“He did ask that you keep him apprised of the progress of your friend’s work, the cancer research.”
“Of course, I will.”
“He said he couldn’t think of a more righteous way to increase the value of your land.” She paused. “Mr. Winekoop, behind Mr. Stonebugger’s gruff exterior is a man with a lot of compassion. He has a big heart.” Her voice drifted off to where Lee could barely hear her.
“If I send a letter of condolence to his office, will you see to it he gets it?”
“Yes, of course.”
It was a bittersweet victory.
* * *
Lee was halfway out the door on his way to tell Dr. Rad the good news when the phone rang. It was Dennis Freborg telling him the town had denied him the permit to build his house.
“But they already dug the hole. Are you aware of that?”
“You don’t need a permit to dig a hole. Because the plans were so straightforward, and I’ve designed so many other homes in Harvard, and Earl has built just as many, we took a chance getting started early, knowing we wouldn’t have any problem getting a permit.”
“Why was it denied then?”
“Are you sitting down?”
“No, but I can be.”
“Apparently, there is an old building code still on the books that requires each newly built home to be able to accommodate at least one horse-and-buggy in a building separate from the house that is of a certain size and construction.”
“What?”
“I knew there had to be some mistake, so I called the building department and talked to the person who issues permits. She cited the code for me. I asked her how many homes had been built in Harvard during the last fifty years and how many of them were required to build a stable for a horse-and-buggy. She said, and I quote, ‘I’m just doing what I’ve been told. If you have an issue with this, you’ll have to take it up at the next open city council meeting.'“
“Good grief. When is that?”
“Next one is in two weeks.”
“This is bogus.”
“Oh, it’s bogus all right. How do you want me to proceed?”
“Do we have any choice if we want to go ahead with the house?”
“Not that I can see.”
“Then let’s attend the next city council meeting.”
* * *
It was hard for Lee to resist the temptation to exceed the speed limit on his way to Dr. Rad’s house. Windows down and a George Michael song blaring on the radio, he put the house permit issue out of his mind for the moment and thought back a few years to when he had interned for Dr. Rad. He reveled in the thought of being involved in his research again.
He found Dr. Rad sitting on a rocking chair in the far corner of his small, cluttered back porch, staring into space.
“Dr. Rad?”
The doctor gave Lee a faint smile. “I was just thinking about you, Lee.”
“That’s good, because I’ve been thinking of you, too. I have some wonderful news.”
“Hmm?”
Lee told him what he was able to offer: a lab and greenhouses designed to his specifications and fifty acres of land for his research. Then he told him about the Johns Hopkins researcher interested in meeting with him to discuss cancer research. It took Dr. Rad several seconds to respond.
“I don’t know how to tell you this, but while I appreciate what you’re trying to do for me, I don’t know if I can go through it again. And for that reason, I have to—”
“What? You’ve got to be kidding me!”
“I wish I were.”
The heaviness in Lee’s chest made it difficult to get the words out. Dr. Rad’s talent, his past research, his beliefs, his passion—he couldn’t bear to think of it all going to waste. “You can’t give up now.”
“It’s not like I haven’t given this significant thought, Lee. It was one thing to be financially supported by big companies and the university, but for you to support me, an individual, a friend, what if I fail? I would never forgive myself.”
“Fail at what? When is medical research a failure? ‘It doesn’t matter if you prove it right or prove it wrong, the value is in the proof.’ You taught me that.”
“Perhaps being away from it for so long has eroded some of my self-confidence.”
“Well, you can’t let that happen. That’s all there is to it.”
“Lee, I don’t know what to say to you. I have spent practically my whole life dedicated to plant research, clawing my way to finding a cure for, or better yet, a prevention for cancer. More people criticized my work than praised it, but that didn’t stop me. But when the rug was pulled out from beneath me in December of ‘86, I felt that was the end, not only to my research, but to my life in a way.” He looked past Lee and paused for a moment. “Tell me something, why do you believe in me?”
Lee stared into Dr. Rad’s eyes, beyond their surface. “Because you believed in yourself.”
Lee took a few minutes to think of the right words.
“I had a nanny once who used to say, ‘All you need in life are two things: curiosity and confidence.' Back then, I didn’t understand it—I was too focused on what I thought was expected of me by others to understand self-confidence. Then I met you. I watched you work. I witnessed the outcome of your thought processes. I felt your passion. Sure, I saw how frustrated you got with the roadblocks you faced, but that didn’t stop you, and that’s when I realized you were what that saying was all about. And I wanted to be just like you.
“Dr. Rad, you can’t give up—there’s too much at stake here. And I’m asking you... No, I’m begging you not to give up on me.”
Dr. Rad clasped his hands together and slowly raised them to his lips.
“When do we start?” he asked.
16 | “What Do You Want from Me?”
Lee and Dennis arrived a few minutes before the open forum portion of the city council meeting was supposed to begin. They waited in the hallway until the doors to the meeting room opened. The woman who opened the door seemed surprised to see them standing there.
