But: “Knowing how to type and take shorthand, how to keep accounts and speak Spanish will be useful to you all the rest of your lives,” Mr. O’Reilly induced. “You’ll be repaid many times over for the time you spent taking these courses to learn these subjects. Remember what I told some of you about the marbles that those I didn’t lose were stolen from me. Don’t let the same thing happen to you. It won’t, if you take these courses. They’re true business courses. You’ll learn to be alert in these matters. And in today’s world you have got to be. And if you take them in P.S. 24, you’ll be getting as good instruction right here as they get in the High School of Commerce downtown, right here in the school you’ve always gone to and with the teachers you know and who know you.” Mr. O’Reilly’s tic tocked away as he talked.
Mr. Housman, the Geography teacher, became instructor of typing and shorthand, teaching both subjects with all the assiduous care and neatness of one who had but recently learned the skills himself. He showed the class how to erase errors in typing by tucking a sheet of paper under the erasure like a dustpan to catch the crumbs of rubber before they lodged in the new machines — and cuffed Ira soundly when he was caught ignoring the practice.
Mr. Sullivan taught bookkeeping as well as first-year high school English, and found it impossible to understand how Ira could be so discerning in the one and so abysmally obtuse in the other. And he said so in no uncertain terms. But why in hell you debited when you debited, and credited when you credited, eluded Ira continually, though classmates not as bright as he was seemed to understand quite readily. And how to keep an asset from slipping with protean ease into a liability — and back — was beyond his power. It was beyond Mr. Sullivan’s power also to explain the difference either — in any permanent way — so both teacher and pupil despaired. Mr. Kilcoyne, the dairyman from Yonkers, taught Civics, and Mr. Lennard, on the strength of numerous vacations spent in Puerto Rico, became transformed from an American History teacher to a Spanish teacher.
IV
Wracking arthritic nights, and the old man. . In his excruciating rigidity he needed M to lift him to a sitting position in bed. No need dwelling on it. A peculiar insight this pain bestowed, hackneyed and vivid at the same time: He was no more than a suffering member of the animal kingdom. .
Last night he intended having a discussion with M about his son Jess, a discussion he hoped to tape; but conditions were inopportune, and he never brought the matter up. Now it swung in a dull, slow arc in his mind. After his return from Africa — from Tanzania, where he had taught school, from Johannesburg where he had operated a computer, from a long hitchhike to Dakar — Jess seemed by his estranged manner to have come to the decision no longer to communicate his innermost thoughts and problems with his parents, his father in particular. And with some brief interludes, he continued the practice — expanded it, until only the most surface topics were subject of discourse, those addressing the least personal concerns. He shunned, he guarded against any kind of serious interchange. And with Jane’s revelation of Jess’s actions, a complex of hypotheses emerged in Ira’s mind: That had his son spoken of his “problems,” had he and his father interchanged reflections, or better, he and both his parents, his behavior might have been modified to a point where he could not have treated Jane so shabbily, as was evidently the case, and with such appalling cruelty and callousness.
But then came the counterthought: It might very well be that his treatment of Jane before the point of crisis in their relations was reached was such that Jess already felt it needed concealing, and hence the cause of the prolonged lacuna in any meaningful communication between son and parent. Said M: “Is your solicitude about Jane based on your resentment of Jess?” And how could Ira deny that it was a component of his attitude: the sense of desolation at being rejected by the one he loved, rejected, excluded. He had never done that with Mom. To the extent possible, immigrant woman though she was, scarcely acquainted with American mores, to the extent that he could, he had told her of his activities, his experiences, and his reflections on his experiences (not so with Pop; he never had, being the spurned one himself from the outset). And yet — he had to admit to himself — his statement was not altogether true: What agonizing perpetrations he had withheld from Mom, what sordid troughs of deed. So there was an analogy here, a limited one, to be sure, between Jess’s refusal to communicate with his father, and his own with Mom. What if he had said: “Mom, I—” What if he had confessed: “Yes, Mom, I—” No, it was impossible. .
He would never be sure, unless somehow the pertinent record could be uncovered or unless he was willing to go to the trouble of trying to locate it. (The public school record, he was reasonably certain, was still extant; but the record of Park & Tilford’s employees, who knew? Was Park & Tilford still in existence?) He would have to make a stab at it, decide arbitrarily which preceded which, if they didn’t take place more or less simultaneously. At any rate, one thing he could certainly count on: that for awhile the two things that played such important though different parts in shaping his life must have overlapped. Interesting, he reflected, this process of introspective delineation, introspective ordering of autobiographical material; it was something in the nature of a chess game, though he knew very little about chess: a supposition in one direction was blocked by a contradictory recollection.
If he had obtained the after-school job with Park & Tilford before he met Farley H in junior high — and it was there Ira certainly met him — then he must have begun work at Park & Tilford when he was still only thirteen, for he was fourteen at almost the same time the new junior high school classes began, which was February. Were juveniles of that age, under the age of fourteen, allowed by law to be hired to do after-school work by well-established businesses? Ira wasn’t sure. Some research, perhaps only a few phone calls could dispel the uncertainty (and he much preferred to work within well-defined contexts). But what the hell. Again, if he went hitchhiking with Farley of a summer’s day, in his junior high school year, which was his fourteenth, why wasn’t he busy at his duties at Park & Tilford? (On the other hand, the two might have gone hitchhiking on a Sunday, although the memory had the aura of a weekday.)
Amid the welter of conflicting impressions, probably his best assumption was that he had actually been hired by Park & Tilford when he was thirteen much to his present (as well as his past) surprise, had worked there during most of eighth grade, and into part of junior high, when he met Farley. If so, that would entail revising some of what he had previously dealt with — not that he would. So, to begin with, Park & Tilford — and there was one very definite bit of “evidence” to buttress his assumption, a bit of incontrovertible mental memorabilia: He recalled beyond all question that he reported for work that first day at Park & Tilford wearing his “new” blue serge Bar Mitzvah suit. That argued proximity to his thirteenth year, argued in favor of the year 1919 as the date he was hired, of his being in the eighth grade.
V
Pop’s countenance was wreathed with cordiality when Ira came home that Friday afternoon. Pop even called him Ira’leh, the name he reserved for Ira when most pleased with his son — or wanted him to run an errand or do some other favor. Ira looked at Mom for explanation.