Old School

by Tobias Wolff

  I kept reading. The narrator is at a bus stop, heading home after a typing class at the Y. She smokes the butt while she waits, even when it becomes apparent that another girl has caught her in the act and is completely grossed out. I don’t really care, the narrator says, because I don’t know her. If I knew her, or if she was a boy, that would be different. As she smokes she thinks up a lie to scare up some cigarette money from her mother; another fee for supplies in the typing class.

  She rides the bus across the city—Columbus—and walks home through a neighborhood of brick apartment buildings. Her mother’s apartment is on the third floor. It’s sweltering inside. The narrator’s little sister is watching TV, her mother’s in her bedroom with a headache. She calls out to the narrator—Ruth, it turns out her name is—and Ruth puts some ice in a dishtowel and carries it into the darkened room. She sits on the edge of the bed, holding the icepack to her mother’s forehead, and after making some tender inquiries slips in the lie about the typing supplies. Her mother sighs and says, Okay, of course, take what you need. She tells Ruth that two of her friends called, but asks her please not to make any plans as she feels really awful and needs help with Naomi.

  Ruth goes into the kitchen and looks at the notepad by the phone. The first message is from a girl she grew up with. It’s the second time she’s called since Ruth got home for the summer and though Ruth feels guilty for not calling her back she knows she won’t do it this time either. The other message is from Caroline Fallon, a classmate at the boarding school Ruth attends on scholarship. She dials the number immediately.

  The two girls make clever talk about how bored they are. Ruth calls her mother Maman, and describes her indisposition in terms that make Caroline laugh. Then Caroline asks if she’d like to go to a dance at the country club that night. When Ruth hesitates, she apologizes for the late notice and says, by way of explanation, They need girls.

  Okay, Ruth says. I need boys.

  There’s just one thing, Caroline says. It’s so ridiculous, but anyway—can I give your name as Lewis instead of Levine?

  Lewis?

  You know, Lewis, Logan, something like that. I’m sorry, Ruthie. Club rules.

  I see.

  It’s disgusting. I probably shouldn’t have called you.

  No, that’s all right. That’s fine. Tell them Windsor.

  Windsor! You are a stitch! I mean, Ruthie Windsor!

  Ruth Anne Windsor.

  Ruth and her mother argue over her plans for the night, and Ruth handles it so deftly that her mother gets out of bed to coax her back from desolation and take in the waist of a smart old evening gown of her own that Ruth’s been coveting. When she leaves the apartment she has to stop and catch her breath, she’s so heady with the relief of escape, like getting out of granny’s hospital room.

  Then the dance—the convertibles in the parking lot, the Japanese lanterns along the path to the ballroom, the music, the boys. Ruth sees that the boys have noticed her, but the one who catches her notice happens also to be the boy Caroline has in her sights. His name is Colson. He and his friend Gary sit down at Ruth and Caroline’s table. They’re both handsome, but Gary’s sort of bland and Colson’s broody and smart—too smart really for Caroline—and just as Ruth feels his interest shift toward her she senses a growing restlessness in Caroline, a watchful formless unease. Something’s wrong and Caroline doesn’t yet know what it is, but she’ll know soon enough if things follow their present course, and she will hate Ruth for it and drop her like a toad.

  Normally that wouldn’t bother her. Ruth likes to compete with other girls, and she fancies this Colson with his rumbly voice and hooded eyes. At any other time she would encourage his attentions.

  But this isn’t any other time. She’s at the beginning of a long summer. One of the convertibles in the parking lot belongs to Caroline, and already Ruth has gotten used to being rescued from her hot apartment for breezy drives to movie theaters and the pool at Caroline’s house. This is only the first of many dances at the club, and she wants to be invited to the rest. Caroline won’t just drop her if she feels betrayed, she will make sure Colson knows that Ruth is here tonight under false pretenses, and exactly what those pretenses are. How interested will he be then?

