Like an Escher drawing, things in an environment shape each other and in the process it's hard to tell where the fish ends and the bird begins. New Yorkers are like that; they've come from all over the place and they all kind of shape each other. I know there isn't a New York accent per se, but there is a something. Laura's "A" is getting as flat as a dime or mebbe a quata, for example. Last night as we were going to bed she said, "I wanna read some more, but I just key-ant."
Not long ago I heard her talking on the phone to a student's therapist. The kid was acting out in ways I would love to describe here, but while I am on this blog fairly cavalier with self-disclosure, it is not mine to other-disclose. Suffice it to say that the student was behaving in ways that will make her grandchildren clap their hands and beg her to tell another story about when she was a kid back at the turn of the century. Laura needed to consult the therapist, as one does in such situations, fifty years before the grandchildren of a rascal adolescent appear on the scene.
When you're ten feet away from a phone conversation, cooking up lunch, the voice on the other end is a high-pitched gurgle, if it's your average female -- a little bit like if a robin could talk. If it's your average man, you hear a low wuzzah wuzzah, like if a bear could talk. Many good cartoons have actually already nailed these sounds. This particular phone call I can hear the rapid-fire, friendly-sounding gurgle. It goes on for a very long time. This is how New Yorkers talk -- they've been trained from a very young age in competitive conversation. It's like double-dutch, where the ropes are moving fast and you have to jump in at just the right moment. I can see Laura holding the phone doing that rocking motion with just her head, looking for the right moment to jump in.
The therapist is on the beach somewhere in the Caribbean, taking the call from her danged client's danged high school principal. "Ach," I imagine she says to her main squeeze, who is reclining on an adjacent chaise. "Hon, I have to take this cawl. Could you grab me another margarita?" She is a good egg about it. So is Laura. They're the Adults in This Situation, and you can hear them both doing their best adult voices.
Laura swings through the kitchen as she talks. She passes me a little sticky note. It says, "She's faking it!" I smile but make sure not to laugh audibly. Laura is playing her own role of School Official. "Well, I'm concerned about the attendance issue. She's going to have a hard time catching up if this goes on much longer." Then a long stream of birdsong, waxing psychological and sincere, no doubt, about this kid and whatever she's going through. Laura jumps in again, beginning to mirror the cadence of her double-dutch partner -- which is what you have to do, right? Otherwise you get tripped up by the ropes. It's like conversing in English with native Chinese speakers; you have to use all kinds of shortcuts through sentences, which they get to do in Chinese, grammatically. If you use all the words you normally use, you're like someone who lugs a picnic table to the picnic, while everyone else has already eaten lunch off the nice blanket on the ground and moved on to frisbee.
Both the principal and the sunbathing therapist are reassured and reassuring as the conversation draws to a close. They've conveyed to each other that they are concerned but not worried about this kid who will, gawd willin', live a lawng life and go on to tell wild stories to her rapt grandchildren. They can both say to the parents that they've spoken to each other, that they've done their jobs as responsible members of their kid's team.
I can tell things are wrapping up because Laura has turned to counselor herself, empathizing with some story the therapist is telling: "Oy," she says, with feeling, in response.
I shake my head. Right there; the fish ends and the bird begins, right there.
