Old School

by Tobias Wolff

  True, he said I was doing pretty damned good work, but his considering sort of canceled that out. The part where he said I knew what I wrote about, that was good, that was true—so why did he have to spoil it with that business about knowing something else? Did this story need me to know something else? And what, exactly, should I have thrown away? An example would’ve been nice, if he could actually find one.

  The best part was about “Summer Dance” being a story of conscience, giving other consciences something to learn from. But why not take the obvious next step and mention the courage this kind of story required? He knew, he had to know from writing “Soldier’s Home” and “The End of Something” how it felt to expose yourself like this for the sake of a story, to make it living and true. Why didn’t he say so?

  The answer came to me as I studied the shape of the interview. Hemingway had begun by talking about my story and surely would’ve gone on talking about it if he hadn’t been derailed into all this trivia by Mr. Ramsey’s questions, now cleverly removed to make Hemingway sound like a maundering, self-important old bore with his beard in a drink. It was an injustice both to him and to me, and I resented it, as I resented the prissy editing of the interview. I had a vision of Mr. Ramsey, Lolita’s Paladin, sworn enemy of censors everywhere, hunched over the typescript like some lip-reading Soviet goon as he cut the guts out of Ernest Hemingway’s language.

  Hemingway had been ill-served and so had I. But he’d be here soon, and free to talk about my story without interruption. I could wait.

  A hand gripped my shoulder. It was Mr. Rice. Looking thoughtfully down at me, he squeezed until it almost hurt, then he gave a little nod and let go. Well done, sir, he said. A commendable effusion. And because your Mr. Hemingway had the sense to recognize it, I will try—I will try—to forgive his boorish traducement of his betters. But I must warn you I shall probably fail.

  Nice job, a boy across the table said.

  Yeah, it’s okay, another boy said. I read the whole thing.

  George Kellogg fell in with me on my way to class. At first he said nothing. We walked together, hands in our pockets, shoes scuffing on the brick walkway. I’m disappointed, naturally, he said. But I’m glad for you, for writing that story. To tell the truth, if I hadn’t seen your name on it I wouldn’t have thought it was yours. Which goes to show what a big step you took. It’s a good story, a really good story, and you should be proud of it.

  I thanked him and said I’d like to read his sometime.

  No you wouldn’t.

  Oh, come on.

  No, he said, and that was all.

  With only weeks to go until graduation, my class was drawing close. You could see the change—our studied nonchalance cracking and falling away like the shell of an egg. Even boys who had lived almost in exile, either by their choice or ours, were led inward by the tribal feeling that had come upon us. This was both urgent and ordinary. We had seen it happen to other classes, and been told that it would happen to ours with such tedious frequency that we became knowing and wary; but despite our knowingness, it happened anyway. I didn’t want to lose my place in the circle, so of course I was afraid of what my schoolmates would think after reading “Summer Dance.”

  My fears came to nothing. Masters and boys alike told me pretty much what George had said—with plain goodwill and something else, something like relief, as if they’d felt all along that I was holding back, and could breathe easier now that I’d spoken up.

  A manila envelope was leaning against the door of my room. I hefted it—a book—and carried it inside. A note scrawled on the envelope said: You should have this. P.

  I opened the envelope and slid the book out. It was a first edition of In Our Time. I sank to the edge of my bed and sat there studying the cover. Bill came through the door not long after. He took in the book at a glance and said, Purcell?

  I nodded.

  To the victor go the spoils. Here, he said, and took his Waterman fountain pen from his pocket and tossed it on my bed.

  Bill, what’re you doing? I can’t take that.

  Oh, I think you can. What’s mine is yours, right? Bill went to his desk, opened the drawer, rummaged for something, then slammed it shut and stood facing out the window. He was leaning on the desktop with both hands as if trying to push it through the floor.

  I’m sorry he didn’t pick your story, I said. I’m glad he chose mine but I’m sorry he didn’t choose yours.

