by Robert Riche
How is it possible that a brother and sister, so close in age, brought up in identical ways, it would seem, as even-handedly as we could manage it, could turn out so different? It is a mystery, though the problem for me is, I really don’t believe in mysteries. What I believe is, there’s an answer to everything, and if we don’t know the answer, it’s only out of ignorance. I, therefore, have to believe that somehow we have failed with Peter. Which, of course, is what makes the whole business so abysmally depressing. It’s our fault. This skulking little bastard is off smoking dope, listening to lyrics of some rock group exhorting him to violence, and responding ungratefully to our every effort to help him as interference in his life. And I end up feeling guilty. I’ll show him what interference is; he doesn’t begin to know yet about interference.
Forty-five mintues after hanging up, Lacy calls back, and my daughter gets me in from the leaves.
“Hello? Mr. Lacy?”
“Yes, hello. Can you hold, please?”
The little shit! Yes, I can hold. I can fandango in the nude, if that’s what it will take to give my kid a break.
“I met with the boy’s advisor,” he says, coming back on.
“Yessir.” Breathless.
But, then, he’s off again, the mouthpiece half covered as he banters with someone else, in his office. “Tell her—mumble, muffle—Ha, ha—That’s all right—muffle, mumble … Hello, Mr. Brock?”
“I’m here.”
“We’re going to send the boy home—for a week—”
I can’t hold back a sudden audible choke. “Thank you, sir.” I twist my mouth into something halfway between a grin and a grimace at my wife who is standing next to me. Quickly she turns away, and with her back to me, I see that her shoulders are shaking.
“He’ll be on probation until Christmas.”
“Yessir.” I don’t want to keep saying “yessir,” but I do it, anyway. All the power is with him.
“Can you fetch him this morning?”
“Yessir.”
“Good. His teachers are giving him his assignments. I would suggest that he keep up on things during the week.”
“Yessir. We’ll see to that.”
“Good-bye.”
“Good-bye, sir.”
And it’s over. My wife and I are holding each other now, and I am thinking that we are clinging not just to one another, but to the fragility of dear life itself. Until now, I think I have not truly realized just how easy it would be for the life that we know to fall apart. We have succeeded under stress in holding it together this time. Something remedial, and different, will have to be done. We stand there a long time, breathing together rhythmically, softly.
CHAPTER VIII
The picturesque country road on the way up to my son’s school takes on the aspect today of a dreary blacktop secondary highway poking through one provincial town after another, each indistinguishable from the other, gas stations, fast-food joints, video outlets, car dealerships and wired overhead traffic signals scattered along the way.
What is troubling is that I don’t know precisely how I should act when I see my son. Certainly, I am furious at him. I am also angry (though probably irrationally) at the school. But aside from anger, I am scared. Fearful of the future. I would really just like to walk away from the whole business, but, of course, I cannot do that. I have to be responsible, authoritative, understanding, helpful. Dignified.
I will not fly into a rage—at least, not an uncontrolled rage. If I show anger it will be part of a calculated approach to inspire fear and respect. On the other hand, maybe I should treat the whole thing lightly. “Hey, man, you smoked a little weed, forget it. It’s no big deal. Get on with it.” Sure. He’d go back, and get busted again, suspended until the year he becomes eligible for Social Security. Or would he? Maybe he would take the attitude, “The old man is right; I gotta get my act together, and start being responsible on my own.”
Who the hell knows?
When I arrive at the school, kids are sitting and lying about on the lawn in front of the administration building. I park carefully on the edge of the grass so as not to leave any tire marks. No point in establishing in Lacy’s mind a further image of Brock family failed responsibility. A few kids in shirtsleeves fling Frisbees back and forth. An Irish setter prances and races crazily from one group to another. It is one of those New England fall days when you think of football—not the professional kind on television, but the kind you associate with old grads and wives, tailgate picnics and raccoon coats.
