly. He was in the middle of a fitting. Miriam, Edith, Sunny, and Judy basked in the radiance emanating from the bride-to-be as she stood perfectly still while Mr. Kleinman tucked and pinned the white taffeta along her waist. “It’s true,” Edith said. “All brides are beautiful.” Edith made mention of this because, stripped of the white gown, this one would have been anything but beautiful with that schnozzola and a half, what a nose on her.
    The Girls moseyed around the shop, oohing and ahhing at the gowns and veils and tiaras. Miriam fell in love with a tulle-and-lace gown, but Judy returned to the first one they’d looked at, an ecru satin bridal gown, artificial seed pearls sewn at the bodice and cuffs, and said, “I still say this one for Valentine, when her day comes. Seriously, Miriam. Picture your Valentine in this. Can you imagine how gorgeous?”
    Miriam often fantasized about Valentine’s wedding day. What mother doesn’t, and especially with an only daughter and also because Miriam didn’t get to have a real wedding of her own. When the time came, Miriam intended to make Valentine a celebration elaborate enough for both of them: first an engagement party at a catering hall; then a bridal shower at the house; the wedding itself she’d like to have at one of those Long Island mansions you can rent for special occasions; Valentine’s gown would take your breath away—the heaviest silk and an eight-foot train. She’d carry a bouquet of pastel roses and baby’s breath, the bridesmaids in peach-colored chiffon and the maid of honor in yellow the same as the flower girl.
    Miriam had yet to breathe a word of these plans to anyone, not even to The Girls, and definitely not to Valentine. For the time being, it was Miriam’s own to decide if the candy coating on theJordan almonds should be all white or the same pastel colors as the bridal bouquet, and to picture, God willing, Ronald’s father walking Valentine down the aisle, and when they reach the khupah, the organist will play “Sunrise, Sunset” from Fiddler on the Roof, and there won’t be a dry eye in the house. At that juncture in her musings, Miriam began to hum and then to sing softly, “Is that the lit-tle girl I car-ried, is that the lit-tle boy at play, I don’t re-member growing older, when did they?” Judy Weinstein and Edith Zuckerman and Sunny Shapiro joined in with the chorus—“Sun-rise, sun-set—” and in a heartbeat the four of them were bawling like babies.
    That’s how Mr. Kleinman found them, standing in a row in front of