Chapter 11
The next day Ron was invited to the principal’s office. Sister Irene was in back of her desk. There was a large arrangement of cut flowers underneath the picture of the Blessed Virgin. Off to the left and directly over her desk was a crucifix. “Things seem to be going rather well for you, Mr. Tuck, but we have to talk about some things.”
“Yes Sister.”
“First of all the girls are very excited to have you here and I’ve already had two calls from parents asking about who you were.”
Ron stiffened. He wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not. “It must be a tad difficult for a man like you being here with us, Mr. Tuck. These girls are very young and sometimes very obvious in their interests.”
“I like them very much, Sister and it’s not at all difficult. I know my place.”
The nun smiled. That was exactly what she was worried about and she liked that he was bright enough to anticipate what could have been a tense conversation.
“I came from around here, Sister, and these kids deserve someone who is willing to see them as what they are.
“And what is it that you see them as, Mr. Tuck?”
“Young girls who could benefit from learning the language, Sister.”
The nun smiled and came around from behind her desk. “We’d like to have you over for dinner next Wednesday. Do you think that you can make it?”
“I’d like that very much, Sister.”
“Good, then we’ll expect at six o’clock. We’ll be back from prayers by then. Enjoy your day, Mr. Tuck.”
And Ron did enjoy the day. The pattern of his classes was a constant in his life now. Whenever he had nothing to do, he had preparation for the next class and papers to grade and pieces to read again with an eye towards what he would say to them the next day or the day after that. Twice a day, he dutifully went to the coffee shop and got his coffee. He didn’t sit on the fire escape and drink it and smoke the way that he had done on the first day or two. Now, he took it back to his car and sat there with a stack of papers, the front seat rolled back, his watch placed on the dashboard so that he didn’t lose track of time. Each story or each fragment of a larger piece of literature that he read was seen with a new eye, in a new light. He wasn’t seeing them for himself as much anymore as he was studying them for his students. He found that his thoughts went deeper into the ideas. He saw not only what the ideas were but what the ideas were meant to do. It was an entirely new way of looking at what he read that he’d never experienced before. What would his classes think of this? How could he structure something to attach it to an earlier idea? When should he say this? He didn’t take notes, he absorbed what he read. He felt himself wrapping around it and internalizing it. It grew inside of him and became part of how he looked at everything. The stranger thing was that it didn’t only happen with literature, it happened with everything he saw and everyone he saw.
When he wasn’t teaching or preparing he was with Zoe and that was magical. He never told her that he’d heard from Robin. In fact, he told himself that he had not heard from Robin and made the lie stick, although it didn’t stick too deeply. He was unable to do that. If he saw the truth of something a certain way, he didn’t seem to have the ability to consciously lie to himself. He couldn’t lie to himself. It had always been a problem and he knew that he’d gotten it from his mother
She had been told so many lies as a child that she had taught him and re-taught him the value of truth. She seemed far away now. Although she was always just a telephone call away, or a short drive away. If he needed her, or more possibly if she needed him, he could be there.
He’d gone to see Quimpy’s office and had been duly impressed by its size and the wonderment that Quimpy actually had a secretary. It would take about two weeks to process his forms and put his name in front of the board of education. Ron didn’t understand any of that but Quimpy had said that it was all bullshit and not to worry about it. They had agreed to get together for the games that Sunday.
Zoe was going to visit her youngest sister up in Boston and Ron was alone on Friday afternoon. His phone rang.
“Hello, Ron,” said Chris.
“Chris, how are you doing?”
“I’m getting blasted with the law round the clock. It’s like the Sheriff’s revenge.” Ron laughed hard and genuine. “Anyway, what I was thinking was that if you weren’t doing anything tonight that you could drive in and we could get some dinner and maybe play guitars.”
“I’d love to do that,” said Ron quickly. “I’m on my way in.”
“See ya then,” said Chris.
The drive into the lower east side on a Friday afternoon was a nightmare. Ron fought his way down to the parkway and then up to Route 82. That would take him to the tunnel. The skyway was a stinking crawl. It was a warm afternoon and the industrial combination of smells rose like an uncomfortable tweed suit that assaulted his nostrils and would not let them go. The cars rolled and then stopped for no apparent reason. They sat idling and then would roll forward less distance than he hoped that they would. Ron had brought some joints with him but he refused to light one. Everyone that he knew that smoked in their cars got busted. He’d seen it after Hank, who had been so careful about the way that they smoked in the car and where they smoked in the car, got popped. Even Chris had been popped. Joseph had been popped. Ron was not about to get busted. He had learned a long time ago when and how to pull back so that didn’t happen. It was only with Chris that he stretched those limits.
The tunnel squirted him onto the streets like he was ejaculate. He moved around a circle in a tight speeding line of other cars that moved around the circle, and then he saw the street and turned and he was on Broome Street and he careened his way across town, wincing at every pot hole and uneven street over which he rolled and bounced.