  Lousy odds, Ruth thinks. She fastens her attention on Gary. He warms to it, and Colson withdraws moodily before resuming his languid banter with Caroline, who comes brightly to life. But Ruth is still aware of Colson and knows that he’s aware of her. Something may yet come of it before this summer is over, something secret where Ruth can get her own back. Even now the current between them is so obvious to her that she can hardly believe Caroline doesn’t feel it. Ruth stands and takes Gary’s hand to lead him toward the dance floor. Caroline smiles up at Ruth and lifts her glass. Good—she doesn’t know. Everything’s okay.

  Everything’s okay. That was the last line in the story, this story where nothing was okay. I went back to the beginning and read it again, slowly this time, feeling all the while as if my inmost vault had been smashed open and looted and every hidden thing spread out across these pages. From the very first sentence I was looking myself right in the face.

  It went beyond the obvious parallels. Where I really recognized myself was in the momentary, undramatic details of Ruth’s life and habits of thought. The typing class, say. What could be more ordinary than spending your summer days in a typing class at the Y? That was exactly what I’d done for part of the previous summer, yet I’d never once mentioned it to my schoolmates just because it was so completely ordinary, and uncool. And taking a bus to get there! No character in my stories ever rode a bus.

  The whole thing came straight from the truthful diary I’d never kept: the typing class, the bus, the apartment; all mine. And mine too the calculations and stratagems, the throwing-over of old friends for new, the shameless manipulation of a needy, loving parent and the desperation to flee not only the need but the love itself. Then the sweetness of flight, the lightness and joy of escape. And, yes, the almost physical attraction to privilege, the resolve to be near it at any cost: sycophancy, lies, self-suppression, the masking of ambitions and desires, the slow cowardly burn of resentment toward those for whose favor you have falsified yourself. Every moment of it was true.

  How do you begin to write truly? I went back to that first sentence. I hope nobody saw me pick up the cigarette butt off the sidewalk . . . It made me cringe. This was not how I would ever want to be seen, though in my own cigarette-craving I had done that very thing, and more than once.

  What the hell—let’s see how it felt to write it. I rolled a fresh sheet into the typewriter and started pecking it out: I hope nobody saw me . . . Then the keys jammed. I separated them and they jammed again. That sentence did not want to be written, but I wrote it still. And there I was, winner of the Cassidy English Prize, future protégé of Lionel Trilling, bending to the sidewalk for a lipsticked butt.

  I had stopped going to confession right after my mother died. Even as a young boy I’d performed it grudgingly and with no payoff I was ever aware of. But in writing those words I felt at least an intuition of gracious release. To strip yourself of pretense is to overthrow a hard master, the fear of giving yourself away, and in that one sentence I gave myself away beyond all recall. Now there was nothing to do but go on.

  Word by word I gave it all away. I changed Ruth’s first name to mine, in order to place myself unmistakably in the frame of these acts and designs, but kept Levine, because it made unmistakable what my own last name did not. I changed the city to Seattle, Caroline to James, and brought other particulars into line. I didn’t have a lot of adjusting to do. These thoughts were my thoughts, this life my own.

  It took a long time. The typewriter kept inching back, and as it retreated I leaned farther and farther over the desk until the discomfort broke my trance. Then I’d have to return the machine to the starting line and get up and pace the room a while to ease my back before bending once again to the work.


  I finished the story just before the bell rang for breakfast. I read it through and fixed a few typos, but otherwise it needed no correction. It was done. Anyone who read this story would know who I was.

  WHEN IN DISGRACE WITH FORTUNE

  As I left the dining hall one morning Mr. Ramsey took my elbow and asked if he might have a word with me. He guided me in the direction of the headmaster’s garden, away from the stream of boys going to their rooms or their chores. He kept his hold on me as we walked, in what I took to be a confidential English way, so I bowed my head and looked grave. It puzzled me to be singled out like this. Though I had done well in Mr. Ramsey’s class the year before, I’d kept my distance and so had he.

  You’ve not wasted your time here, he said.

  I knew that Mr. Ramsey had been on the Cassidy Prize committee, so I thought he was referring to my Shakespeare essay; but when I thanked him he looked annoyed and waved it off.

  We’re not here to talk about essays, he said. One can imagine a world without essays. It would be a little poorer, of course, like a world without . . . chess, but one could live in it. Mr. Ramsey let go of my elbow and stopped beside the low stone wall that ran around the garden. A skinny black squirrel with tufted ears scrambled up the wall and began chattering at us.

