by Frank Conroy
He fiddled with his papers for a moment, looking off into space. “Yes, I guess so,” he said reluctantly. “If and when I come back to Stuyvesant I’d like to talk to you again.”
I hiked my books high under my arm and went out the door. Standing motionless in the small room, I looked at the secretary and the four boys on the bench. The bell rang.
The Third Floor
Miss Tuts, a tiny red-haired woman, stood at the side of the room screaming at the boy in front of the blackboard. “No, no, no! Didn’t you hear what I said? Soixante-deux! Soixante-deux! And write it out, don’t just put the numbers.”
The boy turned slowly to the board and raised the chalk. Hesitantly he began to write.
“Wrong,” she yelled. “Sit down. You didn’t prepare the lesson.” Her figure was black against the big windows as she paced back and forth with quick little steps. “Bernstein! Put the vocabulary for today on the board. And don’t forget the verbs.”
Bernstein stood up, a perfect pear. “Just the French?”
“Yes,” she cried irritably. “Do I have to explain every day?”
Someone laughed in the back.
“Quiet!”
Bernstein finished one column quickly and started on the next, writing the words in exactly the same order in which they’d appeared in the textbook. He could memorize effortlessly, and the pride with which he repeated the same trick day after day had not endeared him to his classmates.
“Bernstein sucks,” the boy next to me said quietly.
“Did you say something, Aaronson?”
“No, Miss Tuts.”
“Stand up and translate the first column.”
“Le shawmbra, the room. Le lee, the bed ...”
Someone hit Bernstein on the back with a ball of paper as he turned away from the board. Laughter from the rear of the room. Aaronson went on without skipping a beat. “Revay, to dream. Se lavay, to wash ...”
“Who threw that?” Miss Tuts screamed, running to the front of the room. “Who threw that paper?”
Looking uncomfortable, Bernstein returned to his seat.
“Le shapoe, the hat. La ...”
She slammed her hand on the desk. “Shut up! Sit down! Now, who threw that paper?”
Silence.
Plunk! Someone plucked the short-metal prong under the seat with his thumbnail. Plunk! Answers started coming in from different parts of the room. Plunk! Plunk!
“Stop it! Stop it this instant!”
Plunk! Plunk!
“I’ll send you all to the Dean! The entire class!”
We laughed as she stalked out. Her threat was empty. It had been used too often.
The Fourth Floor
Dr. Casey was a big man, well over six feet tall with the build to go with it, but he was getting old. His square face was touched with the gray skin tone of age, and except for rare moments of anger his eyes had lost the flash of life. He stared out over his desk expressionlessly, his hands clasped before him. He talked from the first bell to the last, and no one interrupted him. As long as he talked we didn’t have to work. We’d discovered there was no need to listen. We could catch up on homework for other classes, read, or do the crossword puzzle. He didn’t care as long as we were quiet and looked busy. Perhaps he even thought we were taking notes.
