Teacher Man: A Memoir (4 page)

Somebody should have told me, Hey, Mac, your life, Mac, thirty years of it, Mac, is gonna be school, school, school, kids, kids, kids, papers, papers, papers, read and correct, read and correct, mountains of papers piling up at school, at home, days, nights reading stories, poems, diaries, suicide notes, diatribes, excuses, plays, essays, even novels, the work of thousands — thousands — of New York teenagers over the years, a few hundred working men and women, and you get no time for reading Graham Greene or Dashiell Hammett, F. Scott Fitzgerald or good old P. G. Wodehouse, or your main man, Mr. Jonathan Swift. You’ll go blind reading Joey and Sandra, Tony and Michelle, little agonies and passions and ecstasies. Mountains of kid stuff, Mac. If they opened your head they’d find a thousand teenagers clambering all over your brain. Every June they graduate, grow up, work and move on. They’ll have kids, Mac, who will come to you someday for English, and you’re left facing another term of Joeys and Sandras, Tonys and Michelles, and you’ll want to know: Is this what it’s all about? Is this to be your world for twenty/thirty years? Remember, if this is your world, you’re one of them, a teenager. You live in two worlds. You’re with them, day in, day out, and you’ll never know, Mac, what that does to your mind. Teenager forever. June will come and it’s bye-bye, teacher, nice knowin’ you, my sister’s gonna be in your class in September. But there’s something else, Mac. In any classroom, something is always happening. They keep you on your toes. They keep you fresh. You’ll never grow old, but the danger is you might have the mind of an adolescent forever. That’s a real problem, Mac. You get used to talking to those kids on their level. Then when you go to a bar for a beer you forget how to talk to your friends and they look at you. They look at you like you just arrived from another planet and they’re right. Day after day in the classroom means you’re in another world, Mac.

So, teacher, how did you come to America and all that?

I tell them about my arrival in America at nineteen years of age, that there was nothing about me, on me, in my head or suitcase, to suggest that in a few years I’d be facing five classes a day of New York teenagers.

Teacher? I never dreamed I could rise so high in the world.

Except for the book in the suitcase, everything I wore or carried off the ship was secondhand. Everything in my head was secondhand, too: Catholicism; Ireland’s sad history, a litany of suffering and martyrdom drummed into me by priests, schoolmasters and parents who knew no better.

The brown suit I wore came from Nosey Parker’s pawnshop, Parnell Street, Limerick. My mother bargained for it. The Nose said that suit would be four pounds, and she said, Is it coddin’ me you are, Mr. Parker?

No, I’m not coddin’ you, he said. That suit was wore wanst be a cousin of the Earl of Dunraven himself and anything worn be the aristocracy has higher value.

My mother said she wouldn’t care if it was worn by the earl himself for all the good he and his ilk ever did for Ireland with their castles and servants and never a thought for the sufferings of the people. She’d offer three pounds and not a penny more.

The Nose snapped that a pawnshop was no place for patriotism and she snapped back that if patriotism was something you could show on the shelf there he’d be polishing it and overcharging the poor. He said, Mother o’ God, missus. You were never like this before. What came over you?

What came over her was that this was like Custer’s last stand, her last chance. This was her son, Frank, going to America and she couldn’t send him off looking like this, wearing the relics of oul’ decency, this one’s shirt, that one’s trousers. Then she showed how clever she could be. She had very little money left, but if Mr. Parker could see his way to throwing in a pair of shoes, two shirts, two pairs of socks and that lovely green tie with the golden harps she wouldn’t forget the favor. It wouldn’t be long before Frank would be sending home dollars from America and when she needed pots, pans and an alarm clock she’d think immediately of The Nose. Indeed, she could see half a dozen items there on the shelves she couldn’t live without once the dollars came pouring in.

