Deja Vu In A Dream: A True Short Story Read online

  Brother Euclid treaded water for a while, getting to know us, but it seemed to me that he focused on me entirely too much. He mockingly embraced me in front of the other students saying, “See how he loves me and I love him?”

  Obviously not, and the kids laughed as I squirmed.

  In academics, I suspected him of undermining me. I was one of the champion spellers in my school, rivaled only by one or two of the Smart Kids. I won most of the spelling bees until Brother Euclid arrived to preside. After that, invariably, I would end up one of the only two boys left standing, and Brother Euclid would snooker me with a word like “phloem.” I knew he might be trying to fool me with the “ph” sound, but sometimes I blew the rest of the word, which always left me suspicious. I never won a spelling bee under the man’s tutorage.

  Brother Euclid got to know me, one minor confrontation at a time, maybe better than I knew myself. He sized me up as a wise guy, but one who understood crime and punishment. Whenever I broke the rules, I accepted the punishment without question, and he knew I wouldn’t whine about it to my father. He stepped close to the line one day as my teacher, Brother John, lectured me about the evils of disruptive behavior while I stood next to my front row seat. (I was assigned a front row seat because the teacher decided that I should be under close supervision--better to smack me in the head if I talked out of turn to my neighbor). While I listened patiently to his remonstrance, I mimicked boredom by nodding my head extravagantly. Then, when Brother John turned his back on me to approach the blackboard, before I sat down, I delivered him a mock kick to the ass--a little theatrical mime which provoked nervous titters in the class, as opposed to the laugh I expected. Then, I saw the reason for my classmates’ restraint: Brother Euclid was watching the scene from the small window in the classroom door. As soon as I sat down, I spotted him, and he crooked his finger at me. I got out of my seat, walked to the door, stepped into the hall, still holding the door open, and he never said a word to me, while I’m sure he knew the class was watching--okay, kids, you saw the kick, now watch the slap. He gave me a huge, wound-up slap in the face. I looked at him for a second and understood that he had nothing else to add, so I stepped inside, closed the door and went back to my seat. No big deal, except that I hated him.

  He seemed to toy with me. Once, when a local storeowner called the school to complain about a bunch of kids who played the pinball machines in his store at lunchtime, and who heckled him for being a comical character with a foreign accent, Brother Euclid emerged on the school intercom to warn us about bad behavior in the community, adding that he suspected the incident may involve “Public Enemy #1, Tommy St. Laurent.” He was wrong, in fact. I had been to that store many times to play the pinball machines, and I had witnessed the harassment of the funny old Greek man, but I always disdained the kids who picked on him. I thought they were callous and stupid, mostly just contemptible--not funny.

  But Brother Euclid’s public declaration over the intercom was very funny. I laughed too, but, along with being very proud of my distinction, I suspected that Brother Euclid would not let my fame rest on a bit of his own wit. He announced a variety of other students from time to time as Public Enemy #2 or #3, always to the delight of the classes, but I was always #1, though there was no real documentation of any serious crimes on my part--unless you count animosity to him as a serious crime.

  The defining moment of my relationship with Brother Euclid occurred one afternoon during science class. Usually, all classes in all subjects were conducted by one and the same teacher. But apparently Brother Euclid wanted to teach science because the school had acquired a brand new portable laboratory on wheels. Science became a special class requiring us to troop down the stairs to another room. During one of these classes, Brother Euclid was interrupted several times by students he considered inattentive or disruptive, but he only stopped and stared until the guilty parties were intimidated into silence. As Brother Euclid digressed into a story of how one time at a football game he faced off against a gang of high school bullies (he scared them off, of course), one of my classmates, in the middle of this braggadocio, begged for my attention, whispering and waving under the table. He wasn’t one of my good buddies, just another loser, but he was very excited about what he had in his hand, and, although I wasn’t interested, perfectly conscious of class discipline while Brother Euclid was in the room, my classmate persisted, so I took a look. Under the table, he opened his hand and showed me a sealed glass test tube containing a cigarette, and I looked at him as he gleefully flashed his eyes, bouncing his eyebrows at me. My contempt for him and his contraband was approximately one-hundred percent, and I rolled my eyes. Big deal, I thought, Jerry was a big bad criminal with forbidden fruit. Who cared? Instead of being impressed, it confirmed my opinion of him as a low-rolling jerk.

