A Good Man

by Ani Katz

  and we like-a both the same

  I like-a say this very day

  I like-a change your name

  ’cause I love-a you

  and love-a you true

  and if you-a love-a me

  one live as two

  two live as one

  under the bamboo tree

  Where is your ring? I asked, breaking the silence.

  What ring?

  Your engagement ring.

  Oh.

  She got out of bed and crossed the room to her dresser, opened the top drawer and peered in, sifting through the drifts of threadbare underwear. Without looking at me, she extended her arm and handed me a small box, its black velvet partly worn away. Inside there was a subtle gleam, like an eye opening in a dark room.

  I thought maybe you’d thrown it away, I said.

  Of course not, she replied. I would never.

  She began to move around the room, tidying the piles of old magazines and cast-off clothes, talking quickly.

  It was supposed to be for Eve. You’re supposed to give these things to your oldest girl—I always meant for her to have it, when she grew up. But you—you take it. It should be yours now. Miriam is a lovely girl. I’m very happy. Very, very happy.

  Don’t cry, Ma. Please.

  She turned away so that I couldn’t see her face.

  * * *

  —

  My sisters were back in the pool—naked this time, though I had begged them to put their suits back on—carousing and calling out to each other like a pair of naiads. Miriam and I sat on the edge with our legs dangling into the water. Our limbs were pale and green—they looked as if they didn’t belong to us. She swirled her left foot in slow circles, brushing it against mine.

  I’m sorry, I said.

  Why are you sorry?

  This wasn’t what I wanted it to be.

  What do you mean?

  I didn’t answer. We watched my sisters for a while—their bodies alien and elongated, their features lost to the ripples of the water. They floated on their backs and looked up at the stars.

  I just want to do it all the right way, I sighed finally. Love and family, everything.

  We will, darling, Miriam said. We’ll do it the right way.

  I want us to have everything I never had, I said. I want to build a shell around us so that we’ll be protected.

  She took my hand then, and I knew how it all would be.

  I could see us back in the city, holding hands at a table after a waiter had collected our menus, leaning our heads together as our train rumbled through the darkness under the river.

  I could see us meeting with an immigration lawyer downtown. We’d open a joint bank account, get Miriam’s name on my lease. I could see the dossier of snapshots and correspondence that we’d amass: the evidence of our life together, of our love. I could see Miriam in white on the steps of city hall. My wife.

  And I could see her holding a squirming bundle, sitting in the leather club chair in our living room, milk spilled on her wrist like a cuff of lace. I could see private school, a cubby labeled with a musical name, a child carving out the letters of the alphabet with a crayon clutched in a sticky fist.

  Now I can see that Miriam wanted to protect me just as much as I wanted to protect her. We were two of a kind, my wife and I. If my life up to that point had been like an old and battered house, she wanted to rip the rot from the rooms, banish the bad memories, throw open the windows, and fill the place with light and air and the breath of the future.

  She loved me very much. She did.

  I didn’t propose that night. I wouldn’t for another two weeks. But that night I could see myself kneeling before Miriam with my mother’s ring. I could hear the promises I’d make about the life we’d have, my words alighting on her—on us—in fully formed perfection, as if in a dream.

  I could see how I would keep her.

  II

  I once read an article online about a polar bear in a zoo that ate its own cubs.

  This kind of infanticide had been seen in the wild before. Up in the Arctic, a group of scientists had sighted an adult polar bear devouring the bloody carcass of a cub, the small body so mauled that it was initially mistaken for a seal. Climatologists and other experts said this behavior was on the rise. Driven to desperation by ever-shrinking ice, the famished bears were turning to their own young as a food source, killing them with sharp bites to the head, the same way they would kill a seal, as if there were no difference between their children and their prey.

  But this news story was different. Determined not to raise a pair of soft, dependent polar bears, the zoo staff had refused to hand-rear the babies, even when it became obvious that their mother couldn’t care for them. Better to let nature take its course and let them starve than interfere, the zoo said. Let wild things stay wild, even as we charge admission for you to see them, print their faces on T-shirts, sell their likeness as stuffed animals.

  The staff thought everything was going fine. There’d been no crying from the cubs, which seemed to suggest they were well fed and content. But when they finally entered the polar bear’s cave they found no sign of them, and their mother was no longer hungry.

  In the uproar that followed, experts speculated that the mother might have seen the cubs as a threat, or that the stress of captivity may have driven her to filicide. But I think she may have done it to save her children—to save herself. Her cubs were extraneous. They could bring her no joy or satisfaction, and she knew she couldn’t care for them. She had failed as a mother.

  The story reminded me of Medea. I have always loved the 1959 Maria Callas recording at Covent Garden, when she was both in her vocal prime and at the pinnacle of her artistic maturity. She is radiant in that last scene, debating with herself, agonizing over what it means to be truly merciful. Leave her beloved children in the care of their vile and traitorous father, or do the business fate has given her?

  So it must have been with the mother bear, exerting her terrible love the only way she knew how. Better to kill her young than to see them waste away in that dismal cave. Better to draw them back into her, where they could be at peace.

