Beet

by Roger Rosenblatt

  America speculated:

  Can you imagine New England without colleges? Take colleges out of Massachusetts and what would be left? Chowder. That’s what.

  Hell, can you imagine the whole country without colleges? American culture would be cut in half. What would happen to plays and movies no longer able to include the drunk, stubble-chinned, chain-smoking, self-loathing, brutal but deep down kind and inspirational professor? Where would one behold the undergraduate who finds love, loses it, yet learns the lesson of a lifetime and faces the future with clear eyes?

  What would become of the college essay, and those revelatory moments when one realizes that one’s parents are people too, or that life consists of something bigger than oneself?

  What would happen to phrases like “the press of work”? Who would “concur”? Who would “demur”? Who would “recuse” or “adumbrate” or find things “cathartic” or “emblematic”? What would happen to letters of recommendation and “without hesitation”?

  What would happen to secondary education? Schools like Groton, Exeter, Andover, and Peace’s own St. Paul’s would be the first to bite the dust. Why go through all that fancy-schmancy preparation if one is merely aiming to work for Bollovate? On the other hand, public education might get a boost because without the brass ring of attending a top college, the private schools would be deprived of their competitive advantage. At long last, there would be an equal playing field in American education. Say! Did Bollovate have something after all?

  “You see?” said Manning to Peace after returning to the campus. He was still in uniform. “Colleges are thought of as any old business, so they’re available to the same standards. Thirty years ago, did you ever hear of anyone talking about colleges as moneymakers? You bet your ass you didn’t. Look at these parents. Don’t you think half of them are thinking about money right now? Is the school worth it? Are their kids better off working at IBM?”

  Whatever their thoughts, most parents had come for the weekend simply to be with their kids. Matha Polite’s mama and daddy drove the metallic bronze Range Rover up from Virginia in spite of their daughter’s e-mailing them that Parents Weekend had been canceled due to a blizzard. All she needed was for one of them to call out her three names, with that slow southern emphasis. As it was, Luelle wondered why people kept referring to her daughter as Matha, but concluded it was a Yankee mispronunciation.

  The weekend was kicked off by a welcome speech from President Huey in Lapham Auditorium. There sat the parents like obedient children, looking up at a man on whom most of them would have looked down in any situation other than a college—if they noticed him at all. Huey was in his glory. He had no significant talent, save a nose for his superiors, but he possessed an old-fashioned West Virginia senator’s gift for speechifyin’, and though his public talks contained no more wit or wisdom, or information for that matter, than his private ones, many were pleased to listen to them, the way people are pleased by the soothing repetitive rhythms of a train. Students, however, being less tolerant of their leader, greeted his appearance with a razzing parodic chorus of “I Did It Their Way.”

  Huey stood at the podium, cleared his throat for effect, and told the convocation he knew these were “stormy days,” and the “winds of change” might be blowing “the great old ship” of Beet College “to and fro and hither and yon.” Yet he for one was convinced that “smooth seas lay ahead” and “the albatross or the sharks, whatever, would soon give way to the doldrums and the scallops.” He also asked the parents to donate what they could, each according to his ability. Ferritt Lawrence took down the speech word for word, noting that though Huey “sent shock waves through the community,” he was “no stranger to controversy.”

  Outside Lapham after the talk, students and their families collected in huddles. Mothers and fathers of freshmen in particular confronted Huey, their noses inches from his, asking, What did he think the college was doing, admitting students to a school they planned to shut down?

  “You’ll pay us back every cent, you fraud,” shouted a DuPont executive from Delaware.

  Huey, who was so adept at tergiversation one could barely recall the subjects he evaded, took the assault with a frozen smile. Showing the bouncy self-confidence of a fencing instructor and backpedaling toward his office, he told the man, “You know, I’ve always been interested in the DuPont Corporation.”