I don’t have an appointment specifically to see Mr. Lacy, but I stick my head into the outer office to report in to his secretary. She doesn’t suggest that I go in to see him, and noting that his door is closed, I don’t suggest it, either. She has seen other parents come to fetch their kids, I imagine, and her tone is sympathetic without actually inviting any conversation about it. I am eager for a conversation with someone. Just a few words said to me, like, “Peter’s a nice boy. This will probably do him good,” or, “Don’t feel bad, Mr. Brock, this is very common among boys your son’s age.” Anything. Just a word of consolation. No. Rather, reassurance. Things will be all right.
Like an angel appearing to answer my prayers, Mrs. Lacy rounds a corner in the corridor outside of her husband’s office. I met her the previous spring at a reception at the headmaster’s house when they were falling all over themselves to recruit new freshmen. She was pouring tea and continually smiling, and at the time I couldn’t help but think that she was mother earth set here to brighten all of our lives. Also, she is under forty, with a perky pair of boobs and a face like Miss Art School Grad Student of five years before, with a no-nonsense-horn-rimmed-glasses serious appearance. She has dark hair swirled in a bun that I figure probably uncoils to at least the crack of her ass.
“Mrs. Lacy,” I say by way of intercepting her. I am looking at her with an expression, I know (as a public relations expert) that conveys at least three different impressions that I would like to get across in an instant, namely: I feel sad about my son; but we’re a wonderful family; and I know you are an understanding person and will say something that will give me the reassurance I am looking for.
Evidently not reading me closely, and certainly not smiling like last spring, she replies coolly. “Yes?”
“William Brock. I’m here to pick up Peter. You know about it, I guess.”
“Yes. Very bad. Bad boy. Not good.”
“Yes, well, I think we’ll be able to talk a bit of sense to him while he’s home.”
“I hope so.” And lowering her eyelids like a curtain, she squeezes out an “Excuse me,” then sidles by in the narrow corridor, and is on her way without another word.
There is a moment when I feel like throwing a body block at her from behind—a spine-snapping clip, if possible—but I suck in a deep breath, and charge off in the opposite direction toward the stairs up to my son’s room.
Mounting the stairwell to the second floor is like offering oneself to the gates of hell. I enter a domain of cacophonous blasting, a stereophonic horror of competing rock groups. I have the sense of making my way through the landscape of a Hieronymus Bosch painting—the wail of zithers, the screech of electronics, the thrumming of guitars and percussive crashing, the screams and howling of the demented foisting off their terrorist nightmares onto the world. Is this what I’m paying $11,000 for? How do they study?! No wonder they are all weedheads; it would be the only way to survive. Is that clown, Lacy, sucking on a peach, aware of the hell inflicted on the inmates of this institution?
From behind the door of my son’s room there emanates a generous contribution to the overall racket. I rap my knuckles on the door, but, of course, make no impression whatsoever on whomever is on the inside. I open the door carefully and stick my head in, not knowing what to expect. There, not my son, but the nerd roommate, is standing with his back to me jiggling his shoulders and wobbling his head in a trance-like state, apparently in some kind of solipsistic ac
companiment to the clamor. I approach him quietly (One is intimidated into a humbling silence, as in a church, by the vaulting racket), and tap him on the shoulder. Interrupted in his reverie, he whirls as if to fend off an attack, but seeing me, merely frowns, and reaches down to the desktop which is filled not with books but by his stereo set, and flicks a switch. It is now possible, with the door closed, to be heard (barely) above the roar of other stereo sets from other rooms.
“Hi,” I say, shouting. I don’t know his name.
The roommate is as uncommunicative as my own son, and I am beginning to think that behind his thick glasses there is the soul of a diabolical criminal. He doesn’t speak, but he nods (I think). With a pang of sadness (and envy) I have to acknowledge that nerd or no, the kid is smart enough to use his fan to clear the evidence when he smokes. I have failed to instill into my kid the requisite deviousness.
