David Christensen When the mail arrives there’s a letter from your alma mater. What is it—fundraising? You graduated more than twenty-five years ago. The letter is hand-addressed, has four stamps stuck haphazardly in the top right corner: a nineteen-cent stamp, two twenty-three-cent stamps, a one-cent stamp—sixty-six cents postage. It’s bigger than a letter; it’s an ‘information pack.’ A grades transcript? But you didn’t ask for it. And you have no need for it. You open the information pack and you read. Dear Alumnus/Alumna: We regret to inform you that it has come to our attention that an unfortunate clerical error has occurred. When you “graduated” from the College of the Mountain West, it was with the full faith of the Office of the Registrar that you had completed all the requirements of your undergraduate program. Since then, we have learned that an error was made when calculating the total number of credits you earned. You are, in fact, 23 credits short of earning your bachelor’s degree. As a result of this shortcoming, your diploma is hereby considered null and void. To rectify this situation, if you choose, you may attend a seven-week Summer semester, during which you may earn the required 23 credits, in which case your degree will be considered, once again, valid. Please see the attached documents for details concerning the courses you must complete. We encourage you to seek legal counsel to determine whether any subsequent education and/or employment gained in part through your status as a College alumnus/alumna is also, therefore, null and void, and what, if any, recompense you may owe said educators and/or employers. Please accept our deepest regrets. Sincerely, You read the attached documents. You must pass six courses to earn your degree: Intermediate Algebra, Basic Math, Advanced French Grammar, Beginning French Grammar, Health, Introduction to Math. You make arrangements. You make phone calls and you arrange for a plane ticket, an apartment. You go to a store and you buy notebooks and pens. Mostly you think about the plane ride. Four hours on a plane. Four hours at 30,000 feet above the ground. You pack your bags and you get on the plane. Maybe you’re not as scared as you were when you first thought about it, so you sit on the plane for four hours at 30,000 feet above the ground and you read a book or you don’t read a book but you get where you’re going. You sit there and you fiddle with your loose tooth and you get where you’re going, you get to the College of the Mountain West. You get to the apartment you’ve rented for seven weeks, an apartment in a slapped-together student housing complex: courtyard swimming pool, flimsy molded ‘stucco’ walls, ‘bronze’ fixtures, new carpet, inexpensive furniture. Your apartment sleeps four but you’re in it alone. For all you know you’re the only one in the complex. You move your things in. It doesn’t take long because you didn’t bring much. You go for a swim in the courtyard pool. The water is cold and stagnant. After a few minutes you notice a thin ribbon of blood dancing in the water: your mouth is bleeding. On the first day of classes you go to the Office of the Registrar. You stand in line with thousands of young students and you register for the classes you need to finish your bachelor’s degree nearly thirty years after you started it. From the Office of the Registrar you get a tiny piece of paper with a schedule printed on it. Intermediate Algebra 8:00
HFAC-1103 At least that’s what you think it says. It’s hard to read with the ink so smeared. You don’t know where any of the buildings are —the campus has changed dramatically since you were here before—so you ask directions. The other students assume you are a new faculty member and use a respectful, distanced tone when they address you. You attend the first meeting of each class. You learn that Intermediate Algebra has daily homework. You learn that Basic Math has daily homework. You learn that Advanced French Grammar has daily homework, a daily lab and a research paper. And so on. You walk home with a backpack full of textbooks. On the way home you feel good about being in this town again—it’s warm and sunny and dry. And you only have to think about one thing: passing your classes. You must solve a hundred arithmetic problems each day. You settle in at the kitchen table and start adding and subtracting. Multiplying and dividing. When you poke your loose tooth—something you do so often now it’s unconscious—you notice that the cuspid next to it is also loose and there’s a coppery taste in your mouth. Now you must solve a hundred quadratic equations. And there are French verbs to conjugate in the passé simple, too. You like the warm dry weather but it’s hard to keep up with the homework. Day after day, pages of problems, equations, irregular verbs, vocabulary lists. The new buildings look so much alike you never learn to identify them. You rely on other students for directions. You have three loose teeth. You think about seeing a dentist. There is a student clinic but you can’t find it and you don’t want to ask directions again. Some days it’s hard to remember which class comes next and you’re always consulting the blurry little schedule. Three times you lose the schedule and go to the Office of the Registrar to ask for a copy. The Office of the Registrar knows who you are, and when you enter, someone is already printing your schedule. You finish your first week of classes. So far you’ve kept up with the homework. You count four—no, five—loose teeth. You read in the faculty directory that your former piano teacher, Herr Hauptmann, is still giving lessons. In college you took a few lessons for fun. You haven’t played in years but you used to be quite good. You pay a visit to Herr Hauptmann. He is now well past retirement age, a little stooped and very thin. Otherwise not much has changed: the baggy brown suit, the wire-frame glasses, the heavy