Monday, November 04, 2002 6:26:21 PM Joe Coluccio

Good night, Mrs. Cohen, wherever you are.

I was sitting, comme l'habitude, as the French, who irreconcilably adore Jerry Lewis, say, sipping hard caffeinated coffee and absorbed in a dream of writing that I was pledging before God, the Holy Roman Empire and Truth, Justice, an American way of living, at a coffee bistro in the environs of Squirrel Hill, when I noticed, on the sidewalk outside a flashing dark haired beautiful woman. She entered and I exited all thought and gazed at her. She was in her fifties, I suppose, dressed casually, a pleasant visage as she looked in the nooks and crannies for, well... as it turned out a fetchingly pretty blond woman. They ordered coffee and sat in a booth on the other side of the shop from me.

In the ninth grade at Seneca Junior High School, (the place is now rebuilt as an old folks home is called Seneca something to do with assisted living. Sits on the crest of Saltsburg Road, a hard climb up from its nascence on Verona Road and a million miles from Saltsburg, PA. My own Aunt Mary on my father's side lived the remainder of her Alzheimer existence there with a smile on her face that made those who visited jealous of the world's harsher reality.), my Home Room, as well as my English teacher, was Carole Cohen. Dark hair that danced around her neck, dark eyes that penetrated more than I could ever hope to hide. I was (and am) hopelessly, in love with Mrs. Cohen. I am sure that I am not the only one that was so affected; 'cause I could hear the eyes of teacher's click as she clicked down the hollow hallow halls. But their adoration, like the French and Jerry Lewis was of the more coarse and sensual kind. Eventually I married her. More about that in a moment.

I have wished for two things in my life. A. I wanted, from first glance at the night splendor of the sky to be an astronomer. I would even at this very late moment throw it all over, if I was invited to Mt. Palomar. All my heroes have been astronomers. B. I have wanted to write. Both desires are not that different and have to do with inner reaches. I was, in that year of the ninth grade, under the thrall of Leon Uris. (Maybe Harry Browne, Richard Tregaskis, certainly Edward L Beach.) I thought that Battle Cry was the most astounding and important novel ever written.

Mrs. Cohen gave us an assignment to write something creative. I wrote about a platoon of marines on some godforsaken Pacific island. The ending was some pleasing trick that is lost in the web filled rafters of my consciousness. After correcting my spelling of Sergeant (see Carole I remember) Mrs. Cohen gave me a relatively glowing grade and some validating criticism. My friend, Phil Trafican, and I would meet at the end of the day in our Home Class Room and talk to Mrs. Cohen as she prepared for the following day. She encouraged us in our writing and in our intellectual quests. One weekend she invited us to her apartment to meet her brother, who was a writer.

Beechwood Boulevard. I can almost remember the building when I pass the apartment complex on the street which has made the Guinness Book of Records because it crosses (must be Catholic) itself so many times. I thought it strange to invade the habitat of teacher away from the relationship of classroom. Were they then just common people after all? This intimate glimpse proved that Mrs. Cohen didn't live anywhere near the corner of Valhalla and Mount Olympus. I don't remember the apartment much, it was small, tight and cultured. A studio piano, books proper on their shelves. Clean. We drank soda, her brother showed us his work, we talked large and small and eventually returned home.

She cried one day as we discussed the Holocaust in class and despaired at the wasted loss of life and the good that was snuffed out of the world. How many Einsteins died at the hands of the Nazis? We were assigned an essay. Two days later she read a paper written by Frank Cerra that pointed out the flaw in her argument. How many Hitlers were killed, asked Frank? She praised Frank for his good thinking. I don't remember what I wrote but have yet to come grips with the true evil that can be so manifest by you and me.

I vowed to dedicate my first book to Mrs. Carole Cohen, wherever she was. She was one of the first and one of the few that saw something in me. Oh, yes, my first wife had dark hair and black flashing eyes. We lived a kind of reverse Abby's Irish Rose marriage which embraced both the invisible Elijah and the less than probable Saint Nick. Ravioli, kreplach, what's the difference (a little tomato sauce and little chicken broth).

The woman at the coffee shop? I walked past her booth. We smiled.

Ah, how schmaltz can tickle the heart!