When We Argued All Night

by Alice Mattison

  2

  When Artie applied to teach in the WPA adult education program, he claimed proficiency in photography, journalism, and current events, and was hired, that September of 1936, to teach two afternoon classes in an elementary school in Queens: English conversation for the foreign born. Artie was of several minds as he traveled through Queens to meet his classes for the first time. Since the day in the mountains when he noticed what Virginia was doing, he’d been sure he should teach. At the same time he thought he might be a fraud, only pretending to be a teacher. In the camera store, people had walked away from his explanations. He had not made Virginia listen. In the third place, if he was a fraud, he was proud to be putting something over on the people who’d hired him. He took an elevated train, then a bus. He wore his only sports coat and a fedora, and he carried a briefcase his elder brother had lent him. Inside was nothing but a pad of paper and a few pencils.

  The first class had twelve students, mostly mothers who were free while their children were in school. Some attended this very school, and when a child’s voice could be heard, the mothers sat up straighter. Current events seemed like a good reason for conversation, and Artie began talking about what he’d read in the newspaper on his way to the school—progress for the Spanish government against Franco and the rebels, a display of military might in Germany, a march by Father Divine. The young mothers were quiet. The school did not use this classroom, up on a dusty, warm third floor. Artie liked its smell. He stood at the front, his hat and briefcase on the teacher’s desk, and twirled chalk in his fingers, then dropped it. The windows were open, and fresh air stirred the hair of his twelve students, most clustered near the front. The desks were small, and some students stuck their legs into the aisle. A woman let a shoe fall from her foot and ran her stocking foot over the old wooden floor, as if feeling for splinters.

  Artie asked questions. His students knew that FDR was running for reelection, and they considered him a good man but could not say why. Some were not sure who was fighting whom in the Spanish Civil War. They did know about King Edward VIII of England and Wallis Simpson, the divorced American he was in love with, as well as Bruno Richard Hauptmann, who had been executed for the kidnapping and murder of the Lindbergh baby. After Artie thought to ask about the king and his girlfriend, they became less shy.

  The one man in the class, who reminded him of Harold’s father, was happy to talk. He spoke slowly, with a heavy Eastern European accent, explaining the fighting in Spain sadly and patiently, as if he described battles taking place outside the window while he watched.

  When the class ended, Artie had an hour off. The classroom was lonely and he went to talk to his supervisor, a woman a little older than he, Beatrice London. Your name gave me the best idea I had, he said, walking in on her. It wasn’t true, but why not say it? She was a small woman with tight brown curls, sitting at a desk that filled the office, and she started when he spoke. He’d forgotten that he moved silently. He said, London made me think of England, and England made me think of King Edward and Wallis Simpson—my ladies knew more about that than anything else.

  Beatrice London looked at him soberly under her hair, then smiled. I hope you can get them away from that kind of subject, she said.

  On the contrary, said Artie, pleased with himself. Making students feel they already know something about the subject at hand is the best way to prepare them to be receptive to learning. He had not known he possessed an educational philosophy. Beatrice London bent forward a little, her chin protruding. He found himself whistling. I just thought you might have something you wanted to tell me, he said. Instructions.

  —No, said Miss London.

  The second class was full of talkers, some who barely understood English. The old man with the accent, unaccountably, was in this class too, so Artie didn’t feel that he could bring up exactly the same subjects. But after a while he ran out of others, and the man was again happy to tell the group about the rebels in Spain and how Hitler and Mussolini supported them and the Spanish loyalists opposed them. This group didn’t need to be told.

  Another man stood and, with expansive gestures and little English, denounced Roosevelt—in the pay of the capitalists—while a man who seemed to be Italian shouted that Roosevelt was the only person who cared about him and his family. Others shouted. Artie clapped his hands, stamped his foot, and shouted, Gentlemen! The two men stopped, apologized. They sat down and faced front. One folded his hands on the desk.

