by Lee Kalcheim
Now, we were to meet her again, and this cruel streak was to surface again. One of Gabe’s assignments was to write a ten minute play. This he did … and it turned out to be quite charming. But when he got his first grading of it, he found, attached to the play was a “grading sheet,” in which points where given for various aspects of the play. Thirty points were just given to “formatting”—that is anything from spelling to not following the format she had laid out, i.e., stage directions in italics and characters names center with colons after them. I told Gabe to use my playwriting computer program. No, he said, your program is not accurate. “Accurate? It’s exactly accurate. It’s based on the template for what professional playwrights use.” No, Ms X didn’t want the program used by most playwrights, she wanted her program. If not … points off. When I met with her to question why so many grade points were focused on what seemed irrelevant aspects of playwriting she said, “I’m teaching the students discipline. I’m teaching them to follow instructions. This is not about playwriting. It’s not a playwriting course. It’s a discipline course.” I said, You mean if Eugene O’Neill were to submit Long Day’s Journey and he got the formatting wrong, you’d lower his grade?”
When I relayed this to the boys, Sam jumped up. “Discipline? That’s not discipline! We’re disciplined. We do our work, and we do it well, and we don’t need to be prodded to do it. That’s discipline. What she wants is blind obedience!”
And he was right. She made up arbitrary rules…. so that she could teach her students to follow rules … just to see if they could follow rules. Even if their plays were brilliant, it mattered little. First they had to learn to obey her rules. That was the preeminent lesson. She was killing the creative drive in the spirit of Mussolini.
But Gabe knew how to keep his eye on the ball. It wasn’t that difficult to follow her narrow orders. Requirements for spacing, spelling, page numbers, could all be fulfilled easily enough, time consuming though they may be, and in the process he could take the notes she did give about actual playwriting and make his play better. This he did. And his grade improved. More important, his play improved. Then, the night before he was to hand it in, he panicked.
“It’s not exactly ten pages. It has to be ten pages.”
I looked at the text. “So, it’s 9 and three quarters”.
“She’ll take off … it has to be exactly ten.”
“You’re kidding.”
“No!”
I quickly looked over the play. “No problem … just take some of your dialogue and break it up. The mother has these lines here … and the daughter interrupts, But, Mom … And then the Mom continues. Zap! It was exactly ten pages. We high-fived. We had beaten the system. Well, we had given in to the system. Well, no, really we had seen the system for what it was … and gamed it … for the greater the good: handing in a damned good play.
Gabe had shown unusual patience. More than I had. My instinct was to storm into her office and call her a fascist. I didn’t. Thank goodness. I played Gabe’s game, and simply saw her manipulative nature for what it was and saw its relative unimportance in the overall scheme of things. He would not have to deal with her again. And he had written a good play. He had learned that sometimes you have to put up with this petty shit from people who have skewed agendas. Pick your fights.
He lost a lot of sleep, scrupulously formatting his play. He could have spent it polishing the prose on his history paper. But, as far as he was concerned, it was only sleep. He’d sleep when the semester was over. And, after all, she was going to get Sam the next semester, and, as he remembered from kindergarten—“criss-cross apple sauce”—Samuel did not suffer fools gladly.
SCENE: BROOKS BROTHERS STORE IN NEW YORK.
(Lee, Sam, and Gabe are shopping for suits for the boys)
GABE
Here are some nice suits, Dadoo.
(Lee comes over, looks at the price tag)
LEE
Yes, yes, but they cost a thousand dollars.
GABE
A thousand dollars?
SAM
That’s ridiculous!
GABE
The one’s we saw at the discount store were two hundred dollars.
SAM
How can they cost five times as much?
LEE
Well, maybe these suits are made better. Better material.
GABE
I’ll bet there’s not that much difference.
SAM
I’ll bet the material and the labor costs pretty much the same. Y’know the difference? Advertising! You pay for the name brand advertising. And the store’s advertising. The guy who made the material—the guy who made the suit—doesn’t make anything. It’s not fair. Let’s get outta here!!
