I Dream Alone Page 5

With the beginning of the new school year I enrolled in Washington Irving High as a junior. The admissions officer tested me on several subjects and it was clear by the look on his face he wasn’t impressed with my score. I had only the bare rudiments of maths and English and almost no knowledge of history. Subjects such as geometry and algebra were foreign to me. There was nothing on the aptitude test about opera, chess or Mozart – or Churchill for that matter. I was placed in the junior grade mainly because the admissions officer was willing to accommodate my enthusiasm rather than my sagacity. Putting me in a class with students a year or two younger was more practical, at least in his mind, than placing me in a lower or higher grade. I was about two years older than the average junior grader. The junior grade seemed like a perfect placement for me. I could fumble and fail there, more than in any other grade, before it became obvious and apparent that my previous academic background was lacking in just about every department.

  My brain had been so conditioned to getting up early since I was thirteen when I started working that getting up at seven every morning in the castle to prepare and serve Mrs. Axe her breakfast in her bedroom was as routine an experience as any I’d had in life.

  Business began and ended Mrs. Axe’s day. Every morning when I entered her bedroom she was inevitably on the phone conducting business. When she put the phone down she engaged me in talking about how I was adjusting to life in high school. Every conversation I had with Mrs. Axe had the element of teacher and pupil. She, like Maggie, had a compulsion to correct my English: so much so I became very self-conscious and often when delivering her breakfast kept my mouth shut. My retreat into silence, however, only made her suspicious and she didn’t hesitate to ask how I was doing in the classroom. I told her I was happy with the entire world of high school. She seemed impressed that I had classes in several subjects she had recommended.

  Because of high school most of my time was now spent outside the walls of the castle. When I came home from school in the late afternoon I’d help Pat and Jim in the kitchen. Every so often the Axes entertained guests and Pat would recruit me to assist her. Because of my new schedule of being up early every morning and spending the day in school I was not expected to be in the company of the Axes or their dinner guests. On the rare occasions when the Axes entertained, I’d walk into the main dining room and meet a few guests but that was not something I did often. Mornings, after serving Mrs. Axe her breakfast, on my way down the marble staircase I’d bump into employees who worked at the office. When asked if I was going to join them at work I’d remind them that I was now a full-time high-school student.

  When questioned by Mr. Axe about my scholastic progress I would purposely divert the conversation to how well I was doing on the soccer team. He, in his usual mode of indifference, would just shake his head and talk about history or opera as if I knew what he was talking about.

  The fact that I had been recruited by the soccer coach to play on the school team actually made Mrs. Axe laugh.

  * * *

  For once something about my childhood in Dublin had come in handy. On the streets in Dublin I picked up the ability to dribble and move the soccer ball without much opposition from opposing players. When Washington Irving played other schools I displayed dexterity with the soccer ball that, at least to some of my teammates, was special and unique. For me it was simply a matter of recalling a routine I had been used to since childhood. Most of the time and in most of the matches I managed to score the winning goals for the high school. After a short time I became popular with those who cheered the team on and when I arrived in school the morning after a game I was greeted by just about every student in my junior class with a smile and a greeting. Some of the boys referred to me as ‘Irish’ while several of the girls in class took it upon themselves to name me ‘Foreign Intrigue’. The ‘foreign’ appellation probably came from the fact that I spoke with an Irish accent.

  One morning, while I was withdrawing my books from my school locker I found a note in it. The note was written in Spanish and it said: “Yo te amo.” It wasn’t signed and I didn’t know what it meant so I took it to a schoolmate, Jerry DiCicco. Jerry had spent time in Spain and was chairman of the Spanish Club at school and he was close to being fluent in Spanish.

  “This says ‘I love you’!” he said to me as he handed the note back to me.

  “It says what?” I asked.

  “It says, ‘I love you’. Who wrote it?”

  I had no idea. I was happily shocked.

  “Someone said they love you in Spanish. Who are you seeing?” Jerry asked me.