  Matha Polite was “pissed” to see her parents standing next to Akim’s, making chitchat. For one day only the radical poet was distracted from her campus mischief, though the Bacon takeover remained on schedule five weeks hence. She wanted to get Daddy alone. Lately she had experienced an irresistible desire to learn all there was to know about real estate. And Akim had never known so strong a wish to be near his parents, to the point of broaching the subject of chess with the rabbi. (He’d decided not to tell them about the cave or the TATP.) Matha approached anyway, said a breezy “Hi” to Akim, which sent him reeling with puppy love, and collared her old man. She needed a spoon-fed lesson in his trade before her upcoming business conference with Joel Bollovate at Sow’s Motel, down the road from the campus.

  With Huey’s remarks consigned to legend, the rest of Saturday was to be spent by the students ushering their parents to activities meant to highlight the college. In the late afternoon there would be a football game on Beet Field with the cheerleaders jumping up and down, assembling into injury-threatening pyramids, shaking their pompoms, and yelling “Piggy Piggy Piggy Piggy, Oink Oink Oink!”—a traditional cheer that always deflated opposing teams, which had been preparing those very words as a taunt.

  In the evening there would be concerts in the Old Pen by twenty-four of the college’s a cappella groups (the other sixteen were on tour), each singing “Old Black Joe,” “Camptown Races,” and “Nobody Know Da Trouble I Seen.” This medley was followed by a lecture by Professor Godwin, “Who Speaks for the Halt?” The day would end as did most days at Beet and other colleges—after the parents had gone back to their hotels—with binge drinking and casual sex, and most of the students simply headed for sleep.

  For now, they guided their parents to selected classes. Those who attended Professor Smythe’s class, Analepses and Anaphora in the Oeuvre of Dan Brown, could barely make out a word he said, while those who went to Professor Kramer’s class left frightened. Kramer decided to do a one-man reenactment of the Battle of Blenheim, striding up and down in front of the room in full battle dress and wielding a two-handed sword. And no one went to Booth’s class because it was chemistry. The students in Peace’s Modern Poetry class actually wanted to show off their teacher. But more than a few in other classes were visibly anxious about exposing their folks to what they had been paying for. When the eerily quiet visitors finally emerged from Professor Lipman’s much-sought-after seminar, three parents vowed to cancel their subscriptions to the New York Times, and two inquired as to the procedures involved in withdrawing their children from the college immediately, with a refund or without.

  After his show class, Peace headed home for a rare lunch when the whole family could be together. On the way out he saw Manning walking toward Lapham. “And how are you pleasing the parents today, Captain?” he asked the Marine.

  “Believe it or not, I’m on a faculty panel about diversity.”

  “They invited you?”

  “I volunteered. I wanted to ask my fellow panelists if they thought that holding a different opinion constituted diversity.”

  The town parade was long over (having taken but twenty minutes from start to finish), and Robert was sitting on the hall staircase when Peace came in. Head in hands, he was counting to one hundred, very softly and seriously.

  “What are you doing, Bobby?” asked his father.

  “I’m giving myself a time-out.”

  “Why? Did you do something wrong?”

  “No. But I’m going to.”

  “And he means it,” said Livi, greeting her husband with a kiss and asking, “How goes it a
t the House of Wax?”

  “Never better.”

  She took his hand and led him into the kitchen. They sat together at the corner of the long pine table, where they could be close. Livi had laid out two chicken salad sandwiches.

  “Well, I’ve got some news that will make you even happier.” Peace tried not to look apprehensive. “I’ve been offered a job in hand surgery.”

  “Where?”

  “In New York,” said Livi, with too broad a smile suggesting her own anxieties. “What do you think?”

  “And you learned of this when?” His lips were tight.

  “Of the opening? Ten days ago. They interviewed me in Boston. I should have told you, I know. But they just called with the offer today, when the children and I got home.” She looked him in the eye. “It really is a wonderful chance. What do you think?”

  “What do you think I think? Why are you doing this?”

  “Doing this? Oh, you mean my life. I didn’t invent the job, Peace. But here it is.”

  “But you timed the move deliberately, didn’t you? To get me to quit my job?”

  “Yes, I’ll admit, it was in my mind. Not the first thing, but yes. Did you think I was kidding when I said the college isn’t worthy of you?”