  Stories, though—one could not live in a world without stories.

  No. No, sir.

  Without stories one would hardly know what world one was in. But I’m not saying this very well. Mr. Ramsey stared out over the garden. It has to do with self-consciousness, he said. Though I’m no believer, I find it interesting that self-consciousness is associated with the Fall. Nakedness and shame. Knowledge of ourselves as a thing apart, and bound to die. Exile. We speak of self-consciousness as a burden or a problem, and so it is—the problem being how to use it to bring ourselves out of exile. Whereas our tendency is to lose ourselves in the distance, wouldn’t you say?

  The squirrel approached to within a foot of us and reared up, obviously expecting a handout. Someone had been sneaking him scraps, probably a younger boy, homesick, missing his dog.

  That squirrel looks about ready to take us down, I said.

  Lost in the distance, Mr. Ramsey said again. It’s a wonder we’re not all barking. And of course we would be if we hadn’t any way to use self-consciousness against itself, or rather against its worst inclinations—morbidity, narcissism, paranoia, grandiosity, that lot. We have somehow to turn a profit on it. Which is, I must say, exactly what that story of yours does. “Summer Dance.” A marvelous story! Pure magic. No—no—not magic. Alchemy. The dross of self-consciousness transformed into the gold of self-knowledge. Enough. I see I’m embarrassing you. But I had to tell you, for my own sake if not yours, what a superior piece of writing that is.

  I thanked Mr. Ramsey for his kind words and asked how he’d happened to read my story. I had dropped my only copy in the submission box, from which I assumed it had been forwarded to Idaho with the others.

  I chose the final entries, he said. Seeing my surprise, he said, Really, now, you didn’t suppose we sent Mr. Ernest Hemingway every story you fellows came up with, did you? All thirty-four of them? Oh no. I skimmed off the three best and sent him those, though I knew it was strictly pro forma after I’d read the first page of “Summer Dance.” And I was right, wasn’t I?

  Sir?

  Ernest Hemingway chose your story. Hadn’t any choice, really. I’m no believer, as I say, but I do believe in the existence of what one can only call gifts—gifts without a giver, if you will, but gifts all the same. That which cannot be earned or deserved. Rewards for nothing. A scandal to the virtuous and hardworking, but there you are. I’ll admit to some envy here.

  Ernest Hemingway chose my story?

  We’re asking you not to say anything until it’s announced in the school paper tomorrow. Didn’t want to spring it on you all at once like that—out of the blue. Wanted to give you a chance to draw breath, and of course add a personal note of congratulations. Your story will run with my interview.

  I was glad for the day of grace I’d been given. After my last class that afternoon I went AWOL across the river and mucked through freshly ploughed fields to the tallest of the neighboring hills, Mount Winston as we called it. Mount Winston had been a smoker’s roost when I served with that band of incorrigibles; to judge from all the butts moldering up here in the dimples and clefts of exposed shale, it still was.

  I paced the hilltop, exhausted but too nervous to sit. In my classes the blood-roar in my head had rendered me nearly deaf. Most of this was explosive relief and exhilaration, yet with a thumping underpulse of dread. It was one thing to confide your hidden life to a piece of paper in an empty room, quite another to have it broadcast.

  A warm wind blew across the hilltop, and with it the faint cries of boys chasing balls. The school lawns and fields were a rich, unreal green against the muddy brown expanse of surrounding farmland. Between the wooded banks of the river two shells raced upstream, oars flashing. The chapel with its tall crenellated bell tower and streaming pennant looked like an engraving in a child’s book. From this height it was possible to see into the dream that produced the school, not mere English-envy but the yearning for a chivalric world apart from the din of scandal and cheap dispute, the hustles and schemes of modernity itself. As I recognized this dream I also sensed its futility, but so what? I loved my school no less for being gallantly unequal to our appetites—more, if anything. With still a month to graduation I was already damp with nostalgia. I stretched out on a slab of rock. The sun in my face and radiant warmth on my back lulled me to sleep. Then the wind cooled and I woke with a wolfish hunger and started back.

