Ordinary Daylight by Andrew Potok

Author:Andrew Potok
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction
ISBN: 9780307418272
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2007-12-18T05:00:00+00:00

I paced constantly at St. Paul’s, inside the building, round and round the lobby, through the creaky wooden corridors, in and out of the empty braille room, up and down the cellar stairs. I walked through the cold, unlit cellar room that housed some half-dozen typewriters on which we had lessons three times a week, and back upstairs into the TV room, where I often found Big Fred and Herman with their ears turned to the tube, listening to the Danny Thomas show or Lucille Ball reruns. “That’s got to be Andy,” Fred would say as the floorboards grumbled and I stood on the threshold looking at the two of them. I would often fix the flickering vertical hold on the old set and go back into the lobby, where I had rearranged the chairs into a circle, an innovation that met with Miss Hennessy’s disapproval. “The rows were good enough for all the groups before you, Mr. Potok,” she had said. But everybody liked the geniality of the circular arrangement, and Miss Hennessy had to give in. I would sit for a moment next to Ray or Margie or Hank to chat, and then spring up again to pace or walk outside under the big old trees that spread over the ample grounds. I often left the estate altogether now and, slipping on my occluders, practiced with my cane on the deserted side streets of Newton.

I knew that Kathleen was particularly aware of my restlessness and energy. She seemed to enjoy the breeze that swept across her cheeks as I flew by, and she often interposed with a request or a comment. “Hey, Andy, run down and get me a Coke, would you?” and I’d fly down the back stairs to the soda machine. “Sit down a minute, speedy,” she would whisper, blushing, “and let me feel your beard”—which had grown an inch or so since my first day there. And as she took a sip on her Coke, she brushed a cold, wet fingertip along my ear and let it slip tenderly to the side of my neck. Kathleen liked my nervousness, especially since no one else moved much in the first weeks of our training. And the one who moved least was Katie herself, who would sit like a proper matron with her legs tightly crossed and her sleek black hair pulled severely into a bun. During the day, she hoped to go unnoticed so that she could avoid the exertion of a mobility lesson in Boston traffic or even a braille class, for which she was often unprepared. She would hail me on one of my rounds of the building to whisper into my ear, her hands cupped around it and her breathy voice exciting me: “You sit next to me in braille class, sweet-heart, and when that deaf old bat calls on me, for Christ’s sake, help me.”

Succeeding as a student at St. Paul’s was terribly important to me, not so much because I couldn’t

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