Teacher Man: A Memoir (11 page)

His mother adores him, other teachers won’t have him, the guidance counselor passes the buck and I do not know what to do with him.

In the closet he finds hundreds of little watercolor jars, with contents dried and cracked. He says, Wha’. Wha’. Oh, man. Jars, jars. Colors, colors. Mine, mine.

OK, Kevin. Would you like to clean them? You can stay right here by the sink with this special table and you don’t have to sit at your desk anymore.

It’s a risk. He might take offense at being offered a task of pure drudgery.

Yeah, yeah. My jars. My table. Gonna take off my hood.

He pushes back the hood and the hair flames. I tell him I’ve never seen such red hair and he grins. He works at the sink for hours, spooning out the old paste into a large pickle jar, scrubbing the caps, arranging the jars on the shelves. At the end of the year he is still working, still not finished. I tell him he won’t be able to stay during the summer and he cries out of frustration. Could he take the jars home? His cheeks are wet.

All right, Kevin. Take them home.

He touches my shoulder with his multicolored hand, tells me I’m the greatest teacher in the world and if anyone ever gives me trouble he’ll take care of them because he has ways of dealing with people who bother teachers.

He takes home dozens of glass jars.

He does not return in September. Guidance people at the Board of Education send him to a special school for incorrigibles. He runs away and lives awhile with the white mice in his father’s garage. Then the army takes him and his mother comes to the school to tell me he’s missing in Vietnam and she shows me a picture from his room. On the table the glass jars are arranged in a series of letters that say
MCCORT OK
.

See, his mother says. He liked you for helping him, but the Communists got him, so tell me, what was the use? Look at all the moms have kids blown to bits. Jesus, you don’t even have a finger to bury and will you tell me what’s goin’ on in that country over there nobody ever heard of? Will you tell me that? One war finishes, another one starts and you’re lucky if you just have daughters won’t be sent over there.

From a canvas bag she pulls the large pickle jar filled with Kevin’s dried paints. She says, Look at that. Every color in the rainbow in that jar. And you know what? He cut off all his hair and you can see where he mixed it in with those paints. That’s a work of art, right? And I know he’d want you to have it.

I could have been honest with Kevin’s mother, told her I did little for her son. He seemed like a lost soul, floating around looking for a place to drop anchor, but I didn’t know enough, or I was too shy to show affection.

I kept the jar on my desk, where it glowed, incandescent, and when I looked at clumps of Kevin’s hair I felt sorry over the way I let him drift out of the school and off to Vietnam.

My students, especially the girls, said the jar was beautiful, yeah, a work of art, and it must have taken a lot of work. I told them about Kevin and some of the girls cried.

A maintenance man cleaning the classroom thought the jar was junk and took it away to the trash in the basement.

I talked to teachers in the cafeteria about Kevin. They shook their heads. They said, Too bad. Some of these kids slip through the cracks but what the hell is the teacher supposed to do? We have huge classes, no time, and we’re not psychologists.

A
t thirty I married Alberta Small and started courses at Brooklyn College for the Master of Arts in English Literature, a degree that would help me rise in the world, earn respect, increase my teacher salary.

To fulfill the requirements for the degree I wrote a thesis on Oliver St. John Gogarty, doctor, poet, playwright, novelist, wit, athlete, champion drinker at Oxford, memoirist, senator, friend (briefly) of James Joyce, who turned him into the Buck Mulligan of
Ulysses
and made him famous worldwide and forever.

My thesis title was “Oliver St. John Gogarty: A Critical Study.” There was nothing critical about the thesis. I chose Gogarty because of my admiration for him. If I read him and wrote about him, some of his charm, talent and learning would surely rub off on me. I might develop some of his dash and flair, his flamboyant air. He was a Dublin character, and I hoped I might become a debonair, hard-drinking, poetic Irishman like him. I’d be a New York character. I’d set the table on a roar and dominate the bars of Greenwich Village with song and story. At the Lion’s Head Bar I drank whiskey after whiskey to give myself the courage to be colorful. Bartenders suggested I slow down. Friends said they didn’t understand a word coming out of my mouth. They lifted me out of the bar and into a taxi, paid the driver and told him to drive nonstop till I reached my door in Brooklyn. I tried to be Gogarty-witty with Alberta but she told me for God’s sakes be quiet, and all I got for my efforts to be Gogartian was a hangover so agonizing I fell to my knees and asked God to take me.

Professor Julian Kaye accepted my thesis despite “a repetitiousness of style and a solemnity which conflicts with the subject, Gogarty.”

My first and favorite professor at Brooklyn College was Morton Irving Seiden, Yeats scholar. He wore a bow tie, he could lecture three hours on the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles or Chaucer or Matthew Arnold, the material perfectly organized in his head. He was there to lecture, pour knowledge into empty vessels, and if you had any questions you could see him in his office. He would not waste class time.

He had written his doctoral dissertation at Columbia University on Yeats and a book,
Paradox of Hate,
in which he argued that fear of Jewish sexuality was a major cause of anti-Semitism in Germany.

