Within Close Range: When Opposites Teach -- in Two Parts

Part One - The Ill-fitting Suit

Monsieur Neumark is how I knew him - my freshman/sophomore year, high school French teacher.

A small, skinny man with a sparse goatee and dark, frizzy hair with a Bob Ross perm. 

He really got into the whole “French” thing: from his starched, striped shirts with French cuffs, to his far-out, 1970s-wide, Toulouse Letrec ties; which he regularly swapped with an ascot for that truly continental vibe.

But that vibe didn’t jibe - at least not with me - because I found him an odd, little man who wore wool socks.

Around his neck. 

To help his throat during frequent bouts with laryngitis, he once explained — en francais — when I stared at it a little too long while standing at the side of his desk one day.

Determined, he seemed, to be somebody else.

Someone more interesting, more cosmopolitan.

E tres certainment, un les Francais.

And maybe he was all of these things.

But not to me.

Because all I saw was an odd, little man, struggling to try on someone else’s suit.

Someone else’s life.

But it wasn’t a match, as he squiggled and squirmed in the ill-fitting being in front of the classroom, annoyed when we didn’t grab French-made suits of our own.

And each day I watched him be someone he wasn’t, which made me not listen.

Which made me feel artless and awkward and restless and destined to fail because I just didn’t get it.

Or him.

Monsieur Neumark was like the wool sock around his neck.

Out of place and out of step.

And I did not care to follow.

Part Two:  Mrs. Alleman’s Magic

I once wrote a children’s fairytale in which a funny, little witch named Addie Mostsincere leads the two heroes on an exciting and daring adventure. In the years since, I’d never attributed the character to anyone in particular, until just recently, when I began writing about a beloved high school teacher, Enid Alleman, or Mrs. Alleman.

A teeny, tiny titan of the teaching profession, who I was lucky enough to have for Speech my junior year. 

Like my fairytale character, she had a little magic.

Most kids liked Mrs. Alleman because  Mrs. Alleman was not like most teachers.

She was not like most people.

Hovering somewhere near 5 feet tall, she wore Peter Pan blouses, pedal pushers and ballerina flats. Her dark hair had a pixie cut and you’d never see her without her red, cat-eye glasses, behind which lay a set of mischievous and wise, yet sorrowful eyes.

Her diminuitive size and spritly appearance gave her that Fairy Godmother-like quality, but her immense character, passion and compassion gave her wings.  

Entering her classroom was not like entering other classrooms and it wasn’t all the personal knick-knacks she had filled it with over the years. It was Mrs. Alleman. Who filled it with her penpal-to-prisoners personality.

And evenmoreso, allowed her students to fill it with theirs. 

Unabashed and unreservedly.

I never knew what to expect. No one did. 

Mrs. Alleman liked the idea of finding one’s self and one’s inspiration in the unexpected moment. 

One long overdue, spring day, with the two, immense sash windows of her classroom fully raised to invite in the sweet breezes, my brother stood at the podium, in front of Mrs. Alleman’s 4th period speech class when a sudden gust of wind snatched the paper from the platform and quickly swept it through the enormous windows, into the courtyard, one floor down.

Without hesitation, Jim dashed from the classroom (just ahead of some classmates trying to beat him to it), down the stairs and into the courtyard, where he found his wind swept speech and — with Mrs. Alleman and the remainder of the class leaning from the sills — finished his presentation.

Barely missing a beat.

Mrs. Alleman told students about the incident for years and I don’t think because of the random silliness of it.

Which she wouldn’t deny.

But because of what Jim did with it.

He followed the breezes, instead of fighting them.

And it was musical - even a little magical.

Just as Mrs. Alleman was.

Who, like Addie, urged us heroes to explore the worlds within and without.

To follow the breezes.

Within Close Range: Tubular Bells

Built on a slope, at the end of a cul du sac, down a short, steep drive, everything about the holiday rental house feels dark, narrow, sunken.

And hairy.

The owners of the house on the outskirts of Snowmass, Colorado have several Huskies. Or rather, several Huskies own this house, as can be gathered by the Husky-related photos, ribbons, paintings and pillows.

The neighbors next door also have one of these intrepid snow dogs, who sits on the frozen earth, at the end of a chain by their front door, all day and all night.

Quietly watching us come and go.

