When We Argued All Night

by Alice Mattison

  It was September, and they’d been teaching for a week, after the first days of putting their classrooms in order and dealing with the demands of 110 Livingston Street. The kids were back in school too: Brenda in fifth grade, Carol in third, Nelson in second, though he seemed like a baby. Harold was silent now and Artie whistled.

  When they left the zoo, Brenda glanced over her shoulder at her father, then climbed a heap of glacial boulders near the path. They sat down on a bench to watch her. Nelson hit Carol’s leg and she hit him back.

  Artie was annoyed with Harold for telling him in his superior way that he’d discovered Beatrice London, sweetly teaching homemaking. Harold had a way of implying that Artie made enemies needlessly. Nelsy, he said, let’s have a race. See if you can beat me.

  —I can’t beat you, Nelson said.

  —Maybe you can, Artie said. You’re not like your father. He’s a terrible tennis player. But maybe you can beat me at running.

  —Cut it out, Harold said.

  Carol walked slowly in Brenda’s direction. She wore a blue cotton dress, and her head, above it, was small and cute.

  —Come on, Nelsy, Artie said.

  At last Nelson stood up to have a race. Artie chose the starting line and the finish, a bench a little distance down the path. Carol, Artie called, you’re the referee. Make sure I don’t cheat.

  Carol smiled and waited. Artie did cheat, starting to run when Carol had called, On your mark, Get set, but not yet, Go. She had paused to let him, since he always did it. She shouted, You cheated, Daddy, you cheated!

  —You got me, he said. Nelson didn’t comment. He didn’t get into position to run or even face front. Carol said, Go, and it took Nelson a while to get going. Artie couldn’t run slowly enough to let Nelson win. Harold had taught the boy nothing! Artie loped to the bench when Nelson was halfway there. If it had been Carol, he would have staged an elaborate fall to let her get ahead of him, flopping on the ground, shocking passersby. But he stretched out his arm and touched the bench, yelling, I won, I won! He danced a little. Nelson stopped and put two or three fingers into his mouth.

  —Nelson, Harold called.

  Brenda came running from the rocks. Jumping off the last rock, she fell. She scrambled to her feet. Stop it, she screamed as she reached her father, crying and pounding his arm with her fists. I hate you, Daddy, I hate you.

  —Where did you come from? Artie said. Nelson understands—boys have to learn, win or lose.

  —I hurt my knee, Brenda said.

  —Hurt your knee? You can’t think of anything to say, you figure out you got hurt.

  —I—don’t—do—that! Brenda screamed; she shrieked. She sat down on the paving stones and pulled her skirt above her knee. It was bleeding. He’s just a little kid, she sobbed.

  Harold, still on the first bench, stood up. Let me see, Brenda. Ignoring his own child, who still stood with his fingers in his mouth, Harold went to Artie’s daughter and reached out a hand to help her up. Brenda seized it, pulled, and with the momentum of rising fell forward, in tears again, against Harold’s body.

  —Would you just stop it? Artie shouted. She was too old for this. Adolf Hitler rose from the dead and killed you, is that the trouble?

  —For God’s sake, that is enough! Harold said. These are children. Come on, Brenda, let’s go back to the zoo. You can wash your knee in the ladies’ room. Carol will help you, won’t you, Carol?

  He was crouching, now, his legs straining his pants, examining Brenda’s knee. There’s a lot of gravel, he said.

  —Oh, for heaven’s sake! Artie said. He came up to them and brushed the gravel off Brenda’s knee with his hand. I’m taking you home, he said.

  —It’s an hour on the subway, Harold said. Everyone’s hungry. What’s got into you?

  Beatrice London. Artie couldn’t stop. Well, you and your pathetic kid can go and dine in that case. Artie seized Brenda by the shoulder, knowing Carol would follow, and strode south to the subway.

  Years earlier, Brenda’s father had taken her to Central Park, also to the zoo, but by herself. Her mother had wanted Artie to stay home. It had something to do with a promise. Brenda didn’t like hearing her parents shout.

  They walked from their house to the elevated train station, but when they had climbed the steep staircase, Artie said, Did you bring money?