(The boys walk off toward the escalator to leave. The salesman comes over to Lee, who is still standing there)
SALESMAN
May I help you?
LEE
No, I think Brooks Brothers is a little too steep for us. I think my boys want to shop at Marx Brothers … Karl Marx Brothers!
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
SEX, LOVE AND MONEY
One of my greatest regrets is that the boys never got to know my parents—the penalty for marrying late. My father died thirteen years before the boys were born. The boys were two when my mother left us. Thank goodness she met Julia.
On first meeting, Julia got the big welcome-to-the-family hug that she admitted she’d rarely gotten growing up with her own family. As my mother would say, “Around here we hug and kiss when you take out the trash.” So, this sweet, blue-eyed, freckle-faced girl who was half my age (at the time, she’s catching up) was suddenly brought to the bosom of the quintessential Jewish mother. Well not quintessential. Jewishness was not her dominant feature. There was no old-country accent. There was no smell of brisket throughout her apartment. There was no burden-of-life tone to her voice. She was like a Noel Coward character who happened to be Jewish. Behind all the sassy lines was warmth. And Julia loved it. And it didn’t hurt my cause.
The spirit of my mom’s generosity, infused in me and released in Julia, came full circle with our sons. Though they didn’t “know” my mother, they acted as if they did. And spookily enough, the same for my dad.
My father had struggled through the depression, and it informed everything he did. It did not make him ungenerous. Never. It just made him wary of spending money he might not have tomorrow. Thanks to him, I’ve become a sort of a squirrel. Saving money when I have it. Never using a credit card if I don’t have the money in the bank to pay the bill. Always looking for a bargain. But always remembering to splurge when the occasion is right
I remember him teaching me how to balance a checkbook as if it were one the great rites of passage in the Western World. The key to stability and life-long happiness was a balanced checkbook! I also remember the “sex talk” we had when I was, I guess, fifteen or sixteen. He came into my room and sat uneasily on the chair by bed.
“We should talk about … you know … sex and things”
I shrugged, “Okay.”
He looked at me, shifted in the chair. Sighed.
“So, is there anything you want to know?”
“Nope,” I said quickly.
“Good,” he said, and got up and left the room.
The balance-the-checkbook talk took considerably longer. Consequently, my financial life has been far more consistent than my sex life.
My dad was conservative in the old fashioned way—i.e. you don’t talk about sex, and you save your money. He was a principled tightwad. If he was going to spend money, it was going to be on something good. Except, of course, when my Mom would ask him to pick up some Jack Daniels Bourbon and he would bring home “Old Hickory,” or some other unknown brand. My mom would say, “I wanted Jack Daniels.” “Oh,” my dad would say, “Bourbon is bourbon. It’s all the same!”
“It’s all the same to you. You don’t drink bourbon!”
On the other h
and, if I needed a suit, he’d go to the best men’s store in town. There was no point in buying crap. You buy something good—it lasts. He didn’t know from bourbon. He knew from suits.
And so, when the time came that I would be conflicted about spending a good deal of money on a gift for my wife, the boys came to the rescue. I was walking the dog in New York awhile back, when I saw a striking dress in a store window. I thought, My God, Julia would look great in that dress. She has nothing like it. It has an empire cut and a striped soft fabric that dropped almost to the ground. When the hell would she wear it? We don’t go anywhere! Well, if it’s $200.00, I could see buying it to wear on special occasions.
I went in. The saleswoman gave me the price: $400. Well that was it. Thank you very much. She held the dress up in front of her. She was my wife’s size.
“Could you …. put it on?”
