This had the unwanted effect of causing my heart to quiver like a bag of kittens. I was not using lesson plans; I had no true curriculum that I was following. What would I tell her I was doing in there? I had been spending the past few days having them write in their journals so I could investigate the folded-page entries. (I really did feel as though I should be vigilant there after what happened to Suzanne Rule. I know, from a certain point of view one might think I was also looking forward to a little voyeuristic pleasure, but that never crossed my mind. When my students wrote about their sex lives it embarrassed me.) I’d also given them Dickens’s Great Expectations to read, and I’d been spending a portion of each class talking about their own dreams of the future; you know, that stuff that gets them talking about themselves and each other and has the terrific benefit of getting them to think out loud.
I had no plan.
It’s possible I was too nervous for it to occur to me then—but I may have remembered what Doreen had just said to me about Bible’s balancing act, and the knowledge of that flitted across my mind. At any rate, I now see, what I was doing in the classroom back then was a kind of freewheeling venture, every day, and if that’s not a balancing act or a walk on a high wire, I don’t know what is.
Mrs. Creighton said, “Just leave me some notes for each class about where you are in the lessons and I’ll pick it up.”
“Well,” I said. “That’s not going to be as easy as it sounds.”
“I beg your pardon.”
“I mean—I don’t—I can’t just sit down and sketch it all out, I’ll need some time.” I think it raced through my heart that I could always make something up.
“I wanted you to start with them today—the afternoon class.”
“Oh I will.”
“Just leave notes for fifth period today. And tomorrow we’ll make the complete switch.”
“Sure,” I said.
“There’s one other thing.”
I had started to leave my seat, so when she said that, I sat back down and waited. She took a long time to say anything directly though. It was so quiet I could hear the clock ticking in the hall outside. Finally she said she assumed Professor Bible and I were friends. Good friends. I nodded at that. She asked me how well I knew him. I told her not so well as I’d like to. She smiled, as if she were offering the unwilling acknowledgement that I had amused her, but then she pressed on. “I assume you’ve been to his apartment, you know how to …”
“No.”
“No what?”
“I’ve never been to his apartment.”
“Well, he lives just up the street a few blocks. At the Bridgewater Apartments. I assume you’ve gone out to eat dinner with him and …”
“No.”
“I see.”
“We eat lunch together almost every day,” I said, and she smiled. “Or we used to anyway.”
“You know he has no friends to speak of outside of this place. A few people from his apartment building, the old woman he sublets his apartment from. He has no family to speak of and he’s going to be—alone. A lot of the time.” She paused, and I had the feeling she was looking for just the right words, so I tried to supply them. I told her the treatment was going to involve surgery and that he would probably be fairly disabled afterward. In fact, I think I used the word “helpless.”
“That’s right,” she said. “He’s going to need a lot of people to help support him while he goes through this, until he’s, until he’s … back to normal.”
This didn’t seem to call for a response so I said nothing. Some people find it easy to promise they’ll do a thing in the vague future while counting on some ingenuity or other creative method to get out of it once the future gets more specific, but I didn’t want to be that way. I knew I could offer nothing, so I said nothing. There was another long silence.
“I hope you’ll be willing to visit him once in a while.”
“I’m going to do the best job I can in his classes,” I said.
“Well yes. That, too.”
“I’m sure Doreen will want to look out after him.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m not real good with this kind of thing,” I said, weakly, and feeling pretty weak too. “Illness—I don’t bear it well.”
She shook her head slowly, her eyes still fixed on me.
“It’s just the truth,” I said.
“Well you know he’s asked me if I would explicitly talk to you about this. He said he was counting on you.” Her tone was not sad. It was judgmental, in a way, and also kind of incredulous—not at what I had said, but at the irony of it. “He said you were his friend.”
“I guess I am,” I said. But I didn’t think of myself as his “friend.” I knew him, I worked with him, but he was a mentor—superior in ways that precluded friendship it seemed to me. I admired him, but my affections were bound up in sorrow for him; even pity. How can that be friendship? I said, “He’s been very good to me.”
“Will you do this for him?”
“He said to ask me?”
She wrote his address on a piece of paper and handed it to me. “He said he knew you’d probably stop by occasionally—that he wouldn’t be lonely.”
“Really?” I stared at the address.
“Why does that surprise you?”
“It’s just that I never thought of him as a friend. He was—” I realized I spoke of him in the past tense. “He’s my mentor.” I shrugged.
“Apparently you give the wrong impression to people.”
“Maybe I do.”
“You fooled me.” She was having a hard time looking at me again, and then I remembered how I had betrayed Bible’s secret to Doreen, and I figured I owed it to him. So I told her I’d be glad to do whatever was expected. I told her I wouldn’t want to disappoint Professor Bible.
“Or me. You shouldn’t disappoint me, either,” she said.
23
Substitution
Mrs. Creighton figured out that something was wrong with my “curriculum” after only one day of teaching my classes. She called me into her office and wanted to know exactly what my students were supposed to be doing. I had to go over my “plans” with each class, making it up as I went along. I had to make up things that my students wouldn’t immediately reveal as totally new to them—things that would not cause suspicion. I knew she would not approve of classes that were not planned right down to the last second. I could not think fast enough to convince her.
