What Are We Doing in Latin America

by Robert Riche

  I may not know what it is, dignity. And maybe it is something that forever will elude me. But I know what it is not. And I know, further, that whatever it is, or however one finds a way of living with it, it must have something to do with kindness, or compassion, or gentleness, or something very close to those three things. Which, to my mind, are not merely words to be mouthed in order to dupe others into accepting whatever deceptions at the moment serve one’s self-interested purposes.

  I think that very likely I am not attuned to the world. Probably I am a misfit, though I am able to hide it from most people. A neurotic. Certainly I am confused. Bemused, too. And bewildered. My powers laid waste, I feel. Late and soon, getting and spending, my heart given away. How do those lines go? “—Great God! I’d rather be

  A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;

  So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,”

  (Half sleeping while Chet flies the plane)

  “Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;

  Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;

  Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.”

  Jesus! Who wouldn’t have wanted to be a poet after reading that for the first time?

  My son, whom I have not thought of in two days, is entering into this world that I find myself overwhelmed by. Without ever having read Wordsworth or even The New York Times, he recognizes that we are preparing him for a bucket of shit. Is it any wonder that he wants no part of anything that he associates with his old man, which in his mind is indistiguishable from adult life? He sees himself as an outlaw, and nourishes the fantasy. An outlaw in the sense that he is outside the constraints of the rest of us, even though it is not in his nature, I don’t think, to break any actual laws. It is the notion of himself as outside, the hobo around the campfire, that he cherishes right now. And who is to say that he is wrong? And yet, what are we doing, my wife and I? We hope that if that $11,000-a-year school that we are sending him to does its job right, within four years he will be elbowing others out of the way to get into Harvard Business School and come out and get his own job in marketing and join the parade. Believe me, if he wants to be a poet, and shows the slightest talent at it, he’ll get no argument from me. I’ll help him. I’m not trying to force him into anything. Give him his shot in life. Maybe I will write this down, and give it to him. It will help us to understand each other better. He is, in a sense, the only monument that I will ever create, and all I ask is that it turn out right.

  CHAPTER VII

  Chet puts us down smoothly and on time into LAG, and I get lucky with the Connecticut limo, having to wait around the baggage area for only ten minutes before they call out my name.

  At the Norwalk stop, I retrieve the Pontiac from the darkened parking lot, hubcaps still in place, and twenty-five minutes later, at exactly 2:45 a.m. on the dashboard digital clock/radio, I am turning into the driveway of the old homestead. (Ahead of Chet apparently, as his Wagoneer is not in the driveway where he customarily parks it when he’s there).

  My wife has left the front porch light on for me, which is a welcoming sight to a weary breadwinner. I let myself in quietly so as not to wake her, wrestle the bags into the hall, and pass on through to the country kitchen/family area where I am somewhat taken aback to find her sitting in her pajamas and robe at the kitchen table, reading The New York Times.

  “Hi,” she says.

  After eighteen years of marriage, a sense of a break in the normal household rhythm signals that something is wrong. “How come you’re up?”

  She looks up at me from the newspaper without speaking, her gaunt expression seemingly mirroring the day’s headlined tragedies.

  “What’s wrong?”

  And in the next moment her face is buried in her hands, her shoulders heaving, and little helpless squeaking noises are coming from deep within her.

  “What happened?!”

  “Peter—”

  I reach out for support from the back of a chair.

  “He’s been—suspended!”

  Suspended! I thank God it’s only that. In a daze, I say, “Suspended.”

  “For smoking—pot.”

  And, incredibly, I am aware of the sick hollow terror of the preceding moment already becoming transformed into a new feeling, of fury at my son. “When?”

  “Last night. Mr. Lacy called. I didn’t want to call you in Vegas.”

  “How long’s he suspended for?”

  “Until Christmas!” It comes out as a choked cry.

  “Christmas!”

  My wife nods her head wordlessly. She is crying softly now, and I realize that probably she has been crying most of the day. Her face is red from long hours of her grief, and wet, as she brushes the sleeve of her gown across her eyelids.

