Old School

by Tobias Wolff

  As we ate lunch we talked about our schooldays. Susan took a hard view of Miss Cobb’s and also of my own school, which she remembered well from joint concerts and dances: boys dropping hints of their importance within moments of meeting her, then triangulating her own position from an unvarying progress of questions about friends, parties, and vacations; boys forcing themselves on her as if she had no choice in the matter and then, if she held them off, exchanging signs with other boys to be relieved of her, even on occasion abandoning her on the dance floor; their refusal to discover whether she could think or even talk; their transparent designs and appalling confidence.

  Susan considered my caper with her story a fine joke on this ivy-covered stud farm, and on Papa, as she acidly called him, and on the idea of literature as some kind of great phallic enterprise like bullfighting or boxing. Change a few names and pronouns and Papa himself, the peerless measurer of penises—why the funny face? Hadn’t I read A Moveable Feast?—Papa himself couldn’t tell if he was reading the story of a boy or a girl. So much for the supreme arbiter of manhood, not to mention his built-in shit detector! And so much for the supposedly basic differences between the sexes by which our schools justified their absurd existences.

  It was a terrific prank, she said. But what in the world made you think of it?

  This put me in a corner. I understood that whatever curiosity had drawn her to this lunch hinged on her belief that all these subversions were deliberate. What would she think if I told her I’d loved both Hemingway and my school, and that playing them for fools had never crossed my mind? How could I explain that it hadn’t been just Ernest Hemingway but I myself who couldn’t tell us apart?

  It was all too complicated, and hardly plausible—less so than Susan’s version, to which, I sensed, she was attached with a ferocity I shouldn’t provoke. With a modest shrug, I let things stand.

  You used your own name, she said. That’s smart, that always gets them eating out of your hand. You kept Levine, though. I guess you needed a Jewish name for the story to work, but still. You’re not Jewish, are you?

  Good question, I said. It depends on what you mean by Jewish. Here at last I gathered myself to do some truth-telling, but Susan cut me off with a laugh.

  Son, if it depends on what I mean by Jewish, then you’re not Jewish. She turned and signaled the waiter. Sorry, she said, I’ve got a heavy date with Agnes. She laughed again when she saw my face. My cadaver.

  Oh.

  Anyway, I’m flattered that you put my poor effort to such good use.

  It isn’t a poor effort. It’s a fine story.

  Nah. It’s a well-written little exercise in unhappiness and spite, that’s all.

  It’s not just well written. It’s brave and honest.

  How do you know it’s honest?

  I looked at her.

  How do you know it isn’t a sham from start to finish?

  I guess I don’t.

  The waiter came with the bill and gave it to Susan. He didn’t even glance in my direction. Please, I said, this is on me.

  She counted some bills onto the table. Gotta support the troops. She must have sensed my humiliation, because she reached over and gave my hand a squeeze. You get the next one, she said, though I knew there wouldn’t be a next one. Tell me, you really did like that story?

  It’s terrific. I’d read anything by you.

  There’s nothing to read.

  You don’t write?

  Not for years.

  That’s sad.

  Not at all.

  Well, it makes me sad.

  You’ll pull through. She stood up, and I stood with her. The waiter helped her on with her coat and when she said mille grazie he all but purred. We walked outside and stopped in front of the restaurant. Susan gave me a hug. You be careful, she said.

  Is it a sham?

  Must dash, she said.

  You should keep writing.

  Mmm, don’t think so. Too frivolous. Know what I mean? It just cuts you off and makes you selfish and doesn’t really do any good.

  This actually shocked me. We know what is sacred to us when we recoil from impiety, and Susan’s casual desertion of her gift had exactly that force. She saw I was about to say something. Just one gal’s opinion, she said, and waggled her fingers and headed up the street.