“You don’t really have a plan for these students, do you?” she said. I couldn’t tell if her voice registered scorn or sadness or a little of both.
“Well,” I said. “I like to wing it a bit in my classes.”
“Wing it?”
“I think you have to get in there and talk with them, see where they are in their lives and then …”
“You don’t have a lesson plan.”
“I have plans, but not each lesson. Not daily, no.”
“So, how can I show the State—when it comes to licensing and accreditation …”
“The State?”
“I have to have approved curriculum. Virginia requires that certain subjects be taught.”
“I’m teaching writing,” I said. “You’ve seen some of their essays.”
“But what kind of writing?”
“Just writing.”
“They’re supposed to be working on summary, on definition, description, comparison contrast; on analysis and on proper grammar, proper uses of …”
“They are.” I got a little loud. Then more quietly I said, “Mrs. Creighton, I’m teaching them the best way I know how.”
“I want you to have a curriculum—goals and …”
“I do.”
“I want it to be clearly stated, both for me, the State, and our students.”
I had no response to that. I knew it meant a lot of work, and a lot more careful thinking about adjectives and adverbs and other ridiculous terms about which I had
no clue. I mean, I could say “predicate nominative” but I had no freaking idea what it was.
“Do you understand me?” Mrs. Creighton said. It wasn’t a pejorative question, she really wanted to know. “If you can’t do that, I still have copies of Cindy Gallant’s lesson plans. You can use those, if you have to.”
“I understand.”
“I realize you started immediately after you were hired—that you didn’t have a summer to prepare these things, but I want you to have them for me as soon as possible.”
I nodded, but I was already thinking my glory days as a teacher were over. Sheepishly, I said, “Can I see Mrs. Gallant’s plans?” I saw her eyes sink—something happened to the expression on her face that told me she was disappointed so I hastened to add, “I mean, you offered them and all. I can use them while I’m drawing up my own curriculum. Just for reference.”
“And only for reference,” she said.
Mrs. Creighton’s replacement for Bible was an elderly gentleman named Steven Granby. He had worked at Glenn Acres more than ten years before and was an old friend of the Creighton family because of the years he had put in at the school. He was tall, thin—with a black-checkered vest that was so loosely fitted it might have blown off him in a stiff wind. He also wore a baggy, thinly woven short-sleeved white shirt—you could see his flesh beneath it, which is probably why he insisted on the vest—and black, tightly fitted jeans that made his whole frame look as if it was supported by stovepipes. Every now and then he wore a different pair of pants, and the shirt might change, but he always wore the vest. He had a long, deeply lined face, and very white skin.
That first time I saw him he was sitting in his chair as if someone had strapped him to it and they were going to pull the switch at any minute and electrocute him. His arms rested on the arms of the chair, his back rigid and totally upright—an exact ninety-degree angle from the hips—his legs bent perfectly at the knee and his feet in the proper place at the base of the chair. He spoke slowly and deliberately. His hair was gray and so sparse he scarcely combed it. It just sort of clung to the top of his head and moved about where the breezes took it over a smooth, oddly curved, almost pointed dome. His ears ran almost the length of the side of his head, but they didn’t stick out much.
“This is Mr. Granby, History and Government,” Mrs. Creighton said.
He did not get up. I reached out and shook his hand. Mrs. Creighton introduced me and I smiled. Still holding onto my hand he said, “Steven Granby.”
I told him I was glad to meet him, and then I withdrew my hand.
“And you teach?” he looked at Mrs. Creighton for his answer and she gave it to him. When she told me he was going to be replacing Professor Bible, Granby said he was aware that he had his work cut out for him. “I know what kind of teacher Professor Bible was.”
“He’s still a great teacher,” I said.
Mrs. Creighton said, “Professor Bible was a lot more organized in his lesson plans than Mr. Jameson here.” This might have wounded me, but we’d been all around and over that problem.
Granby turned out to be a little crazy. Doreen hated him. She said he was always stealing her lunch out of the refrigerator—Mrs. Creighton had put a small refrigerator and a water dispenser in the combination break room/counseling office. (Glenn Acres had no counselors, but Mr. Creighton frequently closed the deal on new enrollments in that room. It was in the far corner of the building, a long way from North and South and the daily morning deposits.) Granby’s main fault as far as I could see was that he loathed all of our students. It was hard to listen to him for five minutes. He thought all of them were criminal, uncivilized, and barely human. In his best moods he saw his job as a kind of informed stewardship of juvenile delinquents; in his worst, he believed we were no more than cultured guards watching over an unlawful population that might at any minute rise up and kill us all. He had nothing but contempt for anyone who had not read all of Shakespeare’s plays and sonnets, or who had no knowledge of the Hundred Years War. This meant of course that he hated everyone, but you had to infer that from things he said, not from any actual stipulation he might make to you. In other words, he was perfectly civil in conversation.
