Joseph McElroy - Women and Men

"I don’t know this geography," said Mayn, "but I got chased by a patrol car in high school without a license and drove across a wood bridge and it fell to pieces behind me—"

— but it was dark, the streetlamps were still bright, and Gordon had gotten up much too early.

At the school gate there was Metz waiting. At the last second Metz stepped inside ahead of Gordon and leapt up the steps into a glare coming off the glass doors; it was the sun, and the time was the normal time. In no time, Gordon reached his classroom and Metz had already begun addressing the class in German, harsh and speechifying, and two girls were giggling like children. Gordon was at the bulletin board untacking clippings as they were needed to illustrate Metz’s talk and the board flashed. But in the dream Metz didn’t know that with each new piece of newsprint untacked the accompanying explosion on the bulletin board was in the Pacific Ocean, not western Europe.

He was telling his daily life that he’d had in Alsace; they used wooden plates there—

"Was that what he actually did talk about?" Mayn asked.

"Yes," said Gordon, but in the dream his French and German were so easy to understand (like a story you don’t listen to the actual words of) that Gordon recognized his own mother’s slick-haired Italian cobbler in his basement shop on the south side of Montague Street and red decorated Flexible Flyers almost out of control on the ice and snow racing down the harbor end of Montague Street that led to Furman Street and the docks, down Montague’s cobblestone hill covered and quieted with the wintry white gravity of the air itself — or elsewhere, a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta accompanied by an alternately loud and nearly inaudible piano coming out of a brick house on Garden Place with a brass knocker helping the piano keep time to "What a very very nice young man"—

"Dreams," said Mayn.

— and red clay tennis courts at Henry Street between Remsen and Jor-alemon and Gordon’s dad out of breath going for a drop shot and Gordon’s parents standing elbow to elbow sharing a hymnal by the light of Presbyterian stained glass while for some reason the shallow, carved-wood offering plate was reaching into their pew to get their attention, and Metz’s French and German were so easy to understand and Metz told how many planes while Gordon was trying to tell them none of this was true.

"All I want to know," said Mayn, "is who took your place as the fifth-grade angel?"

Gordon had been only one of the fifth-grade angels. It was lost in history. But the kid who had been Joseph and got sick, got well and came back and ended up an angel, whether substituting or not Gordon didn’t recall.

"You’ve taken a leave of absence," said Mayn, "you said you were unemployed?"

"I thought I was not living as I ought to," said Gordon.

"Oh is that all," said Mayn.

Gordon hadn’t said leave of absence. So how did Mayn know? "What have I missed?" Gordon said, standing up and looking around the room, looking for mementoes of Mayn’s adventures. "It’s a rambling memory."

"The Metzes didn’t get out of Europe till ‘44?" asked Mayn.

Gordon actually didn’t know. Perhaps if the Metzes had made a dramatic escape the kids at school would have heard the story.

"Had they been in hiding?"

Gordon didn’t know. He and Metz were friends for a few months. The Metzes moved to Manhattan the next year, he thought. Yes, Metz took violin lessons in Greenwich Village, someone had said.

Gordon said he had to go. "One other thing," he said. "The Christmas pageant, right?"

"Right," said Mayn, "but did Metz take lessons when you knew him?"

"Not in Greenwich Village. That was after he moved away. He visited school the next year and stood in the corridor, he had his violin case with him. He was quite a tough fellow."

"But the pageant," said Mayn.

"Metz’s parents came. So did my mother. She knew Mrs. Metz from Civitas it comes back to me — a women’s club that had speakers. It was Metz’s father who created the scene."

"What happened?" said Mayn.

Gordon and Mayn both laughed. "Maurice hadn’t told his parents he was playing Joseph. His father was offended. I’m sure they weren’t especially observant Jews; maybe that was the reason. Anyway, carrying a candle was one thing; playing Joseph was something else. Miss Gore kept saying, ‘He was really very good,’ meaning how Maurice had looked in the tableau. I remember him after the pageant standing there with everybody and his father talking to him and then to the principal who was a tall, handsome man with a black mustache. Maurice was standing there at attention. His father was upset. Mrs. Hollander was there, too, and I remember she and my mother talked like friends, like two women; and when Mrs. Hollander came up, taking it all in, I remember my mother turned away from the Metzes and the principal and Miss Gore to pay her respects to Mrs. Hollander; and Mrs. Hollander had a smile on her round face with all the rouge; she had a sense of humor, you know; she was little; and instead of answering what I imagine my mother must have said, Mrs. Hollander said into the group, ‘I think you’re expecting quite a lot of your son.’ And something in how she said it shut Mr. Metz up and next thing the principal was introducing Mrs. Hollander to Mr. and Mrs. Metz, and my mother and I were so conscious of what had happened to Mrs. Hollander…"

Gordon had finished. He had been standing, addressing Mayn who looked up at him from the couch but now swung his head around to look toward the front hall where the tentative sound of a key in a lock could be heard.

The door creaked, and Gordon heard the voice of his own wife Norma say, "Oh you’re home."

"So is someone else," said Mayn, hauling himself up, as Norma in the hall was heard to say, "Oh?"

"I got home earlier than I expected," said Mayn. Gordon wondered if Norma was to have been a welcoming committee.

She was in the doorway now, looking at Gordon, and she was wearing a pale brown cashmere sweater with a monogram, and she had that plain-boned prettiness and that strength of demeanor that Gordon knew he took for granted, and she was hanging on to the red rubber bulb of the plant sprayer.

Gordon remembered the trailing ivy-like plant he’d noticed. "Got yourself a job?" he said.

"What are you doing here?" said Norma, taking a few steps into the room and stopping.

"We’ve been talking," said Mayn.

"What about?" said Norma.

"Oh, what’s become of us," said Mayn.

"I’ll bet," said Norma, but with an irony of relief risen in her voice, yet Gordon still did not look from her to Mayn.

"Yeah, just reminiscing," said Mayn. "It’s that time of day. ."

"— when," Gordon added, "the Chacma baboons of southern Rhodesia get melancholy supposedly."

‘They have each other," said Norma.

Mayn said, "He was going to tell me about the day they exploded the cloud cover that makes Venus into a greenhouse."

"Extemporaneously," said Gordon, sitting down again, and understanding now what Mayn had said to the new doorman, the remark that had mas temprano in it — he’d said he had come home a day early. "No," Gordon said, "I don’t think I can manage any more history right now."

"I’ve been watering Jim’s plants while he’s away," said Norma.

Gordon wanted to make a bad joke, but couldn’t think of one.

She went out of the room. Gordon heard water running. Mayn did not say, "Hey wait a minute, didn’t you know?"

"So that was the year I skipped a grade," said Gordon.

"That year you skipped was pretty packed," said Mayn kindly.

"That was only three months of it," said Gordon.

The water stopped. For a few moments there wasn’t a sound from the kitchen.