“I put my sons through Harvard. Both of them. But they’re gone now. Things change, that’s what you people don’t realize. When you’re my age it becomes quite clear. Things change, things change constantly and the very things that seem most secure are actually changing very slowly, sometimes so slowly you can’t see what’s happening even though it’s staring you in the face. You must stay alert at all times. Never believe the way things look. The garbage collectors believe everything is simple and that’s why they’re garbage collectors. You have to look behind the masks, you have to get behind the lies. Most of it is lies, you know. I am aware of that fact.” He tapped the surface of the desk with his knuckles. “I can see through the lies because I’ve lived a full life. I didn’t waste my time. In the First World War I was in graves registration. I saw things I can’t tell you about. Things so horrible good taste prevents me from mentioning them. You people of course have no idea. That’s why I’m here. That’s why I’m here. That’s why I’m sitting up here at this desk giving my life for your vicarious perusal.” He stared out over the lowered heads of the boys and cleared his throat with a tremendous bellow. It was highly overdone, a self-conscious mannerism the boys had learned to ignore. Each day more and more phlegm was rolled more and more lovingly, as if he were testing our unconcern, as if, as the gesture became totally operatic, he were daring us to call his bluff. “My field was etymology. Where words came from. Words, after all, are the tools they use to break us down. I resist them because I know more about words than they do. Every educated man should know about words.” He paused to let the thought sink in. “Then when they spew out their poison and their vomit I see it for what it is. Filth! Nothing more or less than that! And we are surrounded by it, gentlemen. The secretions of corrupted minds are the juices that nourish modern society, just as the blood of animals nourishes our bodies. Pus runs free over the body politic. Graft and corruption are everywhere. They’ve approached me many times, I assure you, whining and wheedling before me, making their filthy offers, trying to break me down. Well they can try for a thousand years and my answer will be the same. They can shove their special arrangements. They can shove their recommendations, gold watches and testimonial dinners. Let them eat their own swill.” He spoke softly, as if withdrawn into himself, as if the strength of his feelings had driven him back to a point where he was no more than an observer of his own actions. Leaning far back in his chair, his long legs extended straight out into the aisle, he peered through loosely clasped fingers, his entire body motionless as a corpse. “None of it surprises me. None of it. They show us one man riding another, riding him like a horse, like a beast of burden. That stuff gets through. They call it art. They spit on the nobility of the human body. They lower themselves to the level of animals. Below animals. A man riding a man is going too far. I call them dogs from the bottom of my soul.”
The school day is over. A mood of manic hilarity fills every classroom as we wait for the final bell. The aisles are crowded with laughing, shouting boys. The teachers, already on their way home mentally, sit behind their desks with lowered heads and occupy themselves with small unnecessary tasks.
Despite the confusion we’re ready to go at the signal. Our books are packed. Our jackets are on. We pour through the door and out into the hall with a collective sigh. We rush for the stairs, dodging in and out among the slower boys. The noise is terrific. On the stairs we really let loose. Screams and yells float up from the lower floors. Fists bang against the metal side panels in continuous thunder. Down, down, down, rushing past the painted numbers, swinging round like crack the whip at the landings, leaping steps when there’s room, pushing the boy in front, being pushed from behind, all of us mad with freedom. Down, down. So easily, so effortlessly. The stream carries us safely past the third, the second, the first, and out into the immense throng streaming through the banks of open doors to the street. We flow over the sidewalk and between the parked cars onto the asphalt. In the darkness faces are indistinct. Matches flash for cigarettes. Around the corner the avenue gleams with neon. Most of us have already forgotten the five hours inside school because for most of us school is less than nothing. We spread like a liquid over the neighborhood and disappear into the subways.
11
Blindman’s Buff
I REMEMBER coming home the day the baby was born. As I opened the front door Jean strode down the hall, his eyes gleaming. I knew instantly.
“Was it a boy or a girl?” I asked. “A boy? Was it a boy?”
Enjoying the moment, Jean fluttered his hands. “The main thing is it didn’t have two heads.”
“A girl?” I slammed the door.
“Those things happen,
you know. It’s all very mysterious about heredity. Of course the doctors have to act as if they know all ...”
“Jean! For God’s sake, what ...”
“It’s a girl. With one head.”
So there it was. I stood quite still, conscious of the tremendous importance of the moment. Three of us now. Alison, myself, and the new baby. I stuck out my hand. “Congratulations.”
He laughed. “What’s to congratulate? You think I did something hard? Any moron can have a baby. It’s no accomplishment.” But he took my hand.
“What does she look like?”
“Like a baby. They’re all the same.”
“Is Mother okay?”
He nodded. “They said it was an easy birth.”
I started up the hall to the kitchen. “Wow!”
Jessica Fouchet. When she came home her utter helplessness shocked me into loving her. She seemed the quintessence of mortality. It made chills run up and down my spine just to look at her.