The Nose was no daw. From years behind the counter he knew the tricks of his customers. He knew, also, my mother was so honest she hated owing anybody anything. He said he valued her future custom, and he himself wouldn’t want to see that lad there landing shabby in America. What would the Yanks say? So for another pound, oh, take off another shilling, she could have the extra items.

My mother said he was a decent man, that he’d get a bed in heaven and she wouldn’t forget him, and it was strange seeing the respect passing between them. The lane people of Limerick had no use for pawnbrokers, but where would they be without them?

The Nose had no suitcases. His customers were not known for traveling the world, and he had a good laugh over that with my mother. He said, World travelers, how are you. She looked at me as if to say, Take a good look at The Nose for it isn’t every day you’ll see him laugh.

Feathery Burke, in Irishtown, had suitcases for sale. He sold anything old, secondhand, stuffed, useless or ready for the fire. Ah, yes, he had the very thing for the young fella going to America, God bless him, that would be sending money home to his poor old mother.

I’m hardly old, said my mother, so none of your plamas. How much for the suitcase?

Yerra, missus, I’ll give it away to you for two pounds because I don’t want to be standing between the boy and his fortune in America.

My mother said that before she’d pay two pounds for that worn-out piece of cardboard held together by a spit and a prayer she’d wrap my things in brown paper and twine and send me off to New York like that.

Feathery looked shocked. Women from the back lanes of Limerick were not supposed to carry on like that. They were supposed to be respectful of their betters and not rise above their station, and I was surprised myself to see my mother in that pick-quarrel mood.

She won, told Feathery what he was charging was pure robbery, we were better off under the English, and if he didn’t come down in his price she’d go to that decent man Nosey Parker. Feathery gave in.

God above, missus. A good thing I didn’t have children for if I did and I had to deal with the likes of you every day they’d be standing in the corner whimpering with the hunger.

She said, Pity about you and the children you never had.

She folded the clothes into the suitcase and said she’d take the whole lot home so that I could go and buy the book. She walked away from me, up Parnell Street, puffing on a cigarette. She walked with energy that day, as if the clothes and the suitcase and my going away would open doors.

I went to O’Mahony’s Bookshop to buy the first book in my life, the one I brought to America in the suitcase.

It was
The Works of William Shakespeare: Gathered into One Volume,
published by the Shakespeare Head Press, Oldhams Press Ltd. and Basil Blackwood, MCMXLVII. Here it is, cover crumbling, separating from the book, hanging on through the kindness of tape. A well-thumbed book, well marked. There are passages underlined that once meant something to me though I look at them now and hardly know why. Along the margins notes, remarks, appreciative comments, congratulations to Shakespeare on his genius, exclamation marks indicating my appreciation and befuddlement. Inside the cover I wrote, “Oh, that this too, too solid flesh, etc.” It proves I was a gloomy youth.

When I was thirteen/fourteen I listened to Shakespeare plays on the radio of Mrs. Purcell, the blind woman next door. She told me Shakespeare was an Irishman ashamed of what he came from. A fuse blew the night we listened to
Julius Caesar
and I was so eager to find out what happened to Brutus and Mark Antony I went to O’Mahony’s Bookshop to get the rest of the story. A sales clerk in the shop asked me in a superior way if it was my intention to buy that book and I told him I was thinking about it but first I’d have to find out what happened to everyone in the end, especially the one I liked, Brutus. The man said never mind Brutus, pulled the book away from me and said this was not a library and would I kindly leave. I backed into the street embarrassed and blushing and wondering at the same time why people won’t stop bothering people. Even when I was small, eight or nine, I wondered why people won’t stop bothering people and I’ve been wondering ever since.

The book was nineteen shillings, half a week’s wages. I wish I could say I bought it because of my profound interest in Shakespeare. It wasn’t that way at all. I had to have it because of a film I saw where an American soldier in England went around spouting Shakespeare and all the girls fell madly in love with him. Also, if you even hint that you read Shakespeare, people give you that look of respect. I thought if I learned long passages I’d impress the girls of New York. I already knew “Friends, Romans, countrymen,” but when I said it to a girl in Limerick she gave me a curious look as if I were coming down with something.