He also smoked cigarettes, but he bought his own. Aside from his age, his smoking habit, and I suppose a fairly thorough knowledge of history and government, he had absolutely nothing whatsoever in common with Professor Bible.
I missed having Professor Bible around at the school, but I ended up visiting him fairly often during his recovery. I went to his apartment shortly after his surgery and sometimes I helped him bathe his surgically wounded foot.
You heard right. “Bathe” and “foot.” I had to be in on that. But it wasn’t really so bad. I’d get him clean towels, or a cup of tea, so he didn’t have to get up. It’s just that on some of my visits I had to be there, in the same room, with that foot, you know? And have you ever seen a foot, with a lengthy cut along the outside of the big toe, after it has soaked in warm salt water for several hours? From certain angles, it looks like a newborn infant before it opens its eyes and takes its first breath. It will make you shudder to look at it, even for a little bit.
My memory of the rest of that first year is a blur. Nothing much went on that would shed any light on what eventually happened. I remember very clearly the work with George—I still kept close watch on his neck, to be literal—and this new student Mrs. Creighton kept telling me I should watch out for: Suzanne Rule. She never got to the point where Mrs. Creighton felt comfortable putting her in my class, but I kept running into her—in the hall, or sitting in Mrs. Creighton’s office (She sat the same way she stood, bent over at the neck. She looked, when sitting down, as if she were looking for something very small in her lap.) I said hello to her a couple of times, but she said nothing. She was just this strange creature with red hair. I’d never seen her eyes. I’m not sure anybody had, except those boys who had scooted under her and looked up to see the tears beginning to fall.
I also remember learning to accept Steven Granby, in spite of Doreen’s constant barrage of bad news about him. Once you got used to his unvarying bitter news about our students I didn’t mind him so much. Sometimes, he was pretty accurate in his criticisms, and he could be mildly amusing if you didn’t take him too seriously. I can only remember one time when he got to me.
We were smoking cigarettes outside my classroom during a break and Doreen had just finished hers and gone back inside. He watched her go, then turned to me and said, “She’s got a real problem with men.” I said, “No, she likes men,” and he said, “I didn’t mean that. I meant men don’t like her.”
“I like her and I’m a man,” I said.
“You may be the only one.”
“Why?”
He seemed to consider for a long time, then very thoughtfully he said, “Well, she is strong-willed, intelligent, and fairly forceful, isn’t she.”
I agreed.
“She says what she thinks, and is not afraid to disagree with you.”
“Yes.”
“In short, she’s a bit of a cunt.”
I didn’t like the way his lips curled when he pronounced the word cunt. I said nothing at first, but I stopped puffing on my cigarette. I held it in my hands, just looking at it, and he chuckled to himself. “A rummy bitch like that would shatter a good man’s balls,” he said.
He was old enough to be my father, and as far as I can remember, I’d never spoken disrespectfully to anyone more than one or two years older than me, but I couldn’t help it. I felt my face starting to burn.
“Just now …” I said through my teeth, “I think you’d better finish your cigarette, old man.”
He made this sound in the back of his throat and his face changed. He looked exactly like he’d just seen something suspicious dripping from my mouth. I checked to see if anybody could hear us. Then I said, “You know she doesn’t like you very much either.”
“She can go to the devil.”
&nbs
p; “Why don’t you shut the fuck up about her,” I said. “How about that?”
“I had no idea you were …” he didn’t finish. His visage softened a little and then he said, “I really am sorry. I didn’t know you cared about her in that way.”
“I don’t. Not even slightly. But I do care about her. I mean we’ve worked together all year.” I don’t know why his sneering talk about her made me so angry. I really didn’t have what you could call sincere affection for Doreen, at least not then. The only thing I can say is Granby pissed me off. I was angry at him for saying things like that about her when she was not there to defend herself. I knew Bible would never characterize her in that way, and maybe my anger over all that had happened up to that time just boiled over.
At any rate he stood there, looking silly, and I said nothing except to repeat that I was not romantically involved with Doreen. “She’s not somebody I have any interest in that way,” I said.
“Well, all right then.”
I threw the cigarette down at his feet. “Shit,” I said, and left him there.
What he said wasn’t that bad, but it made me furious anyway. Perhaps I reacted so angrily for another reason. I believed Granby was partially right when he said men didn’t like Doreen. She was too strong for them, too capable and sharp. It didn’t bother me, but I could see how it might bother others. Especially the usual lot of young power brokers and former athletic types, who drank light beer, slapped their prosperous stomachs, watched ESPN vigilantly, and who only liked lesbians if they could watch them having sex once in a while. But Granby should have been better than that. Maybe I was angry for that reason too. He should have been better.
24
A Kind of Rescue in the Snow
In late March a terrific snowstorm crept up swiftly from southern Virginia and began to cover the ground almost instantly. Mrs. Creighton decided to let school out early. Because of the bad weather we would not drive the buses, so parents had to pick up their children and take them home. Some students had their own cars and left immediately. The others had to wait. Mrs. Creighton let me borrow her big silver Oldsmobile to go home. “You go ahead, honey,” she said. “Mr. Creighton will come pick me up in his car.”
In the Fall They Come Back Page 18