Chapter 60
At the faculty meeting that began the 1980-81 school year, Ron was introduced to the two new male teachers that would be joining the staff. Anthony Mancuso and Arnold Needlehaus were as different as night and day. Mancuso was a very young, dark haired, olive-skinned Italian kid that Ron could see the girls going completely gaga over. Needlehaus was an older gentleman with grayish white hair and a short closely cropped beard. Instinctively Ron felt that something was not quite right about this man. He was effusive and smooth, and Ron thought a bit too old to be more than a one year guy here, using the school as some kind of way station.
Sister Donna Maria introduced them both to Ron saying that he was one of the faculty leaders and that they should address any questions that they had about assimilating to the school to him. Anthony looked scared and Andrew appeared to be smug. Both new teachers stood in front of him waiting for him to say something.
“The girls are great but they will watch everything that you say and do, even more than students normally would. They’ll take note of everything that you wear, and they will watch you all the time and talk to each other about you. Just relax into it and you’ll be fine. They have hungry minds and open hearts. If I can be of any help, just let me know.”
“What do the nuns expect?” said Needlehaus.
“Mostly that we do our job and do it well.”
“Do they check lesson plans?”
“No they don’t, but it’s a good idea to have them for your own purposes.”
“I’ll probably just break out some old ones and get by using them. I retired from public school teaching last year and I don’t imagine that this will be significantly different. It really is all the same, isn’t it?”
Ron said, “I suppose you can look at it that way.” Ron turned his gaze to Anthony. “You know the girls are gonna think of you as quite a hunk, right?”
The kid blushed visibly and said, “Is there something that I can do about that?”
“You can use it to your advantage but make sure that you create a professional distance,” said Ron. As he said it he thought that it was the exact opposite from what he intended to do.
Again, Ron was in charge of the faculty council but this time it was explained at the faculty meeting that all of the lay teachers and nuns would submit their discipline referrals to him and he would keep the records of who needed to appear because of an excess of demerits. Donna Maria explained that discipline referrals should only be used after teachers had utilized their personal, in class, discipline. Ron noted, with disappointment, that Bernadette was not a member of the faculty council and would be in charge of both the choir and first Friday Mass preparations, and the family life units that all of the girls would now be required to take. Ron saw Holly Risotto across the room, but she stayed away and did not look at him. They had not spoken since the day that he drove her home. She had appeared after Easter vacation as if nothing had happened, and Ron had been cautioned by Bernadette that it would be better for her and for him if he did not mention the absurdity of her being back in the school. She told Ron that she would keep an eye on Holly, and make sure that she did not do any harm to herself or to the girls.
After lunch Ron wandered over to Bernadette’s classroom. She smiled when she saw him. There was an awkward moment when they almost hugged, but they both laughed and shook hands instead.
“Did you have a good summer, Ron?”
“I did,” said Ron, “but I’m glad to be back. What about you?”
“I got to spend some time back home in Philadelphia and it was good to see my family. For a while, I wasn’t sure that I wanted to come back.”
“Did you have a choice?”
She raised her eyebrow. “We always have choices, Ron. You must be excited. These are your girls.”
Ron felt the smile spread across his face. “Yes, they are. I want this year to be special for them.”
“So what are you teaching?”
“Senior English, Public Speaking, Creative Writing, Shakespeare Seminar, Sociology and Economics.”
“So you are still gonna work yourself silly?”
“Is there any other way?”
“Probably not for you, no. Ron, what about your life? Do you have a girlfriend yet?”
“No one special.”
“You aren’t getting any younger, Ron. What are you thinking about?”
“I suppose that I’m not thinking about it at all.”
“I don’t believe that,” said Bernadette. “Whoever she was, Ron, she was a fool for not wanting you.”
“I don’t know, Bernadette. Maybe it was me who was the fool.”
The next day the girls arrived and Ron spent the first hour of the morning smiling and hugging them. He felt himself swelling with pride as he saw how they were growing up, about how the lights in their eyes were strong and bright and breathtakingly beautiful.
One of the improvements that Sister Donna Marie had instituted was a full school meeting that began the year. They would all meet, and then there was a much modified schedule where the girls would report to each of their classes for 10 minutes.
As each of the faculty was introduced, the girls applauded. Even for the teachers that they hated, there was polite applause. The new teachers got the benefit of the doubt and received an enthusiastic welcome, particularly Anthony Mancuso who got a few whistles that required Donna Maria to remind the girls that they were ladies. When Ron was introduced, the gym erupted in cheers. Some girls stood and cheered loudly and clapped and chanted “Tuck, Tuck, Tuck.”