  She is crying for the same reason that I feel like screaming. We have sent our son away to this school to save his life, and within three days of being there he has decided to end it. For that is what it means, it seems to me. They are to send him back from the sanctuary, back into the plague.

  Possibly there are mitigating circumstances. “Were there other kids involved?”

  “Just one.”

  “A bad kid?”

  “Mr. Lacy says Peter was the instigator.”

  “I can’t stand it!”

  “That’s why they want to send him home. They say—they think he’s a bad influence.”

  A bad influence. You have to hear this said—that your kid is a bad influence—to really know what it is to have failed in life. I may not have become a Nobel prize laureate poet; the daily routine at Pro-Tec I may find absurd and ultimately demeaning; but all of that I can absorb and accept; I would cheerfully—gratefully—put up with the worst imaginable humiliations for the rest of my life—until the very moment they lower me into the ground—if the monument that my wife and I have labored over for fifteen years, our son, might turn out to be a thing of pride and beauty. To hear that this only creation is unacceptable—rejected—is to know absolute and total failure.

  “We’ve got to do something.”

  “Mr. Lacy will be in his office tomorrow at nine. He says you can call him then.”

  “When does he want Peter out?”

  “Today. He wanted him out today. I told him you were away. So he said tomorrow.”

  “Have they got him behind bars?” As wrong as my son is, I can’t help feeling a first tinge of resentment that the school is acting so swiftly and vengefully. By kicking him out—for that’s what they might as well be doing if they suspend him until Christmas—they are throwing him back into the same den of wolves that we had hoped to rescue him from. He will be lost. I understand well that the school must have its rules and must make an example, but at what cost to the poor little bastard who got nailed? He’s not an addict, for Christ sake! He’s a jerk! A show-off little kid whom they should scare the hell out of by sending him home for a week, if they have to, then bring back on probation with a warning that one tiny slip again, and it’s out not until Christmas, but until 2010 A.D. The kid—any kid—deserves that chance, to see if he can learn anything from a dumb mistake and turn himself around 180 degrees, and win all the senior awards on commencement day three years from now. That’s what I have to tell Lacy on the phone tomorrow.

  And I will convince him that I am right! Not for nothing have I spent the past ten years of my life bullshitting editors to run terrible half-truths and lies about Pro-Tec products in their magazines and doing it successfully enough so that I have a solid reputation in the field, and have survived corporate housecleanings and have gotten raises, and, with the exception of Frank, have most people fooled into thinking I have a certain amount of dignity. My son must be allowed to continue.

  But for the moment, at three o’clock in the morning, there is nothing more that my wife and I can say to one another about what has happened. We are both exhausted.

  Before retiring upstairs, my wife takes time to go into the other room, returning a moment late
r with a little box wrapped in gay birthday wrapping paper. “It’s a hell of a birthday,” she says, “but I hope your 51st year is a happy one.”

  “Thanks,” I say. It’s a hell of a time to have to give me a birthday present. I take it from her, and open it, feigning eagerness, as if nothing has happened.

  Inside the box is an electronic radar detecting device—a fuzz buster—that I have been threatening to buy for myself ever since I got my last speeding ticket. I look up at my wife, genuinely pleased.

  “You wanted one,” she says. “I knew you wouldn’t spend the money on yourself.”

  “It’s a good one, too,” I say. I love it. It can be attached under the grill, and the control will fit for concealment in the ashtray. I give my wife a small kiss on the lips. “Thanks, hon. It’s a nice present.”

  “I’m sorry this is such a terrible day for your birthday,” she says.

  “It doesn’t matter. What is important is that we get through this.”

  She gives me a small wan smile, and turns to go upstairs. I make the rounds of the downstairs rooms, turning out lights.

  Once in our double bed, my wife mercifully, I can tell from her regular and heavy breathing, falls off to sleep, almost immediately. Having passed on to me the burden of the day’s unhappy developments, she is able, at last, to slip away now, while I remain there beside her, rigid, tense, and in my wide-awake state, fending off one by one the unceasing procession of demons of this longest of all nights.