  Is that all you can think about? Ernest fucking Hemingway? He couldn’t have chosen mine. I never handed one in.

  Why not?

  None of your business. He turned and looked at me. Have you ever been inside a synagogue?

  No. Well, once. On a field trip.

  That’s not what I mean.

  Then no.

  You’re Catholic, aren’t you?

  Not exactly.

  You used to go into town with the Catholic boys.

  For a while. Not anymore, not since fourth form.

  So you’re a lapsed Catholic. The point is you were raised Catholic.

  Yes.

  So it’s fair to say you haven’t had the experience of doing what this person in your story does.

  What’s that?

  You know. You know.

  That’s not exactly true.

  Don’t give me that shit. Okay, so you’ve taken an interest in this person’s situation. So you’ve imagined what it’s like. Bully for you. That doesn’t make it your situation. It isn’t your situation, and it isn’t your story. That was my story, you fucking leech. That was my story and you know it.

  I’d been all set to explain myself, right up to the moment he called me a leech, but now I just shrugged and said, If it was your story you would have written it.

  Oh—it’s as simple as that?

  Yeah. As simple as that.

  By the time I got back to the room after dinner I’d cooled off and was ready to tell Bill my side of things. It wouldn’t make us friends, but it might make him understand how the story was really my own. I waited for an hour or so and when he still didn’t show up I figured I’d find him in the library.

  The scholars’ studies were in the basement, five of them awarded to the highest-ranking sixth formers at the start of each year. The basement had its own entrance so they could come and go even when the rest of the library was closed. I didn’t like it down there; the air was dead, the long shelves of periodicals depressing in the sheer dusty mass of their obsolescence. The place appeared to be empty that warm May night, no sound at all, no lights showing under the doors. I knocked on Bill’s anyway, then tried the handle.

  I shouldn’t have. I had no business doing that, and no business reading the notebook on his desk. But I took it out of the study and slumped down at the far end of a row of shelves and began to leaf through it under the dim yellow light—over a hundred handwritten pages without a title, without chapters, without any discernible form. I didn’t read every word but I read most of it, enough to be overcome by its nakedness and misery and to understand why he could never have shown a page of it to anyone.

  After classes that Friday afternoon a boy came to my room and said I should go to the dean’s office. I didn’t think anything of it. Hemingway would be here the following week, and I assumed Dean Makepeace wanted to give me some tips on how to handle myself with his old friend.

  It was hot and steamy. We sixth formers had the privilege of sunbathing on the quad, and at this hour the grass was crowded with pale hairy boys basting themselves with oil as they yelled back and forth over their transistor radios, all tuned to the same station, the same song. I stopped to shoot the breeze with a couple of classmates, then ambled on.

  Mrs. Busk, the dean’s secretary, was a short woman with a jutting bosom and a scattering of moles across her face. She was leaning out of her office when I arrived, peering down the hallway. Where have you been? she said. They’re all waiting.

  They?

  She went to Dean Makepeace�
��s door and knocked. He’s here, she said, then stepped back. Go in.

  The headmaster was standing in front of Dean Makepeace’s desk. He motioned me to a chair on his left. In the three chairs lined up across from mine sat Mr. Ramsey, Mr. Lambert, and a boy named Goss, president of the Student Honor Council. Mr. Lambert was my French master, a dapper, pipe-smoking Parisian whose collars always looked too tight. Dean Makepeace wasn’t there. Despite the air conditioner rattling in one of the windows, the room was hot and Mr. Ramsey’s round, ruddy face glistened like a ham.

  I didn’t know what this was about, but there’d been rumors of cheating on a French final earlier that week. I was clean, and hadn’t seen anything that I should have reported.

  The headmaster leaned back against the desk and stared at the floor between my feet. He had not looked directly at me since I came in. All right, he said, let’s hear it.

  Sir?

  I’m sure you have a story for us. We’re ready to hear it.

