I decided to take two weeks off between jobs, time I desperately needed. The previous August, as I graduated from Carolina Tech, I never imagined one short year later I would be making another major transition. My new position was also in Connecticut and commutable from my apartment, so moving was not necessary. As much as I would have liked to leave New England for cheaper pastures, I was content to merely leave the company that expected superhuman performance without reward, a company that reserved the right to intimidate me with unfair accusations. I left gladly. My boss, Ralph Sebetich, shook my hand and told me he understood. Since I had only worked for Contessa for about a year, there was no big send off reminiscent of Luwanda’s. I just went to lunch with a few friends and departed peacefully at quitting time. The Troll never looked at me again after she heard that I handed Ralph my resignation.

Christos and I kept in contact for a couple of years until he received a better offer in New Jersey. The family had to relocate, but they would be able to afford a bigger house as the children reached high school age. I heard, through Christos, that Dr. Sebetich also left Contessa to become Director of Consumer Research for a personal care products company in the Midwest. Contessa Cosmetics was eventually sold to an international conglomerate and disbanded. I hope they dumped The Troll on her enormous silk-swathed caboose.

As a reward for surviving the trials of my first real job, I considered a Caribbean cruise but quickly rejected the idea. The thought of sitting around alone on a cruise ship stuffing my face with gourmet cuisine while honeymoon couples strolled hand-in-hand on deck depressed me. I might have met someone and had a wonderful time, but I did not need a romance spawned in the artificial setting of a love boat. Instead, I bought an airline ticket to Sacramento, California and spent a week with my father.

This had the potential to be equally disconcerting. However, I did not accompany him to the grocery store or ask if Howard Millbank still worked there, and my father never mentioned it. Howard and I should have married that summer, but I simply came home alone to recover from another negative situation. I still had friends in the area and the Sacramento rink was still open. Undoubtedly, Howard fulfilled his nuptial destiny by wedding Shannon. He may have even been away on his honeymoon during my visit.

I did not pine for Howard very long after we officially ended our affair and was only prompted to think about him upon returning to Cambridge Hills. Although curiosity moved my foot to the brake pedal as I passed his apartment complex, tempted to turn into the parking lot and make an adolescent survey of the automobiles, maturity caused me to drive on. I was not necessarily afraid to find him at home, or at the store, or to see him with Shannon. I simply realized I was too old to chase boys, and Howard Millbank no longer merited chasing. Smiling, I pressed harder on the gas as my father’s sporty little car took off down the road. I guess this meant I was all grown up.

Through condensation on the Plexiglas that separated the soda shop lobby from the small skating surface at Hansie’s Ice Chalet, I could see Georgeanne tracing circles with her coach standing at her side. No one else utilized the facility and no one else occupied the building except for Hansie’s bird brained son, Timothy, who stared slack-jawed at the television set. Georgeanne came off the ice a few minutes later and greeted me as I stretched my legs on the glittery countertop. Her coach pushed the rink door open and leaped through, simultaneously popping an unlit cigar into his mouth.

I had only met Georgeanne’s coach once before, when she took a Sunday morning lesson. The man dressed eccentrically, even in the summer heat. He wore a three piece suit and a hat, the type of hat businessmen wore in the fifties. When I first met him, he layered a trench coat over the suit and draped a colorful scarf around the lapels. He carried the cigar as a permanent fixture. Never lit, he used it as a prop, the aftermath of a broken smoking habit.

Orville had known Hansie for years, and he had a key to the place. Maybe ten years younger than Hansie, Orry had been the Koenig family’s lawyer. Now semi-retired, he picked up occasional coaching appointments on weekday mornings. As a long time skater, Orville still liked to play in ice rinks. He drove the Zamboni and filled in at the counter sometimes during the summer.

“Katie, Katie, Katie!” the strange fellow exclaimed pulling the cigar from his teeth, “So good to see you again!” He tipped his hat revealing a baldhead with a bum roll of curly gray hair tied neatly into a small ponytail at the nape of his neck. The hair matched his waxed handlebar mustache perfectly. Ignoring the ponytail, Orville belonged in an old fashioned silent movie, bumbling around with an uncooperative Model T.

I did my best not to laugh, but probably smiled a bit too much. Orville was the perfect ringmaster for Hansie’s poodle circus. He blended seamlessly with the painted caricatures on the lockers.

Orville might have dressed like a buffoon, but he skated expertly. Footwork was his forte and he danced over the ice with blades flashing and darting, moving almost independently under his body. Occasionally, Orry would trip, but he never fell. Emitting a silly holler, the man would catch himself, as a clown purposely stumbles to make the audience giggle. According to Georgeanne, Orville had not seriously taken lessons or competed. As a boy, he simply hung out at outdoor rinks, frozen ponds, and roller palaces; learning by watching others. Friends privileged with professional instruction gave Orville pointers and he mimicked their movements. While less gifted people might have picked up a few basic skills through osmosis, Orville’s ability must have been exceptional. As a mature adult, he no longer jumped and did only simple spins. But Orville never claimed freestyle skating to be his strength; he enjoyed dance and compulsory figures. He still traced complicated fancy figures on the ice using the halting, jerky movements required for unlikely turns, edges and stops, creating snowflake patterns even modern champions would struggle to duplicate.