She went to change. I thought, “I’m not paying $400.00 for a dress. I know uptown women pay thousands for a dress, but they’re married to men who are running the world. One of Julia’s favorite jackets cost $5.00 at a thrift shop in Connecticut. She was joyful after that purchase. I was already getting depressed at the thought that this dress might look terrific on an actual person. The saleswoman reentered. She looked stunning! Julia would look magnificent. Well, I’m not paying $400.00 for a dress!
“It’s the last one,” she said.
Ohhhh, the old “it’s the last one” ploy.
“Will you get more in?”
“They don’t make them anymore.”
Ohhhh. “The old they don’t make them anymore” ploy.
I took a deep breath. “Let me think about it. Could you hold the dress till tonight?”
“Sure.”
I left the store. Good. Leaving is good. Once you leave the store, the charm of the actual object fades. It’s always good, before you make an impulse buy to leave the scene of the crime, the impulse, and allow the impulse to subside. I was now a block away and could feel my love of the dress now being overtaken by the practicality of not spending $400.00. She’ll wear it—what, once every five years? If that.
I got home. Yes, the memory of the gorgeous dress was fading. No, it wasn’t. I imagined Julia in it on the opening night of one of my plays. Even if the play was a disaster, she’d look great. It was one of a kind. It made no sense. The boys came home from school.
“I just saw a fabulous dress for Mommy. For her birthday. But I can’t afford it.”
“How much is it?”
“Four hundred dollars.”
“Wow!”
“What’s it made of?”
“I don’t know. It just looks great.”
“Is that a lot for a dress?”
“Sam, it’s a lot for us.”
“Right.”
“What do you think guys?”
“We have money in our savings accounts. From Grandmom, from our birthdays. Why don’t we help you?”
“We could pay half.”
“I’ll pay for the upper half!”
“Dadoo!”
“You guys really want to do that?”
“Yes! Sure!”
The ghosts of my parents had taken over the bodies of my children. The principled tightwad and the effusive hugger had fused in their immediate and generous response.
Julia came home.
I imagined her in the dress.
Opening night. Ooohs and Aaaaahs.
“Where did you get that dress?”
“My hubby and my boys gave it to me for my birthday.”
Ooooooh.
I called the store. Hold the dress. I’ll pick it up tonight.
I did.
A week later, on her birthday, she tried it on. She looked incredible. The boys and I looked at each other and knew we’d done the right thing. I don’t know what I would have done if they had not joined in the purchase. I was happy to have no regrets. I was happy she was pleased. And I was most happy that it had come from all of us. Me, my sons and my mom and dad.
SCENE: THE NEW YORK KITCHEN—DINNERTIME
JULIA
Do you guys know if you want to go to the same college or different colleges?
GABE
Maybe different colleges, but a half an hour apart.
JULIA
That’s going to limit your choices.
GABE
Maybe the same college but we room apart.
JULIA
Big or small?
SAMGABE
Big.Small.
GABE
Mommy, the size doesn’t matter. The quality of the education matters.
JULIA
Of course.
GABE
But we would like a beautiful campus.
SAM
Beautiful architecture.
GABE
Old. Gothic. Like Oxford.
SAM
With fireplaces in the room.
GABE
We want a nineteenth-century education.
LEE
Oh. Great. Will you be taking your manservant?
CHAPTER TWENTY THREE
THE GRAND (OR NOT SO GRAND) TOUR
In the boys’ junior year of high school, we planned the requisite college tour. How many colleges could we hit during the ten-day spring vacation? How many fleas could dance on the head of pin? We didn’t want to push it. See so many that they all blurred together. We decided to pick the farthest location, Chicago, fly there, rent a car, then drive our way back east stopping at colleges along the way. Piece o’ cake. With a brief respite at the house in Massachusetts we scheduled eight schools. Piece o’ cake. Had I forgotten how hard it is to eat cake?? I always take a bigger piece than I can eat. It’s always too sweet. I always feel bloated and guilty after I eat it. Why don’t I chose something healthier for me like … a pear? Okay, with a little cheese on a cracker. Okay, with a few cookies. Okay, a dab of ice cream. And chocolate sauce. Stop! That’s kind of what happened with the tour. It turned into a one-a-day marathon. What I found out was: (a) All college tours are alike. Some bright enthusiastic kid walks backward while you shuffle after him among ten other families as he/she points out not how good the education is at his/her college, but how good the food is! College is all about food. At Cornell (not on this tour) a young lady actually said, “Y’know … we have so many courses here. I mean, like freshman year … if you’re an English major and like you don’t wanna take a heavy duty lit course, you can take a course in the Simpsons!” We could have stopped the tour there. My kids were appalled. Sam jumped in, “It doesn’t make sense. Cornell’s a good school. Why do they think telling prospective students that they don’t have to take rigorous courses is attractive?” Gabe followed, “Maybe the tour guides do it on their own. They think it’s cool.”
