A Commodore of Errors (17 page)

“Nothing is happening
to you
,” Raymond said.

“Oh, God. You're too good, Ira. Too good.”

Putzie was behind Mrs. Tannenbaume with one foot on the aerobic stepper now. “Hoo hoo. That's it, Ira. Ha ha. That's it. Right there.”

“So that's where the hoo hoo and the ha ha comes from,” Raymond said. “I sort of wondered where she got that.”

The Commodore pressed his hands to his ears as tightly as he could, but he could not cover them fully enough to block out the woman's vulgar pillow talk.

“Okay, Sylvia.” Putzie climbed up on the aerobic stepper. “Here I come.”

Mrs. Tannenbaume felt Putzie struggling behind her.
What a rookie!
“No. Don't do it yet.”

“Raymond! Listen to her. Could she be more demanding? Who could be intimate with someone as demanding as her?”

Putzie had Mrs. Tannenbaume by the hair now. When Mrs. Tannenbaume smacked his hand away, Putzie lost his balance.

“Don't forget your rhythm, love.”

“Why is she talking about rhythm, Raymond?”

Raymond placed his hand on the Commodore's shoulder. “I think that's how Catholics practice birth control, sir.”

“Hold on, Ira.”

Putzie was slumped over Mrs. Tannenbaume's back now. “I'm trying.”

“We're getting close now, love. Don't stop now.”

The Commodore could not stomach being present for the denouement. He pushed himself out of his chair. “I have to leave before it's too late . . . ”

Putzie was really wobbling on the aerobic stepper now and Mrs. Tannenbaume could not bear all of Putzie's weight. She screamed out, “Oh, Mr. Paultz!” and they crashed to the floor.

The Commodore had not made it out of the dry cleaners before this incident occured. His hands were at his ears when he turned around to seek out Raymond. “Raymond.” His voice was as small as a child's. “Please help me.”

“I think I sprained my ankle,” Putzie said. “Raymond!”

The Commodore looked at Raymond wide-eyed.
They want Raymond now?

“Raymond! Help!”

Raymond left the Commodore's side and opened the curtain. Mrs. Tannenbaume and Putzie lay on the floor. Putzie was fully clothed on the
floor clutching his ankle. Mrs. Tannenbaume was dressed in a leotard. Raymond helped Mrs. Tannenbaume up off the floor first.

“We were so close, Raymond. The lesson was going so well.”

“I know, Mrs. Tannenbaume. We heard.”

“He does okay with two feet on the floor, but as soon as he gets on top of that stepper, he loses it. I encouraged him the best I could. It was part of my lesson plan. Did it sound realistic enough?”

“Oh, yes, Mrs. Tannenbaume. It definitely sounded like the hoo hoo and the ha ha.”

“Well,” Mrs. Tannenbaume blushed. “I know a thing or two about slow learners. They need encouragement most of all, you know.”

Raymond told Putzie he would go get some ice. Mrs. Tannenbaume looked at the Commodore with his hands pressed to his ears.

“Oh, don't be such a prude,” Mrs. Tannenbaume said. “Haven't you ever heard of sex ed before?”

The Commodore removed his hands from his ears. “I am aware that sex education exists, Madam. I simply have never been privy to an actual—oh, what would one call it?—session. And I certainly have never heard of a private session taking place in a public forum.”

“Lesson. It was a lesson and I had a lesson plan. So you learned something?”

“Yes, you might say so.”

Mrs. Tannenbaume beamed. “Care to share it with the class?”

“I learned that it will not be long before Mitzi is back in Mogie's arms.”

Raymond returned with the ice and rushed to his employer's defense. “He can still get the hang of it. I think you're a good teacher, Mrs. Tannenbaume. You're patient.”

“Thank you, Raymond. But much as I hate to admit it, I think Flouncy here is right.”