  “Nobody,” I answered with a tinge of self-consciousness in my demeanour. I was flustered that someone would put a note in my locker and not sign it. A note that said they loved me.

  “I’ve had a few put in my locker too,” Jerry volunteered.

  “Hey, thanks, Jerry,” I said gratefully and took the note from his hand and put it in one of my school books.

  For the next week, whenever I opened my history book, I’d read the note over and over in English. “I love you. I love you.” The more I read the note the more I wanted to know who wrote it. I assumed it was one of the girls in my history class but I had no idea which one. All of the girls were warm and friendly towards me and I just couldn’t figure out which one had taken the bold step to write me a note in Spanish. When I entered the classroom the next few days I walked around the room hoping I’d spot a Spanish text book. I spotted one then another. It seemed all the girls in my junior-grade class were students of Spanish. I gave up trying to solve the mystery of the Spanish Note.

  * * *

  As I sat in class an announcement came over the public-address system that a school dance would be held the following Saturday night. I couldn’t wait. Seniors, juniors and freshmen were invited to attend and, even though I was a year or two older than my classmates, I felt comfortable about the prospect of attending the dance.

  The next morning when I brought Mrs. Axe her breakfast I told her about the dance. She wasn’t impressed with a low-grade report card I had received recently but in spite of my slow academic progress she appeared to be in favour of my going to the dance. She immediately warned me about alcohol consumption and to be careful behind the wheel of the car. So, with my car on standby and no obligations in the evening at the castle, I looked forward to attending my first high-school dance.

  * * *

  The dance was held in the school gymnasium and popular songs of the day were played over the public-address system. Listening to some of my favourite songs brought back memories of Sunday nights in Dublin when I used to listen to Radio Luxemburg playing the Top Ten hits of the week. Only this time I didn’t have to be sitting outside a neighbour’s house listening to someone else’s radio. The gymnasium was packed to the rafters and just about every student in the entire high school was in attendance. I entered the building wearing new trousers and sports jacket as well as a shirt Mrs. Axe had bought for me recently. After wandering about in a circle I settled and sat on one of the bleachers where I watched couples dance. Several of my school and soccer mates greeted me with warmth that made me feel very much at ease and at home. After the four months since I started at the school, I was getting used to being accepted as one of the gang. My prowess on the soccer field had elevated me in the eyes of some of the other boys in the school and I was welcomed into their circles as if I had lived all my life in Tarrytown.

  When the record of Marty Robbins singing “A White Sports Coat and a Pink Carnation” stopped, someone made an announcement over the address system.

  “And lucky students, boys and girls, the next dance is a Sadie Hawkins!”

  I’d no idea what a Sadie Hawkins meant. A friend on the soccer team told me it was when the girls got to choose what boy they wanted to dance with. The prerogative came only once during the course of the evening. How would this be done, I wondered. The mystery was solved when I noticed almost every girl in attendance crossing the floor in unison a
nd inviting the boys to dance. The expressions on some of the boys’ faces reflected disappointment and displeasure because they were being invited to dance by the wrong girl.

  As I sat, amazed and amused, listening to Kay Starr’s voice singing “The Wheel of Fortune”, a girl approached me. She held out her hand and unhesitatingly led me to the centre of the floor. I hadn’t danced since I’d left Dublin and I was about to drown in self-consciousness. The girl, however, was smiling, radiant and looking very confident. If she wasn’t the most beautiful girl at the dance she was certainly in the top five.

  As I held my newly found dance partner at arm’s length she blurted out, without looking at me, “My name is Muriel.”

  I attempted to mumble something interesting to her but I could only say: “I’m Gabriel.”

  Muriel, with her head partly leaning on my shoulder, looked at me and said, “Sí. I know your name.”

  I was so shocked my ears began to heat up. I knew what the word ‘sí’ meant and I instantly stopped dancing.

  “What’s the matter?” Muriel asked.

  “Nothing,” I replied.

  “It’s not nothing! You’re shy. I know you are.”

