“Like you’re off the karate team for the year.”
What?
“Sir, once you’re kicked off the team, you can’t rejoin.” He was one belt away from a ninth-degree black belt, the highest skill level attainable.
“Maybe you should have thought about that before you went into that fag bar.”
Lee stared at him, not believing he had heard right.
“Is your so-called friend a Cornell student?”
“No, sir.” As perturbed as he was with the way Robin had abandoned him at the nightclub in favor of her own self-interests, he wasn’t going to say anything that would vilify her for being different.
“Were there any other Cornell students there with you?”
“Not with me.”
“But they were there?”
“Not that I’m aware of. I was there for only—”
“Do you really think it’s relevant how long you were there?”
“No, sir.”
“I’m going to recommend probation. You’ll hear from us in writing.”
“With all due respect, sir, I don’t—”
“Wanna go for suspension?”
“No, sir.”
“Good day, Mr. Winekoop.”
* * *
When Lee found it hard to concentrate on his studies in his third week of the new quarter, he knew it was more than just a matter of getting back into the swing of things after having had the summer off. And he was having other problems: constant nausea, lack of sleep, and a general feeling of inadequacy and helplessness—shades of his childhood he had thought were behind him. By week five of the ten-week quarter, he was failing most of his classes.
Following the student counselor’s advice, he dropped two of his six classes, agreeing that it was too heavy a course load but knowing in his heart that wasn’t the problem. After all, he had carried the same number of classes, in addition to karate, the previous year and had maintained a 3.0 GPA, a requirement to remain on the karate team.
He missed karate. On his way from his dorm room to class, Lee occasionally stopped by the exhibition room to watch his former teammates sparring. His longing to be back in it made him wonder if he would have provided the dean with Robin’s name and school if he would have lessoned punishment. He thought about calling her to let her know that, but in the end, decided against it.
Karate had given him that smidgen of self-confidence—more than he had ever had before. It had allowed him to void all thoughts from his head during performances except for two things—responding to his opponent’s moves and finding opportunities to make his own. That sort of mindfulness was such a welcome reprieve from his usual insecurities.
Now that was gone.
He considered dropping out of school. Maybe he was just fooling himself about being able to get a college degree. Maybe he was still caught in that trap of trying to meet someone else’s expectations. The more he thought about it, the more sense it made to drop out. He had no plan for after he graduated, so what was the point? Why postpone the inevitable?
Lee stopped by the karate exhibition room one last time. Instead of the usual sparring going on, the room had been set up with hundreds of folding chairs and a dais. Students were streaming toward the building. He walked toward the front door to check it out.
“Who’s speaking today?” he asked one of the students rushing into the building. He ignored Lee. He had to ask several others before getting an answer.
“Grandmaster Tatsuo Suzuki,” someone shouted at him.
Lee was aware of him—anyone who studied Wado-Ryu was aware of him. One of the youngest men to achieve the highest rank attainable in Wado-Ryu, Susuki had gone on to form the first Wado Federation in England and had been instrumental in spreading Wado-Ryu throughout Europe. A scholar of the Zen doctrine, the man was highly revered in the karate community.
Tickets would be required, of that Lee was certain. Determined to get in, he hid out in the men’s room until the nearest half-hour on the clock and then went through the now-closed double doors of the exhibition room. He stood in the back of the room and waited for the lecture to begin.
Suzuki’s topic was the significance of fear. Fear arises out of helplessness, he explained, and when we feel helpless, our instinct is to run. But if you train yourself to transform all that valuable energy into a positive motivating force, it turns into self-confidence that allows you to face the fear. Suzuki defined anxiety as nothing more than drawn-out fear. Lee had never looked at it that way. Suzuki went on to say that anxiety arises from the mind’s perception of stress as a danger to the body, causing the body to respond by going into panic mode—a lot of wasted energy.
Lee had heard ideas like these expressed before, but for some reason, they hadn’t completely resonated with him until now.
An hour and a half later, on his way back to his dorm room, Lee stopped by the Office of Student Affairs to inquire about getting help.
With the benefit of a private tutor, Lee raised his GPA to 3.3 by the end of the second quarter, and that was after adding back the two classes he had dropped the previous quarter.
* * *
With graduation less than a year away, Lee knew he had to have a plan for what to do next, whether to continue with more schooling or something else, before he visited his parents during spring break. During the taxi ride home from O’Hare Airport, he practiced what he planned to tell them, ignoring the taxi driver’s periodic curious looks in his rear-view mirror each time he tweaked his speech.
“It may be a long shot, but I’ve applied to Cornell’s grad school,” he told his parents after they had engaged in a suitable amount of small talk. “I can’t get in with my current GPA, but if I can score at least in the ninety-fifth percentile on the GRE, they’ll let me in on a conditional admission.” Lee had always tested exceptionally well—it was class participation, written assignments, and class presentations that typically brought down his grades.
“More gardening?” his father asked, with more than a hint of sarcasm.
“Henry! If you would take the time to understand what horticulture is about...and stop being so ignorant.”
It was just like his father to ignore the fact he was about to graduate from college, so his father’s reaction didn’t surprise him. What surprised him was his mother calling him ignorant.
