episode 2: collision

LAST WEEK

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Saturday, October 30, 2010 The stage was set for Dame Miriam’s Cast. When eight of her eleven guests arrived at the reunion, they were greeted by Carmen Rockland, co-founder of Rockland Academy, along with grand formalities they had not experienced since being a student some fifteen years before. They had survived Dame Miriam’s theater class, and even though years had passed, it would take more than time to erase the perplexing memory of her weighted influence.

At the private reunion breakfast, it became clear that this was not a reunion for a reunion’s sake: Dame Miriam wants them to answer her age-old question: “who are you and why are you on stage?”

The question was challenging enough in middle school, but now that they were adults, they knew they would have to answer, and even amid the complexities of their life because, if Dame Miriam had taught them anything, it was to take the stage and give their greatest performance.

Out of respect, out of learned decorum, out of obligation, the eight guests finally stood to announce their form, past and present. They were and would never cease to be Dame Miriam’s Cast.

The Progressive Publishing Model™ Page 1

© 2014 Rhonda Adorno Dame Miriam’s Cast: The Last Guest

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SEASON 1: EPISODE 2

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SUNDAY, MARCH 15, 2009



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MORNING



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Solomon Ivory McDanielsMrs. Rockland had arranged the meeting,

inviting us to a catered brunch under the airy, cedar arches of her back lawn pergola. I had known Carmen since arriving, timid and knock-kneed, more than twenty years ago as a full-time boarder at her preparatory school. Her son was my best friend. After Julius passed away, the maternal tentacles I considered punitive and harmless, clutched on and had tamped their suction in such a way that discreet acts of nepotism could no longer be called anything else besides guilt-ridden favors. Those I committed to were as contrived a responsibility as they were a need.

Nonetheless, I agreed when Carmen asked that I come meet her friend and colleague, Phaedra Prince, owner of Prince Consulting— an event planning agency thriving inside Orlando’s four-diamond hotel district.

“So this is nice, very nice,” Phaedra said in a quick, refined voice. “Just beautiful arrangements the whole reel I would honestly consider applauding if I had not given you the idea.”

She finished without a comma, laughed easily, and graciously scooped up the Mimosa The Progressive Publishing Model™

Page 5© 2014 Rhonda Adorno Dame Miriam’s Cast: The Last Guest

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that appeared right as she reclined into her luxurious armchair across from me. I noticed the impression of a ballet instructor’s hand pressed against the straight line of her spine.

“You are bold, Phaedra,” Carmen stated in a measured voice, sitting adjacent to her. Her words were always anchored, eloquent, and well-defined by her plump, feminine, naturally contoured lips. “And I like you one percent of the time,” she concluded.

“Ha!” Phaedra exclaimed. “Really that? I can’t even stand you at all. I just make exceptions and hope to come to my senses before menopause takes them off on a safari.”

Carmen laughed, and leaned forward placing her empty glass beside the footed fruit bowl spilling over with clusters of grapes. “Solomon,” she said to me, “I should have warned you about Dr. Prince. Although we are delighted to bring her on as Rockland’s full-time event coordinator, she is one cranky bat.”

“And whatever detriments you’ve endured by working so closely with Cruella de Vil this year, my condolences.”

“Our Director of Publications enjoys working for me just fine and you wouldn’t know anything about it, Dr. Prince.”

I picked up my own alfresco beverage and hung in there.

“I know enough to know that not everyone can work under your red-pressed thumb.”The Progressive Publishing Model™


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“Am I not the head of the most respected preparatory school in Central Florida?”

“I imagine twelve years of my daughters’ tuition had something to do with that.”

“You really have no class.”“Excuse me, but I am the guest who’s being

viciously attacked.”“Ladies,” I interjected. “How exactly can I

help with your project?”Neither of them let go of the toy, and they

stared in contempt for a long while, until finally, they both chuckled, and surrendered like the cool breeze that swept up under the white chiffon curtains which looped through the high lattice.

Phaedra, draped in a peach linen pantsuit, with an ostentatious sun hat shading her face, replied that she needed a book to be written and through Carmen, I had come highly recommended.