  But, as I rolled my eyes, right in the middle of Brother Euclid’s braggadocio, silence suddenly dominated the classroom, and I looked up to see Brother Euclid staring at me. Maybe my eye-roll had occurred at a climactic moment in the story of his heroism, I don’t know. But he was seriously offended. He whacked down his piece of chalk on the lab table, then crooked his finger in my direction and strode out the door of the classroom very dramatically as my classmates watched. Of course, I was understood to follow, so I did, after squinting a contemptuous eye at “Jerry with the Cigarette.”

  I’m not guilty of anything, I thought as I made the short trip through the hallway to Brother Euclid’s office. And, if that bastard lays a hand on me--I’ve had enough--he’ll be sorry, because I’ll pay him back, sooner or later. Me, myself, personally. I’ll give him back one for one, eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth.

  He opened the door to his office, let me in, then closed the door with a flourish, indicating that we were alone--one on one.. He stood across from me for a second then delivered a roundhouse slap to my face. He was a tall, very thin man and, even at twelve years old, I might have held my own in a fight with him, but he owned all the authority in my small world, all the prerogatives--for today. We’d see about tomorrow.

  I knew he would hit me again, and I vowed to count the blows. And I wouldn’t go running to my father with the count. This was mine. I would take care of it myself. I had a lot of patience, and I could wait a long time--years--the longer the better to savor my dreams of vengeance.

  After the first slap, he paused to gauge my reaction while I stared at him not moving, full of hatred and defiance. Go for it, I thought, do your damnedest, Brother, I’m counting.

  His solution to my defiance was to hit me harder each time, left hand, right hand, cranking his arms from way back and down low. Every slap was followed by a slight pause to evaluate me, but my attitude didn’t change. I stared at him with undisguised hatred and stuck out my face, but otherwise didn’t react, though I was stung to the bone, and my only consolations was that I was really pissing him off--and I was counting.

  If he had left a mark on me, I would’ve had to explain to my father, but the only visible mark was the redness of my face, as one of my buddies told me after school, “Wow! You wouldn’t believe how red your face was when you came back in class.” But that redness would wear off long before I got home and sat around the dinner table with my family, and I would keep the incident to myself.

  When my count reached nine--nine slaps--the pain became intolerable, serving no purpose but to increase the strength of each blow as I offered the man my face without defense. On his tenth swing I threw up my arm and ducked to divert the blow and, to my surprise, he stopped swinging, said not a word and opened the door for me to exit.

  The number NINE echoed in my head as I walked out of the office.

  NINE.

  That’s how many times he hit me. NINE.

  I owed him NINE.

  Far from being dispirited, I celebrated vows of revenge.

  Everyone, all my class buddies and probably Brother Euclid, thought the incident was over, but, to me, it was only beginning. He probably had some
lingering anxiety after the slapfest because Mr. St. Laurent might knock on his door, but not much. He knew me, and he knew I wouldn’t talk, and there were no witnesses. He could plausibly minimize the confrontation.

  Brother Euclid and I reached a stalemate for the next year, he being careful not to cross the line into criminal assault, and I, hating him all the way.