“May I help you?” she asked them.
Dennis explained the reason for their appearance.
“We were told no open-forum agenda items had been submitted, so I’m afraid we’ve adjourned.”
“I completed the necessary forms and submitted them two weeks ago,” Dennis told her.
“Well, I’m not sure what happened then. Anyway, everyone is gone now.”
Lee could feel the blood rising up his neck into his face. “Look, I’m trying to build a—”
Dennis grabbed his arm. “It’s not her problem, Lee. Let’s go.” He waited until they were safely inside his car before he continued. “I don’t know why, but there’s some ridiculous game-playing going on here.”
“I may know who’s at the root of it.”
“Who?”
Lee told him about DeRam.
“Really? Look, I’ll do whatever I need to do to get your permit, but I’m going to have to start charging you extra for my time.”
“That’s certainly fair. Do whatever it is you need to do.”
Three days later, Dennis called Lee to tell him he had called the Building Department, and the same woman he had spoken with earlier informed him that the permit was sitting on her desk—no horse-and-buggy structure required—and she was wondering why it was taking so long for someone to pick it up.
* * *
At eight A.M., two days after the permit had been secured, Lundberg’s construction crew began getting ready to pour the foundation for Lee’s house. But by noon, a city inspector had shut them down.
Lee was livid when Earl told him what happened. “Tell me I didn’t hear you right, Earl. That’s preposterous.”
Earl had explained there was another old law on the books in Harvard that stated no licensed contractor could subcontract work from any person or company that charged more than the price fixed by the local craft societies. The law referenced an 1
836 price book for thirty-one categories of construction work. The inspector had cited them for twelve violations.
“They’re going out of their way to either cause you unnecessary delays or stop you from developing this property altogether,” he told Lee.
“So what do we do now?”
“Well, the inspector admitted the price book was outdated and they didn’t have a current one, so he said as long as I produce two more estimates for each trade to show my good faith in providing you with the most economical services, he would give us the go-ahead.”
“How long will that take?”
“Luckily, I have at least one and in some cases two other estimates, so I’m a little ahead of the game. The problem is that I don’t know where to find a third estimate for some things, like putting in sewer lines. There are only two outfits within fifty miles of here who do that.”
“Do we have any recourse?”
“Not that I can see. They shut us down. If you ignore them and proceed anyway, you’ll get fined, and my guess is they’ll make those fines especially high for you. Or who knows, you could end up in jail.”
“I want to proceed.”
It took Earl three weeks to secure the required estimates, ten days to arrange for a meeting with the county inspector, and another week to free up his crew to pick up where they had left off.
By mid-May, Lee’s house had been roughed in, and fifty acres of land had been cleared for building three greenhouses and a main lab for Dr. Rad. Lee’s spirits were high—until he received a call from his mother, who told him the entire family intended to spend Memorial Day weekend in Lake Geneva...with him.
As unnerving as it was to be spending an entire weekend with his family, something unsettled Lee even more, and that was his concern for CJ following the incident with DeRam. He was at a loss for what to do next, if anything. He had talked to her on several occasions at the bar, and she had said she hadn’t heard from DeRam since then, but Lee wasn’t sure he believed her. After carefully considering the consequences of potentially butting too far into her business, he asked if he could come over to her house before she left for work the next day, and she said okay.
When CJ opened her door for Lee, he greeted her with a handful of wildflowers.
“Nice daisies,” she said. “What’s the occasion?”
“I found them alongside the road and thought you might like them...but they’re not daisies.”
CJ led him into the kitchen where she quickly reached for a vase. “So what are they?”
“Heath asters.”
“Really. So tell me about heath asters, Socrates.”
“Aster ericoides. Bees, butterflies, and wild turkeys love them.”
“Oh, really? I’ll have to remember that the next time I invite a wild turkey over.”
“They grow well on dolomite prairie land, and we’ve got a lot of that in these parts.”
“No shit. What’s dolomite?”
“It’s a calcium magnesium carbonate sediment a few feet below the surface. Very rich in nutrients.”
“You’re a regular repository of information.” She laughed. “That was today’s word on my Harvard Business School word-of-the-day calendar.”
He gave her a puzzled look.
“One of the bar bums gave it to me for Christmas last year...probably as a joke. I didn’t think I’d ever have an opportunity to use any of the words. Ha! Then I met you.”
“Thank you...I think.” They settled in at the kitchen table, the vase of flowers in front of them.
“Nice touch,” he said referring to the cookie jar. A giant blue cartoon character riding a tricycle and blowing a trumpet was on the side of it.
“Thanks. He’s a Smurf by the way. Got it with green stamps.”
He gave her a blank stare.
“I’ll explain some other time.”
He wondered if green stamps had anything to do with social welfare, like food stamps. Up until now, he hadn’t given much thought to how CJ had managed to raise two kids on a bartender’s salary.