  —Why did you sign up for this class? Artie asked them. He said it with exasperation as well as curiosity, though he was pleased that this group was wide awake, but the students considered the question appropriate and the women raised their hands. So I can become citizen, they said. So I can talk grandchildren. The group resumed talking and arguing. Artie didn’t think their English would get better, since they didn’t listen, but he liked them. Each had come to a truce with the English language, and that was enough. They were all older than he.

  Instead of going home when it was over, he went to Harold’s, though he didn’t have his camera with him. Harold was not home, but his mother gave Artie a glass of seltzer and then a bowl of soup. When Harold arrived, they ate again, and Harold said he’d walk Artie home. He was excited about a meeting he’d attended, a woman he’d talked to.

  —You’re such a fraud, Artie said cheerfully. You don’t give a damn about suffering people.

  —Just stop it, said Harold. His voice shook. Artie knew he had gone too far. Of course Harold cared. Artie wanted to talk about his classes, but in the right way. Being a teacher should seem significant, not just something he could get paid to do. But he said, Nah, you’re just looking for girls. What happened to what’s her name—Belle? Did you give her back to her husband?

  Harold didn’t answer, and they walked in silence. It was dark. Darkness was interrupted by places where streetlights gleamed through rustling leaves. After passing under a light, they’d be back in darkness, as if the night itself encouraged them to pause and reflect privately. Artie began to whistle.

  —What’s that? Harold said.

  —What’s what?

  —What you’re whistling.

  —I think it’s Mozart, Artie said.

  A block or so later, Harold said, Every few days there’s something in the paper about Jews in Germany.

  —Not today, Artie said. Speech by Hitler. Women should stay home and make little German babies instead of going to work.

  —If you’d looked closely enough, you’d have found the Jews, Harold said.

  —Yeah, Artie said, what is it with us Jews? Anybody looking for somebody to kick around? Here we are! All set. Then he said, But what are your pals in Russia doing about it, huh?

  —What’s Roosevelt doing, for that matter?

  —Roosevelt has other things on his mind.

  —Winning the election? said Harold. He doesn’t have much to worry about.

  They came to Artie’s house. Sometimes they walked past it, circled through the neighborhood more than once, but now Harold seemed anxious to be by himself. As he turned back, he said, Remember that girl, Myra Thorsten?

  —What girl? said Artie. The dame at the cabin?

  —I saw her.

  —You saw that girl? The one who took your book?

  —Well, I had to get it back, Harold said. We had a drink.

  —Stay away from that dame, Artie said. Harold was already moving away, and his wide, solid body was a dark shape, his face obscured by shadow but his pants and shoes easier to see in a puddle of light. Harold kept his shoes clean and polished. The laces were tied evenly.

  —I can see she’s a handful, Harold said. But she had some ideas about the book. She’s no dummy.

  —Stick to the smart little Reds, said Artie. Harold waved and started walking.

  Artie continued teaching adult education classes, mostly at night, at the same school, paid by the WPA. Twice he taught a photography course. If you had ten students, you could run a c
lass. More often it was English composition or conversation, and sometimes the same students came term after term. A young woman memorized verb tenses and vocabulary words, turning in pages of homework in pencil, making herself complete every exercise in the textbook. Artie sometimes corrected her errors. Sometimes he didn’t. The loose-leaf pages, heavy with pencil marks, made him sad. Miss Kowalski’s hands must have been damp with sweat as she clutched the pencil, and the pages were stiff, as if they’d been moist, then dry, more than once. Maybe she cried over them.

  Beatrice London remained the supervisor. Artie got used to the sight of her moving quickly through the corridors, always with her curly head thrust slightly forward. She ground her heels into the floor. She was mildly attractive, with a conscientious look, and was careful not to be informal with the teachers she supervised. Artie decided she would like being encouraged to make friends, so he asked questions about lesson plans, and she frowned and answered, then sought him out again to give a fuller answer. She grew friendlier. One night he made a joke with her: he told her she should get ten cents less a week for wearing out the floor with her heels. Miss London ignored that and stayed away from him for a while.