shoes, the Viennese accent. “I remember you. You work hard and make some leetle progress. Now why do you come to see me so many years late?” You tell him of the unfortunate clerical error. “Then why not take lesson again while you are here anyway? Make something from nothing. Everyone should have hobby. Who knows: maybe you play good enough to perform in master class this time?” You tell him you want to try. “And what do you play for me?” You tell him you want to play your favorite piece: Le Tombeau de Couperin. “Ah—Le Tombeau de Couperin! Ravel’s monument to the father of French music. I studied it with Marguerite Long in Paris. You know it was she who gave first reading in 1919? So, we have bloodline from M. Couperin to M. Ravel to Mme. Long to me—your old fossil—and at last to you. But be warned: it is rare and fortunate soul who masters the Couperin’s Tomb. I think we begin with, as you say, ‘baby step.’ You learn first part, Prélude, we see how it goes. Maybe the rest come later. Now go to the piano.” With few students around for the summer it’s easy to find a vacant practice room and after Math you play for an hour, two hours each day. It’s relaxing to play. It takes your mind off your homework and your loose teeth. After a while you play three or four hours a day, sometimes more, and each day you love the Prélude more: it’s light and playful, shimmering, made entirely of sixteenth-note triplets that ripple up and down the keyboard with little turns on the main beats. The turns are awkward and the triplets are hard to play fast and evenly, but it’s beautiful. It ends with a little shudder and dies out quickly like an unexpected orgasm. By the third week you cut back on your homework. You do Math most days but not every day. First you do less homework, then you start cutting class. French is easier to fake, so you cut French more often. You go to the practice rooms and play the Prélude from Le Tombeau de Couperin. Sometimes you think of Herr Hauptmann’s warning, but not often. You play the Prélude from Le Tombeau de Couperin and you do not do your homework. You count seven loose teeth now, and always there is a metallic taste in your mouth. You take a lesson on the Prélude from Le Tombeau de Couperin, then another lesson the next week, and another the week after. Herr Hauptmann is polite and makes helpful suggestions but he seems disappointed in your playing, always asking for more. Three loose teeth fall out. You spend most of your time practicing, hoping to improve your playing, hoping to impress Herr Hauptmann, hoping to master ‘Couperin’s Tomb.’ During the sixth week Herr Hauptmann invites you to perform the Prélude from Le Tombeau de Couperin in his weekly master class. In college you were never asked to play in class because you weren’t a Music major and you didn’t really play so well. Now it seems Herr Hauptmann’s standards have relaxed. You’re excited and nervous to play in class and now you spend all your hours at the piano. Oh, you still show up for Introduction to Math now and then, still do a little homework on the weekend, but mostly you practice the Prélude from Le Tombeau de Couperin. For Health class you must run a mile and compare your finish time with your classmates’ finish times. You run a mile, it’s not so hard and your finish time isn’t so bad, but you bite down as you approach the finish line and you break off three more teeth. You run your mile, you spit out a mouthful of blood and ivory and you compare your finish time with your classmates’ finish times. You go to the locker room to take a shower and change your clothes so you can practice the Prélude from Le Tombeau de Couperin and play it in class. In the locker room you can’t remember your locker combination. You wrote the combination on a piece of paper and the piece of paper is inside the locker. You ask an attendant to open the locker for you. The attendant gives you a startled look and you wonder what’s so startling about opening a locker until you realize there is blood coming from your mouth. You wipe it away with the back of your hand, shower quickly, and put on your clothes. You haven’t eaten all day. The running and the blood and the teeth and the stage fright make you weak and light-headed but now you’re behind schedule, you’ve got to practice the Prélude from Le Tombeau de Couperin so you can play it in master class. This afternoon you cannot find an empty practice room. You walk up and down the hallways, waiting and hoping, and you don’t get a practice room. You do not get a practice room and you’ll have to play class ‘cold.’ Master class is held in a large rectangular room with a Steinway concert grand at the far end. This is no recital hall; this is a big classroom with fluorescent lights and folding chairs. One wall is entirely glass, so it’s a fish bowl, you’re playing in a fish bowl. The piano is at the far end but it’s not perpendicular to the wall, it’s at a sharp angle like someone gave it an angry shove. Folding chairs are scattered randomly around the piano. The chairs have flimsy little ‘desk’ surfaces that swing up from the right and fold across your lap in case you want to take some notes about this master class. A dozen students are seated in the folding chair-desks. Your hands are solid ice. Herr Hauptmann enters and sits down in a folding chair-desk. Your hands are stone. Your hands are made of stone and ice and you must play the Prélude from Le Tombeau de Couperin in front of a dozen students seated in folding chair-desks in a large rectangular fish bowl with fluorescent lights. The room is icy cold. Herr Hauptmann asks a student to play. The student plays. On what note does the Prélude from Le Tombeau de Couperin begin? The room is bright and cold. Herr Hauptmann asks another student to play. You don’t hear the student playing but you know the student is playing. Does the Prélude from Le Tombeau de Couperin begin with the left hand or the