I took his year-long course on the History of English Literature, from Beowulf to Virginia Woolf, from warrior to worrier. You could see he wanted us to know and understand how English literature had developed and the language along with it. He insisted we should know the literature the way a doctor knows the body.

Everything he said was news to me, one of the benefits of being innocent and ill-educated. I knew bits and pieces of English literature but it was thrilling with Seiden, rolling along from writer to writer, from century to century, pausing for a closer look at Chaucer, John Skelton, Christopher Marlowe, John Dryden, the Enlightenment, the Romantics, the Victorians and on into the twentieth century with Seiden reading passages to illustrate the development of English from Anglo-Saxon through Middle English through Modern English.

After those lectures I felt sorry for people on subway trains who didn’t know what I knew and I was eager to get back to my own classroom and tell my students how the English language had changed down the centuries. I tried to prove it by reading passages from Beowulf but they said, Nah, that ain’t English. You think we’re stoopid?

I tried to imitate Seiden’s elegant style with my classes of plumbers, electricians, auto mechanics, but they looked at me as if I had lost my wits.

Professors could get up there and lecture to their hearts’ content with never a fear of contradiction or a quibble. That was a life to be envied. They never had to tell anyone sit down, open your notebook, no, you may not have the pass. They never had to break up fights. Assignments were to be completed on time. No excuses, sir or madam, this is not high school. If you find it difficult to keep up with the work you ought to drop the course. Excuses are for children.

I envied Seiden, and college professors in general, their weekly four or five classes. I taught twenty-five. They had complete authority. I had to earn it. I said to my wife, Why should I have to struggle with moody teenagers when I could live the easy life of a college professor? Wouldn’t it be a pleasure to stroll into the classroom in that casual way, nod to acknowledge their mere existence, deliver the lecture to the back wall or a tree outside the window, scratch a few illegible notes on the board, announce the next paper to be written, seven hundred words on money symbolism in Dickens’s
Bleak House
? No complaints, no challenges, no excuses.

Alberta said, Oh, stop the whining. Get off your ass and get a Ph.D. and you can be a nice little university professor. You can bullshit the female sophomores.

When Alberta was taking the examination for the teacher’s license she met R’lene Dahlberg and brought her home for dinner. She kicked off her shoes and sat on the couch drinking wine and telling us about her life with her husband, Edward. They lived in Majorca but she returned to the States from time to time to teach and make money to keep them going in Spain. She said Edward was quite famous and I said nothing because I could remember coming across his name only once in an essay by Edmund Wilson on proletarian writers. R’lene said he’d be returning from Spain in a few months and she’d invite us over for a drink.

From the minute I met him I didn’t like Edward Dahlberg, or, maybe, I was nervous about meeting a man of letters, my introduction to the social world of American literature.

The evening Alberta and I came over, he sat in a deep armchair in a corner by the window facing a semicircle of admirers. They talked about books. They asked his opinion about various writers. He waved his hand and, except for himself, dismissed everyone in the twentieth century: Hemingway wrote “baby talk,” Faulkner “sludge.” Joyce’s
Ulysses
was “a trudge through the ordure of Dublin.” He demanded everyone go home and read authors I’d never heard of: Seutonius, Anaxagoras, Sir Thomas Brown, Eusebius, the Desert Fathers, Flavius Josephus, Randolph Bourne.

R’lene introduced me. This is Frank McCourt from Ireland. He teaches high school English.

I put out my hand but he let it hang. Oh, still a high school boy, are you?

I didn’t know what to say. I wanted to punch the discourteous son of a bitch, but I did nothing. He laughed and said to R’lene, Does our friend teach English to deaf mutes? In the Dahlberg world teaching was for women only.

I backed away to my chair, confused.

Dahlberg had a massive head with strands of gray hair pasted across the baldness. One eye was dead in its socket and the other moved rapidly, doing the work of two. He had a strong nose and a luscious mustache and when he smiled there was a flash of false white teeth, which clacked.

He wasn’t finished. He turned the one eye on me. Does our high school boy read? And what does he read?

I searched my head for something I’d read recently, something distinguished that might please him.

I’m reading the autobiography of Sean O’Casey.

He let me suffer a moment, passed his hand over his face, grunted, Sean O’Casey. Pray, quote me a line.

My heart jumped and pounded. The semicircle of admirers waited. Dahlberg lifted his head as if to say Yes? My mouth was dry. I could think of nothing from O’Casey that would match the grand passages Dahlberg quoted from the ancient masters. I mumbled, Well, I admire O’Casey for the natural way he writes about his life growing up in Dublin.

He let me suffer again while he smiled at his admirers. He nodded toward me. The natural way he writes, says our Irish friend. If you admire so-called natural writing you can always scrutinize the walls of a public lavatory.

The admirers laughed. My face was hot and I blurted, O’Casey fought his way out of the slums of Dublin. He was half blind. He’s a…a…champion of the worker…. He’s as good as you anytime. The whole world knows Sean O’Casey. Who ever heard of you?

He shook his head for the benefit of his admirers and they shook their heads in agreement. He called to R’lene, Tell your high school boy to leave my presence. He’s not welcome here though his charming wife is welcome to stay.