“It’s a time-sensitive project, due in six months,” she said. “A compelling overview of Florida’s private educational system, inclusive of the best practices and current research methodologies in a tone of scholarly discourse, but from the contemporary, didactic, and personal perspective of its keynote speaker, to which Carmen has been amiably assigned.”

I could only presume she expected me to write the book since she tilled through a number of more details as if I had already been contracted for the job. The Progressive Publishing Model™


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“It would be the complimentary gift from my client to his distinguished list of convention attendees,” she concluded.

“Do you understand what is happening, here?” Carmen alluded. Her thick hair was brushed back into an elegant bun. She wore a spring jacket, pink as the climbing bougainvillea plants in full bloom around her lush, manicured property. Her hands were folded loosely over her white, creased pants, and she wore an amused expression for her railroaded friend.

My smile conceded.“Well, I don’t mean to put you on the spot,”

Phaedra added indifferently.Carmen stood: a tall, postured woman with

a complexion so smoothly dark, it was pure as cocoa. “I’ll leave you two to battle it out,” she stated. “Velda has been waiving me inside for the past ten minutes to take a call.”

“Alright,” Phaedra chimed.I watched her take the easy steps up the

brick walkway that led to her handsomely situated, lake front home, dueling with the magnanimous charm of its historical neighbor— the town’s intimate liberal arts college that was viewable from the hindmost windows.

After she observed that Carmen had cleared some distance, Phaedra sat forward and accosted me with a set of paradise blue eyes that I could now clearly see from under the broad rim of her hat.The Progressive Publishing Model™


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It also revealed a pulsating tuft of auburn hair pulled back strictly into a band. Her demeanor changed dramatically. “Alright, Solomon,” she said with direct, professional vigor. “You and I need to talk.”

She did not waste a minute explaining. “While Carmen is indeed scheduled to speak at a convention for educators and a book is on the table, that’s not why you’re here.”

“Why am I here, Phaedra?” I asked circumspectly.

“My client is Dame Miriam. You know her.”She was right. I did. Phaedra’s client was

Dame Miriam, a woman whom I had known since being a child at Rockland Academy, who, in her unconventional way, taught theater at the school for several years before succumbing to retirement.

She continued in her rushed, impatient climb. “Dame Miriam has commissioned me to produce an off the seat biography about Isaiah Rockland, Carmen’s late husband. The problem is that no one knows anything about him really. Where he came from and how he could build something better than the government’s fantastic school system—you know that being black and educated never makes anyone comfortable in our society.

“The fact that he traipsed into prohibited territory snatching up the offspring of wealthy of the wealthiest with his little empire is perplexing The Progressive Publishing Model™


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to say the least. No one except Carmen and she refuses to speak about it with anyone beyond common courtesy. Dame Miriam knows this, but clearly does not care what teething troubles this causes me, especially since she wants the book to be a surprise for Carmen. That is until I thought of you.”

Candidly, she said, “I need you to become my expeditious, but scrupulous journalist, Solomon, exploiting your relationship with Carmen by getting her to talk about her husband, Rockland Academy, and whatever challenges and successes they encountered while building it. At the same time, interview her for her respected opinion on education, finessing all the legitimate information I’ll need in accordance with her being my keynote speaker.”

I was not a writer—not as much as I was an enthusiast of writing. And truthfully I could not take on any more responsibility, not more than what I had already incurred by becoming engaged, signing on as Carmen’s Director of Publications, and inheriting Ivory Stables.

Still, her petition had merit. Despite Carmen’s seniority in age, position, and her misplaced devotion for me, she was a dear friend. The opportunity to honor her husband’s legacy was my pleasure; surprising her would be rewarding, but also humorous motivation. By the time I sorted through my thoughts, Phaedra was stating, “Dear, you would be writing a book about The Progressive Publishing Model™


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your best friend’s father for his mother. No one else is going to get Carmen, our proverbial Venus fly trap, to open up about her husband’s dynamic legacy, on accident, allegedly.”

I decided to become Phaedra’s expeditious, but scrupulous journalist, and soon began soliciting Carmen’s unbiased, professional opinion.

In her own light, she was the powerhouse who helped build the foundations of what had become a highly-esteemed and accredited preparatory academy. During our meetings, she was generous, but could never understand the reason behind my Mona Lisa smile. Our hour long sessions eventually stretched into three or four.

