The Charcoal Coat

A Christmas Novella About Coming Home

Author’s Note: Although this story is based on true events, it is a work of fiction, not of memoir

Dedicated to Walt Walker

Chapter 1

OUTSIDE THE CLASSROOM, wind and rain drenched the buildings, streets, and Jacaranda trees of Los Angeles. Inside, warmth and sharp attention—my poetry seminar of juniors was three weeks into tolerating their student teacher.

For today’s discussion, I had chosen a poem by Theodore Roethke. We were listening to Jan Singer recite it. With soulful eyes and three gold studs lining her right ear, Jan was playing the romantic lead in the fall production of Bye, Bye Birdie. She was easily my most thoughtful student. As she began reading, my cooperating teacher, Jacob Banks, tiptoed into the room, dropping into a desk to join the circle of twelve students. Scanning a spare copy of the handout, he tightened the Windsor knot on the scarlet tie he was wearing.

Jan’s uncertain voice reflected the poem’s pathos as the teacher describes the joyful girl he once taught, comparing her to a fragile, singing bird.

Three years earlier, I had taught English in a parochial school while taking college classes in the evening. One of my sophomores—Esther, a sensitive poet with a warm nature—had died of aggressive liver cancer in February. I had followed the casket into the cold, windswept graveyard located up the hill behind the Amish churchyard my late mother once attended. My older sister Mary, who had taught my student in Sunday school, stood beside me, sobbing. When my younger brothers began to shovel dirt over the casket, she turned, burying her face in my shoulders. Awkwardly, I pulled her to me, her tears turning to ice on my leather jacket.

Now, in this warm room, my student had reached the end of Roethke’s poem, describing the teacher’s inability to be consoled, there beside the wet gravestone.

I decided Jan must have lost someone as well, because her voice broke slightly as she said the word console. She drew in a deep breath before the last stanza, then finished the poem, which describes the speaker sobbing uncontrollably, as the full realization overwhelms him, the knowledge that he has no way to express his grief publicly.

Forcing myself to be still, I let the silence seep over my students. Jacob had encouraged me to give them space to respond.

One of the boys cleared his throat. Jodi—a girl whose tattooed arm usually reached for the ceiling—blew her nose into a tissue. I waited.

“So who’s the speaker?” I finally asked.

“It’s a teacher,” said Joe, a towheaded senior who played halfback for the football team and had gotten some press in the local newspaper. “And he’s crying beside the grave of a girl—one of his students.” The accusation hung in the room, acrid as smoke.

“He sees his role as so confined,” said Tiffany, a quiet student who constantly played with her dark, straight hair. “Why doesn’t he think he has any rights?”

“Cause she’s his student.” Jodi bit off the words. The class turned.

“It’s a risky poem. Teachers aren’t permitted to care this much for students, right?” Anger edged her voice now. “Yet here’s a teacher who does. And some of his words? It’s what a lover would use.”

“Like what?” Tiffany seemed genuinely confused.

“Like darling.” The accusation hung in Joe’s tone.

Silence. Cleared throat. Turning heads—Mr. Banks had something to say.

My mentor had made it clear he never got involved in class interactions—he merely observed.

“You know, this is one of the things I hate most about teaching.” He held white chalk between his fingers—an unlit cigarette, sharp edges, unused. He set it down and pushed his hand through his thick black hair, graying at the temples.

My students froze. No one wanted to miss what came next.

Jacob picked up the chalk, rolling it between his fingers like a smoker preparing to light up.

“Sometimes the most loving thing we do is the least emotional.” The chalk snapped. We jumped. His hands shook, split chalk trembling in his palms. He laid the pieces down carefully, pulled out a red handkerchief, wiped his eyes, and blew his nose.

Who was he thinking about? Outside, raindrops slid down the windows. Finally, he found his voice.

“The most difficult thing is knowing how to respond to students during difficult times. Emotional times. There are times when students need you, and—” He paused, then shrugged his shoulders. “But that’s the reality of teaching,” he said. “If you’re a male teacher, and your student is a boy and you hug him, you’re gay.” He paused for a moment, then added, almost as an afterthought, “If it’s a girl, you’re a dirty old man.”

The bell rang. I let my students leave the classroom without giving them any homework.

I STAYED IN touch with Jacob. It wasn’t difficult—Brookline hired me after I finished my student teaching, and I was fortunate enough to work every day with Jacob during that first decade. Neither of us ever got sick, and even when we did, we came to school anyway.

Jacob went from being my cooperating teacher, to becoming my department chair, to becoming Brookline’s academic dean. I lost his day-to-day guidance when he became headmaster at The Masterson School, located deep in the San Fernando Valley.

But Jacob stayed in touch, remaining available even after he left Brookline. His steady approach was crucial to my success. He answered every phone call—during school hours, in the evenings, on weekends when I was desperate. We averaged about an hour of conversation each week, times when I called to brainstorm teaching ideas or confess classroom failures or simply talk through the isolation I felt from my Amish-Mennonite family.