Without thinking, I promptly asked Orville for a lesson, and he agreed to accommodate me that morning. This was my first lesson in about a year-and-a-half. It amounted to Orville spending thirty minutes evaluating my skills and interjecting helpful comments. Unfortunately, my abilities had crashed to an all-time minima due to lack of instruction and, most importantly, insufficient practice time. One brief lesson redirected my concentration to the poor quality of my skating. Orville had asked me to skate strongly into each element; whereas, I usually only took a few half-hearted steps. I suffered from ‘public-session syndrome’, easily diagnosed by the confined abbreviated movements of a skater used to carving out a small corner of a crowded rink for practice. I lacked the confidence and skill to skate swiftly, weaving between other people, as advanced athletes do in the most chaotic freestyle sessions. Even in a virtually empty rink, my blade tracings focused on tiny patches of ice instead of working the entire surface between spins or simple jumps. Although I had learned a competitive program, I had not rehearsed it since discontinuing serious practice at the Martinsville Community Arena. I had forgotten how to cover the ice, and only struggle to do so in the context of prearranged choreography.

Left to skate independently, I did not expand on the concepts of my program, improvising new footwork and stroking around the rink to build speed; I reverted to lazy comfortable habits that provided a sense of security but no actual growth. I found a spot that I could defend like an animal guarding its den. There, in my personal territory, I rotated in a spin or a remedial jump. This actually improved my spins but did little to develop my weak jumping skills.

As much as I hate to admit, Zach and other people, who were not exactly kind or friendly, probably intimidated me. I tried to avoid conflict, already having plenty of negativity to deal with at work. I preferred to stay out of the way of those who apparently did not like me. Of course, Zach and his buddies had no more right to the ice surface than I did. We all paid the same admission fee to the numbskull at the desk. But I cowered, especially as my stress level increased and fighting to share the ice equally became proportionally unimportant.

Straining to utilize the entire ice sheet under Orville’s guidance depressed me. After my lesson, I discovered that I was ill equipped to fill a rink the size of Hansie’s Ice Chalet. I would be completely lost in a full-sized arena. While I did not lack the physical ability to stroke the length of the place before initiating a maneuver, the process required deep concentration. After riding a spiral around the far end, I would put my free foot down then think about how to blend that transition into another movement. A few confused steps often followed before gathering my focus to push into a spin. The freedom to move about the ice surface completely eluded me. Every step was telegraphed and carefully planned. I could not move spontaneously. I could not frolic as though ice were my natural element. Each time my blade touched the frozen medium, I thought about how to push, which way to turn, and if I was skating too fast. Certain movements felt unnatural or scary. I avoided them and stuck with the familiar. No development could occur in an atmosphere of contemplative safety. The pathetic limitedness of my skill inventory disappointed me more than the realization that I was not pushing myself to improve. Becoming a well-rounded skater would be a tremendous challenge.

At the conclusion of our first lesson, Orville asked if I planned to skate regularly on weekday mornings, and I confessed that I would be returning to work the coming Monday, but could anticipate a free morning almost every week. Unfortunately, that day did not concur with Orville’s established schedule. However, he had decided to start teaching at the Sunday morning adult session, a session curiously devoid of coaches; and those that appeared sporadically did not impress me. Zach took lessons on Tuesday nights from one of the fashionable women who dressed in a colorful ski suit but rarely donned skates. Alex had told me that he could not fit regular lessons into his schedule or budget. I may have been the first person to list my name on Orry’s new Sunday morning dance card.

Again, skating took a backseat to my real world challenge: adjusting to a new job. As desperate as I was to escape Contessa Cosmetics, I chose a new position very carefully. Not that offers brimmed in my mailbox, but as a slightly experienced professional, I received more telephone calls than I had as a graduate student. I selected an opportunity working for a consumer research firm. Companies that had downsized or eliminated their own consumer studies departments could outsource their projects to this third party. The company had been founded by three women, who decided to leave corporate jobs and the appended long hours, travel, and stress. In my second interview, I brazenly asked about overtime and after hours expectations. I would not be trapped in another horrendous situation. A cofounder smiled compassionately. She had suffered as I had, sacrificing her personal life for the demands of her career. She told me I would receive compensated leave for overtime hours and would work a normal eight-hour shift even if I had an evening focus group. Evening groups would be scheduled in advance and I could expect one per week, almost always on the same night. After hours responsibilities were shared equitably among employees; I would be stuck with no more or less than anyone else. Consumer Solutions understood the plight of the professional person, whether he or she had a family at home or other extracurricular interests and obligations.

It was a lateral move for me, both financially and professionally. However, I would be working fewer hours overall in a more pleasant environment. My weekly evening focus groups also allowed an available morning for figure skating. I grabbed the offer, trying not to appear too eager, but actually, I would have accepted less money to shed the iniquitous Contessa yoke.

So after Labor Day, I began a new phase of my consumer science career, again filled with hope and enthusiasm.

Chapter 62 posted 11/1/02
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