It was an opportunity for us to reconnect: time to visit again, time to sit down at her kitchen table and talk over her yellow tomato soup and grilled chicken and cheddar cheese sandwiches.

We had been bruised for a while and not even our professional relationship or expert poker faces could conceal the emotion of back-to-back finality; we had lost her only son and buried my uncle, her long-time acquaintance. The double –edge sword that had struck us in our gut was finally sliding out.

In one of those reflective pauses that settle after a healthy, starved laugh, she said, “…I bet you didn’t even know he knew your uncle that well.”

I shook my head. The Progressive Publishing Model™


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“Well, he did.” “I’m sure there are several things I don’t

know and haven’t yet discovered about my family,” I replied, hearing my own surprisingly acerbic tone.

She replied, pretending not to notice, “Isaiah knew your grandfather too.”

I offered my attention. “I believe they met when Isaiah was

nineteen, ‘47, ‘48, somewhere around there. He was a lot less fat, but black as an eggplant,” she laughed. “No doubt that’s why people called him Flint. One day, he spotted your grandfather outside a feed store and asked him if he could load barrels of hay onto the bed of his pickup for long-term work. No fear of consequence, perhaps the real reason for his name.

“Ivory took note and hired him on the spot, even though he gambled with an onlooker who said in one day Isaiah would fail and prove to be a waste of his better sense. My future husband had no intention of failing at anything. Three years passed and when he saved your grandmother from a burglary, Ivory resolved that he had won that bet for good.”

“He worked for my grandfather?”“He worked for him as a ranch hand,” she

said. While I was clearly trying to sort through

the history of slavery, even imagining Crooks from Steinbeck’s novel, she added for my benefit, The Progressive Publishing Model™


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“He worked for him because he wanted to.” I felt relieved, but Carmen answered again,

“You don’t realize it, but our families have been connected for a very long time, Solomon.”

I was amazed, and bothered. Those were the right words for it because it made me tense that she knew more about my family than I did.

My grandmother Margaret McDaniels had asked nineteen year old Isaiah to help with a repair earlier that day since my grandfather wouldn’t be home until late. Finished with his work that evening, Flint walked up to the porch, but found one of the workers with a knife, tearing and slashing at her breast for her coin purse, which she fiercely clutched. Her two boys stood immobilized nearby. Flint yelled to call him off, but the man kept on with the struggle. Then, without hesitation, Flint swung back the porch screen, took my grandfather’s 1945 Springfield rifle off its rack above the door, steadied his arm, and shot the man cold. His stunned body stalled and dropped.

My uncle, Senator Ivory, was twelve years old at the time and my father, Sullivan Ivory was only eight. My uncle remained a statue while my father lost control of his bladder and peed through his pants. Flint told my uncle to call the sheriff and then he lifted my grandmother, stained with blood, and carried her into a room.

Her bleeding hand finally dropped the purse she had been clutching. When the coins scattered The Progressive Publishing Model™


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and tinkled across the hollow wood floor, her blubbered cry came, “why now?” She cried that she couldn’t let it go, that she couldn’t open her hand, that she tried, but she couldn’t let it go.

My uncle told the authorities what they did not want to hear about Flint, but they had no other choice than to render it fact: he had saved my grandmother’s life. When my grandfather came home, the sheriff returned the rifle to his hands, and said, if it was all the same to him, that they would go ahead and take Flint down to the station, and make sure they had a clear picture of what all went on, for his protection. “No tellin’ who’s gonna get up and arms when they found out there’s been a killin’ especially that it was done by a colored boy,” he said.

My grandfather was quiet, his gaze stuck on the smooth barrel of the gun, but after a while, he walked over to Flint, looked intentionally and at length into his oil rich eyes, and put the rifle back in his hands.

“It was a wonderful gesture that constipated the sheriff,” Carmen replied.

“What was his response?” I asked.“The sheriff? He wouldn’t have said

anything if he dared. Ivory had enough political strength in his pinky finger to affect the outcome of that night. Eventually, he took the body and his leave. Before Ivory left to see your grandmother, Flint asked him why he gave him back the rifle. Ivory walked away and said it was never a good The Progressive Publishing Model™


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idea to leave a loaded gun around boys, that he should keep it; it would be the right thing to do…. Such controlled intelligence, he had.”

