all the "What ups" and "How wuz your summers," the smell of shampoo, toothpaste and new leather shoes, and that scary kinetic energy kids emitted whenever they were in large numbers so floors throbbed, walls buzzed and you thought if only you could figure out how to harness it, get it through a few parallel circuits and straight through a power station, you could safely and economically light up the East Coast.
I'm obliged to reveal an old trick: implacable self-possession can be attained by all, not by pretending to look absorbed in what's clearly a blank spiral notebook; not by trying to convince yourself you're an undiscovered rock star, movie star, top model, tycoon, Bond, Bond Girl, Queen Elizabeth, Elizabeth Bennett or Eliza Doolittle at the Ambassador's Ball; not by imagining you're a long-lost member of the Vanderbilt family, nor by tilting up your chin fifteen to forty-five degrees and pretending to be Grace Kelly in her prime. These methods work in theory, but in practice they slip away, so one is left hideously naked with nothing but the stained sheet of self-confidence around one's feet.
Instead, stately dignity can be possessed by all, in two ways:
Diverting the mind with a book or play
Reciting Keats
I discovered this technique early in life, in second grade at Sparta Elementary. When I couldn't help but overhear details of Eleanor Slagg and Her Recent Exclusive Sleepover, I pulled a book out of my bag, Mein Kampf (Hitler, 1925), which I'd randomly stolen from Dad's library. I tucked my head between the hardback covers and, with the severity of the German Chancellor himself, made myself read and read until the words on the page invaded Eleanor's words and Eleanor's words surrendered.
"Welcome," said Headmaster Havermeyer into the microphone. Bill was built like a Saguaro cactus that had ultimately had gone too long without water, and his clothes—the navy jacket, blue shirt, the leather belt with a giant silver buckle portraying either the Siege of the Alamo or the Battle of Little Bighorn—looked as dried out, faded and dusty as his face did. He paced the stage, slowly, as if reveling in the imaginary clinks of his spurs; he held the cordless microphone lovingly: it was his high-crowned Stetson.
"Here we go," whispered the hyperactive Mozart next to me who wouldn't stop tapping out The Marriage of Figaro (1786) in the space of seat between his legs. I was next to Amadeus and some sad kid who was the spitting image of Sal Mineo (see Rebel Without a Cause).
"For those of you who've never heard Dixon's Words of Wisdom," Bill went on, "those of you who're new, well, you're lucky 'cause you get to hear it for the first time. Dixon was my grandfather, Pa Havermeyer, and he liked young people who listened, who learned from their elders. When I was growing up he'd pull me aside and he'd say, 'Son, don't be afraid to change.' Well, I can't say it any better. Don't be afraid to change. That's right."
He certainly wasn't the first headmaster to suffer from the Ol'-Blue-Eyesat-The-Sands Effect. Countless headmasters, particularly male, confused the slick floors of a dimly lit cafeteria or the muddled acoustics of a high school auditorium for the ruby-walled Copa Room, mistook students for a doting public who'd made their reservations months in advance and shelled out $100 a pop. Tragically, he believed he could sing "Strangers in the Night" off-key, croon "The Best Is Yet to Come," lose a strand of the lyrics and never mar his reputation as Chairman of the Board, The Voice, Swoonatra.
In truth, of course, he was being ridiculed, mocked and mimicked.
"Hey, what're you reading?" a boy asked behind me.
I did not think the words were directed at me until they were repeated very close to my right shoulder. I stared down at the worn-out play in my hand, p. 18. Do ya make Brick happy? "Hello, miss? Ma'am?" He leaned even closer, leaving breath-hotness on my neck. "You speak English?"
A girl next to him giggled.
"Parlay vu fronsai? Sprekenzee doyche?"
According to Dad, in every circumstance when it was difficult to flee, there was what he called The Oscar Shapeley, a man of great repugnance who'd mysteriously come to the conclusion that what he had to offer in the way of conversation was intensely fascinating and what he had to offer in the way of sex was wholly irresistible.
"Parlate Italiano? Hello?"
The dialogue in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (Williams, 1955) trembled before my eyes. "One of those