And I spent a lot of time looking at her, sitting quietly next to her crib watching her sleep, as if by being there long enough, by imprinting her image on my brain, I would come to understand the mystery (I was a child, remember) of life. But nothing was revealed to me. Jessica simply existed, and no matter how hard I looked, that was all I ever knew. There seemed to be no point to her except the fact that she lived.
I heard my mother crying one afternoon, her long blond hair over her shoulders and the baby at her breast. At first I thought she’d been arguing with Jean, but there was something different about the way she cried. “What’s wrong?” I asked from the doorway.
She shook her head, not looking up. I was about to leave when she said, “I can’t feed her any more. She has to have a bottle.” Tears streaming down her cheeks, she rocked the baby back and forth, leaning down to press her cheek to its brow. I went off to my room, completely bewildered. Why anyone should cry over that was beyond my understanding. With the end of breast feeding my mother’s attitude toward Jessica changed considerably. She became much more matter of fact, more practical and nurselike. She didn’t hold the baby while it was fed, for example. A plastic sandbag with the bottle strapped in was good enough.
Quite suddenly Jean and I were alone in the house. Mother had taken the baby to Denmark for a long visit and Alison had become a permanent house guest at the home of her best friend. In an attempt to get “ahead of the game” Jean worked long hours in the cab and came home only to sleep.
I ate in Wright’s Restaurant by the subway entrance on Lexington and Eighty-sixth street (a habit that was to continue off and on until I left home), occupying the same seat every night. If I had enough money I read a magazine from the stand outside, otherwise I’d borrow a paper from the waitress. The routine pleased me enormously. Eating out seemed luxurious as well as adult. The money came from my job, or if I was broke between jobs, from Jean’s taxi earnings. He kept the bills and coins neatly stacked in a tray on the shelf of his closet.
In the mindless, unself-conscious way children go about things I’d become a resourceful sneak thief. If a purse was left unwatched I’d be sure to rifle it. Mother and sister suffered from my new talent, but the real prize was Jean’s cash tray. Ah, those neat stacks of gleaming coins! Those thick, splendid wads of dollar bills! The majesty of the fives and tens!
When my steady pilferage could no longer be ignored a lock was installed on Jean’s and Mother’s bedroom door. For a while I was stymied, but in the end the presence of the lock worked to my advantage. Alone in the house one afternoon, I found myself attempting to force the tumblers with a bent paper clip. I worked abstractedly, more out of boredom than with any hope of success, the way a prisoner behind two feet of solid rock might begin to pick away at the wall with an old spoon just to keep himself occupied, to give a physical focus to his fantasies of freedom. When an hour had passed without a single encourageing development I gave it up and stepped back from the door. As an afterthought I examined the hinges, ran my fingers around the molding, and then (a beautiful moment) backed up farther and saw the transom. Understanding came in a flash. If I could get through the transom my troubles were over, really over, because then I could steal at will in relative safety. It seemed unlikely that Jean kept close track of the money now that he imagined I couldn’t get at it. Stealing small amounts at regular intervals I could very well escape detection completely. A passion ripped through my limbs as I dragged a high-backed chair up against the door.
The transom, its joints heavily sealed with paint, had not been opened in years. I got a single-edged razor blade from the bathroom and went to work. Moments later a few sharp blows with the heel of my hand did the trick. The room lay revealed below me, dim and quiet, full of promise. With shaking hands I grasped the sill and stepped up on the back of the chair.
For once I was glad to be skinny. First my arms, then my head, sideways, and back out again as I realized it wasn’t going to work. I took a few deep breaths and put my head in, then wriggled my shoulders through one at a time. I began to laugh as it became clear I could make it —a special kind of body-knowledge, the sudden switch in sensation from pushing the front part of me to pulling the back part of me. Now my arms were free and I hung, bent at the waist, upside down flat against the inside of the door. Outside my legs lifted off the back of the chair. Still laughing, I twisted the rest of the way through and fell on my head. The pain was barely noticeable. (No more than, fifteen years later, a woman’s teeth in my arm.) Dancing over to the closet. I threw open the door and smiled at the money. I took seventy cents in carefully selected coins, closed the closet and the transom, went out the door, and made it to the movies.