“What about my grandmother and Senator and my father?”

“Margaret was hurt, but she lived long enough to thank Isaiah… in fact, it was every other weekend over Sunday dinner. He raved about her deep fried chicken, which is something I never could get a handle on. Senator and your father were curious about their hero, once the shock was over. Your uncle however would be the one to spend summer nights learning how to clean the infamous rifle. Isaiah created target practice for them too, but not before teaching them how to polish a saddle with a shine good enough to serve a Christmas turkey on.” She laughed at that to herself.

“Between Isaiah and Ivory,” she continued, “it was a comradeship of deep respect that formed over the years. It was unspoken and guarded, as men would have it and then as society had pressed, but as time permitted, ways parted, and life continued, they found the well ran deep. Theirs was a resilient friendship that spanned decades. When Isaiah opened the school, your grandfather attended the ribbon ceremony. He was and still is the largest patron.”

“The scholarship and the stables providing horses and funding for the equestrian program,” I stated. The Progressive Publishing Model™


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“That’s right. Ivory also left a portion of his estate for Isaiah, but he didn’t accept it. He claimed anything else would be greed and his well had been filled a long time ago by the senseless respect a white man, named Ivory, gave a black man, named Flint.”

Carmen confided that my uncle’s adult relationship with Isaiah became a lot like my grandfather’s in those early years. “When words were exchanged,” she said, “they were timed, intentional, and sincere, causing the other to listen in the same manner. It’s this history that allowed you to attend Rockland in the first place.”

Then with a little annoyance, she said, “I can’t believe Senator didn’t tell you this!”

The cranking gears of time had finally caught my shirt by the collar and I couldn’t break free.

I remembered waiting beside my uncle, exposed like a hungry newsboy without a hat, except that was how I looked with most of my donated clothes swallowing me whole. My parents were flying from our home in Thailand where my father had been a missionary before I was born and my mother, one of the women he was instrumental in converting and saving from a mainstay brothel. It was the end of my summer vacation and the last day that my uncle would have to look at me as if I was a defect.

When we were formally given the news, others fell into cries and shook with sobs, burying The Progressive Publishing Model™


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their wet faces in stronger relatives’ chests. But my uncle stood with his head down towards the floor and his hands tucked in his denim pockets, severe and quiet, just like the starched-white shirts he always wore. His disposition just fit.

I traced the hard lines that wormed into his leather-like skin at the tight corners of his eyes and deep creases of his face. Eventually, he looked at me from under his stiff-rim hat, but in stern custody of his words and emotions. The thick, graying brows that loomed above his long, strict-flaring nose and the rough bristle that became his upper lip shielded me from any indication of his reaction to our loss. Then he took me by the shoulder and we walked out of the building in parallel silence.

To my parents, visiting him in the States was a constructive adventure. To me, it was abject suffering. To my uncle, emphatically put, he did not know what to do with me. I was a frail, ten-year old boy who had no stamina or proclivity for the rustic life he cultivated on his ranch. For my father, I think it was a ploy to harden me. My mother, on the other hand, she wanted me to have authentic American experiences, not what I learned by attending an international school with other missionary or expatriate children.

They said they understood that it was difficult for me to be sent away. But that last day of summer, after they were killed on the plane



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coming to get me, I wished three months of difficulty were still an alternative.

When we left and were driving his steel-blue truck down what I imagined was a troll’s tunnel then, a knot formed in the center of my throat. I abrasively wiped away what tears managed to escape the Jerichonian walls I had erected in order to not appear weak in front of my uncle.

My father had told me if anything ever happened to him and my mother, I would come to live with my uncle. “He’ll know what to do,” he had said. “You have to behave the same, like you do with us—well probably not the same, in fact, aim for better, Kiddo.” I laughed before.

When my uncle saw my tears despite my hard effort, he asked, “Are you crying?”

I replied, “No Sir.” “Good,” he stated, and later as if he

needed to bolt down the screws, he added, “You’re old enough not to be.”

With half of me still drowning in the past, trapped in his truck and half of me present, sitting with Carmen at the table, I absorbedly stated, “I remained the crude dirt and cuss under his boot.”

“Senator was primal, that’s no lie, but he loved you.”