  The only bright spot in my years at Sacred Heart Academy was Brother Alban. Brother Alban liked me. Whenever I interrupted a lecture to blurt out one of my irresistible witticisms to the class, ala Froggy, he laughed instead of reprimanding me, then tried to top me with a joke of his own, or, if he was nearby, he would whack my hair in appreciation. I didn’t understand homosexuality or pedophilia at the time, and some people might think he had sexual proclivities, but I never thought Brother Alban too physical with his affection, or overly concerned with sexuality, unlike Brother Anthony, whose religious lectures were replete with condemnations of masturbation. Brother Anthony, bald, but with a flat comb-over on the top of his head, repeatedly assured us that if we played with our penises for a moment of pleasure, we would squirm in the hot fires of hell for eternity, and the frequency of his lectures on masturbation made me think he had an unhealthy concern for our little boyish dinks. My parents never discussed such things with us, but I noticed that whenever my father mentioned Brother Anthony, he affected a slight lilt in his speech, at which my mother would giggle. Once, bored by Brother Anthony’s lecturing, I folded and tore a scrap of paper and found the result, unfolded, resembled a symmetrical pair of pants, so I drew on it. I drew a fly, pockets, pleats and cuffs--perfectly pants. Brother Anthony caught me in the act and demanded the evidence. He examined it and ordered me to see him after class, when everyone else would be gone, and alone together in the classroom, Brother Anthony unfolded my creation and displayed it to me.

  “What is this?” he asked.

  “A pair of pants,” I answered.

  He pointed to the lines I had drawn to represent a fly.

  “And what is this?”

  “That’s the fly.”

  “Are you sure it’s not something else,” he asked.

  My kid antennae went up, knowing Brother Anthony and sensing something weird.

  It is not a penis, I thought.

  He kept insisting that it might be something other than a fly, but I stood my ground, defending the truth. “It’s a fly!”

  “It looks like something else, doesn’t it?”

  “It’s a fly.”

  “Do you know what I’m talking about?”

  “No,” I lied.

  He kept asking, but I kept thinking he was strangely obsessed with thoughts of penises, and he finally let me go without punishment. He must have been exploring my attitude, and he decided that I would not stand silent for anything strange involving penises.

  Although several of the Brothers seemed oddly effeminate, I never witnessed or even heard of any sexual abuse by the Brothers, though, of course, the boys were not likely to talk about it. Brother Alban remained my favorite, and though I was alone with him many times, he never touched me or even approached the subject of my penis. He was just a man with his favorite pupil, and I trusted him completely. My C-student grades--classic underachievement--soared to straight A’s under Brother Alban’s tutorship, even in Religion, and I’m sure Brother Euclid noticed. I thanked God for Brother Alban, who taught me that not all Brothers of the Sacred Heart were walking-dead moralists, obsessed with controlling kids.

  My graduation from Sacred Heart Academy after the ninth grade marked my liberation, though public high school was disappointing. They taught us next to nothing in public school, and the pace of learning was meandering, undemanding and, often, merely a review of things already learned in Catholic school. I was amazed at how easy it was to get acceptable grades. It was child’s play, and I turned to independent reading looking for learning, slogging through famous philosophers and enjoying classic novels.

  Meanwhile, I carried my grudge from Sacred heart Academy for many years, chiseling it into my memory like carvings in stone--so that I would never forget: NINE. I owed Brother Euclid NINE. Just NINE, no more, no less.

  By the time I grew taller and stronger in the town high school, plenty big enough to pay a visit to Brother Euclid, and perfectly justified, I had already begun a compelling rationalization of my grudge. First of all--or so I had always heard--good and decent people don’t hold grudges. I was rapidly becoming an adult, and adults were supposed to be civil and understanding--above all, civil. Violence is not civil, and I could see no outcome from a confrontation with Brother Euclid that didn’t involve violence. Not only that, but I would probably be arrested and charged with assault if I pursued my feelings. Adults don’t do that, walk into someone’s office and end up punching them in the mouth. Resentment was a debilitating burden to carry around with you, and you should let it go, get over it. I reasoned that Brother Euclid doesn’t really matter in the adult world. Who was that scrawny ogre anyway? The principal of an irrelevant little school for boys, no more important or deserving of attention than a crosswalk guard. I decided that my grudge was merely an insignificant personal vendetta. It was history, and it was over. I should be a better man, a bigger man than to seek vengeance. I should be a greater spirit. To hold him accountable could be a breach of the law, moral and legal, I was sure, because emotion would lead me to violence, without a doubt.