FLOUNCY

T
he Commodore was relieved to be back in his office. He lay down on his side on the couch and placed a drop of mineral oil in his ear. The oil was a salve, and he allowed the oil to coat the silica in his ears for over an hour, a half hour in each ear. After his ears were well oiled, he tested his hearing with the machine he “borrowed” from the infirmary. He sat at his desk, pulled out the individually packaged swipes of alcohol that he kept in the top right-hand drawer, and wiped the headphones clean. He placed the headphones over his ears, ran a terry cloth bandana around them, and tied a knot behind his head. He wanted to ensure a tight fit.

His ears tested perfect. That he must protect his hearing was a given. It simply was not possible to produce soaring oratory with tinny ears. A tinny ear gives no feedback, no aural indication as to whether the speaker is producing nasal resonance, and without nasal resonance, one cannot affect a pleasing timbre. The Commodore admired the timbre of his own voice and was certain
others admired it as well. It was an inborn quality, to be sure, but that did not mean he did not have to continue with his voice exercises. He stood in front of the mirror and checked to see that his jaw dropped when he opened his mouth wide, that his mouth formed a perfect circle and not an oval, and that his chin remained lifted above the horizontal. He always had trouble with the last part, keeping the chin up.

He called in Miss Lambright and had her stand on a chair by his side to check for the jaw drop and the chin lift. After twenty minutes or so of checking from all angles, he dismissed Miss Lambright. But just before she walked out of the office, he remembered and called back to her.

“Oh, Miss Lambright? Just one more thing.” The Commodore gathered his thoughts. “It is about your use of time, dear.” He looked toward the ceiling and sighed. He wanted to give the impression that something special was coming—it was a trick he used to get people to lean in closer for more.

“It is a question of values,” the Commodore said, “of priorities, is it not? Do you value time, Miss Lambright? Do you guard it jealously? No, we both know you do not. You are profligate with your time, dear, we have talked about this before, have we not? I have noticed that you dawdle. And now you are allowing me to dawdle. We mustn't allow that to happen, dear. There are too many things that I want to accomplish in my lifetime, things of great import, and so you must, always, every minute of every day, ensure that every activity in which I am engaged is truly the highest and best use of my time. I trust you to be a faithful keeper of my time, dear. Am I making myself understood?”

“Sir . . . is practicing your chin lift really the highest and best use of your time?”

The Commodore's chest tightened. He noticed how his breathing became shallow and quick. The Commodore slowly counted to ten.
Breathe!
He stared at Miss Lambright's face. He studied it, noticing the fine lines around her mouth, the result, no doubt, of years of worrying about the inconsequential and the prosaic. Small problems for small people, as the Commodore's father used to say. The Commodore would not allow Miss Lambright to provoke him with her outlandish statements. He did not need her to account for his time. He was an expert in prioritizing and only meant to help the poor woman. The
Miss Lambrights of the world were consigned to the junk pile of mediocrity largely because they lacked time management skills. And what happened when one tried to help the poor souls? They resented it, of course. Resentment. The hallmark of the “victim.” It happened to the Commodore every time he tried to help the unfortunate. They slapped him in the face. He resented it himself, but who wouldn't?

He turned his back on Miss Lambright, faced the mirror, and resumed his voice exercises. “You are dismissed, Miss Lambright,” he said in his best stentorian tone. “Please try to do something productive with your time for the rest of the afternoon.”

No sooner had Miss Lambright returned to her desk than she was on the intercom. “A Mrs. Tannenbaume is on the phone, sir. Probably another Jewish charity. Shall I handle it? I would not want to waste even a moment of your precious time, sir.”

Miss Lambright kept talking, but the Commodore was not listening. Of course Miss Lambright thought Mrs. Tannenbaume was Jewish. Didn't everybody? She had a Jewish-sounding name. She used Yiddish expressions. She lived in Great Neck. And if Mrs. Tannenbaume sounded Jewish, how did
Captain Tannenbaume
sound? Why hadn't the Commodore thought of this before? Mogie was so eager for a Jew who knew how to drive a boat that he would never question whether Captain Tannenbaume was a Jew. Tannenbaume with an E? Who ever heard of such a thing? Surely not Mogie.