“He sent me to live at Rockland.”“Isaiah had a lot to do with that, you know.” I quickly looked up.



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“The first real conversation the two of them had in a long time was about you, and it occurred here at this very table, of course, it wasn’t yet in this house. Your uncle went to him saying he was in a world of trouble because he didn’t know how to help you. You were such a little prince, Solomon; you were. Adorable with that powdery white skin, the same pitch black hair, those distrusting blue eyes. Isaiah kept his promise to watch over you. Putting me in charge of much of it, as you know.”

When I wouldn’t leave my dorm, it wasn’t anyone but Carmen who coaxed me out… all the way to her kitchen table.

“Solomon,” Carmen stated in a conciliatory tone, apparently seeing my high level of vexation. “Yes, they arranged it in a manner that can only be described as excruciating to you, but I happen to know the security by which you changed hands was measured and it was certainly weighed. Senator was rigid in his emotions, but he wasn’t proud. He recognized what he could not provide for you and sought the most excellent entity that could. Rockland, he knew, was that entity.

“How did he know anything, Carmen? He barely said two words to me.”

“He trusted my husband; he was the man behind its manifesto after all: to concentrate on developing the whole student, in mind, body, spirit, and soul, to provide a haven from the The Progressive Publishing Model™


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ruthless things of life, to recover innocence, and to teach every young child how to believe in something when it’s hard to see in the dark. Despite its rigorous academic programs, and spiritually dogmatic principles, Rockland radiated sanctuary for you and so many boys and girls— in worse situations than you.”

I looked up and felt a pang. Phantom feelings materialized. Then my eyes locked on Carmen. Julius begged to live again in her strong, dark brown eyes. And Isaiah, he missed her too.

“But thankfully,” she said, looking away to rescue us both, “it was all a very, very long time ago.”

§

I said I had to go shortly after that raw plunge into my past. I wasn’t prepared for it. Phaedra had asked me to find out as much as I could about Isaiah. She couldn’t have known that I, in course, would be entwined in the hidden wood of his story. But from the digression, I gained tremendous perspective, especially after Carmen gave me a handful of Isaiah’s diaries. She thought it would help redirect our focus, and help me understand what Isaiah believed the caliber of a “private school” looked like.

“I’m only carrying on Isaiah’s vision,” she said, “and anything I have to say, he recorded better.”

It worked, and I was spellbound. I had The Progressive Publishing Model™


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stumbled upon Rockland at a time when my childhood was exposed to the realism of life, but Isaiah’s diaries allowed me to look with eyes wide open at the country he had set aside, idyllically, some decades before, for sanctuary—the kind where heritage and tradition interlock with the discipline of education, and the difficult battle for innocence.

When I began writing, I wrote facts, and then everything I could pull from my notes, the diaries, scant articles and interviews… well into nights and mornings. I know I was stirring up the past, probably more than the assignment required, but Rockland’s history revealed itself like an archeological artifact; the potency of his words remained with me.

The deeper I explored, I engaged in writing something permanent—something so genuine it should have been penned years before, and by someone far more qualified.

Isaiah’s diaries were wealthy; they captured such boisterous finesse—a great, attractive, lighthearted mixture of intelligence, ability, and raw confidence. That skill of writing would impress any disparate journalist. With every entry, the words rumbled from his pen, electrifying the current day reality of his plan, which by itself was a historical record full of clout.

I learned that Rockland’s walls were first erected during the Great Depression. Concrete and block were laid on a portion of land donated The Progressive Publishing Model™


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anonymously to a women’s group for the spiritual edification of its female laborers. A group of widowed philanthropists named it The Hierarchy of Giving of Good Seminary. It was where young girls, no matter their financial pedigree, were transformed into model citizens of society, and flourished into fashionable young women who were, according to the century, a triple threat: eligible, educated, and devout. As the economy suffered, however, so did enrollment, and eventually the doors closed.

Isaiah had written: …the carcass of a great vision was all that remained: clay roofs, red like wind waves in a desert; outer paint like the face of a pampered boy in a Victorian painting; solid mahogany doors for every barred entrance; covered archways and monastery like corridors. Its green grounds, flanked by red-brick walkways, meandered down grassy hills to the great sparkling lake, hugged and caressed by weeping willows in the distance.