  How much sleep comes to me I do not know, but at seven o’clock, I am vaguely aware of coming out of a semi-conscious state. It was after four when I last looked at the clock. So I have logged perhaps three hours. Which will be enough to get me out of bed, and freshened up, and to the phone to talk to Mr. Lacy and plead for my son’s life.

  Coffee is all that I can keep down for breakfast. I am literally sick, as is my wife. The two of us circle each other, and cross paths, and sigh, and shake our heads, and wait for the minutes to tick by so that I can call Lacy at nine o’clock.

  Actually, I put in the call at 8:55, and his secretary answers.

  “May I tell him who is calling please?”

  “William Brock. Peter’s father?”

  “Oh, yes, Mr. Brock.” As if she knows all about it, along with the whole of the rest of the school, and can’t wait to put me through to find out how all of this will turn out.

  “Hel-lo.” Lacy sort of sings it out. I have the feeling he has had the best night’s sleep of his life, and is freshly shaved and cologned and ready to knock over the day’s ducks as they stick up their heads.

  “Mr. Lacy. William Brock here.” I have this affected silly notion picked up from some old Richard Burton movie, I suppose, that this is a more impressive way of announcing myself than just saying, “This is Bill Brock.” Letting the guy on the other end know that this is no ordinary jerk here, that I went to Amherst, or Yale, or Princeton, or some such.

  “Who?”

  The little bastard, he knows who. His secretary just told him. “Bill Brock, Peter’s father.”

  “Hold on, please.” The phone clicks off in my ear.

  What’s going on? Is he punishing me? I didn’t get caught smoking dope.

  “Yes, hello,” he says at last, coming back on. Incredibly, I get the impression he has had me on hold while going to the fruit bowl, because it sounds now like he’s eating a peach, or something.

  “I’m calling about Peter,” I say.

  “Yes.” Slurp. “Are you coming up to fetch him?”

  “I was wondering if we could talk a minute about his suspension.”

  “Yes. Until Christmas vacation. I spoke to the boy’s mother.”

  “My wife.”

  “Yes.”

  “I would like to put in, if I may, Mr. Lacy, a word on Peter’s behalf.” I’m working very hard at trying to be deferent without actually sounding obsequious.

  “Yes?” Which I take to be a probationary permission to continue.

  “I wonder if you have had a chance to talk to Peter at all.” (I know fucking well he hasn’t; too busy, out sucking around alumni and parents for endowments for the school. Christ! I’ll contribute! If he’ll play ball with me—I’ll donate—I swear, he can have the house!)

  “He is not a bad boy, Mr. Lacy. Certainly he is no drug addict. He is not incorrigible. He is a good boy who has made a serious mistake. I believe right now—more than ever before in his life—he needs to be at your school. I know this boy’s heart. I believe that if you will let him be in your school, his gratitude ultimately will express itself in the form of his leadership abilities, of which he has many. I would like to ask you to reconsider, if it is at all possible, the term of his suspension. I would like to ask you talk to him; tell him how close he has come to cutting off his life; how he can save himself now by turning himself around. I believe that will do him more good than a three-month suspension. I know that you have the rest of the school to think of. I hope you do not really believe that he will corrupt the others. I know that an example must be set. But, please—I would like to ask you to consider sending him home for a shorter period. Set a necessary example, certainly. But with compassion, possibly save an unformed youngster from being lost. I’m asking you to consider giving him that chance, if you can, sir.”

  There is silence on the other end of the line, except for something that sounds like the licking of fingers.

  “I haven’t talked with his advisor yet,” he says, finally.

  “Would it be helpful to do that, sir?”

  “He’s scheduled to come in.”

  “Could you make a final decision after that, then?”

  There is another pause. “I’ll get back to you.”

  “I’ll be here, sir. I’ll be ready to come up and fetch him on a minute’s notice.”

  “Within the hour,” he says, and hangs up.