The roommate doesn’t know where my son is. There is no sign of a packed suitcase, I notice. Possibly he’s in the can smoking dope? No, probably skulking about guiltily in the woods, afraid to come out and face me. As well he might be, since I am properly worked up now for a good mean confrontation.
The roommate mumbles something about asking somebody else, and accompanies me into the hall, and toward the stairs, a step or two ahead of me, until we come to two other kids.
Peter is not in the woods hiding; he is out on the lawn playing Frisbee, the kids shout at us. His mother and I have been agonizing over his future for two days, and he’s out on the lawn tossing all care away with a flick of the wrist. He will get it now.
Sure enough, there he is, the one with the hair down to his shoulders. Earlier, when I passed by the group of kids on the lawn, I must have disregarded him, thinking he was a girl. Nobody wears their hair that long these days, except possibly one of those rampaging slaughterers of Midwest farm families you read about in the N. Y. Enquirer: Dead sister told him to do it. There is a moment when the notion grips me to run out onto the lawn, wrestle him to the ground, shave his head, and scream into his ear, “Why the hell aren’t you skulking about in the woods like the guilty ratfink punk you are?!” But standing there a minute and watching him racing after that flying disc, leaping gracefully, high into the air, and snagging it backhand in an impossible catch, then whirling, and while still airborne, flinging it back again with perfect direction and speed and stable rotation, I am entranced, my heart stumbles over itself in a sudden catch of admiration. I never could do that, could never even hardly make the damn thing reach the other person. Where did that particular talent come from? Not from me. From his mother? Hardly. It’s his, and I can only view it with a kind of amazement.
But that’s only for a second. He sees me standing on the edge of the lawn. He flings away the Frisbee one last time, and slouches over.
“Hello,” he says, in a tentative tone that suggests he is waiting for a signal from me.
“Hello,” I say, echoing his tentativeness. “Are you ready?”
“Yup.”
“Where’s your bag?”
“I’ve just got some laundry.”
“Where’re your clothes?” He is wearing a black T-shirt with some kind of rock group insignia emblazoned across the front and back, and a pair of black corduroy pants and white sneakers. The sneakers are clean, a concession to the school dress code, as are the corduroy pants, Levis not being allowed.
He looks at me, and shrugs. “What clothes? I’ll go like this.”
“Oh, no, you won’t. Pack a jacket! And a necktie!”
“Oh, Dad!”
“Never mind that ‘Oh, Dad’ stuff! You’re suspended for a week. You’re going to do things the way I say, and shut up about it!” I’ve worked up now to the anger that I had intended in the first place, and it feels pretty good. More importantly, it feels right, and I can see that he knows better than to challenge it.
“I’ll be back in a minute,” he says in a low voice.
“Jacket. Necktie. Shoes. Dress shirt. Books, you have homework to do.”
“I know!”
“Don’t give me that ‘I know.’ Just do it, and do it right.”
He heads toward the dormitory, moving more quickly now, making clear his desire simply to get away from me, head ducked low, shoulders hunched forward, a manner I can’t help but recall painfully as identical to my own when I used to skulk away from my father.
“Do you need help?” Calling after him.
“No.”
“No, what?”
“No, thanks.”
Waiting for him is unpleasant, at least discomfiting, as it is well known around school about his suspension, and I am aware of the kids and passing faculty casting certain curious looks at me. Are they wondering how I am taking all this? The kids, I imagine to be sympathetic to Peter; members of the faculty, judging from the attitude of Mrs. Lacy, are probably disapproving. Any one of them, of course, could have been the fink who nailed Peter smoking in the can. I can’t meet their eyes, and I don’t want to appear to be avoiding them, either. I remove myself to the car, where I am partially shielded by the tinted glass. My kid gets busted for doing dope, and I end up the one sneaking away guiltily and trying to avoid the stares of the mob.
It is even worse that that. In my mind’s eye suddenly I have this vivid fantasy picture of myself being discovered—found out, rather—by one of my Amherst classmates (of no particular identity, just a phantom classmate), there, striding purposefully across the lawn on his way to lunch, the guest of Mr. and Mrs. Lacy, bearing a check for $25,000 made out to the school (which is just the first of several gifts he is planning to make; his accountant says it saves him money on taxes).