  It struck me like a bolt of lightning. I assumed my shyness was a secret known only to me. For as long as I could remember the feeling of withdrawal and retreat, brought on by the silent shower of personal exposure, kept me from indulging in personal confrontations. Inwardly and secretly I wanted to battle the feelings that were pulling me back from my impulses. The feelings I had were attached to my days and years and life in Ireland, and for the most part they were to be denied or at the very least ignored.

  What my impulses were exactly at that moment I wasn’t sure because I felt as if my entire body was melting and breaking down and running away from me. I was, to say the least, simply out of control. Anything that heretofore seemed strong and solid about my sense of self had suddenly crumbled away from me. It was as if something in me had exploded and reshaped the definition I had of myself. I wasn’t confident that every particle of my existence would regroup and reshape itself.

  I was standing in the middle of the dance floor when another record with the voice of Eddie Fisher singing “Oh My Papa” was put on and hung in the very air I was breathing. The song reminded me so strongly of how my own papa was different to the one Eddie Fisher was singing about that I was about to choke on fatherly comparisons.

  Despite my engulfing emotions I managed to continue dancing with the beautiful girl who had chosen to dance with me.

  “I love this song,” I said.

  “I do too,” my dancing partner replied.

  “You do?” I asked her.

  She hesitated but, just as I was about to query her on why she liked the song, she answered in a loud and clear voice: “Sí! Sí! Mucho!”

  I immediately stopped dancing and stared at her.

  “What’s the matter?” she asked as if she didn’t know why I had stopped dancing so abruptly.

  “You? The note in my locker!”

  Muriel put her hand on my shoulder as if she had known me for a hundred years. “You understood it?” she asked.

  “No, but Jerry DiCicco translated it.”

  “Jerry’s in my Spanish class,” she said with a smile that was as red as ketchup.

  The music stopped and we both looked at each other and, after what seemed like an eternity of silence, we walked back to one of the small tables that were lined against the wall. A small vase filled with flowers was in the middle of the table and the first thing I did, without much thought, was to take a flower out of the vase and hand it to Muriel. She smiled and seemed pleased with the gesture. We then sat down opposite each other just as another song started up. This time it was “Rock around the Clock” with Billy Haley at his best.

  The music was fast for me but I took the chance and asked Muriel if she wanted to take ago at it. “Want to dance?”

  “I’m taking a rest,” she responded.

  I was glad she declined.

  A silence that seemed longer than my entire existence followed as I sat at the table facing the lovely stranger who appeared to be so relaxed she might well have known me all of my life. As the rock and roll sound blasted in my eardrums and the floor under my feet shook from the crowd on the dance floor, I wondered who Muriel was and why she had the confidence to put a note in my school locker and why she had come over and invited me to dance. I was so transfixed byher I could actually hear my heart moving to the beat of the music that was blaring all over the gymnasium. I began to shake my head to impress Muriel with my sense of rhythm but I quickly stopped when I noticed she wasn’t paying any attention to me. With what I can only describe as an onslaught of Irish insecurity I accepted I was making a fool of myself and retreated by leaning back in my chair. Muriel then reached to the back of her head and pulled out a large hairclip that was apparently holding up her hair. Within a second or two her beautiful blonde hair was touching her shoulders and I became even more transfixed. Before I could fully embrace my lucky predicament, several schoolmates fromthe soccer team came by the table to say hello. I hardly heard their voices speaking to me because I couldn’t take my eyes off Muriel. She was as beautiful as any movie star I had ever seen in the films in Dublin and I was feeling an intensity I hadn’t felt before.

  Then a soft romantic ballad began to fill the air and caressed everyone in attendance. With the implosion of my new-found energy I reached out to Muriel and led her to the dance floor.

