Anyone following these stories knows that I’ve left the blog alone for a while. I would like to claim writer’s block or some other impressive-sounding affliction that strikes creative types, but the truth is that my coping mechanisms are avoidance & denial, and the stories are getting harder to tell. As the years passed, I became good friends with some of my neighbors. These stories are meaningful to me and to tell one becomes a delicate kind of surgery. Mr. Teeter’s story is the first I wanted to tell, but he didn’t make it until near the end of this series.
One evening, late spring, I came out and spotted a group of guys sitting on the front porch next door. Wise-cracking John was there. Brooklyn-raised and manic depressive, he was hilarious during his manic phases, but wouldn’t leave his bedroom for months during his depression. Charlie was also there, loud and good-natured, a mystery since he seemed far too well-balanced to be in this house, along with Michael, a spastic fellow who was later shot dead during a crack deal; Paul, a NYC police officer until he suffered a severe head wound and significant brain damage; and Mr. Teeter, an odd quiet little man who only left the house dressed in a thrift-store coat & tie.
John called me over. “Listen to this…listen…,” he said.
I knew by the tone of his voice that it must be good.
“Ok, Andy, tell Mike this story...”
I looked at Mr. Teeter… Andy. I often passed him on the street and would speak, but he seldom would look up from the sidewalk. I had spoken with him briefly in the yard a few times. It was obvious that he had come here – to this location and to this condition – from some very different place. When he walked down the street in his over-wide tie, his tongue would dart in and out of his mouth, which I understand to be a side-effect of lithium.
All of us fell quiet -- even the gregarious Charlie and wise-ass John -- and turned to Mr. Teeter.
I smiled at this. They’d just heard the story before I came outside, but were all ready for another telling. They had a special reverence for these stories from the past, their stories, the ones that mattered, from a time before now.
Mr. Teeter drew a breath and started timidly, “Well…it was the custom for young officers…”
John cut in, “He was a pilot in World War II.”
“Yes,” Andy confirmed, “but this was before Pearl Harbor…”
“Eisenhower wasn’t a General yet,” added John, wanting to move the story along.
“No, he was a Colonel then, Chief of Staff for General Krueger at the 3rd Army Headquarters in San Antonio,” Andy continued, speaking the most words in succession that I’d ever heard from him.
“It was the custom when we had a cotillion for younger officers to ask the General’s wife for a dance. Guys were lined up to ask Mrs. Krueger. It didn’t matter if she accepted or not. She usually didn’t. It was a custom to ask. It was expected. "
He continued, “But Colonel Eisenhower and his wife were sitting alone. They liked to dance. Besides, we knew that the Colonel would make General one day. He was first in his class at Command School.”
John interrupted, “So you were a brownnoser and all-around asshole, is that the moral to this story, Teeter?”
Mr. Teeter smiled as everyone had a quick laugh and continued, “Well…I could have been just another asshole in line, or the only asshole to ask the Colonel’s wife to dance, so…”
“So…did you?” I asked.
He nodded.
“What did she say?”
“She said,” John chimed in, “that the asshole line is over there.”
Charlie couldn’t resist, and boomed, “The Brownnose line forms at the rear, motherfucker!”
We all laughed, and someone peeked from behind the dark drapes inside the front window. Mr. Teeter laughed the only laugh I ever heard from him, obviously delighted that we were enjoying his story so much.
“She said yes,” he went on, “but as she was getting up from the table, Colonel Eisenhower said, ‘Son, if you’re going to dance with my wife, you’d better treat her as well as I do,’ and I said yes sir I sure would sir.”
He paused, and lifted his face to the sky.
“We danced a waltz. She asked where I was from. She asked about my family and how long since I’d been home. She was nice, and she smelled like lilacs.”
His voice trailed off as we all looked at him.
Then the other guys turned to me, to see, I suppose, if I actually believed the story at all, We were, after all, sitting on the front porch of a group home for Mental Health Co-op patients. Mr. Teeter didn’t look at me though. He looked at the sky, sublime, reliving that moment, a line from a Baudelaire poem, in his melancholy waltz with the future First Lady while music and lilacs turned in the air.
The best I could do was, “Wow. That’s amazing.”
John laughed a triumphant, “Ha!” He had known that I would like that story.
Mr. Teeter, pleased with himself, was ready to talk now.
“I also flew Bobby Kennedy…”
“Yeah, Teeter,” John interrupted, “and that’s a story for another night. You are supposed to be on a cigarette run right now, ya know.”
“Right,” Andy acknowledged. Michael and Paul joined him. He smoothed back his few remaining strands of hair, and headed down the block in front of the other two, tongue darting in and out as he walked.
We watched cars line up at the intersection in front of the house. The sunlight was beginning to drain away as the last of the six o’clock rush hour crept through the four-way stop.
Eventually, Charlie asked, “You believe that shit?”
“I do,” I answered.
A beat passed.
“Me too,” he said.
“Me too,” added John
Two drivers blew their horns and gave each other the finger.
