Free The Pat Conroy Cookbook by Pat Conroy Page B

that.”
    Though my affliction with Thomas Wolfe was now an effervescence that lit up my prose, Mrs. M gave me assignments that showed me another way to go. She required that my adjectives actually mean something when I landed them into one of my overloaded paragraphs. She brought all six of her students news of the world of writing, read us letters from both her agent and editor, and took our efforts with high seriousness. I discovered that my lab mate in physics, Allen Ryan, was the best poet in the school by a long shot; that his sister, Terry, might have been the smartest person I’d ever met; and that a shy, unartificial girl named Joan Fewell produced work every week that was surprising, original, and offbeat. I took great delight in the work that our carefully selected class produced, and the six of us ended up filling over half the literary magazine at the end of the year. We took Mrs. M’s class with thesolemnity that her massive coolness seemed to require. Never once did she seem comfortable around us, her gravity and reserve forces of nature that deflected the possibility of any caprice or horseplay in her presence. She never gave the slightest sign that she was falling in love with us as we turned in our sketches, poems, and stories for her critical inspection.
    Once, during basketball season, Mrs. M stopped me outside the library door and said, “Pat, where are you attending college next year?”
    I blushed and said, “I don’t know, Mrs. M.”
    “You don’t know? That’s absurd. Allen’s already been accepted to Stanford.”
    “I’ve got to win a basketball scholarship,” I said. “Otherwise I don’t know if my parents can afford it.”
    “What nonsense. Your father’s an officer in the Marine Corps,” she said. “You don’t come from a family of beggars. What’ll you do if you don’t get a scholarship?”
    “I don’t know, Mrs. M.”
    “This is preposterous. I wish to speak with your father,” she said.
    “I don’t think that’s a good idea, Mrs. M. Dad’s a little different.”
    “I’m a graduate of Antioch College in Ohio,” she said. “I think you’d flourish in such an atmosphere. It’s free-spirited and bohemian.”
    “I wouldn’t tell my father that.”
    “What are your parents thinking?” she said.
    After basketball practice that night, I entered the car of my scowling father and he got right to the point. “Who is this Morse broad that’s teaching you?”
    “Mrs. M. It’s an English class, Dad,” I said.
    “You’re lying. It’s a goddamn creative writing class. Did I ever give you permission to be in an artsy-fartsy class like that? Damn right, I didn’t. The Morse broad started lecturing me about when we’re supposed to apply for you to go to college. Like it’s any of her goddamn business. Do you know what she told me? That she thought she could get you a free ride to Antioch on a creative writing scholarship. Isn’t that some shit? You know what Antioch’s famous for producing?”
    “No, sir.”
    “Communists, that’s what. They turn ‘em out like sausages up there. It’s a whole college full of fruitcakes and weirdos and pinkos. What a pushy broad. She talked to me like I was a fucking shoeshine boy and she was the Queen of fucking Sheba. Drop that course, pal. That’s an order.”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “Antioch fucking communist Ohio,” he said. “You can bet your sweet ass you ain’t going there.”
    When Mrs. M drove up to the high school parking lot for the next class, I opened the door of her car and explained that my father had demanded that I drop her course. Mrs. M handed me a briefcase filled with her books and papers and we walked together toward the library.
    “I must be honest, Pat,” she said. “I found your father to be a dreadful man. Our conversation was not fruitful.”
    “You’ve got to catch Dad on the right day,” I said defensively. “He takes some getting used to.”
    “He was a perfect ass,” she said, and I