I followed R’lene to the bedroom to retrieve my coat. I told her I was sorry for causing trouble and despised myself for my apology, but she kept her head down and said nothing. In the living room Dahlberg was pawing Alberta’s shoulder, telling her he had no doubt she was a fine teacher and hoped she would visit again.

In silence we rode the subway to Brooklyn. I was confused and wondered why Dahlberg had to behave like that. Did he have to humiliate a stranger? And why did I put up with it?

Because I didn’t have the self-confidence of an eggshell. He was sixty, I was thirty. I was like someone arrived from a wild place. I’d never be at ease in literary circles. I was out of my depth and too ignorant to belong to that squad of admirers who could lob literary names at Dahlberg.

I felt paralyzed and ashamed of myself and swore I’d never see that man again. I’d give up this dead-end teaching career that brought no respect, get a part-time job, spend my life reading in libraries, go to parties like this, quote and recite, hold my own with the likes of Dahlberg and his adoring circle. R’lene invited us back but now Dahlberg was polite and I was wary and smart enough to defer to him, to fall into the role of acolyte. He asked me always what I was reading and I kept the peace by trotting out the Greeks, Romans, the Church Fathers, Miguel de Cervantes, Burton’s
Anatomy of Melancholy,
Emerson, Thoreau and, of course, Edward Dahlberg, as if I were doing nothing now but sitting on my arse all day in a deep armchair reading, reading and waiting for Alberta to serve my dinner and massage my poor neck. If the conversation turned dark and dangerous I’d quote from his books and watch his face brighten and soften. It surprised me that a man who dominated gatherings and made enemies everywhere could fall for flattery so easily. It surprised me, also, that I was clever enough to work out a strategy that would keep him from exploding in his chair. I was learning to bite my tongue and take his abuse because I thought I might profit from his learning and wisdom.

I envied him for living the life of a writer, a dream I was too timid to chance. I admired him or anyone who went his own way and stuck to his guns. Even with all my various experiences in America I still felt like someone just off the boat. When he moaned about the hard life of a writer, the daily suffering of man at desk, I wanted to say, Oh, anguish my arse, Dahlberg. All you do is sit there tapping at your typewriter a few hours in the morning and reading the rest of the day while R’lene hovers, attending to your every need. You never did a hard day’s work in your life. One day teaching a hundred and seventy teenagers would send you running back to your soft literary life.

I saw him occasionally till he died in California at seventy-seven. He would invite me to dinner with instructions to bring my brach. The dictionary told me my brach was my bitch. I realized he was more interested in my brach than in me and when he suggested that we all spend a summer together driving across country I knew what he was up to, a fling along the way with Alberta. The clever man would contrive to send me on a futile errand while he uncoiled and slithered from his tree.

He called one Saturday morning to invite us to dinner and when I said we were busy that night he said, And what, my fine Irish friend, am I to do with the food I have purchased? I said, Eat it. That’s all you ever do anymore anyhow.

It wasn’t much of a rejoinder but it was the last word. I never heard from him again.

Every June during my eight years at McKee, the English department met in a classroom to read, evaluate, grade the New York State English Regents examination. Barely half the students at McKee passed the examination. The other half had to be helped. We tried to inflate the failure grades from high fifties to passing, the mandated sixty-five.

We could do nothing about multiple-choice questions, the answers were right or wrong, but we helped with essays on literature and general topics. Give the kid credit for being there. Sure, what the hell. He could be someplace else getting into trouble, bothering people. Three points for showing up, for selfless citizenship. Is his writing legible? Sure. Another two or three points.

Did the kid ever bother teachers in class? Well, maybe, on one occasion. Yeah, but he was probably provoked. Besides, his father is dead, a dock worker who defied the mob and wound up in the Gowanus Canal for his troubles. Give the kid another two points for having a father dead in the Gowanus. We’re getting that grade up there, aren’t we?

Does the student use paragraphs? Oh, yeah. Look how he indents. The kid is a master of indentation. There are definitely three paragraphs here.

Does he have topic sentences in his paragraphs? Well, you know, you could argue that the first sentence is a topic sentence. OK, give him another three points for his topic sentences. So, where are we now? Sixty-three?

Is he a nice kid? Oh, sure. Helpful in class? Yes, he cleaned erasers for his social studies teacher. Polite in the hallways? Always said good morning. Look at this, he gave his essay a title, “My Country; Right or Wrong.” Now isn’t that something? Pretty sophisticated, choosing an essay title. Couldn’t we raise him three for choice of patriotic topic and one point for using a semicolon even if the situation calls for a colon? Is that really a semicolon or is the paper a flyport? There are kids in this school who don’t even know colons exist, and don’t care, and if you were to stand up there and tell them the difference between the colon and its cousin, the semicolon, they’d just ask for the pass.

Why not raise him another three points? He’s a nice kid and his brother, Stan, is in Vietnam. His father got polio when he was a kid. Spends his life in a wheelchair. Oh, give the boy another point for having a father in a wheelchair and a brother in Vietnam.