East 6th, between Avenues A and B, was humming. Windows were up and some people were cooking their dinner on the fire escapes so as not to heat up the small kitchens. Ron parked, grabbed his guitar from the trunk and walked down the street feeling very cool but scared at the idea that someone might actually think that he could play and ask him to play. He remembered the looks on faces when he played his guitar for them, how people would just start to talk to each other by the third verse of some of his songs. The idea made him wince and grip the guitar case handle tighter.
Ron was never sure how many flights he had to walk up to get to Chris’s apartment. He only knew that it was the landing after the strong smell of gas that always gave him the feeling that the building was unsafe. He could hear Chris’s stereo as he turned the corner for the last half flight. The door was slightly ajar but Ron knocked anyway. “Hello?”
Chris called out. “Come on in.”
He was on his knees in a small living room that had large windows that faced the south. There were rugs, a thick oriental rug on the floor and wall hangings and pictures that reminded him of Rahway. Chris put down the guitar that he had been playing along with to the stereo and reached in back of him for a large pasta bowel that was filed with pot, along with various seeds and stems. He had a playing card and was sifting through the shake and ridding it of seeds and twigs.
Ron reached into his pocket and dropped his contribution of three joints into the bowel. He put his guitar case down and sat cross legged across from Chris, who looked somehow thinner than Ron had remembered him and focused in a different way that Ron had seen him before. On the other side of a large pillow that was on the window side of Chris there was a stack of law books and notebooks.
Ron said, “How’s school?”
“It’s almost over now, but then it’s the fucking bar exam.” Chris shook his head with amazement at the thought. The fucking bar exam where it mattered how many people took it at one sitting as much as it mattered what they wrote.
Chris handed Ron the bowel and lifted up from his knees in a fluid unfolding. “Listen to this.” He went to the stereo that was mounted halfway up one of the floor to ceiling book shelves that were filled with books and records and piles of papers. Ron lit one of the pre- rolled joints that he’d wanted so much when he was stuck in traffic. Chris was careful with the needle and got it down into the perfect hissing silence between the tracks.
“One soft infested summer me and Terry became friends, trying in vain to breathe the fire we was born in”
It was Springsteen and his voiced hissed and wailed and glistened with hope, disappointment, strength, the past and the present all at once. They smoked the joint. And then they smoked another. Chris turned off the stereo and picked up his guitar and began to play it softly. He was playing blues and the single notes slid out of the sound hole and teased Ron’s imagination.
“Do you ever think about Rahway, Chris?”
Chris looked down at the guitar, not making eye contact with Ron. There was a pause and then Chris said, “Have you ever been to Zabars?”
Out on the street Ron and Chris set a good pace as they moved east up 6th street and then they turned south and went into a delicatessen. Ron realized that he’d been hungry. Chris just wanted to buy cake or donuts, but they each ordered a sandwich and walked back to the apartment. The opened things up on the floor of the living room and Chris said, “I try not to think about it because it just makes me feel bad and I want to have something other than feeling bad connected with my memories of the place. It’s just Sheriff’s place now and it will never be anything else than that while he’s there.”
Ron took his guitar out and they began to play and the night got a bit cooler and the sounds from the street turned into night time sounds. There was a siren and there was a radio and there were the sounds of people speaking different languages and hollering their greetings. Ron thought about how much it reminded him of Newark, not that New York City was like Newark but that this part of it was.
In the middle of one of their songs a mouse dropped down from the chimney and ran frantically surprised along the wall and into Chris’s kitchen. Chris laughed. Ron had jumped when he’d seen the rodent but Chris went looking for it with a cardboard box and was talking softly as if he could lure it out and make it come to him and then Ron heard the box slam down and Chris exclaimed, “Ah, now I got you.” Then he carried the box down the four flights of stairs and let the mouse out. When he came back he said, “I suppose that isn’t the smartest approach but I didn’t feel like killing it.” They settled back into their play with the guitars and in just under an hour another mouse or perhaps the same mouse dropped down the chimney and Chris laughed very hard and said, “That’s what I get for not killing it when I could.”
Ron tried to tell Chris about Zoe and about his students. And Chris tried to listen, Ron noticed that he didn’t have any questions and that it seemed as if he was just waiting for Ron to finish what he was saying. Finally Ron asked, “Are you seeing anybody?”
“Just law books and mice,” said Chris.
It was very late when he drove home and it was a clear sail over the same streets that had been so congested when he’d come in. Chris’s apartment seemed larger and somewhat more private than his one room studio. He did have a real bathroom and Chris’s apartment only had this alcove with a box and pull chain. Chris had a stall shower in the middle of the kitchen, but at least there was no limit on sound and Ron was sure that there was no landlady keeping tabs on what Chris was doing or not doing. It was always that way when you wanted real privacy. You had to sacrifice a certain amount of comfort in order to get it.