Going up O’Connell Street I wanted to unwrap my package and let the world see me with Shakespeare in my oxter but I didn’t have the nerve. I passed the small theater where I once saw a traveling company perform
Hamlet
and remembered how I felt sorry for myself for the way I’d suffered like him. At the end of the play that night Hamlet himself returned to the stage to tell the audience how grateful he and the cast were for our attendance and how weary he was, he and the cast, and how much they’d appreciate our help in the form of small change, which we could deposit in the lard tin by the door. I was so moved by the play because so much of it was about me and my gloomy life that I dropped sixpence into the lard tin and wished I could have attached a note to let Hamlet know who I was and how my suffering was real and not just in a play.

Next day I delivered a telegram to Hanratty’s Hotel and there was the cast from
Hamlet,
drinking and singing in the bar while a porter ran back and forth loading a van with their luggage. Hamlet himself sat alone at the end of the bar, sipping his glass of whiskey, and I don’t know where the courage came from but I said hello to him. After all, we both had been betrayed by our mothers and our suffering was great. The world would never know about mine and I envied him for the way he was able to express his anguish every night. Hello, I said, and he stared at me with two black eyes under black eyebrows in a white face. He had all those words from Shakespeare in his head but now he kept them there and I blushed like a fool and tripped over my feet.

I rode my bicycle up O’Connell Street in a state of shame. Then I remembered the sixpence dropped into the lard tin, sixpence that paid for their whiskey and singing at Hanratty’s Bar, and I wanted to go back and confront the whole cast and Hamlet himself and tell them what I thought of them with their false stories of weariness and the way they drank the money of poor people.

Let the sixpence go. If I went back they’d surely throw Shakespeare words at me and Hamlet would stare at me again with his cold black eyes. I’d have no words for that and I’d look foolish if I tried staring back at him with my red eyes.

My students said spending all that money on a Shakespeare book was dumb, no disrespect intended, and if I wanted to make an impression on people why didn’t I go to the library and copy down all the quotes? Also, you’d have to be pretty dumb to be impressed with a guy just because he quoted this old writer that no one could read anyway. Sometimes they have these Shakespeare plays on TV and you can’t understand a word, so what’s the use? The money I paid for the book could have been spent on something cool like shoes or a nice jacket or, you know, taking a girl to the movies.

Some girls said that was real cool the way I used Shakespeare to make an impression on people though they wouldn’t know what I was talking about. Why did Shakespeare have to write in that old language nobody could understand? Why?

I couldn’t answer. They said again, Why? I felt trapped but all I could do was to tell them I didn’t know. If they waited I’d try to find out. They looked at one another. The teacher doesn’t know? How could that be? Is he for real? Wow. How did he get to be a teacher?

Hey, teacher man, you got any more stories?

No, no, no.

You keep saying no, no, no.

That’s it. No more stories. This is an English class. Parents are complaining.

Aw, man. Mr. McCourt, you ever in the army? You fight in Korea?

I never thought much of my life but I went on doling out bits and pieces of it, my father’s drinking, days in Limerick slums when I dreamed of America, Catholicism, drab days in New York, and I was surprised that New York teenagers asked for more.

I
told them that after my two years in the army the GI Bill helped me doze through four years at New York University. I worked nights to supplement my allowance from the government. I could have attended part time, but I was eager to graduate and impress the world and women with my degree and my college knowledge. I was expert at making excuses for late papers and missed exams. I shuffled and mumbled the mishaps of my life to patient professors, hinted at great sadnesses. The Irish accent helped. I lived on the edge of faith and begorrah.

University librarians poked me when I snored behind a stack of books. One librarian told me snoozing was strictly forbidden. She was kind enough to suggest that out in Washington Square Park there was no end of benches where I could stretch till the cops came. I thanked her and told her how I’d always admired librarians, not only for their mastery of the Dewey Decimal System, but for their helpfulness in other areas of daily living.

