Teacher Man: A Memoir (19 page)

He rarely spoke and I felt I had to fill in the silences or we’d just sit there gawking at each other. He never even said, And how do you feel about that? the way they do in the movies. When he closed his notebook I knew the session was over, and it was time for his fee. At the start he told me he would not charge me the full rate. I’d be getting the poor-teacher discount. I wanted to tell him I wasn’t a charity case but I rarely said what was on my mind anyway.

His routine made me feel uncomfortable. He would come into the waiting room and stand. That was my signal to get up and walk into the consultation room. He never offered to shake hands, never passed the time of day. I wondered if it was my job to say hello or stick out my own hand and if I did how he would judge it. Would he say I was doing it out of my massive sense of inferiority? I didn’t want to give him the kind of ammunition where he could decide I was a lunatic like certain ancestors in my family. I wanted to impress him with my cool demeanor, my logic and, if possible, my wit.

On the first visit he watched while I tried to decide what to do with myself. Would this be like confession? Examination of Conscience? Should I sit in that tall high chair or should I lie on the couch the way they do it in the movies? If I sat in the chair I’d have to face him for fifty minutes but if I stretched out on the couch I could look at the ceiling and avoid his eyes. I sat in the chair and he sat in his chair and I felt relieved there was no sign of disapproval on his face.

After a few visits I wanted to quit, walk over to a Third Avenue bar for the serenity of an afternoon beer. I didn’t have the courage or I wasn’t angry enough, yet. Week after week I sat and babbled in my chair, sometimes twice a week because, he said, I needed more frequent attention. I wanted to ask him why, but I was beginning to understand that his method was to make me figure it out for myself. If that’s the case, I asked myself, Why am I paying him? Why couldn’t I sit in Central Park and look at trees and squirrels and let my troubles swim to the surface? Or why couldn’t I sit in a pub, have a few beers, look inward, examine my conscience? That would save hundreds of dollars. I wanted to come right out with it and say, Doctor, what’s wrong with me? Why am I here? I’d like a diagnosis for all the money I’m paying you even if you’re giving me the poor-teacher discount. If you put a name on my ailment I might be able to look it up and figure out a cure. I can’t be coming in here week after week blathering about my life and not knowing whether I’m at the beginning or the middle or the end.

I could never talk to the man like that. I wasn’t brought up like that. It wouldn’t be polite and he might be offended. I wanted to look good, didn’t want him to feel sorry for me. Surely he could see how reasonable and balanced I was, despite my struggle with a troubled marriage and my aimlessness in the world.

He scribbled away in his notebook and, even though he never showed it, I think he had a good time with me. I told him about my life in Ireland and in the classroom. I did my best to be lively and entertaining, to assure him all was well. I didn’t want to upset him in any way. But if all was well, what was I doing there in the first place? I wanted to make him respond, one little smile, one little word to show his appreciation for my efforts. Nothing. He won. He carried the day.

Then he startled me. He said, Aha, dropped his notebook to his lap and stared at me. I was afraid to speak. What had I said to trigger this Aha?

I think you’ve hit paydirt, he said.

Oh, another paydirt moment. The chairman at Fashion Industries High School had complimented me on hitting paydirt with my lesson on the parts of the sentence.

All I had said before the Aha was that, outside of my high school classes, I felt shy with people. In groups I could hardly talk unless I’d had a few drinks, unlike my wife or my brother, who could march up to people and get into lively conversations. That was the paydirt.

After the Aha he said, Hmm. You might benefit from participation in a group. It might be a step forward if you interacted with other people. We have a small group here. You’d be number six.

I didn’t want to be number six. I didn’t know what interacting meant. Whatever it was I didn’t want to do it. How could I tell him the way I felt, that this was all a waste of time and money? I had to be polite no matter what. Six weeks blathering in this chair and I felt worse than ever. When would I be able to walk up to people and chat in that easy Alberta, Malachy way?

My wife said it was a good idea even if it cost more money every week. She said I lacked certain social skills, that I was a little rough around the edges, that group work might lead to a big breakthrough.