“They should be fired!! The girl spent ten minutes telling us about how someone got up on the roof of the dorm at Halloween and smashed pumpkins down on everyone. What’s that?”
Julia calmly added, “You know you’re allowed to have some mindless fun in college. Even a good college.”
But, I couldn’t help thinking. Cornell is a fine school. Several of my most interesting friends went there, so why in hell would the tour guide emphasize its silliest course. On the drive back, we made up a whole curriculum of silly college courses, including: “Wars and Whores: The Influence of Prostitution on Major World Conflicts,” “Short!: Great Undersized Rulers from Napoleon to LaGuardia,” “Farting and Parting: The relationship between Flatulence and Divorce in the Twentieth Century,” “Losers: the Psychological Study of Great Losers in History from Caligula to Custer.”
I wondered though, if there might be no place in the real world for my kids. They hated pop culture. The music. The TV. The movies. Did I need to find a time machine to launch them back at least fifty years? Was their childhood spent listening to Cole Porter songs and old musicals and watching movies like Some Like It Hot and, of course, the whole classical repertoire going to isolate them fr
om most of the other students? It didn’t seem to bother them in high school. They were in a rock band. Well, kind of a rock band. Guitar, drums, vocal, and two violins. But the selections were eclectic … from Beatles to Blue Skies. They got on. Why was I worried? It didn’t worry them. They were secure in the value of what they liked. I was an all too typical parent, worrying if they’d be liked.
On the current trip we planned to visit the University of Chicago then drive east to Ohio for Oberlin, Kenyon—more east to Philly for Swarthmore and Haverford. A weekend break, then a flurry of Trinity, Wesleyan, and Yale, if we could squeeze it.
They all did run together, but more often than not, I realized that in ten minutes I knew if I liked a place or not. Julia and the boys, intent on soaking up as much info as possible, did the tours. Chicago and Oberlin got to us right away. Chicago with it’s neo-gothic splendor and it’s rep for hard-core learning and Oberlin for its bucolic, laid-back, turn-of-the-century, small-town coziness. Forget the tours, sign me up at either one and let’s go home. But we plodded on. The boys felt they had to see ’em all to really know what they wanted or didn’t want. Kind of like dating. You find a knockout on your first date. No way are you going to say to him/her, “You’re it. I know it. Let’s cut the crap and get married and live happily ever after.”
The best part of the trip, for me at least, was the delightful bed and breakfasts we stayed at—some on campus at Kenyon and Trinity. What the hell I thought, I’d had dreams of going back to college, but what I really wanted was to live at a bed and breakfast on a beautiful campus and kind of be back at school, except I wouldn’t have to go to classes and my room would be a lovely suite overlooking green lawns and stately buildings. (Actually many schools have picked up on my fantasy and now have retirement villages on or near campus for just such romantics as me.) At my old alma mater, Trinity, we were able to delight in a dinner with some of my old profs and in the memories evoked walking the long walk on the exquisite campus. But my evoked memories had no influence on the boys. They wanted a really old-fashioned, challenging school, with fabulous rustic old buildings. What they really wanted was Oxford.