Never in his life had Ron been greeted in even a vaguely similar way. His cheeks burned with blush. He felt the wave of sound carry him up like he was surfing. He tried to make them stop but they kept cheering. He took his seat on the stage and Sister Donna Maria said, “I’m glad that I saved him for last. I’d hate to be the person that had to follow that.”
Ron kept his head down. He could not look at them because tears were threatening to brim out of his eyes. He loved them and they loved him back. He was convinced now more than ever before. This year he would give them everything that he had to give.
There were two senior English classes that met the first two periods of the day. When they sat in the old room with the high creaky windows and the squeaky floor with just the crucifix and the portrait of Lincoln as decorations, Ron stood in back of his ever present podium with the class list. He called the roll and with each name a familiar face and story acknowledged him and there was an exchanged smile. It amazed them all how friendly the atmosphere in the class was and how happy they all were to be there. Ron could not stop smiling. The growth that had occurred over the summer, together with the potential that he saw, amazed him.
“I am really happy to see all of you. For the last couple of weeks, I have been anxious for the summer to be over and to get this started. We are going to have a great year. I’m going to drive you hard and it won’t always be easy, but you all know that we will have a lot of fun too and I hope that you think that it will be worth it.”
Vicky DelMarco raised her thin long arm into the air and turned her palm towards him. “Mr. Tuck, what did you do to yourself over the summer? You look almost hot and you aren’t dressing as corny as you usually dress. Are you in love Mr. Tuck?” Ron laughed and came out from behind the podium. Vicky turned to look at the rest of the class for support. “See what I mean? Look at him. Wow, Mr. Tuck.”
Giving her his very best dimpled grin and moving to stand right in front of her desk, Ron said, “I am in love Vicky.” He took a step back. “I’m in love with all of you.” They burst out laughing and he laughed with him. Vicky made a show of fanning herself with her hands. “Didn’t you want me to look good for you?”
Vicky was now playing along completely. “But you know that I have enough trouble concentrating as it is.” She turned to the class and made a hysterical face and rolled her Spanish eyes.
Ron lowered his voice to a whisper then he said loudly enough to project to the whole of the room. “But it will make me so sad if you don’t concentrate. You know how selfish I am Vicky. I want all of your attention all of the time.”
Now Vicky struck her own pose and said with fluttering eyes. “You couldn’t handle all of my attention, Mr. Tuck. I’d wear you out.”
The class laughed hard and the two or three girls who were new to the school sat with their mouths hanging open. This was not the type of classroom that they had ever been in before. This was not the type of classroom that they had ever even heard of before.
“Let’s find out,” said Ron. He turned to the chalkboard, took a breath and did it. There it was his phone number on the board. “I am here for all of you. This is my home phone number. I will give you as much energy as I have. That is my promise. What I want is the very same thing from you. I want as much energy as you have to give.”
The bell rang and the girls left as soon as it did. Ron saw that some of them wrote down the number. Vicky wrote it on the palm of her hand and showed it to him on the way out saying, “Now I can’t wash my hand all day.”
The atmosphere in the Shakespeare seminar was different. He knew all of them and, for the most part, he had invited all of them to join this special class.
Elena Gonzalez, maybe his best student, who he had challenged since freshman year when he had called her “Frowsy” because her shirt used to come out of her skirt and her hair was a wild and beautiful dark tangle. She hadn’t known what the word meant, but had looked it up that night and come into him the next day and stamped her foot in front of him and said that he had insulted her. But she had smiled before she turned away, and that had been the beginning of a challenging relationship where he pushed her and she pushed him back to push her more. Elena was now the class president and a spokesperson for student and Puerto Rican rights.
Ron looked from her to Elizabeth Holland, a paper thin waif looking blonde who had been too timid to speak to him for the first half of 9th grade. She was always immaculately groomed and often quiet, but there was an angular quality about her and a drive that said she intended to prove herself not only to Ron and to the rest of her classmates but to her very strict mother and the rest of the world. She didn’t always like Ron’s teasing because she sometimes took it seriously and when she found out that it was a tease she would blush furiously and quietly steam and shoot daggers at him with her blue eyes.
She sat next to Donna Seaford who reveled in correcting Ron. She was a short girl with very black skin. Ron had once made the mistake of referring to her as an African American. She and her twin sister Deborah, who was very much her opposite, took a dual delight in telling him, with more than a little indignity, that they were Cuban, not Black.
