She left the room. Jake hoped he hadn’t worried Mr. Bissette, who was a pretty good guy, but he supposed he must have, since Bissette had actually made a personal appearance. Jake had an idea that personal appearances were pretty rare for Piper School teachers. He wondered what Mr. Bissette had left. His best guess was an invitation to talk with Mr. Hotchkiss, the school shrink. That would have scared him this morn-ing, but not tonight. Tonight only the rose seemed to matter.
He tore into his second sandwich. Mrs. Shaw had left the door open, and he could hear her talking with his parents. They both sounded a little more cooled out now. Jake drank his milk, then grabbed the plate with the apple pie on it. A few moments later Mrs. Shaw came back. She was carrying a very familiar blue folder. Jake found that not all of his dread had left him after all. They would all know by now, of course, students and faculty alike, and it was too late to do anything about it, but that didn’t mean he liked all of them knowing he had flipped his lid. That they were talking about him. A small envelope had been paper-clipped to the front of the folder. Jake pulled it free and looked up at Mrs. Shaw as he opened it. “How are my folks doing now?” he asked.
She allowed herself a brief smile. “Your father wanted me to ask why you didn’t just tell him you had Exam Fever. He said he had it himself once or twice when he was a boy.”
Jake was struck by this; his father had never been the sort of man to indulge in reminiscences which began, You know, when I was a kid . . . Jake tried to imagine his father as a boy with a bad case of Exam Fever and found he couldn’t quite do it—the best he could manage was the unpleasant image of a pugnacious dwarf in a Piper sweatshirt, a dwarf in custom-tooled cowboy boots, a dwarf with short black hair bolting up from his forehead. The note was from Mr. Bissette.
Dear John,
Bonnie Avery told me that you left early. She’s very concerned about you, and so am I, although we have both seen this sort of thing before, especially during Exam Week. Please come and see me first thing tomorrow, okay? Any problems you have can be worked out. If you’re feeling pressured by exams—and 1 want to repeat that it happens all the time—a postponement can be arranged. Our first concern is your welfare. Call me this evening, if you like; you can reach me at 555-7661. Ill be up until midnight.
Remember that we all like you very much, and are on your side. A votre sante’
Len Bissette
Jake felt like crying. The concern was stated, and that was wonderful, but there were other things, unstated things, in the note that were even more wonderful—warmth, caring, and an effort (however misconceived) to understand and console.
Mr. Bissette had drawn a small arrow at the bottom of the note. Jake turned it over and read this:
By the way, Bonnie asked me to send this along—congratulations!! Congratulations? What in the hell did that mean? He flipped open the folder. A sheet of paper had been clipped to the first page of his Final Essay. It was headed FROM THE DESK OF BONITA AVERY, and Jake read the spiky, fountain-penned lines with grow-ing amazement. John,
Leonard will undoubtedly voice the concern we all feel—he is awfully good at that—so let me confine myself to your Final Essay, which I read and graded during my free period. It is stun-ningly original, and superior to any student work I have read in the last few years. Your use of incremental repetition (”. . . and that is the truth”) is inspired, but of course incremental repetition is really just a trick. The real worth of the composition is in its symbolic quality, first stated by the images of the train and the door on the title page and carried through splendidly within. This reaches its logical conclusion with the picture of the “black tower,” which I take as your statement that conventional ambitions are not only false but dangerous. I do not pretend to understand all the symbolism (e.g., “Lady of Shadows,” “gunslinger”) but it seems clear that you yourself are “The Prisoner” (of school, society, etc.) and that the educational system is “The Speaking Demon.” Is it possible that both “Roland” and “the gunslinger” are the same authority figure—your father, perhaps? I became so intrigued by this possibility that looked up his name in your records. I note it is Elmer, but I further note that his middle initial is R.
I find this extremely provocative. Or is this name a double symbol, drawn both from your father and from Robert Brow-ning’s poem “Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came”? This is not a question I would ask most students, but of course I know how omnivorously you read!
At any rate, I am extremely impressed. Younger students are often attracted to so-called “stream-of-consciousness” writing, but are rarely able to control it. You have done an outstanding job of merging s-of-c with symbolic language. Bravo!
Drop by as soon as you’re “back at it”—I want to discuss possible publication of this piece in the first issue of next year’s student literary magazine. B. Avery