  I am left with a buzzing phone in my hand, as though having been dismissed, as customarily, by Frank. I am paying this guy $11,000 a year, and he’s dumping on me as though I were trying to sell him life insurance. But, of course, that’s the point; I am.

  I put the device into the cradle, and moving quickly now past the anxious eyes of my wife who follows my lurching progress into the downstairs bathroom, I manage to get down to my knees in time in front of the bowl and heave my empty insides into the circle of water.

  “Oh, Bill,” my wife says, behind me in the doorway, not knowing what to do.

  “’Sokay,” I say, and reach for a handful of toilet paper from the roll that has been replaced since missing three days ago, and wipe the rancid slime off my lips. “There’s nothing more we can do.”

  We have the hour to wait. It’s already 9:15, and I am already long overdue at the office. I call now to tell Jinny, my secretary, (whom I share with Tony Passanante) that I doubt if I’ll be in today.

  “Too much Las Vegas, I guess,” is what I say, an inane excuse calculated to appeal to what I tend to think is expected of me. “Little tummy upset.” Under the circumstances, not exactly an untruth.

  “Dieter Grunsted called from overseas,” she reports. “He needs a publicity shot of the Vegas display.”

  “Call him back. You can still catch him before they close for the day. Tell him a set of both color prints and black and white prints is being sent by Express Mail directly from the photographer in Vegas. He should have them early next week.”

  “Also, a reporter, Joe Meechum. Says he met you yesterday at the Sport Supporter press conference, and wants to talk to you about Hand-Arbiter.”

  “I met him at the Pro-Tec conference!”

  “That’s what I thought.”

  “Anybody else?”

  “Not yet.”

  “If Tony or Morrie calls from Vegas, tell them I’m out seeing editors. I’ll call you back later in the day.”

  “Okay.”

  “Thanks, Jinny. Next time Tony is out of the office, you got a day off, on me.”

&nbs
p; “I’ll buy that.”

  I can’t afford to ignore Joe Meechum. If he can figure out where he was yesterday, he could do me some good. He must be on valium or something. In any event, I’m grateful to have some business to occupy my attention until Lacy calls back.

  I call Meechum on the children’s phone, so as to keep the line open to Lacy. My wife promises to hang up on anybody else who calls on our phone.

  “Joe! Bill Brock here. How are ya?!… You got back okay?… Last night?.… Me, too … What can I do for ya?… Hey, Joe, that was the Pro-Tec display I met you at yesterday … Right! We make Hand-Arbiter. Sport Supporter makes a piece of shit called E-Z Clamp. It’s no good. A guy put one on—This is no bullshit, Joe—he put one on, and grabbed his pecker to take a leak, and the goddamn thing cramped up, and now he’s wearing two prosthetic devices. I’m not kiddin’!… So, Joe, please. Let’s get it straight, Pro-Tec makes Hand-Arbiter, which is the most revolutionary, and unique prosthetic hand device ever devised by man, basically, a chemo-electronic device, Joe, whereas the others are all—mechanical. There’s hell of a difference, guy. You got the press kit, right?… It says Pro-Tec. You see the little insignia on the folder cover? An artificial hand holding up the torch?… Like the Statue of Liberty, that’s right. That’s us … Okay, Joe? Listen, if you have any other questions, don’t hestitate to give a call. Let’s have lunch one of these days. If we’re going to be working together, we ought to get to know each other, you know what I mean?… Okay, so take care, Joe. Talk to you soon … Thanks a lot.”

  Do I know what I’m doing, or do I know what I’m doing? That son of a bitch Frank doesn’t know what a gold mine he has in me.

  Meanwhile, back in the real world. Waiting for Lacy’s call. The trick is to keep busy. There is garbage to take to the town dump, but I’m afraid to leave in case Lacy should call back at any minute. So I decide to rake a few leaves from the lawn. My daughter is up. She knows what has happened, and is walking a careful course between our disapproval of Peter’s behavior and loyalty to her brother. She is wise enough to keep a low profile, at least for now, and I admire her for it. This monument, anyway, we have crafted right, and it is a salvation.