  One evening, a year after they’d begun working together, it was raining, and Miss London and Artie happened to meet on their way into the building. Her umbrella had broken and her hair was wet and hung over her face. Artie, wiping his glasses on his handkerchief, bent his knees so he’d seem short and pulled his own hair forward, then walked past her the way she walked, looking down at the floor and coming down hard with each foot. Hey, Bea! he called. She had a stiff way of holding her hands at her sides, and he imitated that as well. It was just a few steps in the corridor, and later Artie swore to Harold that he was the one who looked silly—nobody would even know he was teasing her.

  —Teasing? Harold said. You can be rough.

  —It was nothing, Artie said. After that, Beatrice London began complaining to Artie when his class made too much noise. He’d write a topic on the blackboard—The New Deal isn’t working, or Women should have jobs just like men, or Communists should be thrown in jail. He’d point to someone in the class, who had to start arguing for or against the proposition. Whatever opinion was expressed, Artie opposed it. If a second student disagreed with the first one, he might switch sides—something his students considered magical; they couldn’t do it—or he might point to the first student and make the two of them argue. Others would leap to their feet to join in. Teachers complained that shouting came from Artie’s classroom, and now and then a student went to Miss London to say Artie had taken some outrageous position in class. One evening, when a fistfight broke out between an Italian man and a Russian Jew, a woman rushed out and phoned the police. A cop appeared in the doorway, and Artie said, What the hell are you doing here? and would have been arrested if the teacher next door, an older guy, had not persuaded the cop to forget it. Beatrice London made Artie sign a long description of this incident.

  She’d do anything to get me in trouble, Artie said, after telling Harold this story. It was another of their late walks, this time in the fall of 1937. Harold had recently moved to a small apartment in Manhattan. Tonight he’d somehow gotten free tickets to a play, and Artie had come into the city to meet him. Afterward they had coffee. But Artie got angry when Harold first mentioned Beatrice London, and Harold wouldn’t let him get away with it. They had been asked to quiet down, then to leave. Ridiculous! Artie said as they made their way out. They walked. When Artie was bored, he stopped to take a photograph, using the light of a street lamp, trying to pick up the shimmer of a puddle.

  Now he had returned to the subject. She’d love to get rid of me, he went on. But she’s too timid to do anything.

  —She might work up her courage, Harold said.

  Artie said nothing for quite some time. Then he looked up at the sky, as if for approval, and recited:

  A fella who taught for a living

  From Labor Day right past Thanksgiving

  One day went too far.

  He’s as dead as the czar!

  If only he’d had a misgiving!

  —That’s not as bad as some, Harold said.

  —And the joke is, said Artie, It’s all because she thinks I’m good-looking. She’s in love with me.

  —That would make it worse, Harold said.

  3

  Harold would finally marry Myra Thorsten in 1943, and during the intervening years he considered himself someone women laughed at or pitied. Still, once he had his own place, he felt he should seduce them, making this decision all but grimly. One afternoon he invited a young woman he had met at the Forty-second Street library to have a sandwich with him. Working for the Federal Writers’ Project, he spent many days in the main reading room. The woman’s name was Mary, and she was an assistant to a historian. At a delicatessen they ate corned beef sandwiches and sour pickles. Mary told stories about her family; there were uncles younger than their nephews, and each story included two or three characters named my cousin. At first he listened, enjoying it. Then his impulse was to convince her that her opinions were wrong. Nobody had such simple motives as she ascribed to her relatives—but he stopped himself: what mattered was taking her to bed. Someone as muddled as Mary would forgive his awkwardness or would not even notice. He invited her to his apartment, a few blocks away.

