14 Stories

by Stephen Dixon

  I saw her again this morning. Short dress, hair combed back and neat as ever, tanned legs, knotty calves, big feet, small waist and nose, slender bowed neck—another dancer sign—never eye-or sunglasses or a perceptible face blemish or clothes stain, she walked briskly, gracefully, I’ve never seen her chew gum or her nails or eat on the street or smoke and for no more knowable reason than that mixed with my hopes for her health and conjectures about her dancing career, doubt if she smokes at all, long mouth, average­sized eyes, breasts appear small and except for a day when she wore a man’s white T-shirt and her teats seemed unusually dark and pronounced, never without a brassiere, high buttocks, low heels on her shoes and boots, never sneakers or socks and stockings always a brilliant color and in the red and blue family, though of late never hose, today in sandals, yesterday when rain was definitely forecast and thunderclouds loomed all day overhead, plastic or leather boots but no other visible rainwear, from what I can see no makeup, jewelry or adornments of any kind on her neck, hair, ears, fingers, clothes, ankles and nothing on her wrist but the watch she always wears with the exaggerated pocketwatch face and equally large transparent band, rarely a blouse, skirt or bandanna and always one of about five leather shoulder bags and each beaded or embroidered with colorful primitive or tribal symbols, designs or replicas of prehistoric cave paintings of what seem to be spear-holding hunters on foot or horseback and their animal or human prey and all with leather fringes that beat against her coat or dangle above her knee. That’s about what I know of her till what I learned today.

  For the past two-and-a-half weeks and until school closes I’m the substitute typing teacher for the seventh grade, though without an official homeroom class. Periodically, the other typing teacher unlocks my back or front door with her passkey and offers compassion and advice, such as “Pity you don’t know shorthand or can’t pick it up quick at some speedy secretarial school. For short­hand’s what they were promised to learn for June and which would have kept their interest and them from being so rowdy.” I took the job to guarantee myself a full month’s work, as per diem work is hardest to get the first and last months of the school year. I don’t type and was mainly hired over a woman sub who taught the subject a few years to defend the machines with my very vis vitae and bloody sinews, as the assistant principal put it, since each typewriter costs a hundred fifty dollars and the local school district won’t have the funds to replace the irreparably broken ones for a year. I was warned to be especially watchful that the students don’t dismantle the margin control springs to use as bracelets or pick off the keys one by one till they’ve spelled their first, nick-and surnames in their pockets. Some of the students continue to mutilate the machines no matter what I do. Every day I find several Tab, Mar Rel and Back Space keys on the floor after I heard them pinging off the blackboard. Also, the large bolts and wing nuts that secure the machines to their tables and a variety of less familiar parts that I’m sure come from inside the machine though I can’t locate where. Even if several students in each class remain fascinated by the machines and type every lesson I give them, I’ve gradually become incensed with my inability to control the majority of students and reduce their vandalism, and during the last period today I accused two boys of maliciously destroying their margin controls and not even having the simple skill it took to do the job cleanly, though the only proof I had for either charge were the two margin control springs in their hands.

