"What call?"
"Huh?" asked the obtuse girl
"What call?"
Rita tried to reign in her thoughts and focus on where she was at and her relationship with Gabriele. "The school couldn't reach you. You've got to call them. They said it was really important." From her pocket she pulled out a slip of paper that had a phone number on it and gave it to Gabriele.
"Hmm, okay," said Gabriele. She took her telephone out of a drawer and put it in the phone jack.
When she arrived at the door of the home room with a bag of treats dangling inside a fist, her son's teacher told her that she had go go to the principal's office. The word, "must," took some swallowing but she accepted it magnanimously. She could see that the teacher, Mrs. Recla, found her daunting. The proof was in the face that was being taxed by not being able to frown. She knew that she was emoting a more civil aversion than the teacher could muster. As Gabriele tried not to conceptualize her as "the dinosaur" or "Reclasaur," demeaning second grader terminology, there was a subtle smile on her countenance (feigned or not). In part, it was amusement about the word, Reclasaur, but it was mostly of one who was valiently beyond worldly matters. With her equanimity she also displayed an obdurate, formidable haughtiness no different than any engraving or statue from Akhenaten to Lincoln, or Joan of Ark to Eleanor Roosevelt.
Indifferent to the fact that this was not her appointed time for being a homeroom mother and by the disposition of a teacher who was usually more affable (feigned or not), Gabriele officiously submitted her treats. Like a poorly written essay, they were glanced at and rejected snobbishly. She wanted to check up on her son who often sat in the back row but she was prohibited from looking into the room. She wanted to ask the Reclasaur what he had done to make her so "uptight" but Gabriele changed her mind. She decided that unless it were an emergency (and the teacher would have undoubtedly given the details of an emergency) she should defer knowledge as long as she could. She imagined that once she returned home there would be more to swallow than just cheese and crackers.
In the girl's room Gabriele lit a cigarette and stared at herself in a mirror. She didn't care what others thought of her but in a world where only appearances mattered she thought that wrapping up what little beauty she did posess would go further with a female principal. She did not believe in appearances but she was pragmatic enough to realize that appearances had their uses. Eyeglasses would make her look more intellectual if not outright erudite and opaque. Her turgid opinions would have more merit in such a look. She pinned her hair up into a bun and put on some tinted glasses that she rarely ever used. She smoked for a few minutes, staring in awe at this formidable higher authority being reflected from the mirror. Smoking like this in front of a mirror in the girl's room reminded her of her actions from the age of ten and as she chuckled inwardly to herself she then lifted the plug in the sink and lodged the cigarette down the drain untracably. In the principal's office she scanned an issue of Jack and Jill for 45 minutes. Then she became irascible and restless.
"Miss," said Gabriele with contumely toward the secretary who was the only visible party responsible for making her wait, "will it be much longer? I do have things to do and I can pretty well tell at this point that Jack and Jill is not very good reading—not for me, it isn't."
The secretary smiled painfully. "I'm sure that you won't have to wait much longer. I'm sure Mr. Quest will be with you shortly."