“I do apologize,” his father said in an arrogant tone. “Your mother is right. I have no right to criticize. Why don’t you tell me about all the stimulating facets of horticulture so I am enlightened.”
“Maybe some other time, Father.”
* * *
Lee studied the entire summer, scored in the ninety-seventh percentile on the GRE, and was accepted into Cornell’s graduate school’s Department of Horticulture. Following in Dr. Rad’s footsteps, he decided to concentrate on plant genetics.
The summer after his first year, he interned again for Dr. Rad. One day, as they were readying some slides in the lab, Lee asked the doctor if he knew much about the genetic modification of tobacco plants being done in Holland.
“It’s fascinating work,” he responded. “I’m envious of their freedoms.”
“How so?”
“You see what I’m up against here. The research is expensive, and funding is a constant problem. The money the Dutch earmark for this kind of research is significantly more than they will ever make available here. In fact, I’m not sure how much longer I will be able to continue. I try to stay six months ahead of the game. It’s the best I can do.”
In the course of their work together, Lee picked Dr. Rad’s brain as much as he could. He maintained copious notes from their discussions. Dr. Rad’s most fascinating research involved the study of cancer in the plant kingdom. The doctor was sure that once they found a cure for crown gall disease in plants, they would be on the way to finding the cure for cancer in humans. For this research, Dr. Rad preferred to use red clover, a perennial herb particularly susceptible to crown gall.
Two other interns worked alongside Lee that summer—a foreign exchange student from Guatemala whose English was barely understandable, and a bookwormish young man who had even worse social skills than Lee. No one joked about Dr. Rad’s absentmindedness. No one went to dinner with anyone else. They didn’t even make chitchat with each other. Lee reverted to being socially withdrawn with constant feelings of restlessness and nervousness—feelings he had thought were behind him.
Lee thought about Robin often that summer. In spite of the ill will he still felt toward her, he couldn’t get her out of his mind, and that bothered him. The fact that he had dreams about her confused him even more. When he had a dream about making love to her, he called his childhood psychologist, Dr. Jerry.
“Dr. Jerry, I realize you specialize in counseling children, but since we have such a long history together, I wonder if I could talk to you about something that’s been bothering me.”
“Of course, Lee. What’s on your mind?”
Lee told the doctor about Robin and the disturbing thoughts and dreams he was having about her.
“Tell me about her good points.”
“For starters, she accepted me for who I am from the beginning and continued to even after she got to know me.”
“Anything else?”
“She didn’t appear to have any expectations of me.”
“Go on.”
“I felt comfortable with her, and...I think I see where this is going.”
Dr. Jerry laughed. “Tell me where it’s going.”
“Consciously, I’m confused with why I’m thinking about someone who I would never be with—she’s a homosexual, has a wild side to her, and can be inconsiderate. But what I’m really drawn to are her good points.”
“Not bad. Let me add a couple of things to that analysis. Sometimes we are drawn to relationships we can’t have. Why? Because they’re safe. Afraid of relationships? Then go for someone you can’t have.”
“Because then there’s no chance of having to face that fear.”
“Yes, and even if the unlikely relationship does take off, and it fails, there’s a logical explanation for it.”
“All tied up in a nice, neat little package.”
“Mm-hm.”
“Using avoidance to maintain the symptoms of anxiety.”
“So you really were listening to me some of the time back then,” he said, laughing.
“Some of it sunk in.”
“As I recall, we talked a lot about your childhood fears. Most people stop identifying themselves as a child when they’re faced with responsibilities that scared them as a child. Facing your fears—allowing them in, understanding them, learning from them—is a sign of maturity and helps you transform into an adult.
“Turning negatives into positives.”
“Exactly. As for the dreams, there are many schools of thought on why we have them and what they mean. One theory is that the people, places, and things in your dreams are actually symbolic of something else, often an unresolved issue in your life.”
“Like having meaningful relationships.”
“Like that. And getting back to Robin, keep in mind the only reason you had a relationship with her was because you were both captive in the same space. In other words, you didn’t choose to be in a relationship with her. Think about it—you found someone who accepted you for who you are without even trying. Now think about what could happen if you sought out a relationship on your own, with someone who possesses the qualities you value in a person, someone with similar interests, similar lifestyle.”
“That’s an interesting thought.”
“I’ve helped you then?”
“Yes, you have.” He paused for a moment. “Would you mind if we kept this conversation just between us? Please send your bill to me, not my parents.”
“You’re an adult now, Lee. Of course I will. Good luck, and do keep in touch.”
He was glad he had made the call.
5 | Breaking Away
The closer Lee came to finishing grad school, knowing he had to face what to do next, the more anxious he became. He considered applying to the school’s PhD program, but the obstacles were numerous. For starters, he couldn’t come up with a clear statement of purpose. After stewing over it for several weeks, he finally admitted to himself the only reason he wanted to enter the program was that he didn’t know what else to do.