“So how are you? Really.”
“I’m okay.”
“You haven’t heard from DeRam since that day?”
“I told you I haven’t.”
“I know, but we were in a crowded bar then. I wanted to make sure.”
She looked at the flowers for a moment and then at him. “Can I ask you a question?”
“Sure.”
“Why are you here?”
The question caught him off guard. “Because...I wanted to make sure DeRam has left you alone.”
“No, I mean why are you really here?” She crossed her arms over her chest. “Why do you give a rat’s ass about how I am? Who are you, anyway? What do you want from me?”
The pressure in his chest caused him to wince. “I don’t want anything from you. I care about you. I like you.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m human, and you’re a nice person?”
“You know what I mean.”
“No. I’m afraid I don’t.”
“People who show an interest in you want something. That’s just human nature. So what do you want?”
“That’s not true. I don’t want anything from you.”
“Liar.”
He wondered how this visit could have gone any more wrong. While he may not have fully understood his intentions when it came to her, they were certainly not underhanded.
“I can’t care about you without wanting something from you?”
She leaned back in her chair until its front legs lifted off the floor. “Think about it, Soc. As a kid, you pay attention to your mother because you need food, shelter, love. As a teen, you pay attention to your teachers because your father told you if you failed in school, there would be hell to pay. And then you pay attention to a man because you need...”
He suspected she was speaking from a distant past, reminding Lee things that happened years ago could grab you by the throat at any time. “You need what?”
Her mood changed. “Nothing. I don’t need shit from anyone. You’re getting off the subject.”
“Am I?”
She got up. “Look, don’t think for a minute I don’t appreciate what you did to that asshole for me. I do. But...maybe you better go.”
He remained seated. “I don’t want to leave on a sour note.”
“Looks like you’re not going to get what you want then.”
Lee stood up. “You’re right. I do want something from you.”
“Knew it.”
“Do you have any plans for the weekend?”
“What?”
“Can we sit down?”
“No.”
“May I sit down?”
“Suit yourself.”
“My entire family is coming to my house for the weekend, all eleven of them. That’s eleven against one—hardly an equal match.”
CJ rolled her eyes and then sat back down. “Explain yourself.”
“Look, I fit in with the rest of my family about as well as...well, I don’t fit in is what I’m trying to say. That’s the truth of it. I can’t be, nor do I want to be, like them. Oh, there was a time there wasn’t anything I wanted more than to be just like my brothers, but I stopped thinking like that when...”
She relaxed her posture some. “So you were like a fish tryin’ to ride a bicycle?”
Lee laughed. “Well, yes, something like that.”
“The peels of laughter emulate from within, while he stands on the outside forever looking in.”
Lee reeled back in his chair, and after he’d recovered from the power of the words she’d uttered, he asked, “Where did that come from?”
“It’s the first line of a poem I know.”
“A poem.”
“Some English guy wrote it. I don’t remember his name. I found it in a book of poems in the library one time when I was in one of my weird moods, read it over and over again, and for some bizarre reason remembered it after all these
years.”
“What’s the rest of it?”
“Not now. I’d hate to dazzle you with all the culture I possess in one shot. You were saying?”
“I was saying, I had to break away from my family in order to find myself, because I couldn’t live in their elite world...and survive, let alone be happy, so...”
“So here you are. In your parents’ house, trying to be yourself, but you don’t know quite who that is yet, and they’re all coming up for a nice long visit, and you'd rather be anywhere else but there. How am I doin’?”
“You’re doing great. Look, I’m telling you things I’ve never told anyone before...except for my shrinks, of course.”
“Okay, but what’s all this got to do with me?”
“I thought I’d plan a barbecue for Saturday, and I would be eternally grateful if you and the boys would attend.”
“You gotta be shittin’ me. If you’re saying you don’t fit in, just how am I going to fit in?”
Lee shrugged. “You don’t have to. Just show up, talk to them like you do at the bar with other perfect strangers, which you seem to do effortlessly, enjoy the food, and then go home. There’ll be other kids there. We’ll have things for them to do and...”
“So just how will you introduce me?”
Lee got up from his chair and made a sweeping arm gesture toward her. “May I present my good friend, CJ, to all of you royal—”
“Pains in the asses?”
“Very funny. Actually, they’re usually very well behaved in social settings. Hey, I have an idea. Maybe I’ll invite a few other people from here and try to outnumber them. Ha! This could be fun.”
“Look, I’m sorry I misjudged you. Someday I’ll have to tell you my whole story, and then you’ll understand my trust issues. You can count me in, but only if there are other normal people there.”
“Bring your sister, too. The more the merrier.”
“Soc?”
“Yeah?”
“As far as Bern goes, I carry this with me at all times now.” She reached in her pocket and pulled out a green and white metal canister not much bigger than a roll of Lifesavers.
“What’s that?”
“Mace.”
“Is that legal?”
“I don’t know, and I don’t care.”
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