  Brenda said, You brought money.

  —I’ve got money for myself, said her father. Where’s your money? He put a coin into the slot and went through the turnstile. Brenda stood crying on the other side.

  —You didn’t bring money? he called. I guess you’ll have to go underneath. Brenda was supposed to pay. She was six. The woman in the booth could see them. If she didn’t pay, she could go to jail.

  —Sometimes you have to be an outlaw, her father said. You’re a city kid. Do what it takes.

  An old woman came up the stairs, glared at her father, and put in money for Brenda. She took Brenda by the hand and led her through. The woman said, I don’t know what that was all about. Little girl, is this your daddy?

  —Yes, Brenda said. The old woman left them and went up to the FROM CITY platform, where she stared at them across the tracks. They climbed different stairs, under a sign reading TO CITY. Her father laughed. Little girl, is this your daddy? he asked her several times that day. Little girl, is this your daddy?

  Today, Harold felt soft and firm at the same time, and falling against him was like falling onto a bed or sofa, something else that was soft but would not give way. And when Brenda fell against Harold—she was almost too full of joy, too embarrassed, to let herself remember—he put his big hand on her shoulder. It was as if he said, I know, I know, and that was the look on his face when she turned, while her father steered them away. Harold stood still, looking after them, and Nelson had moved to the edge of the grass and stood with his back to them.

  She was too old to cry in public, but she was more angry with her father than ashamed of herself. She was ashamed of him, as if she should have been able to keep him from taking advantage of Nelson. She’d learned early, playing with Harold’s son, that you didn’t take advantage. The girls in Little Women would not have done so either, and if they had, their mother would explain to them kindly that they must not.

  The subway was far. Nobody spoke. Then her father said, There once was a dad and his daughters . . .

  Long silence followed. Carol knew about limericks but couldn’t make them up. But she was always ready to forgive. She tried, They went to the zoo . . .

  Of course Brenda could make up a second line that would work with her father’s, but she resisted as long as she could. Carol said again, They went to the zoo . . . Uh, It was true . . .

  —Oh, for heaven’s sake, Brenda said. That’s not the way you do it. She recited:

  There once was a dad and his daughters

  They were eight, and ten and three-quarters.

  She said it gruffly and hastily, suppressing the rhythm and her smile.

  —Very good! Artie said, and Brenda knew that for once he had not succeeded in coming up with his own line. He quickly thought of the rest, though:

  They went to the zoo

  Where they danced with the gnu

  And were interviewed by the reporters.

  —Get it, Caroly? he said, reaching to tickle her. Gggg-nu? What’s new?

  —I’m hungry, said Carol.

  —There’s a Schrafft’s around here, Artie said. We’ll have waffles.

  Harold got to know Beatrice London when they were both assigned sixth-period cafeteria duty. Kids eating in sixth period had been made to wait too long for their lunch, and Harold—who had patrolled the cafeteria at all possible hours—thought sixth period was the most difficult. Being extra hungry made them more willing to throw food or fight.

  Beatrice London was not a union member or at least not a member of the Teachers Union, which Harold belonged to. He had friends in the Teachers Guild—which had broken away from the Teachers
Union because they believed it was dominated by Communists—who said they didn’t think she belonged to that either. She was a tidy woman with small breasts and a little frown. She seemed old-fashioned: maybe she wore her skirts longer than other women did, or maybe it was her hair, which was short and curly and made her look naïve, like a girl in a musical comedy who misjudges everything in the first act but gets the man in the end.

  He tried to remember just what Artie had said about Beatrice London, what his grievance had been. He probably expected her to find him delightful, and instead Beatrice had found him confusing. Walking in the aisles between the dirty tables in the cafeteria, her skirt swinging a little, her hands stiff at her sides, fingers spread as if she was afraid of touching something, Beatrice London was visibly conscientious, and maybe that was what seemed old-fashioned. Harold wanted to befriend her.

  One day, easing from his end of the long room to hers, he said, I hear you teach home ec.

  —That’s right.

  —What’s it like, just teaching girls? Do you miss the boys?