Lee found himself obsessing over the successes of his brothers, something he had been told a thousand times not to do. Bennett, thirty-five, married and the father of three, was a named partner in a law firm that specialized in corporate and labor law but also provided legal advice to the underprivileged, many of them illegal immigrants. And if that wasn’t enough, he worked with their mother on two or three major charitable events throughout the year.
Thirty-seven-year-old Nelson had married the daughter of a New York socialite, and they had twin boys. Nelson was sought after by all the major investment banking firms for his ability to structure mergers and acquisitions in short timeframes.
The national unemployment rate was the lowest it had been in seven years, and jobs were plentiful. Lee began considering the different opportunities for someone with a master’s degree in horticulture. At the Cornell library, he scoured the want ads from big-city newspapers to see what they had to offer.
The Philadelphia zoo had an opening for a zoo horticulturist; a government office in San Francisco needed a director of grounds; and a nursery in San Diego was advertising for a greenhouse manager. But nothing appealed to him. Working in a zoo, while certainly a respectable position, would have garnered too much criticism from his family, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to be around so many animals and the general public on a daily basis. The director of grounds position in San Francisco was at a girls’ prep school—he couldn’t imagine being one of a few males among hundreds of teenage girls. Managing a greenhouse seemed awfully boring.
Until he could find something more permanent, Lee checked in with Dr. Rad to see if he needed any help. The good news was Dr. Rad had received a grant that would carry him for another year. The bad news was he already had sufficient student help.
After his graduation, Lee told his parents he needed a break after all the schooling and asked permission to stay at their home in Lake Geneva for a few months while he sorted things out. His mother thought it would be precisely what he needed and immediately started arranging to transfer one of their cooks, Shaneta, to the lake house. His father thought he was stalling, and Lee really couldn’t argue with that assessment.
Lee loaded up his ten-year-old Datsun 240Z with his clothes and a few personal items and headed for the lake house. He had received the car for his sixteenth birthday and refused to trade it in for anything newer even though his mother had offered to buy him a brand-new Porsche when he had graduated from college. The Datsun was Lee’s most valuable possession. No one else had ever driven it. It was his and only his.
As he pulled up to the lake house, Lee was immediately reminded of the pretentiousness of the two-story plantation style home. He parked in front of the three-car attached garage and walked to the front door between the twenty-foot-high pillars that supported a decorative portico. While he had his own key, he rang the doorbell to let any of the servants who might be inside know he had arrived. The Evanston servants lived in the Winekoop home in third-floor living quarters, but the lake-house servants had to commute from wherever they lived.
Receiving no answer to the doorbell, Lee let himself inside. The substantial foyer spanned both stories, boasting a large crystal chandelier in its center that hung from a twelve-foot heavy-gauge anchor link chain.
Like the other two Winekoop residences, this one displayed excessively formal decor—ornate furniture, dramatic artwork, elegant draperies on all the windows—too much aesthetics and not enough function in Lee’s opinion. On the first floor were a formal dining room, a large living room with a stone fireplace that took up one entire wall, an African
Mahogany Crotch paneled study, two bathrooms, an oversized eat-in kitchen, and a sunroom. Upstairs were five bedrooms and three more bathrooms.
The one room Lee actually liked was the sunroom overlooking the expansive patio that gradually stepped down a couple hundred feet to the lake. He had to admit their landscaper had done an exemplary job of mixing the right combination of greenery, flowers, and seating. He loved the way the radiant orange zinnias and yellow Calibrachoa led down to the boardwalk, giving it a natural look and feel quite different from the interior of the house.
Of the five bedrooms on the second floor, Lee chose the one with a terrace overlooking the lake. The room was large by most people’s standards, twenty-five-by-forty feet, with its own bathroom. The Winekoops didn’t do anything on a small scale.
Before even unpacking, Lee curled up on one of the chaises on the terrace and mindlessly watched the rays of the full moon dance on the surface of the lake. Eventually, his mind wandered to memories of times when he was a scared child and the only people around were the hired help. Now he didn’t even have that.
After an hour of feeling sorry for himself, Lee unpacked the few things he had brought with him, got undressed, and climbed into the elaborately carved four-poster bed, feeling a lot like a child pretending to be a gown-up. After a half-hour of mentally beating himself up for not being as mature as his brothers had been at his age, he fell asleep.
The next day, Lee ventured down to the kitchen to see what he could find to eat. The cook, Shaneta, wouldn’t be arriving for a few days, so he was on his own. Never having had to prepare his own meals before, he didn’t know what to expect to find.
The refrigerator contained a few things that had obviously been placed there by the staff for their own use. The freezer didn’t prove to be any more promising. Sonya, the maid, arrived at the house as he was searching the cupboards and recommended a diner in town where he could get a good hearty breakfast, so he headed there.
The breakfast smells at Miss Sally’s were intoxicating, and for a brief moment, Lee felt guilty savoring them. He remembered how when he was young, he would sneak into the kitchen to enjoy the aromas of whatever was being prepared by the cooks but then would inevitably get reprimanded by his mother, who didn’t like him to be in the kitchen with “the help.” As he studied the other patrons at the diner, a few looked back at him. He tried to imagine what they thought of him. Did they wonder why he was all alone, why he wasn’t working or in school? Did anyone care?
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