The professor of education at New York University warned us about our teaching days ahead. He said first impressions are crucial. He said, The way you meet and greet your first class might determine the course of your whole career. Your whole career. They’re watching you. You’re watching them. You’re dealing with American teenagers, a dangerous species, and they’ll show you no mercy. They’ll take your measure and they’ll decide what to do with you. You think you’re in control? Think again. They’re like heat-seeking missiles. When they go after you they’re following a primal instinct. It is the function of the young to get rid of their elders, to make room on the planet. You know that, don’t you? The Greeks knew it. Read the Greeks.

The professor said that before your students enter the room you must have decided where you’ll be — “posture and placement” — and who you’ll be — “identity and image.” I never knew teaching could be that complicated. He said, You simply cannot teach unless you know where to position yourself physically. That classroom can be your battleground or your playground. And you have to know who you are. Remember Pope: “Know thyself, presume not God to scan / The proper study of mankind is man.” First day of your teaching you are to stand at your classroom door and let your students know how happy you are to see them. Stand, I say. Any playwright will tell you that when the actor sits down the play sits down. The best move of all is to establish yourself as a presence and to do it outside in the hallway. Outside, I say. That’s your territory and when you’re out there you’ll be seen as a strong teacher, fearless, ready to face the swarm. That’s what a class is, a swarm. And you’re a warrior teacher. It’s something people don’t think about. Your territory is like your aura, it goes with you everywhere, in the hallways, on the stairs and, assuredly, in the classroom. Never let them invade your territory. Never. And remember: teachers who sit or even stand behind their desks are essentially insecure and should try another line of work.

I liked the way he said assuredly, the first time I ever heard it used outside of a Victorian novel. I promised myself that when I became a teacher I’d use the word, too. It had an important sound to it that would make people sit up and pay attention.

I thought it was terrific the way you could stand up there on that little platform with your podium and your desk and talk for an hour with everyone before you making notes and if you had any kind of good looks or personality the girls would be tripping over themselves to see you afterward in your office or anywhere else. That’s what I thought at the time.

The professor said he had made an informal study of teenage behavior in high school and if we were sensitive observant teachers we’d notice certain phenomena moments before class bells rang. We’d notice how adolescent temperatures rose, blood raced and there was enough adrenaline to power a battleship. He smiled and you could see how pleased he was with his ideas. We smiled back because professors have the power. He said teachers must observe how students present themselves. He said, So much — so much, I say — depends on how they enter a room. Observe their entrances. They amble, they strut, they shuffle, they collide, they joke, they show off. You, yourself, might think nothing of entering a room, but for a teenager it can be everything. To enter a room is to move from one environment to another and that, for the teenager, can be traumatic. There be dragons, daily horrors from acne to zit.

I could barely understand what the professor was talking about but I was very impressed. I never thought there was so much involved in stepping into a room. I thought teaching was a simple matter of telling the class what you knew and then testing them and giving them grades. Now I was learning how complicated the life of a teacher could be, and I admired this professor for knowing all about it.

The student next to me in the professor’s class whispered, This guy is so full of crap. He never taught a high school class in his life. The student’s name was Seymour. He wore a yarmulke, so it was no wonder he said wise things from time to time, or he could have been showing off for the red-haired girl sitting in front of him. When she looked over her shoulder to smile at Seymour’s remarks you could see she was beautiful. I wished I could have shown off myself, but I rarely knew what to say, whereas Seymour had an opinion on everything. The red-haired girl told Seymour if he felt that strongly he should speak up.

Hell, no, said Seymour. I’d be out on my ass.

She smiled at him and when she smiled at me I thought I’d float out of my seat. She said her name was June and then raised her hand for the professor’s attention.

Yes?

Professor, how many high school classes have you taught?