  “That’s for me to decide, Liv. Not you or anyone else. So now your solution to my problem is to break up our family.”

  “We’re not breaking up. Lots of families have split locations. One parent works one place, the other—”

  “And that’s your idea of a family? A jerry-rigged commuter marriage?”

  They weren’t raising their voices, but they had never spoken to each other in grimmer tones.

  Livi studied the planks of the kitchen floor. “Look, I’m sorry if you think I engineered this offer just to push you around. You have to know I wouldn’t do that.”

  “That’s good, ’cause I’m not pushable. If I leave Beet College, it will only be after I’ve tried to do what they’ve asked of me. And it’s not because I’m the good boy doing what he’s told—though that’s probably what you think. It’s because trying to help the college is right. The place deserves to be saved.”

  “Do you honestly think you’ll do that? Even if those clowns on your committee come up with the most wonderful plan ever devised, a real rainmaker, would Beet College ever be safe with people like Bollovate in charge? Manning’s right. Once money alone drives these institutions, they’re goners.”

  “So what do you do? Run, hide, and go work for GM? If you can’t fight ’em, join ’em? Do you really believe those people who say let the liberal arts colleges go under know what they’re doing? They’re not thinking. And Manning is only half right. The theory is fine, but he’s not acting on it. Sure, he has a point about the bottom line. But that doesn’t say there’s no recourse. He had a liberal arts education, you had one, I had one. What’s it for, if not to enable us to beat back people whose only values are dollars?”

  “The liberal arts are dead, sweetheart.”

  “The hell they are. They’re just playing dead.” He stood to leave. “You’re a smart lady, Livi. Brilliant, sharp, all that. But this is something you don’t get. You like to say ‘when pigs fly,’ because you think they don’t fly. But I make them fly. All humanists make them fly. That’s what a liberal arts college is about—making pigs fly. And the fact that pigs don’t really fly makes our work the more satisfying.”

  She sat very still. They weren’t arguing about pigs.

  After a minute of silence—“I’ve got to get back.” They hadn’t touched their sandwiches.

  “Peace, this is a good job for me, a rare chance. Of course, I want you to come with us and get out of this sinkhole. It’s what I’ve wanted for years. Shoot me. But I want you more than anything. If you stay here, we’ll make the new arrangement work. I swear to God. And if it isn’t working, I’ll quit.” She stood in front of him and took his hand in both of hers as if examining it for damage.

  “I hate this,” was all he said. Their lips brushed in what passed for a kiss.

  Heavyhearted, Peace returned to the campus to participate in his own faculty panel discussion, “How Many Cultures in Multicultural? How Far to Go?” But as he drove the Accord past Gregory—who had deteriorated in the past months and was now so out of it that without stopping a single car, and motioning like a bullfighter with a cape, he waved everyone past the gates—Peace decided the hell with it. He made a U-ey at the top of the entrance driveway and exited, to another flourish from Gregory. He bagged the panel—something he would not have thought of doing a mere three weeks ago—and drove home.

  “Did you come back to ask for a divorce?” asked Livi, with genuine fear, when she saw her husband at the door.

  “Nope,” said Peace, giving her a squeeze. “It’s Parents Weekend. Let’s be parents!”

  So the anger fled and the working couple did what working couples do if they want to be a family once in a while; they stole time. They thought they would steal it at Crane Beach in Ipswich, which would be blustery and empty in November, and perfect for the four of them to run about in the swales of the dunes. Not much to report about the rest of their afternoon, really. Mother, father, son, and daughter did nothing more interesting than to play tag and toss around a dog-chewed yellow tennis ball on the hard flat sand at the edge of the ocean. The sky was blue. The water gray. The sand was brown, or maybe tan. The children were so happy with this uninteresting situation, they hugged each other, albeit just once, and though the hug ended with them shoving each other away, they were sufficiently embarrassed by the act to tickle their parents.

