Blue Angel (7 page)

Okay. Angela wrote that chapter. Why did Swenson doubt it?

“All right,” Courtney says. “I can do that.”

No, you can't, thinks Swenson. Courtney's heroine will be Natalie Wood in
West Side Story.
But so what? Courtney's charged with faith in the power of observation to make something come to life on the page, in the power of language to make something walk and talk. That's all Swenson can hope to give them, and together they've bled it out of Courtney's turnip of a story. Meanwhile they've avoided the dangerous question of whether the sharpest details, the most gorgeous embroidery can cloak the clumsy contrivances of a plot about a girl who decides not to join a gang responsible for the death of a child. They don't have to mention that. They've performed the weekly miracle of healing the terminally ill with minor cosmetic surgery.

“Wait a minute,” says Jonelle. Swenson waits for Jonelle to say—as she often does—that the story was perfect just the way it was, and they should have left it alone. Nearly every class has a self-appointed guardian of the writer's tender feelings, an aggressive protector less inspired by kindness than by the need to negate the time and effort they've expended.

Jonelle says, “You didn't give Courtney a chance to say something at the end. Like if there's anything else she wants to ask us, or what.”

Usually, the writer just thanks the class. Still, they need it for closure. “Sorry, Courtney,” says Swenson. “Last words? Last thoughts?”

“Thanks, guys,” says Courtney. “I think I know where to go from here.”

It's like a benediction. Or like the end of Quaker Meeting, the rising and shaking hands, faces warmed by the hour spent by the fire of the Inner Light. Before Swenson knows what he's doing, he glances at Angela Argo. Messages crackle back and forth, and it's understood that Angela will stay after so they can discuss her chapter.

“Wait!” he says. “Before everyone leaves. Whose story are we doing next week?”

Carlos hands over a manuscript. “One for the crapper,” he says.

“Oh, I doubt it,” Swenson says. “Thank you, my man!”

From the corner of his eye, Swenson sees Angela stand up. Is she getting ready to leave? Was he wrong about their wordless agreement? “Angela?” His voice cracks. Carlos gives him a funny look. “Since we're ending early, if you want to stay, we can talk about your manuscript….”

Angela says, “I was counting on it. If it's all right with you. I was just standing up to stretch. I mean, if you want to, if you have the time. I'd hate to bother you….”

“Of course I do,” says Swenson. “That's why I suggested it. Should we stay here and talk, or should we go to my office?” Who's in charge here? Why is he asking
her
?

“Your office. I mean, it's more comfortable there. It's not, like, you know, a classroom. I mean, if that's all right with you.” Angela can hardly speak.

“We're on our way,” Swenson says. “See the rest of you guys next week.”

 

Swenson finds it trying to walk anywhere with a student. Conversation's tough enough when everyone stands in one place. Forward movement creates so many chances for awkward stalls and collisions, decisions about who goes first, right or left, minicrises that make one conscious of authority and position. Does the student respectfully stand aside and usher Swenson through the doorway, or does Swenson, in loco parentis, hold the door for the kid? And is everything different depending on whether the student is male or female?

You bet it's different if the student is female. Crossing the quad with Angela, Swenson's acutely aware that he might walk one inch too close and someone will report them for holding hands. At least the quad's nearly empty. Another advantage of ending class early is that they're spared the traffic jam between classes, the saying hello to everyone just in case you happen to know them. Looking up at the high windows of granite Claymore, Thackeray, Comstock Hall, he wonders who's looking down.

Angela says, “Doesn't it creep you out to think about everyone watching? You could be, you know, just like
walking,
and, like, Lee Harvey Oswald could be drawing a bead on you. Probably some psycho you gave a crummy grade to—”

“Relax,” Swenson says. “My courses are pass-fail. Everyone passes.”

“That's good.” Angela smiles. They're moving much too slowly. It's his job to set the pace. But his legs feel bizarrely wooden. Last week, waiting for Sherrie to finish at the clinic, he read an article about a woman who had a stroke preceded by this same trudging-through-water sensation. The woman was younger than Swenson.