Central Florida’s historical commission petitioned city leaders for its grand memorializing, citing it as an aesthetically pleasing landmark. One former graduate of the original philanthropic society, Penelope St. Clair, controversially protested. It was not enough to have a carcass of a great vision protected and preserved, she declared. She wanted to reopen the doors, an old mission, but a redefined purpose. She circulated her mission and dined The Progressive Publishing Model™


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with city leaders until one day, a noteworthy mogul developed his own curiosity in her idea.

Isaiah Rockland—the city’s most affluent neighbor. They called him “neighbor” because of his benevolent participation in neighborhood affairs. Playgrounds, parked in the middle of dejected residences, transformed solitary lots into spirited communities. Welfare-struck good men, granted labor, dug tunnels out of their hardship. Respected women of the day went to young women on the streets and covered them.

He did not want to be confused with a minister, or a philanthropist, or a community activist. He considered himself a man of deep conviction, charismatic, God-fearing, and sensitive to the plight of others. He believed his goal was to be useful and to do what he believed God had put him here to do—help his kaleidoscopic community.

He had written on the cover of one of his journals: What a man does initially sets the course for centuries to come. Whether he is a father by witness of son and daughter or a father by witness of dreams and vision, he establishes the course for others to follow. Be it good or bad, that which is unknown, travels far into the practices and deeds of another generation, a precocious offspring. And all is consequent of his intentional decision.

The transcendent philosophy was brilliant, but it also upset its share of critics. He thrived as The Progressive Publishing Model™


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a minority, doing more good than some could adequately campaign for. To boot, he was not a college-bred man. He had no recordable degree or refined occupation. No one could pinpoint the source of his financial empire. All they knew for sure is that whatever Isaiah set his hands to do, he prospered.

Rumors were prevalent, but those impacted by his aid defended him. They said Isaiah gave what he had; in return, God showed him how to unlock the witty inventions and ideas already contained in his intelligent mind.

On his path, he was introduced to Penelope. She shared her vision, which matched heartbeat for heartbeat that of his own. It was in the fall of 1976 that their journey began at the barricaded entrance of the seminary. The leaf–clung webs obscured the sign that read:

Alpha. Omega.Let us Acknowledge, Let us Honor, Let us Not

Forsake our Heritage.There, set in natural seclusion amid

decrepit oaks and stately magnolias, a beautiful cavity of heritage prospered.

On that day, Isaiah wrote: I believe in returning to Eden—a place where beauty grows despite the presence of clandestine evil. I want this for my son, my children—to know what innocence feels like long before they understand how to fight for it. Sometimes I think I’m cracked, others definitely do, but I am an intuitive, feeling,



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judging person, and a sort of Eden is what I see and I am going to make it as real for them as the day is blue.

His faith became the crux of all he endeavored to accomplish. As a seasoned entrepreneur, he began the work. Penelope desired to open a private school for young women in Central Florida. His vision was to provide a coeducational program that attracted families from local communities and those outside the municipal area.

“Having spent many years, flesh and soul, in the service of others” Carmen had said, “he wanted to give something to the community, something profound that would affect every generation. Why it wouldn’t work was not the question.”

Together, he and Penelope purposed to establish an institution of academic excellence—one that would uphold a standard of Biblical character. Programs of distinction in academics, athletics, would be offered, and since both shared a passion for the creative and fine arts, that program they agreed would be excellent.

They presented their fleece to God, and Isaiah garnered support from his wife and the community he had impacted over so many years. He received overwhelming endowments. Penelope, although she soon passed and handed off the baton, for all her appreciation, decided the school would be named, Rockland Academy. The Progressive Publishing Model™


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To Isaiah, the school’s construction was more important than the name. He knew he wanted to appeal to the visual stimulus of those whose children would attend. So, he invested greatly in creating the “garden” of his idyllic Eden. In other words, he intended for parents to judge his book by its cover; he wanted them convinced even before they met the entrance gate—convinced that Rockland Academy had the very best to offer in plain sight.

This grandiose approach is what surpassed the efforts of other private, less extroverted institutions in the area. Peitri Ivanovich, Diego Salazar, and Madeline Kent were picked for the exhaustive project. Salazar was chosen for his designs that celebrated Moorish and Spanish architecture, Ivanovich for his truly inspiring landscape designs, and Madeline Kent, well-known to Ivy League colleges and universities, for her interior decorating expertise.