  The school newspaper came out twice a month. They left it in the foyer of the dining hall so we could pick it up going into breakfast, and on these mornings we were allowed to read at the table—our faces obscured by the open wings of the plainly named News, or bent over pages folded neatly beside high-piled plates, which most boys, perhaps from long study of their commuting fathers, could empty without a glance. The thought of sitting there while everyone read my story gave me the creeps, but I had to go. I had to see what Ernest Hemingway thought of my work.

  The kitchen sounds and chink of crockery gave depth to the quiet of the hall. Boys glanced up from their papers to sneak looks in my direction. I couldn’t eat, but I poured myself a cup of coffee and spread the front page over my empty plate. The opening of “Summer Dance” ran down three columns on the left, to be continued inside; the fourth and last column contained the telephone interview with Hemingway, surmounted by our art master’s caricature. Mr. Ramsey had left out his own questions, so Hemingway seemed to be speaking in monologue.

  You can tell your boy there that this is pretty good work. Pretty damned good work, considering. He knows what he’s writing about, more than he’s telling, and that’s good. That’s always good. He is writing cleanly and well about what he knows and he’s writing from his conscience and that always raises the stakes. This is the story of a conscience and that kind of story if it’s honest always has something for another conscience to learn from, even an old wreck like mine. These are true human beings here, I mean true on the page, though I’m guessing they are true in other ways. If they are, they will never forgive him. This I can promise. If your boy had asked me, I would have told him to wait till they were all dead.

  Am I kidding? Sure. Sure I am. The stories you have to write will always make someone hate your guts. If they don’t you’re just producing words.

  Advice . . . Don’t take advice, I never did. And don’t get swell-headed. Writers are just like everyone else, only worse. Did he rewrite the story forty times? He could throw away some stuff, I’ve thrown away enough in my time. The kid knows what he’s writing about and that’s good, now he should go out and know some other things to write about.

  But I don’t mean wars, not the way you probably think I mean. You don’t go to war as a tourist. War’ll get you kil
led and dead men don’t write books. Same with hunting. Same with the sauce. Take Joyce. A rummy. Chained to his desk. Liked to read his work out loud, pretty tenor voice. Blind as a bat. You know what his wife told me? Said he ought to go lion hunting, that it would be good for his work and I should take him lion hunting. Can you imagine that? James Joyce lion hunting, with those eyes? Maybe I should have, come to think of it.

  Watch the sauce. The sauce kills more writers than war, just takes longer. If you’re going up against the giant killer you’d better be damned sure you can win. Some of us can, some can’t. Scott never had a chance, poor soft [———]. Mouth like a girl’s. Between the rum and that pretty mouth and that wife of his he never had a chance. But he didn’t write drunk, not like Bill Faulkner. With Bill Faulkner you can tell, right in the middle of a sentence, where the mash kicked in. Called me a coward once. A coward. I had to have Buck Lanham set him straight.

  Watch the sauce. And don’t pay any attention to what the [———] say about you. They’ve said everything about me. What the hell. They’ll die and then they’ll be dead.

  What else? Don’t talk about your writing. If you talk about your writing you will touch something you shouldn’t touch and it will fall apart and you will have nothing. Get up at first light and work like hell. Let your wife sleep in, it’ll pay off later. Watch your blood pressure. Read. Read James Joyce and Bill Faulkner and Isak Dinesen, that beautiful writer. Read Scott Fitzgerald. Hold on to your friends. Work like hell and make enough money to go someplace else, some other country where the [———] Feds can’t get at you.

  Did I say keep your friends? Keep your friends, hold on to your friends. Don’t lose your friends.

  I don’t know. I guess that’s it. That’s the sermon for today.

  In another week I would meet Ernest Hemingway, and walk alone with him in the headmaster’s garden. He had chosen my story and made special mention of it for everyone to read. There was no excuse for me to feel anything but joy. I knew this, sure, but what did his blood pressure or James Joyce’s wife or Fitzgerald’s pretty mouth or sleeping late or getting up early have to do with my story? I didn’t want Ernest Hemingway’s advice, I wanted his attention.