Miss Lambright's voice again. “Do you want to take the call, sir?”

“Yes, Miss Lambright, put her through.” The Commodore lifted the receiver, wiped it quickly with an alcohol wipe, and held it to his ear. “Hello, Mrs. Tannenbaume.”

“Are you too busy to talk now?”

“No, I am not busy, not at all, madam.”

“I'm sorry I called you Flouncy that time. I hope I didn't offend you.”

“Oh, don't be silly. Flouncy is a perfectly fine nickname, you have not offended me.”

“I think those loud Martinizing machines at the cleaners hurt my ears. They're ringing like crazy.”

“Those loud Martinizing machines hurt my ears as well!”

“Someone told me you have a hearing machine. And that maybe you can test them for me. I hate to waste money on doctors.”

“Well, someone is correct. I do possess a hearing machine. And why should you waste good money at the doctor's office? It would be no trouble at all, Mrs. Tannenbaume, to test your ears. Please come right away. I will administer the hearing test myself.”

“Thank you. That's awfully nice of you.”

“You are quite welcome, madam.”

The Commodore hung up the phone. He could not believe his change of fortune. He knew there was a reason he wanted to get back to his office that morning. How else to solve one's problems but to think them through? To think, to really think, was one of the hardest things to do. It came as no surprise that precious few in the world ever did think. Instead of thinking, most people ran around asking, What do
you
think I should do? It drove the Commodore crazy.
What do
I
think? It is
your
problem, fool, do your own thinking.
No, the Commodore did not need others to think for him—he thought for himself.

And today, by simply calming down, by sitting quietly in his office, by thinking, he came up with a brilliant solution to his problem. Mogie wanted a Jew who knew how to drive a boat? Captain Tannenbaume would be that Jew. And with Captain Tannenbaume in hand, the Commodore's nemesis, old Johnson's Johnson, would finally be removed from office. Oh! The thought of a United States Merchant Marine Academy without Johnson made the Commodore's heart sing. The cad had run roughshod over the Commodore's boys long enough.

Getting Johnson out of the way had proved to be more difficult than he first imagined, but the Commodore intuited immediately that pushing Tannenbaume aside would be far easier. Just before the unveiling of the Mariners Monument—oh, delightful irony—the Commodore would simply expose Captain Tannenbaume as a Gentile. Mogie, of course, would be furious at the deception and demand that Tannenbaume step down.

The Commodore's mind raced. He felt he could make a plausible argument that the unveiling of the Mariners Monument was too important
to postpone, that a superintendent would have to be in place to preside over such an important ceremony—too many people would be watching—that the only thing to do would be to make the Commodore the new superintendent. The plan was elegant in its simplicity: Tannenbaume would replace Johnson; then, just before the unveiling of the Mariners Monument, the Commodore would replace Tannenbaume. Why had he not thought of this before? Instead of whining to Raymond, he should have been in his office thinking. Instead of listening to Mrs. Tannenbaume give sex lessons to Putzie, he should have been in his office thinking. Instead of wasting his time trying to straighten out Miss Lambright, he should have been thinking.

And, now, instead of beating himself up, he should be thinking.
Think!
What was the next step? Mrs. Tannenbaume, of course. He had to win her over. She, after all, would be an accomplice to his plan. Why had he not been nicer to the woman before? He knew that to win friends and influence people he needed to make genuine and sincere compliments, but what possible virtues did Mrs. Tannenbaume possess that he could dote on? The woman was short and inadequate. She fancied herself a teacher on the strength of her thirty-five years as a typist, which proved she was delusional. How on earth was the Commodore, a man deeply rooted in reality, supposed to deal with a woman as degraded as Mrs. Tannenbaume? The Commodore knew he possessed a real life, but Mrs. Tannenbaume? The woman lived a fairy tale life, the best he could tell. For one thing, she had no idea how others perceived her. Perhaps the Commodore could help her. He would try, if for no other reason than it would be in his best interests.