Everything about the rental house feels well-loved and lived-in - if not a little too. An ingenious plan (or a happy accident) to be staying in a place where messes and mishaps could easily be forgiven.

Easily hidden.

Where Mom and Dad - determined to enjoy at least some of the family vacation, without the family - can leave us with little worry of expensive damage or extensive injury. 

So, with plans for dinner out with friends, Mom and Dad leave the five of us with several pizza delivery menues, cash, and a warning to be on our best behaviour. 

By the time our rapidly delivered dinner is being noisily digested and discharged in a particularly fierce burping and farting duel between Jim and Mark, we’ve already started getting restless. 

Bored.

But as the moon rises, the explorable world around us shrinks to within the dark rooms and narrow corridors of someone else’s life.

Someone who doesn’t like T.V.

But loves albums.

Which Jim discovers (along with a stereo system) while snooping. 

Leaving him crouched over the turntable, Chris, Mia and I decide to make  a half-hearted attempt to ready for bed - maybe play cards - and head to our shared bedroom.

I look for a corner to crouch in where siblings’ spying eyes can’t see me in my undies.

“Oh, Anne, I used to bathe you for God’s sake!”

Chris’s words offer the opposite of comfort, so I find a spot between the window and bed where I shiver and squiggle into my nightgown.

Just outside the window, I hear a mournful howl that makes all the hairs, on all of my goosebumps, stand at attention. 

Peeking around the curtains and rubbing away enough frost on the glass to spy out, there, in the shadows of the bright moon, sits the Husky next door, baying into the starry night.

Receiving no reply to his woeful song.

He howls again and I linger at the window, hoping to hear an answer to this haunting moonlight serenade, but hear, instead, strange noises from within.

Jim is up to something… 

We all sense it.

But before Chris, Mia and I even have a chance to share our concerns…

… the entire house goes completely dark.

Crap.

The Husky howls again, filling the dark room with his sorrowful song.

“Jim!!!!”

Silence.

“Don’t be an idiot, Jim,” Chris shouts through the closed and now locked bedroom door into the unknown. “Turn the lights back on!”

No reply.

There’s a tap on the door. 

Mia, Chris and I look at each other, but say nothing.

There’s another tap.

Mark whispers meekly from the other side, “Come on you guys… Let me in…”

Now, Mark has been Jim’s loyal minion many times before, so we know opening that door might mean the intended ambush is upon us. But Mark is a lousy liar and an even lousier actor and his frightened pleas are a little too real. So, we move en masse to the door, open it only slightly, and grabbing for Mark’s skinny arm in the dark, Chris yanks the youngest our our clan through.

Rubbing his manhandled limb, he pleads innocence as we pepper him with questions. He soon convinces us that he has no idea where Jim is, or what he’s up to.

Before long, we have our answer.

From out of the pitch black, the rise and fall of fluttering notes on a piano (which had become very familiar to us since the day Jim returned home with the album, Tubular Bells), can be heard coming from the living room.

Forever to be fused with the cult horror film, “The Exorcist”,  this simple series of horrificly hypnotic notes is currently sending shivers up millions of theater-going spines.

Including those of us not old enough to see Linda Blair’s head spin.

Legendary tales of the movie’s shocking scenes (and cursed actors) have been playground fodder for months. 

It’s clear, Jim is out to scare the daylights out of each and every one of us.

He’s spent nearly an hour trying to figure out the house’s electrical panel so he can turn off all the house lights, but leave the stereo playing.

He is truly committed.

Or perhaps, should be.

As the terror-inspiring piano solo plays on, I feel trapped, huddled there in the small bedroom.

Defenseless.

Directionless.

Do I laugh?

Do I cry?

Pee my pants?

The longer we stay holed up behind a locked bedroom door, the longer Jim has to think of ways to scare us even worse.

It’s decided. We have to act. 

We have to head into the dark.

Face the music.

Find Jim.

Or let him find us.

Only guessing at each other’s expressions in the dark and in our whispers, Chris quietly unlocks the bedroom door and cracks it open slightly to see what she can see.

Which is nothing.

She opens it a little wider.

Still more black.

Tubular Bells is now flooding the room.

He’s out there, somewhere.

In the dark.

Ready to pounce.

Without so much as a warning, Mark is unceremoniously shoved out the door first. As my eyes adjust to the dark, I watch his small, shirtless frame stall in the center of the hallway, not knowing which way to turn.