  She hesitated, then agreed. She had a habit of looking up at the ceiling when asked a question and then smiling before speaking. It might have been either annoying or adorable; Harold determined to consider it adorable. As he brought her into his apartment, he remembered that his bed was unmade, the room was cluttered, and he had nothing to offer but coffee. They talked, and he took her home.

  The next time—having made the bed and bought a bottle of liquor—Harold stood, crossed the room, and laid his wide hands on Mary’s shoulders so heavily she flinched. He expected her to laugh or be offended, but she didn’t laugh, and they went to bed. It was clear to him that Mary had lost her virginity earlier, and he wondered if it was as obvious to her that he had not. Maybe one of the uncles or nephews had taken advantage of her. Maybe she was relieved to be approached by someone who bought her a sandwich and touched her gently.

  Harold thought of himself not as a good lover but as an emergency lover: someone who could perform if preferable men were unavailable, a kind of understudy. Even if Mary didn’t laugh openly, he assumed she laughed when she got home, laughed when telling the story to her girl cousins. It was embarrassing, but he’d learned that to become the kind of man he wanted to be, he had to endure embarrassment. He spent another evening with Mary, this time including a movie in between the sandwich and the sex, and again Mary didn’t laugh. But Harold was bored with her, and since his purpose had been achieved, he couldn’t come up with the wish to see her again. Surely she wouldn’t mind: her interest in him was charitable. He was startled when he received a letter from her a month later, asking if she’d done anything wrong, apologizing. The letter confused him, and he didn’t answer it. He decided it was a kind gesture, designed to make him feel as if he’d dropped her instead of being dropped. Of course, in a sense he had dropped her, but only in a sense.

  Some women said no to Harold, but more than he expected said yes. They did not laugh in his presence. He reflected that there must be even worse lovers around than he, whom women did laugh at openly.

  He noted that the women he approached were rarely Jewish. He felt more Jewish, himself, as years passed, and spent gloomy hours wondering exactly what he’d be doing at the present moment if he lived in Germany. The women he dated were surprised when he told them that Jews were no longer permitted to attend German universities or that their passports had been made invalid. One woman’s face took on an abstracted, spiritual look, like Joan of Arc’s, when he told her about a story he’d seen in the Times that week—it was March of 1938, just after Hitler had annexed Austria—reporting that in a few weeks Germans would vote in a plebiscite. Naturally,
Jews would not be permitted to vote. Voters would be asked a question Harold had memorized: Are you German, do you belong to your Germany and its Adolf Hitler or have you nothing to do with us? He waited for a reaction, but his date seemed too stunned to reply.

  Then she reached across the table; they were having coffee in a little place not far from the Metropolitan Museum. Harold felt a momentary triumph when she touched him, then was horrified to feel triumphant and pulled his hand back. Deriving personal benefit from her outrage at Hitler was a trick as contemptible as the tricks of the Nazis themselves. He would have nothing further to do with this woman; she was a decent person and he didn’t deserve her.

  4

  Unlike Harold’s girlfriends, Evelyn Shapiro truly didn’t count, according to Artie, who had been taking walks and eating ice cream with her for years. He’d never bought her more than a soda. Evelyn, whom he’d met in the neighborhood, had graduated from Hunter College at the worst of the Depression and could get a job only in her uncle’s shoe store. You’d be surprised how many people have ugly feet, she said to Artie. Bumps, corns, squashed toes.

  —Don’t they wear socks?

  —Not for fancy shoes.

  The store sold good shoes and Evelyn got substantial discounts. Artie liked the way her legs looked in high heels with little straps, but he also liked taking long walks. When Evelyn said her feet hurt, he teased her, offering to buy her shoes just like his own. Except for her shoes, she was practical, with wavy hair and a round face. Her big breasts made Artie sick with longing, but that was late at night on the sofa he slept on in his parents’ crowded apartment, where his married brothers got the bedrooms. When he was with her, Evelyn’s breasts were under blouses and jackets. He’d often rest an arm on her shoulders and even stroke her neck, but that was all.