That led to a quarrel that lasted for hours. Who was she to tell me I was rough around the edges like some mick fresh off the boat with bog mud on his brogues? I told her I was not going to spend hours with a bunch of New York loonies whining about their lives and trotting out intimate secrets. Bad enough I spent my youth whispering my sins to priests who yawned and made me promise never to sin again for fear of offending poor Jesus suffering up there on the cross for my sins. Now she and the shrink wanted me to blab again. No.

She said she was sick of hearing about my miserable little Catholic childhood. I didn’t blame her. I was sick of my miserable childhood, too, the way it followed me across the Atlantic and kept nagging at me to be made public. Alberta said if I didn’t continue my therapy I was in deep trouble.

Therapy? What do you mean?

That’s what you’re getting, and if you don’t stick with it this marriage is over.

That was tempting. If I were single again I’d be free to wander Manhattan. I could have said, All right. The marriage is over, but I let it go. Even if I were free what woman in her right mind would have me anyway, a meandering rough-around-the-edges pedagogue blabbing his life away to a Jeeves on East Ninety-sixth Street? I thought of an Irish saying, “Contention is better than loneliness,” and stayed where I was.

They said shocking things in that group. There was talk of sex with fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, visiting uncles, a rabbi’s wife, an Irish setter, sex with a jar of chicken livers, sex with a man who came to fix a refrigerator and stayed for days with his clothes dropped on the kitchen floor. These were things you’d reveal only to a priest, but these group people didn’t mind telling their secrets to the world. I knew a bit about sex. I had read the Kama Sutra,
Lady Chatterly’s Lover,
and the
One Hundred and Twenty Days of Sodom
of the Marquis de Sade, but they were only books and all in the imagination of the authors, I thought. D. H. Lawrence and the Marquis himself would have been shocked if they’d sat in this group.

We sat in a semicircle with Henry facing us, scribbling away in his notebook, occasionally nodding. Then one day there was a silence after one man talked about going to Mass and taking the communion wafer home to masturbate on it. He said that was his way of severing all connection with the Roman Catholic Church and what he did was so thrilling he often repeated that little act just for the fun. He knew there wasn’t a priest in the world who would give him absolution for such an abomination.

This was my fourth session with this group and I hadn’t said a word. At that moment I wanted to get up and walk out. I wasn’t much of a Catholic anymore, but I would never think of using a communion wafer for my sexual enjoyment. Why didn’t that man simply quit the church and go about his business?

Henry knew what I was thinking. He stopped scribbling and asked me if there was anything I wanted to say to that man and I felt my face burning. I shook my head. A red-haired woman said, Oh, come on. You’ve been here four times. You haven’t said a word. Why should we expose ourselves so you can leave here every day all smug and silent and tell our secrets to your friends in bars?

The man with the communion story said, Yeah, I put myself on the line here, buddy, and we’d like to hear from you. What’s your plan? You gonna sit on your ass and let us do the work?

Henry asked Irma, young woman to my left, what she thought of me, and I was surprised when she massaged my shoulder and said she felt power. She said she’d like to be a student in my class, that I must be a good teacher.

Did you hear that, Frank? said Henry. Power.

I knew they were waiting for me to say something. I felt I should make a contribution. I once slept with a prostitute in Germany, I said.

Oh, well, said the red-haired woman. Give him credit. He tried.

Big deal, said the communion man.

Tell us about it, said Irma.

I went to bed with her.

So? said the red-haired woman.

That’s all. I went to bed with her. I paid her four marks.

Henry saved me. Time is up. See you next week.

I never went back. I thought he might telephone to see why I had dropped out, but Alberta said they were not supposed to do that. You had to make up your own mind, and if you didn’t return, it meant you were sicker than ever. She said a therapist could do only so much, and if I wanted to take chances with my mental health, Your blood be upon your head.

What?

It’s from the Bible.

I am leaving the office of Professor Walton, head of the English Department at Trinity College. He said, Yes, quite, to my application for admission to the doctoral program and, Yes, quite, to my dissertation topic, “Irish-American Literary Relations,
1889
–
1911
.” Why these terminal dates? In
1889
William Butler Yeats published his first book of poetry and in
1911
, in Philadelphia, Abbey Theater actors were pelted with various objects after a performance of
The Playboy of the Western World
. Professor Walton said, Interesting. My dissertation mentor would be Professor Brendan Kenneally, he said, A fine young poet and scholar from County Kerry. I was now, officially, a Trinity man, exalted, dwelling in marble halls. I tried to walk out the front gate like a man accustomed to walking out that front gate. I walked very slowly so that the American tourists would notice me. Back in Minneapolis they’d tell the folks how they spotted an authentic debonair Trinity man.