  “They were on the floor when we got here,” one of the boys said. I said “Bullcrap and you know it” and threatened to tell their homeroom teacher of their abuse of school property and hold up their final report cards, and right after school to phone their parents and demand they pay for the repair of the machines. I wasn’t going to make any such calls or even see their teacher. All I ever do after school is hurry home, shower, snack, have a beer, change to street clothes and walk in the park and read and sketch there for a while or lie on my bed and sleep. Besides, the city has a cover repair contract with a typewriter service that includes everything but the replacement of parts, and what would a couple of margin control springs cost? I asked for the boys’ phone numbers. One said he didn’t have a phone and lived with his oldest sister and her kids and the other said he lived on a roof of a building I’d be cut up in if I was ever so dumb to step an inch inside and I shouldn’t be trying to push them around as the only thing strong about me is my breath. Instead of hoisting him out of his seat and demanding an apology, which I felt like doing but which could end up with a corporal punishment charge brought against me, I said “All right, maybe you didn’t do it, but at the rate these machines are being mistreated there won’t be one left to type on in a week,” and went to the supply closet and pretended to be looking for something and came across a stack of old school annuals called Terminations. The teacher I’m subbing for must have saved every issue of the annual since the school opened twelve years ago. To waste time till the bell rang I began flipping through the top copy—last year’s annual—and got caught up in the way the appearances of so many students and teachers I know had changed so radically in just a year. How one teacher with a full head of hair now was in the annual totally bald. How an attractive female teacher then had gained about a hundred pounds since the photo was taken and another teacher looked so different without his present long side-burns, mustache, ear stud and shoulder-length hair. I opened the Terminations of two years ago, expecting to see even greater contrasts and transformations in these and other teachers and from there to proceed to later issues till I had read in reverse order them all, when I saw in a photograph of a ninth-grade glass that one of the girls sitting solemnly in the front row looked very much like the young woman I see every day on my way to work. A few of my students were still typing the warm-up exercises. My prize student was copying from her lesson book the long business letter to a cement company about its basement construction costs. Most of the students were congregated around the phonograph in the back of the room, singing and dancing to their records of eleven-and twelve-year-old recording stars, after having removed the instructional record I’d put on to improve their typing speed. One girl sitting on my desk brushing her hair suddenly yelled “Hey Mr. Teacher, Terry’s molesting me—get him to stop!” I said” I’ll be there in a second, honey—Terry, lay off!” and looked for the blond bony face in the rows of individual photos of the entire ninth-grade graduating class at the end of the book, thinking she shouldn’t be too hard to find among so many dark faces and black hairs and half the class male and about a fifth of them with eyeglasses. And there she was. Unmistakably the same girl. Long thin face, hair combed back the same way, no smile, same neck, ears, eyes, forehead and mouth. Judy Louis her name. 7th­grade treasurer. Voted prettiest girl in the 8th grade. Best sense of humor in the 9th. Fencing club, Dramsoc, Quill ‘n Ink, citywide and intramural girls’ track-team star. High school she’s going to attend: Mind, Spirit, Beauty and the Creative and Performing Arts. College she hopes to attend: School of Hard Knocks. Ambition: dancer, actress, gourmand and paid somnivolent. Favorite sports and hobbies: eating and dreaming. Pet peeves: hard mattresses, cooked okra, bad theater acoustics and a slippery splintery stage. Favorite adage: There’s no yesterday and tomorrow never was.

  Maybe I’ll look up her address in the phone book when I get home and go and see where she lives. Her building’s probably on the same number street as mine but the next block over. But what if she has a front apartment and recognizes me through the window as the man she sees every weekday morning on her way to wherever she’s going, which is probably school? She might become alarmed, tell her parents, who she’s most likely living with, and even if it’s only her mother who’s at home she might come out and ask who I am and what’s my interest in her daughter and their building and the police could be called. No matter how adept I might be in talking myself out of the situation, my school could learn of the incident and I could be fired and also lose my license. Substitute teaching pays me better than any j
ob I’ve had when I worked at it steadily as I’ve been doing and I can pick it up and drop it whenever I want. So forget the girl. Crazy idea, looking up her address. She’s just a kid. Or at least, compared to my age, much too young.

  The bell rings. Chairs are knocked down as the students clamber over one another to leave through either door. I tidy up the room, scour the floor for typewriter parts and check which keyboards the keys belong to and fit them back on, lock the cabinets and doors and go to the general office where I see the other typing teacher waiting with half the teaching staff for three o’clock to come.

  “Some picnic upstairs,” I say.

  “And you see? I bet like most people here you thought we’ve the cushiest job in the school. What are you doing for the summer?”

  “They must have driven that poor woman I replaced right to the hospital she’s at.”

  “No, she was pretty effective. Always a strong lesson prepared and perfectly timed so they didn’t get bored. And most of her playful darlings she had a certain charm with or through a stream of letters and phone calls home got them right under her thumb.”

  “When I was a student in the seventh grade—”

  “Dearie, all of us except the youngest teachers say that.”