My mother had been gone for some months when Jean made a serious error. His motives were undoubtedly numerous—to alleviate boredom, to establish his independence, to punish Dagmar for leaving him alone, to force her to return (both of these last unconscious), and perhaps to make a conquest. (He was tame, though. Years after their divorce I asked Dagmar if she thought he’d ever been unfaithful. “He wouldn’t have dared,” she snorted. “He didn’t have the guts.” An exaggeration, of course, but still ...) As it turned out, his motives were of no importance whatsoever. Who needs to know, about the man falling down the elevator shaft, that he thought he was stepping into the car, or that his original plan was to get off at the tenth floor?
My first view of her was from the rear, as she bent over to take something out of one of the boxes strewn up and down the long hall. Loose piles of clothing, books, kitchen utensils, magazines, stuffed dolls, blankets, and a thousand other things filled the hall from the front door to the living room. The back of her white housecoat had risen as she leaned over, revealing two thin legs, the hollows behind her knees like white egg cups. Hearing me, she stood up and turned halfway around. A pale bony face, eerily bloodless. Bright, hard eyes. She spoke in a high voice with tremendous speed, slightly breathless, her lips barely moving.
“Hi. This is a mess isn’t it? Have you ever seen such a mess?” She touched her hair with the tips of her fingers. “The endless junk one collects. I never dreamed there was so much.”
I stepped gingerly over an ironing board. “What is it? Where did it all come from?”
“It’s mine, sweetie,” she said, standing perfectly still. “It belongs to me.”
The bell rang and I stepped back to open the door. Jean came in, a load of coats draped over his back, a laundry bag under his arm, and a suitcase banging against his leg. “Move that lamp,” he said, and as I obeyed he lowered everything onto the cleared space. Standing up straight, he wiped his brow with the back of his hand. “That’s it. One more trip should get it all.” As if seeing me for the first time, he said, “You can come along. It’ll speed it up.”
“Okay.”
“I don’t know how to thank you, Mr. Fouchet. I mean it’s so damn nice of you. He’s insane, you know. Really utterly off his nut. The things he said to me! The things he called me! I’d die if I h
ad to see him again.”
“It’s all right.”
“Be careful of him. He’ll say anything.”
“Don’t worry,” Jean said, giving me a wink. “I know the type. ”
“It’s all right.”
Going downtown in the cab he explained, talking over his shoulder as I sat in the back, my feet on the jump seat. (In accordance with the law Jean’s flag was down. I watched the meter clicking away, filled with a curious sense of luxury at the thought that no one had to pay.) “I picked her up and she didn’t have a dime. The son of a bitch landlord was putting her stuff on the sidewalk when we got there. Can you believe that? Right out in the open with nobody watching it. He wouldn’t even talk to her and just kept going in and out with the stuff. Then she started to cry and I told her to get in the cab. All the morons were standing around as if the whole thing were a sideshow and what the hell I didn’t care about the fare that much.”
“No, of course not.” A subterranean sense of excitement was beginning to communicate itself to me. Jean’s animation seemed to indicate we were embarked on an adventure, some special adventure in which my role might be gratifyingly grown-up. His tone was more affectionate than it had been in months and I was flattered, flattered that he bothered to explain, flattered at my inclusion in the conspiracy. Deep down I knew it was conspiracy, but I was safe. Jean took the chances. I watched.
“She told me the whole story. No place to go, no friends she feels right about, family out in the Midwest someplace.” He took one hand off the wheel and gestured, his palm flat in the air. “It’s a kind of pride. I understand it. Sometimes it’s easier to deal with strangers than people you know.”
“What happened?”
“She was living over her head. Spending too much money and getting in a hole, and then when she lost her job she ...”