“Do you see anything?” Chris whispers.

If Mark replies, none of us hear it over the growing musical crescendo.

He swivels right and begins to head further down the hallway toward the other bedrooms. A daring, devil-may-care move away from all known exits.

We feel obliged to follow, but as soon as the three of us step into the hall and turn toward Mark (who is already nearing the end of it), a dark, bellowing-mass-of-a-figure pounces from a hallway storage closet toward our tiny, hapless human sacrifice.

All I see before scrambling over Chris and Mia in a frenzied retreat, is Mark’s body suddenly stiffen and spring a foot off the ground before collapsing into a heap on the hairy carpeting, in the center of the dark, narrow hall.

Chris, Mia and I scramble over each other to get to the bedroom, then slam and lock the door.

Leaving Mark.

In the dark.

To fend for himself.

When all is quiet again, we crack open the door to see if he’s still there.

But he’s nowhere to be seen.

They’re nowhere to be seen.

Mark’s defection to the other side is neither unexpected, nor unwarranted.

Yet it’s also unsettling.

In the still, dark bedroom of the still, dark house, all I hear is Chris and Mia breathing.

And the Husky howling.

Long and sorrowfully.

Within Close Range: Mutton Stew

I’m in the middle of the pine-paneled restaurant at Boyne Mountain Resort, somewhere at the top of Michigan’s mitt, between Lake Michigan and Lake Huron.

Sitting in a large, carved pine chair.

Twice as large as it needs to be.

Four times for me.

Looking around the big, round table, there are siblings to the left and siblings to the right, with Mom and Dad straight ahead.

Everyone capable of reading the menu, is.

Scanning mine for a third or fourth time, my eyes keep returning to the word “stew”, which conjures a mouthwatering picture in my head - big, chunks of tender meat in a rich, dark gravy.

“How different could mutton and beef be?” a voice in my head insists - repeatedly - drowning out all inner arguments and already placed orders.

It's my turn.

"I'll have the Mutton Stew, please.”

The waitress looks up from her pad, hesitates, and then looks to Mom and Dad.

“Oh, Annie, you won’t like that,” Mom gently suggests. “It has a very strong flavor.”

But I protest.

“Anne Elizabeth.”

“Please, Dad. I know I’ll like it ,” I plead, revving the perpetually high-powered motor that drives most eight-year-olds.

Dad raises his eyebrows.

The lady is waiting.

“The Troops” are hungry and restless.

Mom urges me, once more, to reconsider, but I remain unflappable.

Dad is looking directly at me when the waitress says, “All right then, Mutton Stew for the young lady.”

Triumphant, I can already taste the dark, rich gravy.

Minutes seem like hours.

The baskets of crackers and breadsticks and the pats of butter on small mountains of ice in the center of the big round table are rapidly disappearing.

Just follow the crumb trails to the culprits.

Behind my family and the large, glass windows overlooking the resort’s ski hills, the slopes are ablaze and white and dotted with skiiers still eager to slip and slide down the gentle, rolling, Midwestern hills.

The hungry voice in my head has now enlisted my stomach, which rumbles, low and loud. Even with all of the motion and commotion of the busy resort, all I can think about is my stew until the waitress returns with her overburdened tray.

Burgers and fries pass by my eyes.

Mom has soup and Dad’s given pasta.

It takes two hands to carry the large, shallow bowl heading my way.

I can hardly keep still in my seat.

My eyes follow the large, round bowl to the place setting in front of me and I look down to see…

… a sea of grayish-brownish goo; its foul smell already invading my nostrils.

Pungent.

Powerful.

Horrible.

My hunger instantly retreats, but all eyes at the table are on me.

Even the waitress is loitering nearby.

I can’t possibly back down before the first bite and so, with reluctance, I grab the smallest spoon and in it goes.

Realeasing more stink from the bowl of brown-gray gloom.

I scoop up a small, dark morsel; highly doubtful about this dubious-scented mouthful.

It’s instant repulsion.

Unbridled revulsion.

A funky chunk of grisly meat that my tongue and teeth want to reject and my throat wants to eject into the clean, white napkin in my lap.

But it’s swallow it, or my pride.

The mutton punishes me all the way down.

Without a word, Mom and Dad turn their attention to their own plates.

The Troops follow.

While I’m left alone to stew.