  She didn’t stop her slow march, and he scrambled to walk next to her. She looked toward a table of boys as if she was only just now noticing boys. They were a little raucous, and Harold touched the nearest one on the shoulder, smiled, and said, Just keep it down, fellas.

  —I have brothers, she said. I’m used to boys.

  —My wife is having a baby, Harold said. We have a son and I’m hoping for a girl.

  —That would be nice.

  He gave a casual wave and returned to his end of the room, striding purposefully, as if he’d detected incipient trouble, but feeling uncomfortable. She was shy.

  A week later, a food fight broke out at her end of the cafeteria, with the usual accompanying rumble of onlookers stamping their feet, and he hurried over. Before he arrived, Miss London clapped her hands, and when she was ignored, she walked between the disruptive boys. A handful of something brown landed on her back, and the boys quieted. Instead of scolding them, she made them stand at the side of the room. You too, she said to several other boys, who apparently had smiled—Harold couldn’t tell. They were mostly Negro boys. She marched them into the kitchen, the brown stain noticeable on her white blouse, and then led them out again, each bringing a dishrag. Under her eye, the boys cleaned most of the cafeteria and were still cleaning when the period ended.

  —Down on your hands and knees, Harold heard her say. A cafeteria worker came over with a mop, but she waved him away. Harold had gone back to his end of the room.

  Later, one of his students said, That home ec teacher.

  —Yes?

  —She allowed to do that?

  —I don’t know, Harold said. He made up his mind to speak to her. She knew too well how to be cruel, but that was more reason to confront her, to help her. A new teacher could get into the habit of cruelty, and then she would be stuck.

  Taking the train into the city one afternoon instead of going straight home, Harold found Beatrice London sitting opposite him, the New York Times folded in front of her with the crossword puzzle on top, a pencil in her left hand. He moved across to sit next to her.

  —You’re a lefty, he said.

  She looked up, slightly alarmed. Harold Abramovitz, he said. Sixth-period lunch.

  —I recognized you, she said. He glanced at the puzzle. He knew an answer, but some people didn’t like help. She moved her left hand so it blocked the squares she’d filled in. Then she said, I’ve been wanting to ask you something.

  He was pleased.

  She said, Do you have a friend named Arthur Saltzman?

  —Yes, yes I do! said Harold. It would give them a connection, and maybe he could go from talking about Artie to talking about dealing with obstreperous kids. Maybe she’d say what she hadn’t liked about Artie, and he could reassure her. Artie wasn’t easy, he could say truthfully, but he was worth it. He meant no harm. She might say Artie had teased her, and he could tell her about times when his friend had teased him. He could describe the recent time in Central Park when Artie had gotten Nelson to race and lose—but no, that would be too bad.

  —What’s he doing these days? Beatrice London asked.

  Harold mentioned the junior high where Artie taught social studies. He said, He’s quite a guy.

  —He certainly is! said Beatrice London cheerfully, but then she stood up, putting her folded newspaper into a large purse. My stop. Nice to see you! and as the train doors opened, she hurried out, her head down, her free hand held stiffly, bent away from her body.

  Artie preferred teaching current events to the established curriculum, and his students knew all about the investigations of Communists in the city schools, among other subjects, but he taught the expected units when pressed by his chairman—who liked him—on New York history or the five boroughs. He’d taken his classes to explore Staten Island and the Bronx, places they’d barely heard of. Once he failed to count and lost a child who lingered in the Museum of the City of New York when the rest of them had left. The boy asked directions, and when they got back, he was waiting on the front steps of the school. Artie hadn’t missed him. He blamed the children, and after that assigned buddies, and yelled at the group if they lost track of their partners.

  —That’s not my job, he said, keeping track of you kids. My job is knowing and thinking. How am I supposed to keep you straight, just a lot of interchangeable children?

  He’d test them. Okay, you, he’d say suddenly. Who’s your buddy? Gary? Okay, which one is Gary? The kids teased him for not knowing their names and sometimes insisted they were who they were not. Once a class almost convinced him that a stranger was Gary.