In 1979, late October, three years later, Rockland Academy opened. Isaiah had availed himself to challenge and defeat, but aimed and kept the vision before him. To his team, he had said, “I want the school set apart. Make it outstanding. Make it academic. Make it paradise. That’s how it’s got to be—excellent, masterful.”

It was all those things. So much that the financially independent were charmed, the laborers were overwhelmed, the dreamers were discouraged, but those who pioneered were The Progressive Publishing Model™


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granted favor. This was satisfactory for Isaiah. His mission, from the start, was outreach. He upheld that if anyone came seeking, he would guarantee their entry, nurture their need, and educate beyond education. Qualified teachers were hired, but he wanted only those who could improve upon his vision. As a result, for some time, the academy lacked a theater director. No one ever met his standard so he postponed the program and, unapologetically, Isaiah prayed.

He prayed until Sept, 12, 1982 where an entry revealed: Dame Miriam Haufmann has begun teaching Rockland’s middle and upper school students. She dedicates her jagged and polished, theatrical eccentricities five days a week in the third period of the day. She also monitors detentions and volunteers some weekends tutoring piano, art, and writing. Parents all but prey on her for the private tutelage of their child; her reputation practically precedes introduction. She brings with her an outstanding resume, listing accomplishments from abroad and near, with both the London and New York stages to her credit

… And my God, does she have the air of any female protagonist who has lived life knowing, simultaneously, the grandeur and baseness of her humanity! For her, punctuality, responsibility, and performance are the commandments. If students violate her set principles, her definitions of grace and discipline



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bewilder them. She has such shrewd level-headedness and beguiling wit, and she enforces her rules. She does not see gray. Most remarkable is her concentration on each student and acuity by which, with unnatural dexterity, she seems to string together past, present, and future like the pearl strand laced around her neck.

I remembered the woman he spoke of. When I came to Rockland, I was brand new—a foal in a new pasture, and she was the purveyor of all things appropriate and unruly.

She would sit propped in her director’s chair with legs crossed like a cat’s tail swaying about its business. She was dressed primly in a black dress, the sleeves folded by a tongue of fabric hooked onto a smart button. She would sit as we filed into her auditorium, watching from behind her dark, horn-rimmed glasses, never letting on that she could see, with a hawk’s precision, every crease and pleat in our crimson and gray uniforms.

When we were seated, she would lean forward in her chair and state in diaphragmatic splendor, “You are not at Rockland Academy to waste my time. I have lived remarkable years to, at last, sit within this superb school auditorium and teach half-wit thespians like you and you.”

She would remove her glasses and then resume, “It is not by God’s might, nor his will that The Progressive Publishing Model™


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we do anything. Let us acknowledge it and not forget it because what they teach you out there is not what I teach you in here. Not by his strength, but by yours, a bigger entity than anyone’s ability to influence your outcome. You will direct me in directing my greatest production—brilliant actors who will impact their generation. Whether I can be proud of it or not, that is up to you. But for the year, you belong to me and there is nowhere else to go.

“Eat up the meat and drink up the juice. What I teach you is meant to digest so you will remember it as good as your mother’s Thanksgiving pie. And when years have passed, you will still wonder what I meant when I say, you are a student and you are an actor until your very last thought. Put off your things. Sit up and pay attention. You are now Dame Miriam’s cast.”

Latecomers always had the misfortune of being hooked onto stage by her curling finger. When they were there, nervous, if not trembling, she would state, “Now I ask… who are you and why are you on my stage?”

Blank expressions turned into anxious, confused, and painful to watch awkwardness. Dame Miriam, however, simply descended the platform and oblivious to their pain, prodded them to answer with whatever came to their minds—a lion, a bank robber, a blacksmith, a tardy student.

No matter what, her mission was to get the The Progressive Publishing Model™


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answer out of them, and soon, we all had a turn on her stage.

She tugged and suggested until we could, without question, convince ourselves. With a voice of increasing vibrancy and enthusiasm, she would state, “…it does not matter if you build a believable character for me. I am not your concern. If you cannot convince yourself, then get off my stage.”