right hand? The room is cold and huge. Herr Hauptmann asks another student to play and you decide the Prélude from Le Tombeau de Couperin begins with the left hand and the right hand together and your hands are made of dead frozen meat and the student is playing Chopin. The room is cold and silent. Herr Hauptmann asks another student to play and this time you are the student. You sit down at the piano. You sit down at the piano and you look around the fish bowl. You look at the students in the fish bowl and you look at the people standing outside the fish bowl, pressing up against the glass and looking in to see how you’ll play. You’re aware of the pain in your mouth. You’re aware of the copper and the iron and the fluids and the shards in your mouth, and now you must play the Prélude from Le Tombeau de Couperin. You pick up your leaden left hand and you pick up your leaden right hand and you place them on an E and an A respectively and you think this is probably the way to begin so you begin. You play an E with your left hand while you play an A with your right hand and you’re certain this is the way to begin so you begin. You are playing but you can’t hear anything. You are playing but you can’t feel anything. You are playing the Prélude from Le Tombeau de Couperin with its awkward turns and its rippling triplets and its little shudder and you can’t feel anything except your loosening teeth. You keep playing and you try not to bite or swallow. You keep playing and you try not to breathe. You keep playing while you think about the people outside the fish bowl looking in. You have finished playing the Prélude from Le Tombeau de Couperin and you have returned to your chair-desk and you do not recall how you played the Prélude from Le Tombeau de Couperin or how you returned to your chair-desk. You sit in your chair-desk and you gradually regain your hearing. You hear a student playing Mozart. You gradually regain your feeling and you hear a student playing Beethoven and then Herr Hauptmann announces that the master class is over. You get out of your chair-desk and you walk past the other students and the chair-desks and Herr Hauptmann. You walk under the fluorescent lights past Herr Hauptmann, out of the fish bowl classroom, past the people looking into the fish bowl classroom and you go home. The next day you decide to see a dentist or a doctor at the student clinic. On your way to the student clinic you stop at a cash machine to get some money to pay the dentist or the doctor. You stop at a cash machine to get some money but you can’t remember your personal code. You punch in 6-6-7. The cash machine tells you you are wrong. You punch in 6-6-7-6. The cash machine tells you you are wrong. You punch in 6-6-7 and the cash machine tells you you are wrong and takes your cash machine card away from you. You ask a student where the student clinic is and the student tells you. You head in the direction of the student clinic but you lose your way. You ask a student where the student clinic is and the student tells you. You head in the direction of the student clinic but you lose your way. And then you reach the student clinic. A student nurse asks you for money. The student nurse asks you for money but you do not have any money because your cash machine took your cash machine card away after it told you you were wrong. You don’t have any money and you don’t have many teeth so it’s difficult to speak in a way she’ll understand. Why did you play the Prélude from Le Tombeau de Couperin in a master class? The student nurse asks you to return when you have money. And soon it is Finals Week and you are not prepared to pass your final exams. It’s four weeks since you did your homework, three weeks since you attended a class. You receive a Notice of Academic Warning from the Office of the Registrar. The notice says your academic success is in jeopardy. The weekend before Finals Week you do your homework. You do your homework and you try to finish all your homework, weeks of homework, and you do study and you do learn but really how much can you learn in one weekend? You take your final exams but you do not pass your final exams, you pass only your Health final exam. You pass only your Health final exam and you have not earned your degree. Something made of wood or steel is poking up out of an empty socket in your upper gum. Your diploma is hereby considered null and void. You move out of the apartment complex. You get yourself to the airport and you sit and wait for an airplane to take you home. You sit in the airport and you think about the planes and the danger of the take-off and the danger of the turbulence and the danger of the landing and you do not want to get on the plane that will take you away from the College of the Mountain West and back to your home. You are worrying. You are trying to remain calm but you are panicking and you know you are panicking. And now you hear the people screaming. You feel a series of tremendous shudders pass through the airport terminal and you hear the people screaming. You hear the people screaming but you cannot see the people screaming because the terminal is full of thick black smoke and shattered glass and hot twisted metal. You hear the people screaming and you feel the explosions—two, three, four—rocking the airport terminal. And you are running. You are screaming. You are running and you are bleeding. You sit down and think about what you have done. You sit down and think about what is happening around you. You are screaming. You are running. You are lying face down on the terminal floor and you are bleeding and there are planes taking off and landing and you are thinking about what has happened. You clamp your jaws shut and break off your last remaining tooth and you swallow this tooth. You swallow your last tooth and it hits your stomach like a gulped LifeSaver and now your stomach hurts, too. And you are screaming. |