  Best to let it be. And I felt very proud of my grand spirit. I would not be small, not petty. Of course, I would never, as Christians are supposed to do, forgive him, because I was never so Christian, and if he was condemned to burn in hell, I would be quite happy with the ultimate justice of it, because I was not the only boy he wanted to grind up in the machinery of misguided moralism. I was just one of his most recent challenges.

  Yet, I would be good and decent and adult and legal and civil, a total man--Aristotelian, even. Somewhere in my readings in philosophy, I had come across a very appealing description of Aristotle’s ideal man. This man never lost his temper. He was thoughtful, intelligent and rational, calm and unemotional, understanding and tolerant of other people’s foibles. He held no grudges, no resentment and no hate. He focused on his purpose without regard for obstacles or contrary opinions, spoke only when necessary and lived his own life independently, fulfilled as much as humanly possible.

  That would be me, I dreamed.

  But, over the years, every once in a while when I thought of Brother Euclid, I thought it was a shame that the man got away with his indiscretions. He had always been an arrogant man, thrusting his chin in the air righteously, sniffing up his hawkish nose and striding into classrooms as though he was the Emperor Caesar, interrupting the proceedings, all to soak up glory from a captive audience of eight- to thirteen-year old boys. Someone should barge into his office, wherever it was , grab him by the scruff of his scrawny, Roman-ringed neck and bang his face into a few wooden cabinets left and right. “Still beat up on twelve-year olds?” would be the question between smacks into the woodwork--as his broken nose bled down over his lips (like my brother, Jimmy’s, did).

  But no, not me. I would be too big. Instead, I would be more like Aristotle. I’d get over it, be an adult, be pure and unsullied by loathing and resentment, not to mention, stay out jail.

  And, I always figured I had succeeded. I was reasonably happy with my decision not to assault Brother Euclid. I didn’t think of him often, and, whenever I did, I merely acknowledged that he was an insignificant villain from the distant past, small stuff from childhood, no big deal.

  A few years later, while I served in the Navy, I learned that Sacred Heart Academy had burned down, and no wonder; it had long been a tinderbox of dried old wood enclosed by brick walls, drying since 1891. Too bad it didn’t wait to burn in hell, I thought. Then, within a year, St. Aloysius Church burned to the ground, and I wondered at the coincidence. I recalled hearing of a public high school classmate of mine who was arrested for attacki
ng the Catholic church he attended as a boy, St. Stanislov’s, on the other side of town; he lashed out at the central altar, ripping things down, smashing sculpture and scattering everything movable, then went to jail. And I wondered: might some bitter alumna of St. Aloysius have torched half the city block?

  No one knows. But it’s conceivable.

  I was about thirty years old before brother Euclid’s image haunted me again. And, I still remember exactly where I was.

  I was a set designer and technical director for a theater in New Jersey and I was looking for an electric motor that would move a piece of scenery on cue. I had heard about an inexpensive hardware/junk store in Fort Lee, New Jersey, and I parked my car in the neighborhood and started walking, looking for the store. It was further than I thought, and I had to walk a half dozen blocks, winding through streets. In the middle of one block, I passed a parochial elementary school where a group of children were gathering into ranks, supervised by two Catholic nuns. As the ranks formed, one child seemed distracted by something, neglecting his summons, and one of the nuns grabbed him by the shoulder of his shirt and pushed him--a little too roughly, I thought-- into his place in the ranks. I stopped cold on the sidewalk, stunned by memories--not that I had any thought of interfering with the situation. “They’re still at it,” I thought, “shoving kids around.” And, suddenly, a rock song echoed in my head, a line from the group Pink Floyd, from Another Brick in the Wall.

  “Hey! Teacher! Leave those kids alone!”

  Bastards.

  I walked on, thinking of the nuns of St. Aloysius.

  The parochial school of my childhood was actually more than one school occupying one grisly city block. There was a coeducational school for boys and girls which split in the fourth grade into Sacred Heart Academy for boys and St. Aloysius for girls, with all schoolyards segregated strictly by gender. Boys were not allowed to cross the girls’ schoolyard for any reason. To get to the opposite street, we were required to walk around the large school building to the far side, and I knew the rule well.