  * * *

  For the next month I met Muriel everyday in school and after school and drove her home after we toured the area and parked by the local lake that supplied the water to Tarrytown. The lake was a favourite spot for young couples. Those of us in school who had a car and a girlfriend drove to it immediately after school and began our “make-out sessions”. I had my first kiss by the lake and experienced the heat, passion and power of embracing my new and first beautiful girlfriend. When word got out in school that Muriel and I were an item I was told and encouraged by other schoolmates that if I really, really liked her I was to offer her my high-school ring, which she in turn was to wear around her neck on a small chain. It signalled to other boys that Muriel was spoken for and was goingsteady with me. I secured a high-school ring and offered it to Muriel. Without hesitation she accepted it and sealed it with a kiss like no other I had ever imagined.

  However, wearing the ring around her neck also caught the attention of Muriel’s father. One day he spotted me dropping her off at their house and he called me in. Mr.RobertAnderson wanted to meet the boy who was seeing his daughter on such a steady basis. My introduction to Muriel’s family – her parents and younger sister Kim – took place over dinner. Mr.Anderson asked me lots of questions. Mainly they were about Dublin and Ireland. When I had related to him what I thought I knew about that, he moved on to questioning me about my father. I don’t think I impressed him when I related my father’s history. I wasn’t sure what he thought of my parents’ marriage when I told him about my mother Molly and how she went about life in search of sainthood. Molly’s obsession with suffering did interest him however. He smiled and then laughed when I related her need to embrace pain. Mr. Anderson was Protestant and, when I spoke of the ritual of the Rosary and how it hurt my knees each time I and other family members knelt down to pray, he laughed out loud. Explaining the Catholic rituals to Muriel’s father was like describing a movie I had seen over and over. Judging by their constant interruptions and questions, Muriel’s mother and sisterappeared to be genuinely interested in my youthful Irish Catholic tales. This reception emboldened me even more to go on and on about what it was like to grow up in Dublin. At times, however, I became overcome by embarrassment under Mr. Anderson’s grilling and then Muriel’s mother diplomatically intervened. She mainly did it to keep me from burning up like the roast beef that was on our dinner plates. Muriel also did her best to ameliorate my embarrassment by telling her father about the circumstance
s under which I happened to come to America.

  It seemed to me that Muriel accepted that my presence in New York and now in her house was something of a romantic adventure she herself might have conjured up. Muriel was as spontaneous and free as she was beautiful. Her curriculum in high school had the profile of a European one. Muriel liked all things foreign. I wasn’t totally confident that being Irish was foreign but I kept that sentiment to myself. Muriel’s passion was art and languages, Spanish being her major interest. She told her family how she had first spotted me walking along the school corridor wearing clothes that stood out from the other students and that I definitely looked like a foreign student who had just arrived from somewhere other than the neighbourhood. I was wearing the clothes that Mrs. Axe had bought me and I had left that choice, even though I didn’t have one, to Mrs. Axe. As a consequence I was wearing clothes that were more businesslike than student-casual. The good news was that the clothes – pants, shirts, jackets – actually fitted me. I also had a tendency to wear a cravat around my neck and that more than any other piece of apparel intrigued Muriel. The colourful cravat was something I had seen worn over and over again in films. If it wasn’t Errol Flynn wearing one it was Tyrone Power or Clark Gable. The cravat I wrapped around my neck every morning before I went to school may well have been the cause and the reason why I found myself in love with a beautiful American girl sitting with an all-American family in an all-American household.

  Mr. Axe was as particular about his diet as Mrs. Axe wasn’t about hers. He swallowed vitamins every morning and insisted on freshly squeezed juice. Mrs. Axe basically ate what was in front of her and would drink orange juice out of a can. It was the same with just about everything else in their lives and relationship. Mrs. Axe was impulsive and spontaneous whereas Mr. Axe was studied and reserved. Mrs. Axe laughed and smiled more and seemed to have a more adventurous spirit than her husband. On weekends her clothes would be almost the opposite to what she wore during the week. Her fitted two-piece suits were shed and colourful oriental kimono-like gowns were her choice of attire. It was as if she made a determined decision that on weekends she would be free and unattached to the activities that absorbed her time while conducting business at the office in New York City during the week. Earrings of an antique nature hung from her ears and a noticeable scent was also obvious. Had the Axes’ personalities been reversed I probably would not have been in their lives.