Oh, I’ve observed dozens of classes over the years.

But have you ever actually taught in a high school?

What’s your name, young lady?

June Somers.

Haven’t I just told you I’ve observed and supervised dozens of student teachers?

My father is a high school teacher, professor, and he says you know nothing about high school teaching till you’ve done it.

He said he didn’t know what she was getting at. She was wasting the time of this class and if she wanted to continue the discussion she could make an appointment with his secretary to meet in his office.

She stood and slung her bag strap on her shoulder. No, she would not make an appointment to see him and saw no reason why he couldn’t simply answer her question about his teaching experience.

That’s enough, Miss Somers.

She turned and looked at Seymour, glanced at me and walked toward the door. The professor stared and dropped the piece of chalk in his hand. By the time he retrieved it she was gone.

What would he do now about Miss June Somers?

Nothing. He said the hour was nearly over, he’d see us next week, picked up his bag and walked out. Seymour said June Somers had screwed herself royally. Royally. He said, One thing I’ll tell you. Don’t mess around with professors. You can’t win. Ever.

The following week he said, Did you see that? Jesus.

I didn’t think someone wearing a yarmulke should say Jesus like that. How would he like it if Yahweh or G dash D were a curse and I blasted him with it? But I said nothing for fear he might laugh at me.

He said, They’re going out. I saw them in a Macdougal Street café all lovey-dovey drinking coffee, holding hands and looking into each other’s eyes. Goddam. I guess she had a little chat in his office and moved on.

My mouth was dry. I thought some day I’d run into June and find my tongue and we’d go to a movie together. I’d choose something foreign with subtitles to show how sophisticated I was and she’d admire me and let me kiss her in the dark, missing a dozen subtitles and the thread of the story. That wouldn’t matter because we’d have plenty to talk about in a cozy Italian restaurant where candles flickered and her red hair twinkled back and who knows what that would lead to because that was as far as my dreams would go. Who did I think I was anyway? What made me think she’d look at me for one second?

I prowled the coffee shops of Macdougal Street hoping she might see me and smile and I’d smile back and sip my coffee so casually she’d be impressed, take a second look. I’d make sure she could see the cover of my book, something by Nietzsche or Schopenhauer, and she’d wonder why she was wasting her time with the professor when she could be with that sensitive Irishman sunk in German philosophy. She’d excuse herself and on her way to the ladies’ toilet drop a scrap of paper on my table with her phone number.

Which is what she did the day I saw her at the Café Figaro. When she left the table the professor looked after her with such an air of ownership and pride I could have knocked him from his chair. Then he glanced at me and I knew he didn’t even recognize me as a student from his class.

He called for his bill, and while the waitress stood at his table obscuring his view, June was able to drop that scrap of paper on my table. I waited till they left. “Frank, call me tomorrow.” The telephone number was scrawled in lipstick.

God. She noticed me, a dockside laborer fumbling my way toward a teaching career, and the professor was, Jesus, a professor. But she knew my name. I was weak in the head from happiness. There was my name on a paper napkin with lipstick that had touched her lips and I knew I’d keep that piece of paper forever. I’d be buried with it.

I called her and she asked if I knew where we could have a quiet drink.

Chumley’s.

OK.

What would I do? How would I sit? What would I say? I was having a drink with the most beautiful girl in Manhattan, who probably slept every night with that professor. That was my Calvary, thinking of her with him. Men in Chumley’s looked at me and envied me and I knew what they were thinking. Who is that miserable specimen with that beautiful girl, that knockout, that stunner? Yeah, maybe I was her brother or cousin. No, even that was unlikely. I wasn’t good-looking enough even to be her third or fourth cousin.

She ordered a drink. Norm’s away, she said. He teaches a course in Vermont two days a week. I suppose bigmouth Seymour told you everything.

No.

So, why are you here?

You…you invited me.

What do you think of yourself?

What?

Simple question. What do you think of yourself?