When you’re admitted to the doctoral program at Trinity you might as well celebrate by walking up Grafton Street to McDaid’s pub where you sat long ago with Mary from Bewley’s. A man at the bar said, Over from America, I suppose? How did he know? It’s the clothes. You can always tell a Yank by the clothes, he said. I felt friendly, told him about Trinity, the dream come true. He turned hostile. Jaysus, it’s a sad fookin’ day when you have to come to Dublin for a fookin’ university. Don’t they have tons of ’em in America, or is it the way they didn’t want you and are you a Protestant or what?

Was he joking? I’d have to get used to the ways of Dublin men.

It was dawning on me that I was an outsider, foreigner, returned Yank and, on top of it, a Limerickman. I thought I’d come back a conquering hero, a returned Yank with college degrees, bachelor and master, man who survived nearly ten years in the high schools of New York. I made the mistake of thinking I’d fit into the warm life of Dublin pubs. I thought I’d move in a circle so bright, witty and literary that American scholars, prowling its periphery, would relay my every bon mot to academia back home and I’d be invited to lecture on the Irish literary scene to irresistible coeds at Vassar and Sarah Lawrence.

It was not to be. If there was a circle I was never part of it. I prowled the periphery.

I stayed in Dublin for two years. My first apartment was at Sea-view Terrace off Ailesbury Road, where Anthony Trollope lived when he rode his horse around Ireland as a postal inspector and every morning wrote three thousand words. My landlady told me his ghost still walked and she was convinced the manuscript of a major novel was hidden in the walls of his old house. I knew the ghost of Mr. Trollope was in residence because of the way the grease would suddenly congeal around my fried eggs and rashers when he made his midnight rounds. I explored the apartment looking for that manuscript till the neighbors complained about my knocking on the walls at all hours. I floundered in Dublin. I started every day with the best intentions. I had morning coffee at Bewley’s and worked at the National Library or the Trinity College library. At noon I told myself I was hungry and strolled out for a sandwich at a nearby pub: Neary’s, McDaid’s, the Bailey. A sandwich needs to be washed down with a pint and, as the wags said, Bird never flew on one wing. Another pint might loosen my tongue and help me chat with other customers and soon I convinced myself I was enjoying myself. When the pubs closed for the afternoon holy hour I had coffee again at Bewley’s. It was all procrastination. Weeks passed and my research into Irish-American literary relations was going nowhere. I told myself I was an ignoramus who knew nothing of American literature and had a sketchy grasp of Irish literature. I would need background and that meant reading the histories of both countries. When I read Irish history I filled index cards with any reference to America. When I read American history I filled index cards with any reference to Ireland.

Reading the histories was not enough. Now I had to read the major authors and discover how they influenced or were influenced by their counterparts on the other side of the Atlantic. Of course Yeats had American connections and influences. Of course Edmund Dowden, of Trinity College, was one of the first Europeans to champion Walt Whitman, but what was I to do with all this? What was I to say? And, after all my troubles, would anyone give a fiddler’s fart?

I had made other discoveries, and off I went snuffling down paths far from American Transcendentalism and the Irish Literary Revival. Here were accounts of the Irish hacking and digging and fighting and singing on the Erie Canal, on the Union Pacific Railroad and in the American Civil War itself. On opposite sides, Irishmen often fought their own brothers and cousins. It seemed that wherever there was a war the Irish fought on both sides, even in Ireland. At school in Limerick we heard repeatedly the long sad story of Ireland’s sufferings under the Saxon heel, but barely a word about the Irish in America, their building and fighting and singing. Now I read about Irish music in America, the power and genius of the Irish in American politics, the exploits of the Fighting
69
th, the millions who cleared a path to the Oval Office for John F. Kennedy. I read accounts of how mean Yankees discriminated against the Irish all over New England and how the Irish fought back and became mayors, governors, party bosses.