The Catcher in the Rye

It’s almost spring, and the ninth graders are reading The Catcher in the Rye again. Again the line that says that D. B. is in Hollywood, prostituting himself, perplexes them. They haven’t heard this term used metaphorically before, and they skate right over the framing device on the first page, too, not noticing that Holden is telling the story from California, not Agerstown, that he’s had to “come out here and take it easy” after “all the madman stuff that happened to me around last Christmas.” They don’t clock that the Holden telling the story is seventeen, not sixteen, a year out from the events he relates to us, that he’s had plenty of time to think about how to tell his tale.

Their eyes get wide: his brother’s a prostitute?

No, I say, he’s not, and then I try to explain about artists and selling out, but I sound very Gen-X-or-older, even to myself.

A lot has happened since last I last shared details here about my life. I got divorced; I moved, once and then again; I got this job teaching English at a prep school. I have wanted to write about all these things, but my efforts so far have been mostly imaginary. Because of finding the time but also, let’s be honest, because of knowing what to say.

The kids shift in their seats. It’s a Friday, a rare out-of-uniform day as a treat for the end of the month. The weekend so close it’s seeping through the frames of the windows, under the cracks of doors.

I too am dressed down, eyeing the plants and flagstones of the courtyard outside the window, sneaking glances at the yolk-colored clock on the wall as it creeps toward 11.

To get in the mood for this reading, the students have written short compositions on the theme of rebellion, and I’ve pulled some highlights onto a slide.

Rebellion is to do what your heart desires without worrying about others’ comments

Rebellion shows how you aren’t going to be pushed around by someone

Rebellion serves as a way to figure out what you truly believe

Back in January, I made what did not occur to me then was a very Holden Caulfield-esque plan, to ride the train to Philadelphia for an aimless weekend away. I’ll leave campus the moment second period ends, drive to Bolton Hill, and walk to the station, bag in hand, ready to board an Amtrak train to Philadelphia. Like Holden with his famous hat, I’ll be wearing a woolly garment I’ve come to associate with comfort: a navy wool coat, made in England, that I found in a local rich-lady consignment shop and have lived in all winter. It’s boxy, androgynous, and it envelops me like a weighted blanket. It looks like something I would have worn back in high school myself, and it makes me feel protected from everything.

Unlike Holden, I’m aware that rebellion past a certain age isn’t really possible, which is why I’ve taken four hours of personal time and cleared them with HR in advance.

I’m not quite sure what I want out of this journey, only that sitting in Baltimore in January I felt an overwhelming desire to go somewhere for a while. I needed to sit on the train again, as I always used to do, to be me-now traveling the tracks carved by me-then. I didn’t flatter myself that I’d understand it, that sitting there would make the reality of my life any clearer, but I needed to put my body through the motions.

It has been a long winter here, gray and not cold enough to be exciting, without a single fall of snow to mix things up. I look forward to spring, and these little travels feel good, promising, like punctuation marks that signal the end of something and make possible the beginning of something else. It’s never really that simple, but as the train rushes north across the Susquehanna River, which gleams with reflected afternoon light across its seemingly infinite breadth, it might momentarily feel that way, and the feeling might be refreshing enough to make the whole trip worthwhile.