I don’t know. I…

She looked disapproving. You call when you’re told to call. You appear when you’re told to appear and you don’t know what you think of yourself. For Christ’s sakes, say one good thing about yourself. Go ahead.

I felt blood rushing to my face. I had to say something or she might get up and walk away.

A platform boss on the piers once said I was a tough little mick.

Oh, well. Take that remark and a dime and you can ride the subway two stops. You’re a lost soul. That’s easy to see. Norm likes lost souls.

Words jumped from my mouth: I don’t care what Norm likes.

Oh, God. She’ll get up and walk away. No. She laughed so hard she nearly choked on her wine. Then everything was different. She smiled at me and smiled and smiled. I felt so happy I could barely stay in my skin.

She reached across the table and put her hand on mine and my heart was a mad animal in my chest. Let’s go, she said.

We walked to her apartment on Barrow Street. Inside, she turned and kissed me. She moved her head in a circular way so that her tongue traveled clockwise in my mouth and I thought, Lord, I am not worthy. Why didn’t God tell me about this before my twenty-sixth year?

She said I was a healthy peasant and obviously starved for affection. I didn’t like being called a peasant — Jesus, hadn’t I read books, every word of E. Laurie Long, P. G. Wodehouse, Mark Twain, E. Philips Oppenheim, Edgar Wallace and good old Dickens — and I thought what we were doing here was more than showing affection. I said nothing because I had no experience of activities like this. She asked me if I liked monkfish and I said I didn’t know because I’d never heard of it before. She said everything depended on how you cooked it. Her secret was shallots. Not everyone agrees with that, she said, but it worked for her. It’s a delicate whitefish best cooked with a good white wine. Not an ordinary cooking wine, but a good one. Norm cooked fish once but he made a mess of it, used some piss from California that turned the fish into an old shoe. The poor dear knew his literature and his lecturing, but nothing about wine or fish.

It’s strange to be with a woman who takes your face in her hands and tells you to have faith in yourself. She said, My father came from Liverpool and he drank himself to death because he was afraid of the world. He said he wished he was a Catholic so he could join a monastery and never have to see a human being again, and it was my mother who tried to get him to say good things about himself. He couldn’t, so he drank and died. Do you drink?

Not much.

Be careful. You’re Irish.

Your father wasn’t Irish.

No, but he could have been. Everyone in Liverpool is Irish. Let’s cook that monkfish.

She handed me a kimono. It’s OK. Change in the bedroom. If it’s good enough for a samurai it’s good enough for a tough little mick who ain’t so tough.

She changed into a silver dressing gown that seemed to have a life of its own. One moment it clung to her, then hung in a way that let her move freely inside. I preferred the clinging part and it kept me alive inside my kimono.

She asked if I liked white wine and I said yes because I was learning that yes was the best answer to every question, at least with June. I said yes to the monkfish and the asparagus and the two flickering candles on the table. I said yes to the way she raised her wineglass and touched it against mine till they went
ping.
I told her this was the most delicious dinner I’d ever had in my life. I wanted to go on and say I was in heaven but that might sound forced and she might give me the kind of strange look that would ruin the whole night and my life beyond.

Norm was never mentioned in the six nights that followed the night of the monkfish except that there were twelve fresh roses in a vase in her bedroom with a card that said love from Norm. I drank extra wine to boost my courage enough to ask, How the hell can you lie in this bed with me in the presence of Norm’s fresh roses? but I never did. I couldn’t afford roses so I brought her carnations, which she put in a large glass jar beside the roses. There was no competition. Beside Norm’s roses my carnations looked so sad I bought her a dozen roses with my last few dollars. She sniffed them and said, Oh, they’re beautiful. I didn’t know what to say to that as I hadn’t grown them, just bought them. Norm’s roses in the glass jar looked dry and it made me happy to think my roses would replace them, but what she did then gave me the greatest pain I ever had in my heart.