In back of them sat Judith Wunderlan who had the face and body of a pixie. She was a bright girl who did her work and did not like to be pushed. She also did not like to ever shut up, and the two or three episodes that she had with Ron was when she had insisted on taking during class. She maintained that she was always talking about what was going on in the class, but Ron had contended that she could not talk and listen at the same time. Judith had maintained that she could.
This year Judith had vowed to sit next to Veronica Petrelli in as many classes as she could. Veronica was a good friend but very conscientious and quiet. Judith was hoping that her influence would be good for her. That was what she was saying publically, but privately she was hoping to bring Veronica more out of her shell and besides a quiet girl seldom interrupted her steady stream of chatter.
Paula Sandal felt the most insecure in this class. She had not been invited to join and she already had Tuck in three other classes. She was being “Fully Tucked” as Elena put it. Ron had spoken to her privately at the end of last year and asked her if she thought that she was overdoing it. She had answered resolutely that she had no other life and that if he could stand to have her in this many classes that she wanted to be there. Now it was here and what seemed like a good idea back then was intimidating her today. He was different and yet the same in each class. She listened and hoped that she could keep her head down here and excel in the creative writing class.
One of the other girls who had not been invited to join the Shakespeare class was Samantha Santorini. She had been dubbed as a party girl in 10th grade when she had a boyfriend who was twenty-one years old. Sister Bernadette had found out about it and tried to talk some sense into the girl. When Samantha had scoffed at the notion, Bernadette had cautioned her that boys that age would want her to “go all the way.” Samantha had informed Bernadette that it was not only guys that age that expected the girls “to give it up” and that she had other ways of keeping them happy. Bernadette had been angry with her and cautioned some of the other girls to not follow Samantha’s example, and a war of wills had begun between the two of them. Ron, of course, was totally unaware of this. Samantha had taken this class to show Bernadette and the rest of the school that she had more than her looks going for her. She wanted them to know that she also had a brain. She was, as she liked to refer to herself, “a gift wrapped package.”
“We’re going to read eighteen plays this year,” began Ron. “Basically it’s going to be a play every two weeks, with some taking a little less time and some taking a little more. We won’t be doing Romeo and Juliet or Macbeth because you have already done those plays.”
Donna Seaford said, without raising her hand, “So this is the class where you try to kill us.”
“You could look at it that way, Donna, but what it really is the class where I show you what the pace at a good college is like.”
Then Ron showed them how serious he was by passing out a syllabus that had dates and titles of plays and testing dates mapped out for the entire year. The girls were shocked into silence by the enormity of what he had given them.
“Nope,” said Veronica. “Donna is right. This is where you kill us.”
At the end of the day, Ron felt himself filled with the energy that the girls had given him. He had no tutoring appointments because, at the beginning of the year, he usually didn’t have any students to tutor. His summer students had gone back to classes or made new arrangements. Ron drove back to his apartment and quickly changed into his running clothes and was on the track just as the football players were filling in for their afterschool practice up in Glen Ridge.
He got his first mile and a half in before they started their stretching. He saw the coaches looking at him strangely as he circled down to the field house at the end of the second mile.
“Excuse me, Sir,” said one of the coaches who was wearing than traditional light gray shorts and maroon t-shirt and baseball cap.
Ron slowed and came over to him. He was annoyed at having to break his stride. “Yes?”
“Can I ask what you are doing here?”
Ron shrugged. “This is where I always run.”
“I haven’t see you here before.”
“Usually I run in the mornings, but I’m back to school as well,” said Ron. “My family lives right over there.” Ron gestured to the back of the bleachers.
“You wouldn’t be scouting us for another team, would you Sir?”
“Not at all,” said Ron. He was flattered by the accusation. “I’d never do anything to hurt the Ridgers. Class of ’67. I played for the team. My name is Ron Tuck.”
Then he saw one of the assistant coaches who looked vaguely familiar. The head coach motioned the assistant over. “Richie you were class of ’67 right?” Richard Westin nodded. “You remember a Ron Tuck?”
“Sure, I remember Tuck. Hello Ron, you still wearing your leather jacket and shades?”
Ron grimaced and shook his hand. “Not so much anymore, Richie.”
Richie grinned at the head coach. “Ron’s alright. He sure ain’t no scout.”
“Just stay to the outside of the track when the team gets going, Mr. Tuck. Sorry to interrupt your workout.”
Ron heard Richie say to the other coaches as he started back into his run. “He wouldn’t know what he was seeing anyway.” The other coaches laughed and Ron felt his ears burn. It made him remember how inadequate they had always made him feel at this school. For the first time, he began to think about whether he really would enjoy coaching football.