In the Fall They Come Back

by Robert Bausch

  “That’s not all a teacher does.”

  “It’s all my teachers did.”

  “Well they weren’t very good teachers.”

  “Maybe they were. Maybe they were doing what they were supposed to do and nothing more.”

  “Forget it,” I said. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “It’s because of your …” she stopped. I waited for her to continue but she didn’t.

  “Because of my what?”

  “Nothing.”

  “No, because of my what?”

  “You know what.”

  “No. Say it.”

  “Your need to control things,” she said. “You’re a control freak. At least you should admit it.” I have to say I was beginning to see expressions on her face that I didn’t like very much—I mean, maybe I was getting used to her, but she would sometimes let her mouth get twisted in a funny way, or crinkle her nose up toward her brow, and in truth, she was pretty awful to look at. Don’t get me wrong—she was very attractive, in a clean, plain-looking kind of way. Her pale skin was flawless. But just sometimes when she crimped her face, I thought she looked almost ugly.

  “I am unable to distinguish between your definition of a ‘control freak’ and caring about people,” I said, and moved away from her on the couch.

  “I know,” she said. “That’s your problem.”

  “Yeah, well.”

  “Really, you just can’t see it, can you?”

  “I said I didn’t want to talk about it.”

  Now she scooted over and poked me, smiling. “I don’t want to fight. I’m just talking here.”

  “Well I don’t like what you’re saying.”

  “What if I tell you a little story?” She wrapped her arms round my arm and snuggled up against me. “Want to hear a little story?”

  “Don’t,” I said.

  But she continued. “Once upon a time there was this parrot lying in the desert, on its back, its little feet in the air.”

  “I said I don’t want to hear a story.”

  “Just listen, will you?” She scrunched her nose up again. I know it is entirely possible my reaction to her facial expressions was a product of the words she was saying to me—the judgments she made of me all the time. She could pass sentence on me with a small flicker of her eyebrow. “So anyway,” she went on. “This parrot is lying on its back and a traveling nomad comes by riding on a camel. He says to the parrot, ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ And the parrot says, ‘I’m holding up the sky with my feet.’ And the nomad says, ‘How can a little bird like you, with those tiny, spindly legs, and little twig-like feet, hold up the sky?’ and do you know what the parrot says?”

  I remained silent.

  In a very high, squeaky voice she said, “ ‘One does what one can,’ ” and then she started laughing.

  I laughed with her, but I was wondering what she was trying to say to me. She continued to laugh and after a while I said, “It’s not that funny.”

  “It struck me funny,” she said.

  “So what’s it mean?”

  “You don’t get it?”

  “I get it. It’s just not that funny.”

  “You’re the parrot,” she said, laughing. “Don’t you see? You’re the parrot. You’re always holding up the sky, or trying to.”

  I came so close to saying, “Fuck you,” I don’t even want to think about it.

  I sat down with George the day before Christmas break. I wished him a happy birthday, and he smiled a little weakly and thanked me. We were in my classroom, both of us sitting in student desks. I had put them together so that we would be facing each other. Before he sat down, he pulled his desk back a little, but he left it facing me.

  “George,” I said. “How are things at home?”

  He said nothing, but he nodded his head a bit.

  “I think you know I wouldn’t ask you that question lightly.”

  “What do you want me to say?”

  “I want you to tell me the truth.”

  He shook his head, slowly. “There’s nothing to tell. Things have been great since—since—well, you know.”

  “I haven’t noticed anything in your journal about it. You’ve stopped writing very much at all about—fishing, or your father, or …”

  “My dad and I get along now.”

  “I’m glad to hear it.”

  “I’m still a fuck-up. But I’ll be leaving soon,” he said.

  “Where are you going?”

  “I’m a senior. When I graduate, I’m going to join the army.” He asked me for a letter of recommendation and I told him he wouldn’t need one. The army would be glad to have him. I complimented him on his growing physique—I told him the weightlifting was definitely beginning to show.

  “It’s my dad,” he said.

  “What?”

  “My dad makes me do it. To punish me.”

  My heart sank.

  “I keep fucking up.”

  “You know I want to help you?” I said.

  “I know it.” He looked away from me.

  “Tell me about it.”

  “What?”

  “George, I can’t help you if you won’t tell me what’s happening.”

  “I keep fucking up. I’m no good for anything.”

  “That’s just not true.”

  He looked at me. His eyes were gray, dead looking.

  “I’m telling you it isn’t true. I’ve seen enough of you, worked with you enough to see that you have talent, you …”

  “I have talent?”

  “You’re smart. You can write.”

  “I’m trying to get an A.”

  “You’ll get an A. But you got to work with me here.”

  “What do you want?”

  I realized I really didn’t know. What could he do? Could I ask him to swear out a complaint against his father? I wasn’t even sure this was abuse anymore—but it was definitely cruelty. I was suddenly absolutely stumped. “George,” I said. “I wish I could save you from …” I didn’t finish the sentence.

  He made a sound in the back of this throat and I could see he was fighting tears. But then he smiled and his eyes seemed to brighten. “I’m a screwup, though. I know that. But look at me. You can tell I work out. I’m building muscle.”