  It’s verr sample, Mr. Lambert said. Tell the truth.

  I’m sorry, I said. I don’t understand.

  You’re only making it worse, Goss said. He was a skinny high-voiced boy with one leg in a brace from polio. I’d voted for him, but I didn’t like him.

  So, the headmaster said. You can think of no reason for our being here today. He kept his eyes on the floor as he spoke. I had the feeling he was deliberately denying me recognition. Usually his brilliant gaze held mine, but in its absence I found myself staring at the wen on his forehead.

  Honestly, sir, I’m at a loss.

  Hah! Goss said.

  Please, Mr. Lambert said to him. On se calme.

  The headmaster reached across his desk and picked up a piece of paper and handed it to me. It was the first page of “Summer Dance” as it had appeared in Cantiamo. The line below the title said by Susan Friedman. The name threw me. I’d completely forgotten it. It had flown my mind as soon as I’d begun reading the story that night in the Troubadour office and seen my own life laid bare on the page, and in all the time since then I’d never thought of “Summer Dance” as anyone’s story but mine.

  And I still didn’t; not really. Even with the proof in hand, even knowing that someone named Susan Friedman had written the story, I still thought of it as mine. I couldn’t reconcile what I knew to be true with what I felt to be true. In fact I couldn’t think at all. My eyes moved back and forth between I hope nobody saw me pick up the cigarette butt—that sentence that had been so hard to write—and the name above it: Susan Friedman.

  Now do you understand why you’re here? the headmaster said.

  I nodded.

  How did this happen? Mr. Ramsey asked. There was no reproach in his tone, only the question itself, and I turned to him with gratitude and the will to give an answer, but none came. I looked at him, then down at the sheet of paper in my hand, my eyes drawn again to that name as if it might yet change back into mine.

  Nothing to say? Mr. Lambert said. When I didn’t answer, he shrugged and shook his head.

  You’ve dishonored our class, Goss said.

  You should know how this came to our attention, the headmaster said. Still looking at the carpet, he explained how the faculty adviser to Miss Cobb’s student newspaper came upon “Summer Dance” in her exchange copy of our News and immediately recognized it as the story that had caused such a stir at Miss Cobb’s some years ago—a dramatic rift between two girls, others taking sides, a great deal of unpleasantness all around.

  I tell you this so that you will have at least some inkling of the harm you have caused our school, the headmaster said. This is not a local matter. You have exposed us to contempt and ridicule at least at Miss Cobb’s, and far beyond if the story gets out, as it almost certainly will. The newspapers had a carnival last year over the Biltmore incident, and that was nothing compared to this. Mere drunkenness. But this—just watch them. Ernest Hemingway! The name is catnip to those people.

  He stopped and closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose.

  Plagiarism’s bad enough, Goss said. But from a girl? I can’t believe you’d plagiarize from a girl.

  It’s a damned good story, Mr. Ramsey said. Whoever wrote it.

  Schools like ours are vulnerable to criticism, the headmaster said softly, as if to himself. There is some truth in these criticisms. Too much truth. But we are trying to do something here. We are trying to become something different and even admirable, and for this effort we need all the loyalty we can draw on. More than loyalty. Love. It is the love of the old boy for this school that makes everything possible. And how do you think the old boy will feel when he picks up his Times or his Globe and sees our name associated with a low, shameless, asinine hoax like this? Ernest Hemingway gulled and embarrassed by one of our own!

  I’m sorry, I said.

  You have no idea of the damage you have done. No idea. Here, already—today. And later to boys such as yourself, and such as I was, boys whose bills are paid by others.

  And did we treat you so badly, Mr. Lambert said, that you should think so little of us?

  No, sir. Never. I love this school too.

  Then I pity your wife and kids, Goss said. If you ever have any.

  Enough of that, Mr. Ramsey said.

