“Dead Poets Society is so clichéd,” I say. “Nowadays we hold hands in a circle and listen to the beauty of words and weep.”
Coleman’s laughter fills the hallway, to the marginal relief of the two freshmen staring at us. “You bunch of effete academics,” he says, still laughing. He then looks at one of the freshmen as if sighting him through a targeting scope. “Mr. Deal,” Coleman says, and the student jumps with surprise. “Do you know that word, effete?”
The freshman licks his lips. “I think … does it mean clever, or something about an accomplishment? Like, a feat of strength?”
Coleman closes his eyes. “Jesus Christ, it’s worse than I thought,” he says. He opens his eyes and glares at the boy. “No, Mr. Deal, it doesn’t mean like anything, nor does it mean clever or anything about an accomplishment. It means weak or enervated, or delicate due to a pampered existence. It can also mean effeminate, but I do not use the word in that manner, as I dislike gender stereotypes about as much as I dislike the New England Patriots. I would suggest that you run, run to the nearest classroom and find a dictionary, or look one up on the internet if you must, and begin reading as if your life depended upon it. Go.”
The two freshmen go.
“That was a nice little teachable moment,” I say. “Very pastoral.”
Coleman harrumphs. “All I did was ensure that those young men know what the word effete means. I can guarantee you they’ll remember it.”
“Yeah, about that. What’s with calling me effete?”
“You love poetry, I thought of John Keats, ergo effete.”
“Ergo? Keats wasn’t effete. The man wrote some of the greatest poetry in the English language while he was dying of tuberculosis, and he only lived to be twenty-five. Ergo, Keats was a badass.”
Coleman shakes his head, scowling, but I know I’ve pleased him. He appreciates wit and enjoys locking horns in argument. The people who are frightened of him—and there are more than a few—don’t realize how much of Coleman’s behavior is an act. The man uses bluster as a way to engage with the world because, at heart, he doubts both the world and himself and longs for assurance that all will be well, which perhaps explains why he is a priest. I have learned that such assurance is hard to find, and harder to keep.
“I got coffee,” Coleman says as we walk down the hall toward his classroom. “Not the swill in the lounge, the real stuff.”
“What, you import it from Colombia?” I say. “Grind it by hand?”
“It’s Starbucks in a French press, as you know very well.”
In Coleman’s classroom, Betsy Bales is sitting at Coleman’s desk, typing on her laptop. She gets to her feet as we enter, all five foot two of her. Her short height accentuates how enormously pregnant she is. “There you are,” she says, brushing her blonde hair off her forehead.
“Here I am,” I say.
Betsy quirks an eyebrow. “I was talking about Father Coleman,” she says.
Coleman frowns. “You just want coffee,” he says.
Betsy lays a hand on her belly, which is roughly the size of a pumpkin, and gravely tells him, “Only your coffee. And just half a cup.”
Coleman grumbles but moves to a table at the back of the room, where he has a large French-press coffeemaker. Betsy follows him, giving me a smile over her shoulder.
Coleman pushes down the plunger on his already-steeping French press, then pours Betsy a chipped mug of coffee, another for me, and a third for himself. He holds up his mug. “Onward and upward,” he says, and we clink our mugs and sip. Coleman pauses and sighs contentedly. I look at Betsy and roll my eyes, causing her to stifle a giggle.
Betsy, who teaches European history, has been team teaching with me this year under Coleman’s guidance as part of a new Humanities course, combining English and history. At the end of last spring, Betsy found out she was pregnant. She taught all fall, her body slowly growing until she resembled the world’s most adorable Weeble, but now she is supposed to go on maternity leave this week. However, her long-term sub, a retired teacher who’s been scheduled since last October, emailed last week to say her husband had—honest to God—won a cool million playing the lottery and they were moving to California immediately. Now we are scrambling to find someone before Betsy gives birth in the classroom.
“So,” Coleman says, “what are you kids teaching today?”
“Ethan’s wrapping up Macbeth,” Betsy says, taking a sip. She sighs, supremely content with her coffee.
“ ‘Double, double, toil and trouble,’ ” Coleman says, waggling his free hand as if conjuring something. Nodding toward me, he says to Betsy, “How is he?”
Betsy looks at me over her mug, considering.
“Brilliant,” I say. “The word you’re looking for is brilliant.”
“Not bad,” she says.
Coleman grins.
Indignant, I say, “You’ve been teaching with me for more than a semester now, and the best you can say is I’m ‘not bad’?”
“I’ve seen worse,” Betsy says.
“Getting Mark Mitchell engaged in class conversation is a lot better than not bad.” I insist.
“That’s funny,” Betsy says. “I never have trouble getting Mark to talk in class.”
“That’s because he loves you,” I say.
Betsy dismisses this with a wave of her hand. “You just need to know how to engage them, get them to do what you want.”
“I’m a teacher, not a psychologist.”
Betsy frowns in mock puzzlement. “There’s a difference?”
Coleman noisily sips his coffee. “This is cute and everything,” he says, “but I was actually asking because I’m going to need your observation notes before you go on maternity leave.”
“About that,” Betsy says. “Any luck finding a sub yet?”
Coleman’s phone makes a loud ding, interrupting whatever response he’s about to make, and with an irritated grunt he pulls it out of his pocket and glances at his screen. “Speak of the devil,” he says. “Got a teacher interested in a long-term sub position who just
