Two men tried to rob him on the street. He went crazy, screamed “You can’t do this to me or anyone else in this neighborhood,” and started to swing wildly and one went down and stayed down after his knife flew into the street and he ran after the second one, caught him and picked him up and threw him through a store window and then punched and kicked him till the man said “Please, I give up, get a rag for my neck,” and held them both on the ground till the police came. The newspapers wrote about it the next day. “Male dancer beats up toughs,” the headline of one article said.
“I have to stop teaching,” he told his wife. “I know we need the money and health insurance but I can’t take another week of it no matter how good the kids might be some days.” She said “Just stick in there, you’re only going through a bad period in your work, and in ten years you can retire at half pay and still be young enough to do what the hell you want for the rest of your life and with never a complaint about it from me.” “Maybe I can take up painting now,” he said, “or classical piano playing. Creativeness runs in my family, or did.”
His dead brother has showed up in his dreams about once a month for the last five years. Usually he was guiding or lecturing him. “You’re not loving enough to your wife…You don’t pay enough attention to your daughters…Be more tolerant of mom, she’s getting old…Go back to choreography if you can’t think of anything else — you never really gave yourself a chance.” “How is it where you are?” he asked the last time and his brother said “Don’t get nervous about it — it’s fine for everyone, but do what you can to take the normal time and beyond to get here.”
One image keeps on coming back to him. He could be anywhere, on a subway, lying in a bed, in his classroom or listening to music, and it just drops into his head. It’s of his mother drying him off and powdering him after he was through taking his own bath.
His older daughter gave him a tie for his last two birthdays and the last Christmas. His wife had a big laugh over the last one. “Don’t you know what it means?” she said and he said “I don’t believe in that stuff or not that much. She just knows I always stain or wrinkle my ties but thinks I look handsome in them.”
He got an anonymous typewritten note from a student. “You are my favorite teacher ever and I’ll tell you why. Some teachers study to teach, you were born into it so didn’t have to study. A born into it teacher is both smart, patient and kind and something else no one can define. Thank you. Signed: a student (female, but that’s not important) but a lifelong friend.”
Today’s his birthday and his watch stopped on the morning hour his mother said he was born. He wound it up but it didn’t start again.
That was when he thought about the hour and day he was born. He took it to a watchmaker who said it would cost more to repair than if he bought the watch new. “The parts now are worth more than the whole. Buy the new nonwindup kind — quartz, the only thing today. Those watches will eventually put me out of business, but they’ll save you a lot of trouble.” “No, I’m an old fogy on things like that — sell me a good windup watch.” The watchmaker said “You have a birthday coming up?” and he said no. “You have a wife though, right?” and he said “Divorced.” “Children?” and he said “Two daughters.” “Old enough to buy a watch?” and he said “The oldest might be, if I wanted a cheap watch, but the youngest is only five.” “A girl friend then?” and he said “None and none in sight.” “I was only suggesting all these because no man should buy his own watch.” “I don’t believe that. Just give me a round one that’ll work even better than the last and which has numerals and has to be wound once a day.”
Encountering Revolution
Georgia and I are getting our son dressed to go to the dentist when the doorbell rings. Jimmy wants to wear shorts and Georgia’s insisting he wear slacks and I’m saying as I go to the door that I don’t care what he wears so long as she gets him out of here and I can continue practicing for my recital tonight.
It’s our landlady, Mrs. Longmore, who says “Quickly, hurry, turn on your radios, turn up the TVs, war’s been declared, the whole country’s going to ruins.”
Mrs. Longmore has been known to use any excuse or lie to get into one of her apartments to see if the tenant’s installed a new heavy appliance without notifying her for the surcharge on the rent, so I tell her to calm herself, the only war currently raging is between our son and his folks, and to quiet my own nerves I turn on the radio to a classical music station which at this hour only plays Baroque.
The announcer’s speaking only a little less hysterically than Mrs. Longmore about a civil war taking place. I figure it’s this very station’s radio play about a war that’s disturbing her. I switch stations to prove my point, but they’re all giving the same kind of news.