  “Yes, you are.”

  “So it’s a benefit. My dad and I work out almost every day. We spend a lot of time together.”

  “All as punishment?”

  “No. But the workouts get more intense when I mess up. And I’m such a screwup …”

  “You’re not a screwup,” I interrupted him. “Everybody makes mistakes. You don’t have to be perfect.” I went on about the idiocy and stupidity of expecting perfection, but gradually I came to see that he wasn’t really listening anymore. He nodded his head, but what I said didn’t even slightly register. He was impatient to get out of there. I hoped he would ask me something—anything—to keep the conversation going; perhaps he would provide me with an opening. But he said nothing. Finally I patted him on the shoulder and told him if he ever needed to talk, I’d be there for him. When he got up, he paused for a second, still looking at the floor, and then he said, “I’m really okay, Mr. Jameson.” He spoke barely above a whisper, but I think he meant it. He glanced back at me briefly, a nascent smile on his face, and then left the room.

  I collected journals a day or so later.

  (Leslie Warren) unfolded

  12-16-86

  Did I ever thank you for saving me from that DNA case at Jolito’s? I am beginning to think that Miss Corrigan is right about you. She said you are a natural kind of hero because you are a gentleman. I think she’s in love with you. Mrs. Creighton thinks you have great potential. She said that to me when she begged me to drop my complaint.

  Did she tell you about it?

  I dropped it because I want to graduate and I’m so tired of being in trouble. I know I’m smart, so I thought I’d do the smart thing for once.
<
br />   Do you need me to help you out with Suzanne? She looks kind of lonely now that Mrs. C isn’t sitting with her anymore. I’d be glad to sit next to her if you want me to. And yesterday George Meeker asked me on a date. I think he’s asked every girl in the school. I was very gentle with him. I told him I already had a boyfriend but if I didn’t, I would sure like to go out with him. He smiled so wide I thought he was going to burst out laughing.

  I’d like to try to help Suzanne.

  I wrote in the margin next to this:

  Be very careful with her. She is very delicate and should be treated as gently as possible. But if you want to sit next to her and befriend her, you’re welcome to try. She has not spoken to anyone as far as I know, so don’t try to force it on her.

  I also wrote that I’d heard from her dad and I knew the complaint had been dropped. I thanked her for it. I tried not to think about why Mrs. Creighton had not told me about it. Then I realized she probably liked it that I was feeling so tentative and threatened. She would expect my best behavior under those circumstances.

  (Suzanne Rule) unfolded

  12-86

  I read all day sometimes. It is a way of listening that almost makes my soul feel warm and safe. I like books that make me think. I’ve always read every kind of book and now I want to read more poetry. I am surprised to find that I like poetry as an art form, because it allows one to speak from the heart. I see it now as a way of expression; of images and intimations that come from somewhere deep in the heart, or even memory and desire. I wouldn’t want poetry to teach me anything. You can’t write a poem that would teach about geometry, or trigonometry, or history, or French. I wouldn’t want to learn French with poetry but I think I would like to read a poem in French. I never read poetry before this year. In school before this year, poetry was always thrust upon me like some sort of test of my intelligence; teachers insisted on their own interpretations of meaning and if I didn’t see it their way, they made me feel inadequate and not up to the work mentally. I never got the feeling poetry was alive anymore, I thought it was dead like Latin, or classical music. Now I like how free I feel from reading it.

  I wrote in the margin:

  I am so glad you like poetry now, Suzanne. I think it is among the most beautiful developments from language of the human race. By the way, classical music isn’t dead. People still play the great composers of the past—Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, and so on. And people alive now are making their own classical music. People like Bernstein and Copland. Did you know it?

  In her next entry, she wrote:

  I think music is too mechanical for some people who play it. I had piano lessons when I was five and all I remember is counting and memorizing scales and counting some more. It’s a hateful thing. I like listening to the piano when my mother plays it. I love it when she caresses it and makes her fingers move so fast the piano sounds like a stream of falling water, smashing against rocks and clattering too fast over tree branches and stones. I like it because it soothes me.

  Suzanne was now talking to me directly, about herself; telling me about her likes and dislikes. I really did believe I was on the verge of something wonderful with her. I can’t put into words how it feels to get to a point like that with a student who is so completely withdrawn and damaged. The way my second year was going, I didn’t even remember law school. I was doing the most meaningful work there is. That’s the only way I can express it. It was meaningful and worthwhile and important work and I was beginning to make a difference.

  It didn’t occur to me then, but just now I see what I had. Why do anything else with your only life?

  37

  Visit, and a Fall to Earth

  After Christmas I went to see Professor Bible. It wasn’t easy to get up the nerve to do that, but I felt a growing need just to talk with him. I hadn’t seen him since the summer so I guess you could say I abandoned him. Somehow it seemed like a major breach in relationship logic to just show up at his door. Annie suggested I send him a letter, but that felt cowardly to me. So, one cold and bracing Saturday morning, after a long jog across the park, I realized I was near the school and I could walk up the street to his apartment. Even though I had been walking for a good mile before I knocked, my breathing still sent wisps of steam his way when he opened the door. He was standing with no cane. Although he was in his robe, he was wearing a pair of white, puffy-looking tennis shoes. His hair, as always, was piled high on his head and as white as the tennis shoes, but now he had a short, very thick and wiry beard. It was also white, so white that it made his mustache look steely gray, and darkened his face a little. He looked quite distinguished.