  Then again, they were just animals. It’s not as if they act rationally. They don’t know what it means to be heartless.

  * * *

  ■ ■ ■

  Let’s move ahead now.

  Picture me a decade and change gone by. At forty-two, I still have all my hair—or almost all of it. These days it leaps back a bit from my temples, as if recoiling in surprise, but it’s just as lush as ever on top. I have only the slightest, softest smudges of silver in my day-old stubble. I own four blue suits and three gray suits, a khaki suit, and a seersucker suit, but today I’m in jeans and a navy linen blazer, brown leather loafers, and a white oxford shirt.

  It is early October, and it is unseasonably mild, as it usually is these days in autumn. The sky aches blue. The fiery foliage crackles. It is the Friday before Columbus Day weekend, and today I’m not at the office—where I’ve ascended from junior art director to senior art director to associate creative director—because as soon as school lets out we’re driving up to the Berkshires to visit our friends for the long weekend (big house, five wooded acres, good wine, a fireplace). And because I’m not at the office, and because Miriam is out buying car snacks and housewarming gifts, and bringing the dog to the kennel and running other last-minute errands, and because I’ve been on call all morning with my team running through their preliminary, unsatisfactory ideas for the new AiOn smartphone campaign pitch—because of these things, I’m the one who answers our home phone when it rings just before noon. And because I answer the phone, I’m the one who makes the twenty-minute drive east along the Long Island Sound to the Anne Hutchinson Academy for Girls—or Hutch, as the students call it—where my daughter has r
ecently started sixth grade.

  Now picture me pulling up to the campus in my iridium silver Mercedes S-Class sedan and parking in the visitors’ lot, Renée Fleming cut off mid-vibrato as I kill the ignition. Picture me ambling through an Arcadian fortress of redbrick Georgian cottages, over grounds crisscrossed by slate paths and sheltered by regal oaks. Hutch was originally founded as a boarding school for the daughters of aristocrats, and there was a time when each girl would arrive in September with her own maid and horse. One can still spot the occasional wandering deer.

  Picture me walking alone down a cool, dim hallway lined with lockers, the student body safely sequestered behind the closed doors of their classrooms, and picture me ushered into the hushed sanctuary of the headmistress’s office. Picture me seated in a tufted leather chair, tapping my foot against the polished floor. Picture the rich mahogany shelves filled with books, the rainbow of alarmist spine copy—Conversations with Ophelia, Guiding Our Daughters, The Crisis of Adolescence, Lilith Speaks, Whatever Happened to My Little Girl? Picture the art on the walls—pink-fleshed mother and child by Cassatt, pensive portraits of important women. Picture the lovingly illustrated Welsh alphabet that lines the upper perimeter of the room, the curious letters illustrated by sweet little sheep and cheerful boats. Picture the homemade ceramics on the broad gleaming desk, and picture the woman sitting behind that desk. Dark skin, curly hair tamed into a tight chignon. She’s pushing fifty, I think, but then again, it’s hard to tell with black women. In pearls and practical gray suit, she projects an aura of serene authority. Only the fleck of plum-colored lipstick on her front tooth mars the effect. This is Dr. Alice Hanover, Headmistress. She has a laptop in front of her, and on that laptop are screenshots of a sugar baby dating profile supposedly created by my daughter—the reason for today’s little tête-à-tête. Dr. Hanover has thus far managed to avoid showing me what is on her screen, but she is talking quite a lot.

  Now that you see everything, let’s listen in.

  As I’m sure you can understand, we take these matters very seriously, especially with our middle school girls. They’re at such a vulnerable point in their development, and we find these types of incidents can signal real problems with their self-esteem. This behavior is a major threat to their well-being and the well-being of their peers, and there’s just no place for it in our community.

  Now, I’m sure she didn’t mean any harm. She’s been very adamant about the fact that creating the profile was meant to be a joke, and that she and her friends were only having fun—but as I’m sure you know, girls this age often don’t understand that their actions have consequences. Serious consequences. And it’s particularly serious in this instance, because your daughter is such a leader in her cohort, and she inspired other girls to get involved, and now their images are out there too.

  I wondered about this Dr. Hanover. She’d been headmistress of Hutch since my daughter entered first grade, but I’d never bothered to meet her, or read her biographical blurb in the school newsletter. I left those kinds of details to Miriam, who would occasionally fill me in on what she thought I should know.

  I knew that Dr. Hanover was a Hutch alum, and that she’d gone to Smith, then Harvard for her PhD. I imagined she’d harbored dreams of being a star academic—perhaps art history, or Romance languages and literature—but in the end she had returned to manage the halls she’d walked as a child. For someone ambitious, it must have been a disappointment, a step down in prestige. Then again, judging from the tuition we paid, her compensation had to be considerable.

  I recall that the hiring of the first black headmistress at Hutch had been a big deal. Many pats on the back had gone around, talk of the school moving into the twenty-first century. Diversity, representation, inclusion. But then some parents began to complain quietly that there was a certain aloofness, even a chilliness to Dr. Hanover’s demeanor. They allowed that she was lovely, and perfectly poised, but they felt that she didn’t quite fit with the culture of the school, or its traditions. They said she could be hard on the girls.