She would clap her hands as she paced the floor down in front. She would spout another question, a challenge, a debate, a contradiction, and offer no response except the distracting clap of her hands. She did so until like a kidney stone, we passed into our role. Then she would stop and look up at us proudly, with that familiar air of a pre-war belle and surrender a dazzling laugh.

With her wrinkled arms shined in aloe cream and folded around her petite frame, she would declare, “Young men fought battles and you are not among those defeated in quests who did not survive to speak the truth of it. Well done.”

We feared her abrupt choice of words and perplexing tendencies, but always, we were pulled in by her magnetism. Like the order of the wind majestically reversed, so Dame Miriam was to Rockland Academy.

When I finished the book six months after I had started, Phaedra, who had become my proficient editor, called me on the phone and The Progressive Publishing Model™


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said, “Dear God, Solomon, what is this?”Not understanding to what dimension I had

plunged myself, I shook my head and said, “That is the manuscript you commissioned for Carmen.”

“I can’t pretend with this!” she exclaimed.“For the convention, I’ve put something

else together so you will have it for the pretense of our story. It’s just that, after I started--

She stopped me. “Solomon, Dame Miriam wants to host a reunion for her students at Rockland Academy—the ones who attended her theater class. Not for the class of one year, rather a gathering of the many. And prior to the reunion night, she wants eleven specific students to assemble without the others.

“The first occasion will be held in Rockland’s dining hall, a breakfast; the second, an informal gathering at a familiar location. This falls on Halloween so that night is the masquerade dinner. Those eleven whom she desires to be present will be receiving a personal, handwritten invitation in one week. Your book is going home with each and every guest.”



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That following week, Dame Miriam’s elaborate invitation came. It concerned a reunion to begin the twenty-ninth of October at Rockland Academy. A letter was enclosed. Before nightfall, in the silence of our homes, offices, parked vehicles, we regarded her words …

To My Eleven, You are each a member of my cast. You

each have been invited to my reunion, though I remind you, I am a misfit and should never be relied upon for a true to form thing. You remember me well. I am almost certain I remember the breadth of you. How have you changed? You know clearly enough it’s not the measure I am after, but the quality. Do you hear my prompt? Yet? Faint, but resonating in the acoustic halls of that superb, school auditorium: who are you and why are you on my stage? It was a terrible, confusing question then, when I offered no stroking backdrop, no familiar scene, no useful setting to help facilitate your answer. But you now have every accomplishment to assist in answering my overarching question.

Substantially, while others will attend in droves, I am most interested in the eleven who always knew. You pulled earth from my hands; I gave you a plain, bare stage, and you created lairs and palaces from eyes within your head. You built Caesar’s Rome with just the whisper of an idea! You were able to see the The Progressive Publishing Model™


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extraordinary thing in you when you were twelve or sixteen, and I delighted in it.

As my cast, it was your duty to convince yourselves of that character for that specific role, and to be accurate without a crutch, and to make it believable beyond a shadow of a doubt.

Now to the gist of it: who have you become on life’s stage, that terrible, terrific, inconstant determiner of all things falsely secure? Do you still know who you are? It’s quite simple. Are you convinced enough of your character to stand in front of me? I, who have taught you and know if you are truly convinced?

Ah, my cast! What brilliant children you were. My reunion will commence at the last hour of the last Friday in October, and following that time, I have arranged two separate functions exclusive to you. The first will see you arriving at the place where the school is set apart near the lake, surrounded with the art of the earth. You must be punctual, and you must not be late.

Arrive at that hour when the sun is awakening over her colorless morning, when roads, wet and dejected by the sleep walking mist, exist as abandoned channels of purpose. It is the kind of road that you will remember with a strange and certain nostalgia. Adhere to its black-lined nuance guiding you; at that



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hour, you must arrive.

|Episode 2:: Close|

What Happens Next Week? Episode 3: DAYBREAK

Meet Scott Prince, the husband of Phaedra Prince, the reunion coordinator. For him, it’s finally the day of the reunion, which means a return to The Progressive Publishing Model™


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normalcy, but finding out that both of their daughters, also members of the cast, haven’t returned their mother’s phone calls or shown up when agreed, means it’s just a matter of time before WW3 happens in his household.

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