  “Right? P.S. 9, just a few blocks from here. We used to sit with our hands folded if we finished a lesson before anyone else. And after school we’d cross the street if we saw any one of our teachers coming, only afraid they might stop and say hello.”

  “Things change. Civilizations and schools notwithstanding. Like this place was the model school of the city when it opened up. Visiting dignitaries used to be invited, and come.”

  “Now the kids buttonhole me for quarters and cigarettes if I see them outside. And one last Sunday cursed me out to his friends when he saw me entering this nice neighborhood bar. ‘Hey look, there goes my wino teacher drunk.’”

  “The last week shouldn’t be too bad with most of them cutting or out on class trips. And if you think it’s cuckoo now you should’ve seen it last two days last year. Hundreds of them across the street and with smaller forces in back in case we tried to escape, and they battered us with raw eggs and ice-cream balls.”

  “How’d they manage to throw ice-cream balls?” But three o’clock’s come. We line up behind the teachers and paraprofessionals to place our room keys on the key rack and clock out for the day.

  At home on my bed I fantasize about Judy Louis. It’s the following morning and I see her walking on the opposite sidewalk on her way to high school. She’s wearing a short skirt, man’s white T-shirt and on her shoulder is one of her leather bags. I cross the street to buy one of my special candies but more to see her up close. No, better it’s the day after tomorrow. Friday, around quarter past three, whole weekend ahead of me, and I’m leaving the same grocery store I saw her approaching that time with her girlfriend. It’s a hot day, near ninety, though the humidity’s quite low. In my grocery bag are two six-packs of ale and beer, items I buy in that quantity almost every Friday on my way home from school along with my once-a-week loaf of unsliced black bread and a hard cheese. The store’s front door is closed, as just the other day I overheard the dairy man yell to a woman to please don’t be keeping it open as they don’t want to be air-conditioning the whole outside. But I keep the door open for her and as she passes I say “Hello, Judy.” She stares at me, surprised I know her name. I say I didn’t want to startle her, but I used to teach at 54. She says “I’m sorry, I don’t recognize you, what did you teach?” The dairy man might say “One way or the other, in or out, but shut the door.” I say to her “Would you mind? In’s more comfortable,” and step into the store, switch the package to my other arm. “You wouldn’t remember me as I was a per-diem sub, but I had your class a few times. Right now I’m a typing teacher for a month—remember Miss Moore?” “Oh God—Miss Moore. Two years and I almost forgot. I had the other one—what was her name—with the very correct manners and bawdy asides and horselaugh?” Or else she could have had Miss Moore and recalls the story I’ve heard about how she got order in the class. “She’d stand halfway up the middle aisle tinkling by the end of its ivory handle this little bell, which she said she got in India forty years ago, till eventually everyone stopped what they were doing and stayed silent till she spoke. ‘Class,’ she’d say, if she didn’t say children. ‘As much as I love each and every adorable one of you, I estimate you took a minute twenty seconds of your Friday free time away by just now taking a minute twenty seconds too long.’ But I actually learned how to type with all my fingers from her, so you could say if it wasn’t for Miss Moore I wouldn’t have my part-time job.” I ask what she does when she isn’t working part-time and she says going to a special city school for theater and dance or even rehearsing a small part with a theater or ballet group. I mention the regularity of my seeing her and she says lots of times she’s wondered herself where I’m off to every morning and finally decided it was a graduate school I attended, because of all the books I carry, or some other kind of school I teach at, though she never figured for J.H. 54. “The books are for my own enjoyment during my free and preparation periods, or if the class cooperates, then during the study periods I try to give them whenever I can. Now I can’t as I have this program for a month and if I don’t keep them busy all the time they’d be climbing the walls.” She asks what happened to Miss Moore and I mention the operation and she says she liked her and hopes everything turns out all right. I say something like I don’t want to be detaining her from her shopping or if she has to be anywhere soon, but if she doesn’t then why don’t we have a coffee somewhere nearby? She says “Coffee’s too hot for today, even tea.” I suggest a soda or beer, though I don’t drink soda, and she says “Sure, either’s fine,” and we leave the store. Outside I say I ought to leave my groceries in the store and pick them up later instead of lugging them around. Or else I’ll just place the