  That was what Miriam had reported to me, anyway.

  Now, these images are just the ones that have been saved, Dr. Hanover was saying. Apparently the girls posted similar content on some other apps—you know, the ones that delete almost immediately. We have some screenshots of those, but not the full-length videos. I’m sure you know how difficult it is to keep up with the new technologies—ideally we’d issue a new code of conduct every month! In any case, the girls just don’t appreciate that other people can see these things, and that once it’s out there, they can’t take it back.

  We’d really stretched ourselves to secure my daughter a place at Hutch, and I was beginning to have second thoughts. I’d wanted her to have a classical education, but for some reason it had taken until fifth grade for her to master long division. The school had no standardized curriculum, and the quality of the faculty was incredibly inconsistent. Some of the fresh-faced shepherds in the lower school didn’t even have teaching degrees, and in the upper school they were either former PhD candidates who’d never finished their dissertations or weary veterans of the public school system. Hutch marketed itself as a haven for girls who were passionate about learning, but the students seemed to care about the wrong things, obsessing over their penmanship and the strict color-coding of their notes. According to Miriam, the mothers formed cabals; they cast appraising eyes over the make and model of other girls’ sneakers and backpacks, whispered about standardized test scores and tutors. Privately, I often worried that my wife was excluded from these small-minded centers of social power because of her foreignness, her Jewishness. Stranded in an insipid sea of white Protestants, she simply failed to fit in. No one had ever said anything to her directly, of course.

  And aside from my doubts about the school’s rigor and culture, its financial difficulties seemed to be mounting. They were starting to sell off some of the property near the water to pad their endowment, and soon there would be luxury homes along the soccer field. Each year’s tuition bill was higher than the last, the semiannual fund-raising letters increasingly plaintive.

  I’m sure you had no idea this was going on, Dr. Hanover was saying. We don’t blame you, of course. We don’t blame anyone. We know she made a mistake—and she’s deeply regretful. But she needs to learn what’s appropriate and what’s not. And she needs to learn how to protect herself. Because these issues will only deepen as she gets older. Better she absorbs these lessons now, before anyone gets seriously hurt.

  I’d thought anything had to be better than public school. Even though everyone said the public schools on the North Shore were much better than the ones I’d attended, I still shuddered to think of those fluorescent-lit linoleum penitentiaries, remembering their particular humiliations. In elementary school I was reprimanded for reading ahead, nauseated by the ever-present smells of urine and old milk. High school had been a cheerless stockyard overseen by security guards in black polyester jumpsuits who were never quick enough to stop kids from vaulting over cafeteria tables to throttle each other. In other ways, it was a lawless place: cigarettes sucked hungrily in the bathrooms, covert blow jobs executed in the stairwells. As far as I could recall, no actual education had taken place.

  I’d wanted something different for my daughter, never mind the social challenges or the expense. Wouldn’t you have chosen the same?

  At least she was learning Latin.

  She’s a lovely, lovely girl—all her teachers say she’s an absolute pleasure to have in class. I know she’s genuinely sorry, and our top priority is to keep her on the right track. Now, I know you must have questions—

  May I see the profile now?

  As I said before, Mr. Martin, I do believe it would be best for you to examine it with Mrs. Martin, in the privacy of—

  Please let me see it now.

  Dr. Hanover hesitated, then turned the laptop around and clicked on an imag
e to enlarge. There was my daughter in an unspeakable state, shielding the shameful parts of her body with a strategically positioned homemade sign: BAD GIRL.

  I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I looked away before the details of the image could fully register. I shook my head, opened my mouth and closed it again.

  I’m sorry, Dr. Hanover said. I know it’s shocking to see it—I’ll admit I was completely shocked myself. I wouldn’t have expected this kind of behavior from her, but I must say again that most of the time when a girl acts out like this, it’s an expression of some deeper troubles. A cry for help, as they say. She may benefit from talking to a therapist, and we are more than happy to recommend—

  Is she suspended? I asked abruptly.

  Dr. Hanover blinked once and pursed her lips.

  No, she’s not suspended, she said. But I think it would be best if she goes home for today. She was very, very upset when I spoke to her, and I think she needs some time for reflection. I’m sure you’ll want to have a family discussion rather soon—I’m sending you these files now, so that Mrs. Martin can see them—and as part of that discussion I recommend setting boundaries for social media use without making it into a forbidden fruit. Above all, it will be important to foster a culture of conversation so that she feels comfortable coming to you with questions in the future. Always begin by listening.

  With that, she extended her hand for me to shake. Her palm was cool and dry, her grip firm. She nodded, smiling with sober eyes.

  Thank you so much for coming in.

  The meeting was over, and I’d barely gotten a word in. Had I allowed it to happen? Had I let this woman boss me around and tell me how to raise my daughter? Had I let the serene, invisible mechanism of authority bulldoze me into silence? Why hadn’t I fought back and told her that I would handle things my own way? Was I that much of a pushover?

  No, I decided. That couldn’t be it. I was just too much of a gentleman to interrupt or protest. Let this middling bureaucrat believe she’d had her way. My daughter was still mine. I was in control.