But it was more than that. Jacob and his wife Emma became like second parents to me. Emma had a gift. My girlfriends would arrive tense, uncertain why I’d brought them to meet my mentor’s family. Within an hour, Emma had them laughing about their own childhoods, their work, their dreams—details I’d never thought to ask about.

Jacob encouraged me to be practical. Slowly, I quit talking about my dreams of becoming a writer. I made the unconscious decision to throw my creative energy into teaching. At the same time, I resented that decision. I believed I was sacrificing my artistic dreams on the altar of teaching. I had not come to terms with whether I wanted to make that a permanent sacrifice.

My marriage to Rachel lasted eight years. By the end, we tolerated each other, uncertain how to own up to our mistakes and end it well. Then we did end it, and neither of us died.

Several weeks after the divorce became final, when I clashed with Brookline’s new headmaster, the emptiness I felt made me reckless.

JACOB AND EMMA invited me to dinner on Friday. I went alone.

Although it had been six months since the divorce became final, and even though I had begun dating again, I was not ready to bless a casual date by introducing her to the only real parents I knew.

Dinner conversation flowed comfortably at first. Jacob and Emma had liked Rachel, had supported their own daughter through her bitter divorce. They’d be on my side, I assumed.

Then the conversation turned to school. I denounced my new headmaster’s choices, his policies, his incompetence. Unthinkingly, I mentioned the editorial.

Jacob shifted. Emma rose to clear the table, disappearing into the kitchen. Her absence spoke volumes.

“Are you sure this is a good idea?”

There was a touch of strain in his voice, but I ignored his real question.

“Maybe the parents need to know what he’s doing.”

“Sometimes wisdom involves restraint.” He stared at the dessert spoon in his hand, rolling it over and over. “Surely you understand that. You’ve gone through enough changes. Do you really want to start over somewhere else?”

He must have meant the question to be rhetorical, but I thought back to the year I had gone abroad on a Rotary Ambassadorial Scholarship. It was a massive cultural adjustment. I had moved from an Amish-Mennonite world—where God intervened to provide rain for the gardens—to a wholly secular world where Samuel Beckett’s little Godot never appeared.

My mentor measured my passion. He wanted the best for me, for my career. That was hard to fight.

From the kitchen came a clink of dishes, silverware. Jazz music played on NPR against the quiet background of the dining area. I thought about what Jacob wasn’t saying.

“I believe in employment,” Jacob stated. Then he smiled, a quirky grin pulling up the corner of one side of his mouth.

Into the ensuing silence, Emma entered, carrying a tray with three small bowls of Häagen-Dazs vanilla ice cream, along with a French press and tiny espresso cups. She paused, feeling the weight of our silence.

“Have you shown him the suit yet?v she asked, but before he could respond, she bubbled on. “Jacob has decided you should have his favorite suit. You’ve probably seen him wearing it.”

She opened the closet door in the passageway and pulled out a charcoal suit, its crisp edges clean and sharp. There were three buttons on the outside of each sleeve. Why three? Why not two?

Jacob had once worn this suit to accept the school’s annual award for teaching, the Sentinel Award, and when asked what he believed, he had briefly stated that a teacher’s primary task is to model the life we teach.

I cleared my throat. I couldn’t speak. I knew how much he valued this suit, what a statement of confidence he was making to me by giving it.

“You’re a born teacher,” Jacob said. Emma beamed and hugged me.

“Now, we must measure you,” she said. “I’m going to have the same tailor adjust the suit to fit you perfectly.” She disappeared into the next room.

Jacob pushed the tray between us.

“Well. Shall we eat?”

HOW DOES ONE “lose a job”? Do you simply misplace it?

My contract at Brookline Prep was terminated after the editorial I wrote for The Los Angeles Times. The kind of attention it received was not the kind a prep school desires.

The fact that I quoted an internal memo by the new Head of School—he of the sunny disposition and snakish backbone—was my first error. Shown in the clear light of a Sunday morning at the top of the Op-Ed page, it put into plain English a direct shift in Brookline’s educational philosophy.

“The way to raise test scores is to focus on developing our brightest students,” Dr. Grimes pontificated. Unfortunately for him, he went on to explain the meaning of the word bright within the memo. It was a definition that lacked the necessary irony.

“Let’s be honest,” he began in his private memo to the Council of Faculty Leaders at Brookline. “Bright students are those with parents who can pay premium costs for tutoring, rather than students whose parents lack the basic means.”

I served on the Council, and so I included this definition word for word in my article, crediting Dr. Grimes appropriately.

“This was a grievous error in judgment on the part of the new headmaster,” I noted. “It is incredible that a leader in American education would hold to such an elitist view. Dr. Grimes’ decision to commit such a belief to paper is even more unbelievable. How will this play out among the Brookline parents and alumni?”

But it was his final comment that really grabbed the attention of the Brookline community.

“If we are going to raise our test scores,” Dr. Grimes wrote, “we must be willing to be judicious with our time. Putting energy into the lower third of our students is unwise. We must find ways to enrich the finest students within the Brookline community—so that our educational reputation will bring us honor, ensure a rich and steady stream of incoming talent, and boost our credibility.”