“Bill Brock! I thought that was you behind the tinted glass with your nose stuck into the New York Times. You look like you’re hiding from somebody, ha, ha. I’m having lunch with Homer and Serena Lacy. Driving the Mercedes over to Bradley Field later to pick up my daughter, Tammy, on her way in from Lichtenstein where she’s been visiting her fiancé, the son of the Crown Prince. She got her doctorate last year in Business Administration from M.I.T., and has a job as Undersecretary of War in the Pentagon. I suppose you know that. There’s been quite a bit written about her in the Times. What’s your boy doing?”
“Oh, gosh, he’s quite the guy. I’m driving him down from school in the Pontiac for a few days. He has this group of friends he hangs out with at the edge of the parking lot in front of the Grand Union. They smoke dope and drink beer out of paper bags.”
Mercifully, my son arrives before I am actually discovered by any old classmates. He throws some kind of khaki duffle bag in the back, which, I presume contains his blazer and necktie rolled up in a ball, and climbs in the front with me, pointing his face straight ahead.
“Buckle your seat belt,” I say.
He complies, not quite daring to give me the contemptuous look that no doubt he feels the command deserves.
It’s some joyful ride. We sit in silence, rolling along the country road beside the Housatonic. For him, silence is probably a mercy. For me, it is something I can barely endure. What can I say to him? I don’t really want to be angry at him. In fact, after a certain point, I begin to feel silly, vulgar, keeping up what is, for me, by now, a charade. What I really want to do is find out what the hell is the matter with him, and why he is screwing up his own and everybody else’s life.
“Do you know that they were going to kick you out until Christmas?” I ask him, at last.
“They wouldn’t do that,” he replies.
“They were doing it! I practically had to beg Lacy—I did beg him—to give you another chance.”
“Lacy’s an idiot.”
“Don’t say that!” Although, come to think of it, the kid may be right. Possibly he has insights deeper than we give him credit for. “Why do you say that?”
“He just is.”
“I’m sorry. That’s not good enough. You got caught smoking dope. What do you expect him to do, congratulate you, and ask
you over for tea?”
“I don’t mean that.”
“Well, you shouldn’t have been smoking dope. I sent you to this school to get you away from that kind of stuff, and what you do, you bring your dope with you—you know better than that—and start perverting the other kids.”
“I’m not perverting anybody. They’re all high all the time.”
“Well, they didn’t get caught! You must have been doing more than they were.”
“No.”
“Peter, for Christ sake, why are you wrecking things for yourself? Don’t you want to—survive? Do you want to go on to college and make something of your life?”
“Sure, I want to make something of my life. I don’t know about college.”
“You have to go to college, if you’re going to get anywhere.”
“I don’t know if college will help me get to where I want to go.”
“Where is it that you want to go? I mean, I think it’s wonderful that you’re beginning to think about these things.”
“I don’t know yet. I know I don’t want to be a businessman.”
Despite the fact that this is an obvious attempt to disassociate himself from me, I am not displeased. “Good! What would you say if I told you I don’t necessarily want you to be a businessman? The question is, What do you want to be?” I remember with a shudder that the last time I asked him he said he was thinking of becoming a stunt man.
“I don’t know exactly. I have this feeling—I’ve just had it a little while. I don’t know, I’d like to do something—important.”
Again, that catch in the chest, as when he was leaping and flinging the Frisbee. I wrote that to my father from Paris, the exact same words, that I wanted to do something—important. How can I make him see how much alike we are? “That’s wonderful,” I say. Though immediately I wonder if he believes that I mean it when I say it. In truth, I have this moment of doubt as to whether or not I believe it myself. It was wonderful when I was young and wanted to change the world with a few well-chosen words on paper. Do I believe it’s quite as wonderful that he wants to do something similar?