  And what am I to tell Ernest Hemingway, the headmaster said. Good God! He looked at me for the first time. He studied me, up and down. Do you really have nothing to say?

  No, sir. Only that I’m sorry.

  That may be a good thing for you. It’s no use to us. So. Here we are. Mr. Lambert and Mr. Ramsey will collect what you need for the trip home. We’ll send the rest on. The train leaves at five. Your father has already been notified.

  The class of 1961 is the best class this school ever had, Goss said, and now you’ve blackened its name.

  Oh, please! Mr. Ramsey said.

  Goss slouched in his chair.

  You understand, the headmaster said, that I will have to advise Columbia that you failed to complete your studies here, and that I cannot vouch for your character. They will withdraw their offer.

  Oh.

  You do understand? There’s to be no confusion about this.

  Yes. I understand.

  Foolish boy, Mr. Lambert said. I looked at him and saw tears in his eyes.

  If after four years with us you could do this, the headmaster said, then you have understood nothing of what we are. You have never really entered the school. So be it. As far as this school is concerned, you were never here.

  That is very hard, sir, Mr. Ramsey said.

  Do you think so, Mr. Ramsey?

  I do.

  Maybe you’re right. You must do better, he said to me, and walked across the room and out the door.

  You’re excused—now, Mr. Ramsey said to Goss, who’d pushed himself up and turned toward me.

  I just wanted to wish him luck. Goss offered me his hand and I disgusted myself by taking it. Well, he said, good luck.

  Mr. Lambert followed him to the door and then closed it again.

  We’ll fill one suitcase and send the rest on, Mr. Ramsey said. Is there anything in particular you need for the trip?

  No sir.

  Nothing? Mr. Lambert said.

  I wanted to ask them to pack my first edition of In Our Time, but bringing up Hemingway at just this moment felt like a bad idea. I can’t think of anything, I said.

  Give Mrs. Busk the combination of your gymnasium locker. We’ll clean it out later. Did you have a study?

  No.

  Please wait here, Mr. Ramsey said.

  I sat where they left me. The window was closed but I could still hear shouts and laughter and faint music from the quad. I’d been noticing those sounds from the moment I entered the office, and how they went on no matter what was being said and done in here. They were the sounds I lived with day after day, ordinary and subliminal as my own pulse, yet throughout this meeting I was sharply aware of them, and they distracted me from the actuality o
f what was happening. During our worst dreams we are assured by a dog barking somewhere, a refrigerator motor kicking on, that we will soon wake to true life. I had somehow—without knowing it—managed to hear such a promise in the hoots and bellows of the boys outside.

  Now they sounded different to me. The very heedlessness of their voices defined the distance that had opened up between us. That easy brimming gaiety already seemed impossibly remote, no longer the true life I would wake to each morning, but a paling dream.

  My shirt was soaked through. I could smell myself. I got up and prowled the room, looked blindly at the titles of the books on the shelves, then saw two copies of the school paper on the desk. I started reading “Summer Dance,” and when the door opened I whipped around like a thief. Mrs. Busk stood in the doorway. Are you all right, dear?

  I wasn’t sure what she meant. I nodded.

  Would you like a glass of apple juice? It’s nice and cold.

  No, thank you.

  They should be back soon.

  Yes, ma’am.

  All right. Let me know if you want a glass of juice.

  When she closed the door again I folded up the paper and put it in my jacket pocket, then sat down to wait.

  Mr. Ramsey came back alone. He had my largest suitcase and my overnighter. Mrs. Busk asked me to sign a form of some kind—I didn’t read it—and then she followed us to the door of her office. She was actually wringing her hands.

  Mr. Ramsey stopped in the hallway. Did you give Mrs. Busk your locker combination, then?

  No, not yet.

  Well? Mr. Ramsey said.

  I’m thinking, I said, but I wasn’t thinking; could only look like I was thinking.

  That’s fine, Mrs. Busk said. Really, dear. It doesn’t matter. You can send it along later.