I concluded my essay with a blunt challenge. “Make no mistake,” I stated. “If the school implements this policy shift, it will be dark days for thirty-five percent of Brookline students who currently receive financial aid. And it will be a black mark on the school’s character, impossible to eradicate.”

It’s all about timing. Had it been any other season of the year, I might have gotten away with having my metaphorical knuckles rapped. But the article hit in the midst of Brookline’s development drive—and Dr. Grimes’ stated goal was to raise enough money to make our school “the most respected and well-endowed preparatory school on the West Coast.”

My editorial did not boost that drive, but it did force Dr. Grimes to spend the next few weeks putting out the firestorm by assuring the community the policy in that memo was not official policy, was never the official policy, and would never be the official policy of the school. It was simply a small part of a faculty conversation taken well out of context.

And several weeks later, once Dr. Grimes had cracked and adjusted his reptilian backbone, and the community and teachers were assured pedagogy would proceed in the traditional vein, I received a polite note from Dr. Eric Grimes, PhD, Harvard, requesting the honor of my presence.

DURING MY ENTIRE teaching career, I had feared losing my job. I had seen my father struggle with debt all of his life. Even at Brookline Prep, I was haunted by the sight of the gray, unwashed men and women walking the streets near our campus, homeless, without jobs.

I’m sure one of the reasons I chose teaching was because it is such a stable profession—and recession-proof. Granted, private schools have less job security, but as long as you are willing to say the right things and support the administration and keep your mouth shut, you’re always taken care of. Even when you are forced out of a job—and with an at-will contract this happens occasionally—they’re happy to write you stellar recommendations and help you land on another academic runway.

Did I force the school’s hand? My new headmaster thought so.

It was late April when I entered Dr. Grimes’ office for the last time. As he scolded me for my egregious lack of judgment as a faculty leader at Brookline, I didn’t hear a word he said. His Wall of Fame covered one wall—award plaques and diplomas and exactly two honorary doctorates from the revered institutions of Brown and Harvard.

The bile rose. I swallowed it down, felt it burn. Dr. Grimes continued his monologue—my lack of judgment, my betrayal of the school, my arrogance in thinking I understood Brookline better than its appointed leadership.

I stood. He stopped mid-sentence.

“Dr. Grimes,” I said quietly. My voice surprised me—how steady it sounded, how cold. “I wrote that editorial because your memo revealed exactly the kind of leadership that will destroy this school. Not my article. Your policies.”

“How dare you—”

“I dare because someone needs to.” The words came faster now. “Your degrees mean nothing if you can’t see that education isn’t about test scores and prestige. It’s about students. All of them. Even the ones whose parents can’t afford premium tutoring.”

His face flushed. “You’re finished here.”

“I finished myself the moment I hit ‘send’ on that email to the Times.” I looked at him—really looked at him—this man who’d parked his red Bentley in the fire zone on interview day, who’d walked past me, ignoring the signs. “I knew that. The only question was whether you’d have the courage to fire me or the cowardice to make me resign.”

I turned and walked out. Behind me, his voice: “Clear out your classroom by end of day.”

I kept walking.

THE PHONE CALL I made to Jacob wasn’t much better. He had already heard what had happened from Dr. Grimes. Clearly, he had read my editorial. I knew that, and he knew that I knew that. But to avoid an impasse, we had to pretend he didn’t know, and I refused to admit my contract had been terminated.

But I couldn’t let it go.

“I’ve decided to retire from teaching,” I told Jacob. “Maybe get a job with a newspaper, since I’ve trained for that anyway.”

“Andreas,” my mentor said, calmly and rationally. “You’re a teacher. You can’t deny that part of you. It’s going to come out, no matter what job you take.”

“Maybe I’m not a teacher,” I said. But Jacob wasn’t listening. It was his turn to talk.

“When are you going to face up to what you are?”

The words stood between us in the silence. I imagined his face, his kind eyes focused on me.

“I don’t know,” I said. Silence at the other end of the line. Then a breath.

“Andreas, listen to me carefully.” Jacob’s voice carried weight. “You’re like a son to me. But sometimes you’re also a damned fool.”

The words hit like a fist. Son. Fool. Both true.

Roaring filled my ears. A tight band wrapped around my chest, squeezing. Jacob’s voice reached me as if from underwater, distant and distorted.

“I hate to tell you this, Andreas, but someone needs to—”

Tell me I’m right. Tell me Grimes deserved it. Tell me teaching will work out. Tell me anything except the truth I already know.

My finger found the button. Pressed. Held.

Silence.

My hand. The finger still pressed against the cradle. When had I decided to do that? The roaring in my ears faded. I pulled the phone away—it belonged to someone else. Finally, I placed it carefully in the cradle.

The truth was, I couldn’t bear to hear Jacob say what I already knew: I’d thrown away fifteen years of teaching because I couldn’t keep my mouth shut. Because I’d chosen to be right over being wise. Because pride mattered more than my vocation.

I sat alone in my apartment, the Letter of Termination beside the silent phone, and felt the full weight of what I’d done.