  I visited a couple of bars on M Street and worked up my answer to Susan. By the time I got back to the barracks that night I had it cold: Her problem was not with writing but with men. Her patricidal tone when she said Papa—some interesting bitterness there. And though she ridiculed the notion of literature as a phallic enterprise, she obviously suffered from that confusion herself. The problem was how she looked at things. The fact that a writer needed solitude didn’t mean he was cut off or selfish. A writer was like a monk in his cell praying for the world—something he performed alone, but for other people.

  Then to say it did no good! How could she say that? Of course it did good. And I stood there half-drunk and adrift in this bay of snoring men, and gave thanks for all the good it had done me.

  BULLETIN

  I figured the school had washed its hands of me, spat me out for good, but eventually the Old Boys’ office got my range and started pumping out the alumni bulletins. Over the years they invited me to reunions and glee-club concerts and championship hockey games and archaeological cruises in the Aegean; asked me to send in poignant memories of a retiring master, news of recent successes for the class notes.

  I never made it to these musters of the corps, nor advertised my progress, but I read every bulletin from cover to cover. Thus I learned of Jack Broome’s death while landing his A6 on an aircraft carrier, and of George Kellogg’s Rhodes Scholarship and his march through the philosophy departments of Penn and Yale and Stanford. Purcell sent nothing in, but Big Jeff did, regularly. He’d gone into computers early on and now had his own famous company. In one of his postings he included a picture of two men standing before a background of distant mountains. The caption read: Cousin Roundup! Big Boots and Little Boots Purcell, ’61, on Little Boots’s ranch in Idaho. Ride them dogies! Big Jeff had his arm around Purcell’s shoulder and was smiling with undisguised love. Purcell looked stoical. He was whip-thin and his face had gotten long and bony. An interesting face. I considered getting in touch by sending him the In Our Time he’d given me, but didn’t. I never saw a word about Bill White.

  Dean Makepeace died of a heart attack in 1967 while walking to class. He was sixty-nine. It surprised me to read in the memorial issue that he had recently married one of the school secretaries. I didn’t recognize her in the cover photograph, a plump woman with big round glasses sitting beside him in the football stadium, a single plaid blanket on their knees, both of them yelling and waving pennants. I spent long minutes over that picture—Dean Makepeace carried away by a woman and a game! The article mentioned his service in Italy during World War I, and ran a sepia picture of a lean, unsmiling young soldier in puttees standing beside an ambulance. He had come to the school in 1930 and taught there ever since, except for a leave of absence in ’61–’62, the year after my expulsion. Generations of boys, the piece concluded, will never forget his kindness in times of need, even as they quake to recall the famous Blue Gaze falling on them in class, and the inevitable question: And you—what do you think?

  The headmaster retired in 1968, was replaced by a man from Exeter who left after just two years, and then Mr. Ramsey became headmaster. It was he who arranged the so-called partnership with the failing Miss Cobb’s Academy, which for all practical purposes ceased to exist. Now our mud-caked quarterbacks shared the bulletin’s photo spread with girls sliding into home, lunging for the heart with fencing foils, and crossing the stage on graduation day to rake in the prizes. It was Mr. Ramsey who started the exchange programs with schools in St. Petersburg and Tokyo. And who, not long ago, invited me back as a visiting writer.

  When the invitation came I felt an almost embarrassing sense of relief. I d
idn’t know I was waiting for it, though I must have been. But then I had second thoughts; I couldn’t make up my mind to accept. My family urged me on. Of course I should go! How could I pass up the chance to return in honor to a place I’d left in disgrace? As a writer, how could I refuse to bring the story to so satisfying and shapely a close?

  Maybe that shapely close was part of what held me back. The appetite for decisive endings, even the belief that they’re possible, makes me uneasy in life as in writing, and may have accounted for some of the dread I felt at the thought of going back.

  That fine pensée arrived after the fact. The excuse I gave myself at the time was that someday I’d write something about my days at the school, and needed to guard my fragile vision of the place. Memory is a dream to begin with, and what I had was a dream of memory, not to be put to the test.