  Nothing more was said between Peace and Livi about her new job or the New York move. Nothing was mentioned of Beet College, or was thought about it, either—a personal best for Professor Porterfield, who had ingested the college whole since mid-October and often felt he had become what he’d eaten. He did not even recognize the fact that for those few hours the institution and its woes had vanished from his system, though anyone observing him, Livi definitely, could see the burdens lifted from his face. He was thirty-six, for chrissake. Today he looked thirty-six.

  After the beach, the Porterfield family moved on to the Lobster Shack, where they chomped on lobster rolls made the way lobster rolls are supposed to be made, with huge chunks of meat and the rolls toasted and submerged in artery-clogging butter. The parents drank beer, the kids root beer. Robert raised his glass toward the others, but then said nothing.

  “Do you want to make a toast?” his mother asked the seven-year-old.

  “No,” said the boy. “I just wanted to raise my glass. They do it on TV.”

  And so they did it in the Lobster Shack as well. Peace raised his glass, Livi and Beth theirs. And the guy behind the counter, too. And two more guys at the bar. And a woman with a rugulose face and slathered makeup, she raised her glass. And a plump older woman in jeans and a Sox cap worn backward, she did also. And two fishermen in their fifties, with red scars like lightning on their forearms, and buried eyes. Outside the window, the sun dug into the sea. And they all raised their glasses, saying not a word.

  In the evening back at the house, Livi said the kids could stay up and watch a DVD. Beth picked out Horse Feathers. From early on their parents had taught them not to fear black-and-white movies, and introduced them to the Marx Brothers, with whose anarchies the children eagerly identified.

  “Yeah! Horse Feathers!” shouted Robert.

  They sat in the corner of the living room they called the den, all four bundled together on the couch, laughing from the moment the movie began. Soon came the part where Groucho is standing in front of a classroom and Chico and Harpo are heaving chalk and erasers at him. Livi and the kids laughed even harder, but none as much as Peace, who was so taken with the scene he clicked back the DVD to watch it again. Noting the force of his hilarity, Beth and Robert were sort of frightened. Livi, too. But Peace just laughed, in deep and heavy gales.

  CHAPTER 12

  �
��WE’VE GOT IT!” PROFESSOR HEILBRUN ANNOUNCED. FOLLOWED by Professor Kramer, he leaped up the wooden staircase, wearing a scarlet Inverness cape wrapped about him like a cloak, and an Oswestry—an ivory brocade Edwardian jacket, striped waistcoat, and black dress trousers with a chamois codpiece. “A touch of whimsy,” he explained. The two men celebrated their own entrance like strippers geysering from a cake.

  The date was November 20. This meeting in Bacon represented the twenty-fifth in the CCR’s brief yet enervating history, and the other committee members, Chairperson Porterfield included, sat around the refectory table, stunned with fatigue. Meeting after meeting had produced nothing but a series of crackpot ideas interrupted by spasms of gossip, and as Thanksgiving approached and the curriculum report was due in three weeks, Peace was wondering if Livi had put a curse on the project, and if Beet College might close its doors after all.

  Peace had tried several tacks in the interest of equal participation. He asked the committee members to define the meaning of a liberal arts education personally. Then he asked them to come up with a common definition as a group. He studied the more successful curricula in colleges similar to Beet in size and traditions. He e-mailed professors in other places who had experience in this sort of project. He asked his six colleagues to do likewise. He moved disciplines around like modular furniture. He made a good-faith effort to get the committee to consider atypical combinations, even though he was pretty sure that such inquiries would result in the usual multi-this-or-that sausage. He tried a host of different centerpieces for a new curriculum—programs of study organized like the spokes of a wheel around a hub of government or history, literature or philosophy, the social sciences, even math and physics—with the thought that one area would be made to lead creatively to another, and expose the entire realm of learning to students as a rational construct. Hope had flared briefly with an offshoot of such an idea—a proposed curriculum divided among studies of discrete epochs such as the Dark Ages, the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, the periods of Romanticism and Modernism. But in the end that plan crumpled as well, as did so many other ideas, when concrete practice was envisioned.