Angela says, “That was a pretty good class.”

“Thank you,” Swenson says.

She says, “Actually, it was a miracle. Considering how Courtney's story sucked.”

Students don't tell teachers that another student's story sucked. They're supposed to show solidarity; the teacher is management, they're labor. And the teacher has a professional (a parental) responsibility not to let students (the siblings) be nasty about each other.

“Ouch,” says Swenson.

“You know it did,” Angela says.

“Courtney will get better.” Is Angela a colleague with whom he's discussing a student's potential? Shouldn't Swenson remind her what the protocol is?

He doesn't. And now his punishment comes barreling toward them down the path. He feels like a bowling pin watching a strike roll in. But how can he call it a punishment to run into the only colleague he actually likes? Because for some reason he just doesn't feel like seeing Magda right now.

Swenson and Magda Moynahan kiss on the cheek, warmly, decorously, as they do when they meet for lunch, though it's not exactly natural with Angela Argo watching, but more of a performance. They may
look
like teachers, but they're humans, they have friends. A swatch of Magda's wavy black hair sticks between Swenson's lips. Getting it loose takes some doing with both women watching.

“We're on break,” says Magda. “I forgot some poems in my office.” Magda's always breathless, always forgetting something, her flyaway beauty torqued by panic and distraction. The author of two well-received books of poems, she's divorced from a more famous poet, Sean Moynahan, who has recently remarried a young female poet with a growing reputation, a pretty girl who could be Magda's twin, minus twenty years. Swenson and Magda have lunch every few weeks and exchange Euston gossip.

“We got out early,” Swenson explains. “Angela and I are going off to have a conference about her novel.”

“Angela,” says Magda. “How are you?”

“Oh, hi! I'm fine!” says Angela, sweetly.

“Let's have lunch, Ted,” says Magda.

“Next week?” Swenson says.

“Call me,” says Magda.

“Beautiful,” says Swenson. Everyone smiles and walks on.

“Did you take…” Swenson's unsure how to go on. What do Magda's students call her? “The Beginning Poetry Workshop?”

“Freshman seminar,” Angela says. “My poetry ate it.”

“I doubt it.”

“Trust me. It did. I was writing all this weird sexual stuff.”

Swenson makes a mental note to ask Magda about Angela's poems.

“The class wasn't so great,” says Angela. “Magda was sort of…stiff. I felt like my work made her nervous. Like on a…personal level.”

It's one thing for Angela to trash a classmate's story, or to be snide about Lauren Healy's class, but it's quite another for this twit to criticize his best—his only—friend at Euston. Swenson isn't going to touch the question of what sexual stuff Angela wrote that made Magda nervous on a “personal level.” Besides, he has to admit that some infantile part of his pyche is pleased. You
want
your students to love you best….

At the entrance to Mather Hall, Swenson says, “Go on up. I'll get my mail and be there in a minute.” He'd rather not follow her up four flights in that face-to-ass configuration. Obligingly, his mail box produces a few party-colored flyers for him to wave at Angela, who is watching from the top of the stairs. Stepping aside as he unlocks the door, she stumbles only slightly. This time, at least, she finds the chair and manages to twist her legs into the yogic contortion she seems to require for comfort. Swenson paws through his briefcase, and after a scary moment finds the orange envelope and hands it across the desk.

“I assume you got my phone message,” he says.

“I saved the message tape,” says Angela. “I played it a million times. Gosh. I can't believe I just told you that? Can we forget I said that about replaying your message? Was I supposed to call you back? I was too embarrassed. I thought you'd think I was trying to make you say even more nice stuff about my work.”

“I didn't expect you to call,” says Swenson. “Wasn't that Robert Johnson on your answering machine?”

“I can't believe you recognized him. Wasn't he the best? Did you know he died when he was, like, sixteen? His girlfriend got jealous and poisoned him with a glass of wine?”