  All of which made a perverse kind of sense and helped distract me from a deeper unease, humiliating to consider: Would I have been invited at all if I were not one of the school’s own? When I thought of the writers I’d seen there as a boy I felt chastened and shy. Did I really own a place among them? If we were all assembled for some great feast, would I be taken for a waiter?

  Too much room for doubt. Suspicion of bias—unwitting, patriotic bias—would shadow every moment of my visit. There’d be a stir when I appeared in the dining hall, quite possibly an ovation. Mr. Ramsey would offer celebratory remarks before my talk and faculty members would make haste to welcome the prodigal home; and under it all would run a spirit of amazed, hilarious congratulation that would give me no end of pleasure if only I could believe I’d earned it. Otherwise I’d feel an imposter. Feel only my deficits, and my distance from those I admired.

  All vanity, of course. I knew it was vain, even yellow, to decline; but I declined, pleading a full calendar. My family was disgusted.

  The following spring I met Mr. Ramsey by chance in the lobby of the Alexis in Seattle. I had arrived that morning for a friend’s funeral and was coming in from a late dinner when I saw him talking to the night clerk and, despite his white hair, recognized him instantly. For a moment I considered going on to the elevator, but there are limits to anyone’s cowardice and instead I waited until he finished his business at the desk. As he turned away I said, Hello, Mr. Ramsey.

  He stopped and lowered his head, peering at me over the top of his glasses. You! he said.

  We went into the little bar off the lobby and took the table in back. Mr. Ramsey had just hosted a fund-raising dinner for local alums, the last of a long string of them on the West Coast, and was clearly giddy with exhaustion and relief. He wore a white dinner jacket as shapeless and woebegone as the linen jacket I’d last seen him in. The boyish flush in his cheeks had overspread his entire face and crimsoned his snub, puggish nose. As we drank and talked he continued to study me over his glasses, so smudged they barely reflected the light.

  Mr. Ramsey didn’t mention my declining to visit the school, but every other subject felt like a dodge. Finally I broke off and said, Look, I’m sorry I let you down.

  He finished his scotch and savored it a moment. Did you let me down?

  I should’ve accepted your invitation.

  Ah. Well, of course we all wish you had. A busy time for you. Can’t be helped.

  Still, I should have come.

  He said nothing.

  You may not remember, I said, but when you took me to the station you gave me a pack of Gitanes.

  Gitanes! What wouldn’t I do for one now, eh? Wife made me quit—bad role-modeling. Nation of scolds. But yes, I remember every godawful moment of that day. You don’t know the half of it.

  Oh?

  Hell of a story, actually.

  The ability to order another round without anyone but the waitress noticing is, if not a danger sign, a handy talent, and Mr. Ramsey had it. But I was disappointed when after the fuss of taking delivery he didn’t pick up where he left off. Instead he asked about my twin daughters and my son. When he heard they were all in college he wanted to know why I’d never sent them to him.

  I could’ve used the girls, he said.

  It never crossed our minds.

  I do hope it wasn’t money. I have oodles of money and can give it to anyone I like.

  Well, it would’ve been a consideration if we’d thought about boarding school. But we liked having them around.

  Really. Most laudable, I’m sure. No hard feelings, then?

  What—toward the school?

  You did get the bum’s rush. Cursed to the tenth generation. We do things differently now.

  No hard feelings. On the contrary.

  Good! Then why didn’t you come back?

  I sensed that Mr. Ramsey would not find thin-sliced arguments about the delicacy of memory very satisfying. So I took my heart in my hands and described the recurrent vision of being called to a feast with all these writers, and then discovering after so many years of work—work which had indeed cut me off, and given pain to others—that I had no place at the table.

  You underestimate us, Mr. Ramsey said. I have the seating chart well in hand. We will put you between Ayn Rand and Ernest Hemingway’s empty chair.

  Was this a joke or some complicated critique? I felt my brow knot up.

  So you will come?