  Artie didn’t remember their names, but he knew each child and worried about them until Evelyn knew them all too, though not by name. They’d be the Boy with the Dead Mother or the Girl Who Flunked Spanish. As Brenda grew older and learned to read, she had insisted that her father should learn the names of the children. She read his roll book and learned them herself. Naturally, Artie made it a game. Who’s the kid who got sent to a psychiatrist? he said once.

  —Lydia Maturo, Brenda said promptly.

  —Artie, she shouldn’t know that! Evelyn said. Nobody should know that! Carol’s listening too.

  —My kid has sense, Artie said. She won’t go all over the neighborhood, talking, and if she did, what difference would it make? Lydia Maturo doesn’t live around here. Carol is playing with her dolls—she’s not paying attention.

  Brenda knew that Carol always paid attention. If you ever meet someone called Lydia Maturo, Brenda told her sister when they were alone, don’t be surprised if she seems crazy. Someday there might be reason to use this piece of information. It could somehow help Brenda rescue Carol when a problem came along that Artie and Evelyn couldn’t solve. Brenda knew that her mother often cried in the bathroom. Evelyn criticized Artie when he left his things around, told Brenda secrets, or didn’t mark his students’ papers until late at night.

  Brenda thought it was unimportant that her father did these things. Her father could speak in the voice of a horse, and for years Brenda had not been certain that an invisible horse named Prancy didn’t live under their kitchen table. Artie could sing and whistle and make up limericks; she herself had known how to make up a limerick since she was four. He had opinions about everything, from what her teacher did to what the president did. Sometimes he got so angry with the government that he screamed at her, his eyes flashing, as if it were all her fault.

  As Brenda grew up, she tried to understand why her interesting father was boring, while her boring mother was interesting. Brenda would rather walk around the block with her mother than have an adventure with Artie, even though Artie’s adventures involved distant subway lines, dusty museums, obscure parks with names he made up, like the Forest Primeval. When he got angry with her, they both shouted. Other people might notice, but only she was ashamed. Brenda valued her father’s praise more than her mother’s, though she never could lea
rn anything he taught her, like tennis. His eye on her was thrilling. But even when Artie was angry, he was tiresome, and she eventually decided it was because though you couldn’t guess in advance what he’d think up, once you knew, you knew what he’d say about it, and he’d insist so hard there was no room for conversation.

  When Harold first became a teacher, he had avoided looking into his students’ faces, especially the Negro children’s faces. Boredom and hostility are easy to detect. He looked over their heads or out the big windows at the side of the room. When he joked, nobody laughed. By the end of each day his hands were covered with chalk dust, and when he smelled it on his body or clothes, he doubted everything he’d believed about the power of literature and his own power to teach it. He wanted to be a professor, teasing out the meaning of Hawthorne and James with graduate students. Instead, he taught Green Mansions and The Mayor of Casterbridge, books that existed only to be taught in high school.

  One evening he was on the phone with Artie, who was telling a long story about his own students. Harold was bored but prolonged the conversation to avoid helping Myra with Nelson. He felt disloyal to his wife, his child, his friend, his work. For a man with a hardworking conscience, he noticed, he rarely did the right thing.

  —So the little bastard stepped on my foot, Artie said. Still hurts.

  —Why did he step on your foot?

  —What I was just telling you. Unresolved conflicts with the bourgeois classes. He said he tripped.

  Harold pictured the boy. Then he realized he was picturing not a stranger but one of his own students, a small, muscular Negro kid whom the others respected, though he was short, because he was fast and powerful. Artie’s student was younger, of course—different from the boy Harold was thinking of, whose name was Elwin Hunt. But Harold continued to think of Elwin, lithe and swift—unlikely to trip over anything—tripping over Artie’s foot, almost dancing onto Artie’s foot.

  —This kind of teaching, Harold said slowly. This kind of teaching, it’s the most important thing there is.

  He forgot Artie in the imagined sight of a boy he had been unwilling to look at but had apparently memorized, Elwin with his short legs and big feet and unlikely speed, his ears—the boy had big ears on a small head. Ears sometimes grew first.