What Should I Do with the Rest of My Life_ - Bruce Frankel [101]
Nancy phoned Jim at his office. Hearing her voice, he, too, asked what was wrong. “Nothing,” she said.
“Then why are you calling me?” he asked.
“You’ve got to drive down here on Monday,” Nancy said.
“What’s wrong?” he repeated.
“I think we’re buying a house,” she said. Then she heard the phone drop.
As it turned out, the Gaglianos’ son John, a professional golf instructor in Illinois, was about to drive down to Florida, and gave his dad a lift. Within a week, the Gaglianos’ offer was accepted and financing approved to buy Nancy’s dream house. That was 1994. “It took another four years for Yakshemash to finally retire,” Nancy said, referring to Jim. In preparation, Nancy began subbing more in Chicago and planned to continue to substitute in Florida when she and Jim retired there. She would at least realize a bit of her girlhood ambition.
A lifetime of cigarette smoking, however, had already caught up with Jim. A stellar athlete once known around Chicago’s baseball diamonds for his silky play and sure glove at second base as well as a former all-city basketball star, Jim had been diagnosed with emphysema. X-rays showed the right lung black halfway up. “It’s sad; when he was young, he was so athletic he could have been a decathlon champ! No kidding, he played every sport there was, and played them well. God gave him an exceptional body, and he just destroyed it.” As he approached sixty, the disease made it hard for him to endure the Chicago winter. He agreed to retire at the end of May 1998.
With a date for retirement in hand, Nancy took charge. She fixed a firm price of $110,000 on the little house the Gaglianos had inhabited for thirty-seven years—and soon had buyers. Nancy filled out the paperwork for substitute teaching in Florida and mailed it to the state Department of Education along with a check for $56. On April 28, she finished packing the family Hi-Lo camper with everything that was precious to her, including her bedroom set and two heirloom sewing machines, hooked the camper to her prized 1988 black Lincoln Town Car, and pulled out of the driveway in Hegewisch, with her son, Jim, his wife, and three kids on the curb to wave her off.
By the time schools opened in August, Nancy had plotted out routes to the seven elementary schools nearest her new home on a Broward County School Board map. She began subbing at each of the schools and weeding out some. There were those where she felt poorly treated, dismissed as a “lowly sub,” and she eliminated them. She was most happy at Banyan. She liked the pleasant, upbeat, and efficient school secretary, Nancy Farndell, and principal Voelkel. They made Nancy feel welcome and wanted. She became a regular substitute at the school over the next three and a half years. Then, during the 2001-2002 school year, Voelkel told her that a second-grade teacher was taking maternity leave in January and offered her the interim position. “I jumped at it. And I just loved it. I had found my home. I had a class of thirty second-graders! It was wonderful,” she recalled, her face lighting up and her voice as animated as if she had just received the news.
The offer proved critical in unexpected ways. Shortly after Nancy accepted the job, Jim Gagliano noticed that health insurance deductions hadn’t been taken out of his retirement check. When he called Chicago to inquire, he discovered that Interlake Steel had gone out of business, and his and Nancy’s medical insurance had been discontinued. “Trick or treat!” Nancy said.
While most of the symptoms of her chronic fatigue syndrome had vanished, the effects of Jim’s emphysema were worsening. With the costs of oxygen and medications escalating, they faced certain financial ruin. After much discussion, their insurer agreed to let them pick up insurance in Florida. But they could not possibly sustain