“I do know,” Swenson says. “Well…I don't have much more to say beyond what I told your machine.”

“Did you find the typos?” she asks.

“Most, I guess. I marked them. I made a few marks on the page. Otherwise…just keep writing. Be careful whom you show it to. For God's sake, don't bring it to workshop. Don't let anybody tell you anything. I mean no one. Not even me.”

“Oh my God,” says Angela thickly. Swenson watches, mildly horrified, as her eyes film with tears. “This makes me so happy.” She swipes at her eyes with the back of her hand. “It's not just because you're the teacher. It's 'cause I really admire your work.
Phoenix Time
is like my favorite book in the universe.”

“I thought
Jane Eyre
was,” says Swenson.

“This is different,” Angela says. “Your book saved my life.”

“Thank you.” Swenson doesn't want to know why. He's afraid he already does. When he used to give readings from
Phoenix Time
, listeners would come up afterward to say that his book was exactly like their lives. Their dads were crazy, too. At first he'd encouraged them to tell him their stories, he'd felt it was his duty to listen to the grisly tales of alcoholics, alimony deadbeats, emotionally distant workaholics. As if that were what he'd written. Hadn't they read the chapter in which the boy sees his father incinerate himself on the TV evening news? Were they saying that happened to
them
? He learned to say, solemnly, “Thank you.” A simple thank you was enough.

But not, it seems, for Angela. “All the time I was in high school, my dad was determined to kill himself. And I didn't know anyone else—not in my school, that's for sure, not in middle-class nowhere New Jersey—I'd never heard of anyone who went through anything like it. After my dad finally did it, I got kind of…weird. That's when my therapist gave me your book. I read it a million times. It made me realize that people survive stuff like that. It really helped me. It saved me. Plus it's a great book. I mean, it's right up there with Charlotte Brontë and Stendhal.”

“Thank you,” says Swenson. “I'm flattered.”

It's true. Swenson feels terrific. It's gratifying to think that his novel helped this girl. When interviewers used to ask him how he pictured his ideal reader, he said he wrote books for nervous people to take with them on airplanes. Now he thinks his answer should have been: schoolchildren in middle-class nowhere New Jersey, girls who think that theirs is the only life scarred by grief.

Angela says, “Can I ask you something?”

“Ask away,” says Swenson.

“Did that stuff in your novel, like, really happen?”

“I thought we talked about that in class. About not asking that question—”

“This isn't class,” says Angela.

“It isn't,” Swenson agrees. “That's really how my father died….My mother and I really did see it on TV. It was sort of a celebrity death. For about fifteen minutes. And that scene in the Quaker Meeting House, when the old man comes up to the kid and says his life is going to rise from the ashes of his father's. That really happened, too.” Swenson's said this too many times for it to qualify as a confession. In fact, it's the prepackaged betrayal of his own painful past—lines he'd robotically delivered to interviewers when
Phoenix Time
came out. “You do know about Vietnam, right? And the antiwar movement?”

Angela flinches, then rolls her eyes. “Please,” she says. “I'm not retarded.”

Regretting his condescension, Swenson searches for some fresh detail that he hasn't recycled again and again. “I'll tell you a funny thing. It's gotten to where I sometimes can't remember what happened and what I made up for the novel.”

“
I'd
remember,” Angela says.

“You're still young. What about the stuff in your novel? How much of
that
is true?”

Angela recoils. “Oh, man.”

Her discomfort is contagious. But would someone tell him why that question was perfectly fine for her to ask him, but a violation—prying—when he turned it around?

“Of course not,” Angela says. “I just made it up. I mean…well, I did have this friend who hatched eggs for her science project. But I invented the rest.”

“Well, that's good,” says Swenson.

“So, fine…I was just wondering if there was anything you think I should do to fix those pages I gave you.”

Hasn't he just told her not to ask for advice? “Let's see it again.” Angela hands back the manuscript, and he skims through it. It really
is
good. He was right about that. If only its author weren't quite so draining.