bag under the checkout stand before we leave, telling the cashier I’ll reclaim it in an hour. Then we head for the bar three blocks away. I’ll tell her what that student called me last Sunday when he caught me entering this same bar. And how many of my students ridicule me for my so­straight behavior because I won’t dance to their records with them, even if I tell them I’d love to dance with them or by myself if it weren’t for the possibility of another teacher walking in. How one afternoon I just sat at my desk and let the class throw erasers and paper planes at me, as I’d given up on trying to control them and lost the will, wherewithal or whatever it is to fight back. How on the hottest most humid day of the year this week I told the kids to just sit quietly and don’t type and by all rights they should be dismissed to find relief in the park and public pools and sprays, and for the first time my assistant principal walks in, face and clothes soaked, and says “I don’t know what you think’s going on here but I’ve been explicitly ordered by the principal and she by the district supervisor to see that every teacher maintains disciplined classes and structured lessons till the last day of the term.” How without being detected I’ve tripped several boys to stop them from running around the room, how others have told me to go on and teach when they had their arm around a girl’s neck and hand on her breast, that I’ve been dubbed ‘pigeon head’ because of my receding hairline and ‘fish lips’ because of what they think are my excessively large lips. How one day about twenty boys from a local high school burst into the room, turned over all the chairs and unbolted tables, threatened to beat up all my students and knife one boy in particular and toss all the typewriters into the street and the teacher after them, and then as swiftly left to pull the same prank with another class on the floor while my students cringed and sobbed behind me at the far end of the room. Or how on another day, but we reach the bar. She could say how come I’ve no nice stories about my students and I’d say because they’d be too unamusing to tell and I’d think uninteresting to hear. She studies dance, quit high school this year, lives with her mom. I explain why I’m only a sub. That
I’ve also been living with my folks for three years to cut down on my rent and help out my mother with my ailing dad. I ask if she’d like to go to the Modern tonight. Only the sculpture garden’s open but we can get beer or wine there, espresso with snacks. I’ve an artist’s pass I acquired for ten dollars and a fake letter from a real art gallery saying I’ve shown there and for an additional two-fifty got a second pass for a nonexistent wife. She says she’d love to go. We return to the store. She says would I prefer meeting her upstairs or in front? We part, we meet, we sit on the sculpture garden steps drinking foreign beer. Before we separated at the store I said eat lightly if you have to eat at home at all tonight as we might as well have dinner after the museum. She says I’m the first teacher she’s gone out with other than a dance instructor who’s her own age. I say I dated many students when I was a student but so far all the single agreeable teachers and college teaching aides I’ve asked have turned me down. Do I say that? We say goodnight. I say I’d like to kiss her now but sort of feel funny about it and she says I don’t see why we shouldn’t. We do. Three shorts and a long. I pick her up at home the following night, meet her mom, am offered a drink. Judy sits beside me on the couch and we want to hold hands but don’t. We have dinner out or see a film. We walk, we talk. I say if I had my own apartment would she come back to it with me now and she says why not? I say I’ve an old car and would she like to go camping next weekend and she says that sound like fun. I’ve no tents but two sleeping bags that can be zippered up into one. We make love in a big bag. Later in the summer we go abroad for two months. When we return we search for our own apartment in the old neighborhood so I can still help out with my dad and mom. We’re married by the end of the year. By the end of the next year we’ve a child. A girl or boy and it’s conceived by natural passion and delivered by natural childbirth and I’m there in the delivery room with her, clasping her hand when I’m not drawing her in labor and giving birth, and then sketches of the cord being cut and umbilicus being sewn and child held aloft and washed if they’re still held aloft and washed, and bundled up by the nurse, suckled by my wife, sleeping and weeping and caterwauling behind incubation-room glass, other fathers and grandparents making faces at the new infants, the room, window view and various objects in this room where Judy sleeps and her three roommates. And we’re both very happy. We’re considered an ideal couple. We love each other very much. I continue to draw, engrave, assist my parents and substitute teach.