  Yes, I said, I’m almost sure I can come. I let a moment pass, then said: You mentioned a story.

  He allowed me a fleeting smile. There is a problem of confidentiality. I can rely on your discretion?

  No.

  Mr. Ramsey appeared to mull this over, but I knew he would tell me, just as I knew he would first justify telling me, and so he did. The person in question, he said, never desired this secrecy; it was enjoined upon him. He would have wanted the truth to be known. Finally, one does want to be known.

  The story concerned Dean Makepeace. Arch, as Mr. Ramsey called him, had befriended him and the first Mrs. Ramsey early on, when most other masters and their wives held back. In those days the school did not open its arms to newcomers. And it could be especially cold to a young master who didn’t hide his somewhat garish light under a bushel. But Arch liked talking about books and ideas, and could still give up old ground for new, whereas his fellow masters had generally made up their minds about things. He forgave Mr. Ramsey his impudence because Mr. Ramsey did not bore him.

  They became friends—the unhappy young couple and Arch Makepeace, who, when he joined them for drinks or Sunday dinner, somehow filled the distance between them, as Mr. Ramsey supposed a child might have done. Arch was something of a child, and Roberta treated him like one, fussing over him, chiding him tenderly, cooking his favorite dishes and watching his face for the least sign of pleasure. Their marriage would not have lasted as long as it did without him. And when it did end, when Roberta left, it was Arch Makepeace who held Mr. Ramsey together, changing overnight from child to father.

  For two months he walked Mr. Ramsey through his life. He stopped by on his way to breakfast to get him out of bed and see that he made himself presentable, and more often than not helped him back into bed at night after listening to hours of accusation and complaint. When Mr. Ramsey had a pugilistic adventure with a Brit-baiting Irishman in Boston, Arch bailed him out and put his friendship with the headmaster at risk by concealing the incident. He listened, and listened, and listened, and never once reproached Mr. Ramsey with useless truths or tried to cheer him up.

  So I could probably imagine how Mr. Ramsey received the news that Arch Makepeace, after thirty years at the school, had in the span of a single morning decided to leave. And not an hour later Mr. Ramsey was summoned to review the evidence against me and to participate in my expulsion. Oh, how he hated these Danny Deever events—nine ’undred of ’is county an’ the regiment’s disgrace, et cetera.

  In fact he already knew I would be expelled, because Arch had told him as much when he said his good-bye. I should not flatter myself that Dean Makepeace had given up his work and home in protest at my well-earned
dismissal, but the two things were connected in a very curious way. Which brought us to his story.

  Mr. Ramsey had been leaning forward as he talked. Now he stopped as if to consider the ground ahead. He settled back and allowed me to see that he was not a young man, and that he was very tired, and that going on would be an effort.

  Then he went on, holding still in his chair and telling the story from that distance. Everything Mr. Ramsey said interested me, and much of it surprised me, including my own obliviously decisive role in this drama. He kept it short, but in the submerged-iceberg manner he used to mock, so that I was somehow given to know more than was actually said. The spaces he left empty began filling up even as he spoke.

  He didn’t quite finish. While describing Dean Makepeace’s wedding he broke off and pushed himself forward and called Price! Price! to a bald, blackbearded man in a dinner jacket who’d just come into the bar and was scowling around. Mr. Ramsey introduced us and said that Mr. Price, the senior history master, had presented another of his brilliant lectures and slideshows at that evening’s dinner.

  Yeah, yeah, Mr. Price said.

  On what subject? I asked.

  School history—what else?

  Mr. Ramsey declared his great coup in persuading me to come for a visit.

  Oh, at last, Mr. Price said. Can’t wait. He turned to Mr. Ramsey. How’d we do tonight? Did you manage to collar that little shit Armentrout?

  Of course.

  I saw him going all out for the exit, him and that scarlet fright-wig on his arm.

  Mrs. Armentrout has been a great support to our Ned.

  How much you get out of him?