  “Well young man,” he said, smiling. Under the darker mustache his teeth shone white and healthy.

  I said hello, or something innocuous like that, and he opened the door wider, as if to present his whole self to me, but he said, “Look at you.”

  “I haven’t seen you in awhile,” I said.

  “Come in out of the cold.” He stood back and waved me in. The warm air shocked me. “Wow, you’ve got the heat turned up in here.”

  “I don’t like the cold.” He shut the door, then walked back into his kitchen. I followed him. He had a fire going under a simmering pot of vegetables and what looked like chunks of beef.

  “Making a stew?”

  He said nothing. He went to one of the cabinets and got down some cups and poured us each a cup of coffee. While he was doing this, he asked me questions about the school, and Mr. and Mrs. Creighton, and George Meeker. He didn’t wait for answers; he just let the questions fly, and sort of answered them himself, like this: “Everything okay at the school? But of course it is. How are Mr. and Mrs. Creighton? I hope they’re doing well. They always do manage, don’t they? And George Meeker? I bet he’s beginning to grow a bit, eh? He’ll be close to seventeen now, am I right?”

  When he had settled himself at the kitchen table, he pointed to the chair across from him. “Sit.”

  “How’s the foot?” I asked as I pulled up my chair.

  “Fine. Never better.”

  “I’m glad to hear it.” There was one dull bulb in the ceiling fan above us, but most of the light came from two windows over the sink. It was early enough in the morning that the sun was parked in one of the upper panes and it leveled a wide, sharp beam of light at chest level across the room. When we sat down, we sat under the beam, which left beautiful shadows on the table and seemed to add a gentle kind of warmth to the steamy air. “I spend my mornings in here,” he said.

  “It’s a lovely room.”

  We sipped our coffee for a while in silence. Finally he said, “So. What seems to be the trouble?”

  “Trouble?”

  “Something’s bothering you.”

  “How can you tell?”

  “I’m an experienced man. I’ve worked with young people all my adult life. I grew old doing it. How do you suppose I could tell?”

  I shrugged. I guess I wanted him to be right, but I was not really troubled by anything except the unalterable fact that I had neglected him since August. It’s possible that he assumed I was in trouble because of my sudden, unannounced visit. At any rate it was clear to me that he wanted to help, so I realized I needed to give him something to help with.

  I took a tentative sip of my coffee, trying to think of what to say to him. What could I tell him that would make this visit seem less like charity and more like a natural result of my need for help?

  He said, “So are you going to tell me?”

  I was on the spot. I simply couldn’t pretend I was there for an easy chat in the natural course of events between friends. I hadn’t seen him in almost three months. So I just started talking. I told him everything that had happened so far that year in school. I told him about getting trapped in the snow with Leslie, my night at the bar with her, and my failed attempt to break through with George. I even told him about the poems I was getting from Suzanne Rule. I did not tell him that I was feeling utterly tri
umphant, or that I was on the verge of real success with Suzanne. I didn’t tell him about Leslie’s complaint, but I did say she had become one of my best students. He listened, patiently, sipping his coffee and without much comment. When I was done, I said, “So I guess I just wanted to see what you thought about things.”

  “What things?”

  “Well,” I said, and as I spoke, I realized I really was troubled about something—deeply troubled. “Annie says I should just mind my own business, teach my classes and go home. She keeps telling me I have a Christ complex or that I’m a control freak. But I think I’m doing the best job I can.”

  He looked at me over the cup. His dark brows and gray mustache made him look almost evil in that light. Like a deranged Hemingway.

  I added, “She makes me feel like I’m doing things I shouldn’t be doing.”

  He smiled sort of ruefully. “That comes with the territory.”

  “What does?”

  “You’ve always got that conflict to figure out.”

  “The conflict between people who teach and those who don’t know …”

  “The conflict between what you know is your job and how to do it without going beyond what it calls you to.”

  “Well what did you do?”

  “I was more traditional.”

  I put both hands on my cup and leaned forward. “You mean more traditional than me?”

  “I would not have gone to Jolito’s to meet Leslie Warren.”

  “I didn’t go there to meet her.”

  “I would have avoided even the possibility that someone would think I did that.”

  “It worked, though.”

  “I know Leslie Warren. She is poison. Plain and simple.”

  I shook my head. “She’s not. Not anymore.”

  He sipped his coffee again, looking at me over the steamy brim.

  I said, “She’s much better in class since I talked to her. I’ve won her over.”

  He lowered the cup and studied the table now, thinking. Then he said, “You may have. It’s possible. She is human and human beings can change. I believed that all my teaching life. One has to believe it. But I’m telling you only what limits I would set in that situation and that’s one of them. I would not have approached her. I would not have spent an evening sipping a beer with her sitting across from me. Nor would I have confronted George.”