Bring the Rain

by JoAnn Franklin

  Nietzsche misunderstood. God not dead.

  That didn’t work either.

  Your family sucks eggs.

  No response to that old farm insult from my past. As a middle-schooler in my hometown of Hawthorne, I always got angry when someone said that to me. Don’t know why I thought a grown woman might respond to it.

  Life is unfair. Get over it. Call me.

  Nothing.

  Someone knocks on the door of a home decorated for Christmas. The home owner opens the door, looks down, and says, why did u bring them? Because, said the Christmas tree bulb, when one of us goes out, we all go out.

  Nothing . . . again.

  I’ll buy you chocolate if you’ll talk to me.

  No response, then just as I was typing in the first letter of another inane thought, her reply lit up the phone.

  That was a lousy joke.

  Seasonally appropriate.

  Christmas 3 months away.

  Never too early for cheer.

  I may not be here.

  Good thing I told you the joke.

  My church group said cancer back because I’m evil.

  You need to change churches.

  What if they’re right? What if I am evil and that’s why I have this again?

  Fight.

  What’s the use?

  I didn’t like the defeatist tone. That was new for Ellen.

  Cancer and I weren’t acquainted, but I did know that motivation to beat the disease back mattered. I could hope that she could rally. Cancer wasn’t a death sentence these days, or at least it didn’t always need to be.

  Answer when I call.

  No. Don’t want to talk.

  I’m not going away.

  Tomorrow. Okay? Tomorrow.

  I’ll stop by.

  Text only.

  You can’t hide.

  Don’t want to. Just need time.

  Don’t like.

  Don’t care.

  How could she not care? I loved her like the sister I’d never had. Maybe over the weekend, I’d stop by.

  The bird with one leg wasn’t there when I looked out the window. No, wait, I was confused. The bird with one leg was on my beach at home, not outside this window. I glanced at my watch. Fifteen minutes had gone by, and Lea would be coming after me if I waited much longer.

  Lea was sitting in a chair at the student tables in front of the podium when I walked back into the classroom. She put both hands palms down on the smooth Formica top as if bracing herself against me as I walked to stand opposite her.

  “Your unwillingness to teach this joint collaborative class has caused a great deal of concern, Dr. Sommers,” she said, looking up at me with a sad expression. “Dean Wright knows you haven’t been cooperative. He told me that Stanford wants to substitute one of their professors in your place. People are talking. Last semester you enjoyed this class. You’re the reason Stanford is partnering with us again. I don’t understand what happened.”

  She was right. Last spring semester and the semester before, I’d loved teaching this course. This semester I felt as if I’d been set up for failure from the beginning. Had this been a regular classroom, students would have sat with her behind those creamy white expanses of tables, their notebooks, laptops, phones scattered about. I missed that interaction with students. No, whatever this was was more than that. Conscientiousness kept me coming to work these last few weeks. The fact was that I’d lost interest in doing my job.

  My eyes went once more to the phone Lea had put down when I came in. Had she called? I must have spoken the words aloud.

  “No, I didn’t call. You told me not to. This lab is booked all day for taping your class, and I want that to happen, more than anything. I believe you can put NCUW and Stratton College on the map with this class.”

  I handed her the stuffed toy. Lea looked confused but she took him out of my hands. “I call him Brown Bear.”

  “Of course you do.”

  “I don’t have students here, Lea. I’m talking to an empty room.”

  She seemingly understood for she stood up and settled the small brown teddy bear on top of the camera. He looked quite silly there astride the blunt-nosed lens, his single adornment a ragged red satin ribbon.

  “This will help, won’t it? I should have realized.” Lea slipped behind the camera and bent her head to look through the lens. Then she popped her head back up and gave me an okay sign.

  I could do this. I went behind the podium, squared my shoulders, and straightened my dark blue suit coat once again. My keys were in my pocket, the phone was on my desk where I could see if Ellen might call. I was ready. Gathering my thoughts, I found the courage my father had struggled to strengthen.

  “Welcome,” I said, and stopped because I couldn’t bear that camera lens looking at me. “Lea,” I said, fighting the urge to run, and when she popped up from behind the camera, I breathed again. Brown Bear seemed to smile at me.

  She saw immediately what I needed. “One minute.” She ducked behind the camera, made some adjustments, and stood upright again. “Now, start again and look at me. I won’t go anywhere but where you can see me.”

  Another deep breath. Again another try.

  “I’m happy to be here with you”—I stared into Lea’s eyes and imagined thousands of students out there listening to me— “for this continuing collaboration between North Carolina University at Wilmington and Stanford University. This class examines decision-making and the roles System 1 and System 2 play in decisions.

  “For those of you who are rusty on the psychology, System 1 is our unconscious. Most of the time we’re unaware of its presence, and the unconscious, what I call The Sentinel, likes it that way. System 2 is the logical, reasoning part of the brain. That’s the part you will use or think you use for the class. But be aware, System 2 usually backs up the decisions that System 1 makes. Most of the time, all this works fine . . . except when it doesn’t.

  “We’ll be framing that discussion within the context of poverty. Your final project for this class will be to identify and resolve a problem that contributes to poverty. And—underline this with a red pen—symptoms of poverty are not the underlying problem that creates poverty. Societal and individual problems lead to poverty. How can we eradicate those causes and, through that process, eradicate poverty?

  “At this point, some of you may be planning to drop this course and find something else.” I smiled to show them I understood how overwhelming this class could be. “Don’t do that. You’ll be working in teams via the internet, and this is your chance to use your brain, to examine stereotypes, political leanings—right, left, and centrist—and whatever else is standing in our way to make a difference.”

  By the time I’d brought my lead slide up on the screen, and the camera shifted to focus there, I was as relaxed as if I had been taping online lectures for decades in classes like this. Lea’s reaction drew my attention away as I followed the cues in her green eyes and facial expressions, and I adjusted my voice, stance, and emphasis in response. That was better, much better, almost as good as having a roomful of students.

  “This compilation of advances in brain research comes from an article in Scientific American,” I said, indicating the slide out of habit rather than necessity as Lea had focused the camera already on that information. “‘Ten Big Ideas in Ten Years of Brain Research,’ by J. Calderone, does a good job mapping out the main advances in areas of neurogenetics, brain mapping, brain malleability, knowing our place”—noting Lea’s frown at the terminology I explained the term, “grid cells” then continued with the list, “memory, therapy advances, optogenetics, glial cells, neural implants, and decision-making. I would add an eleventh area of research—insight—to Calderone’s summary. In fact, I’d move it to the top of the list in importance.”

  I paused, as if there were students in the room, to let those online take in the impact of that statement. “All of this knowledge,” I indicated the slide, “hasn’t kept humans f
rom stumbling into poverty. System 1, the Sentinel”—I knew that if I didn’t make it personal, my students wouldn’t understand the difference between the two systems—“will destroy us, not through intent, but because of good intentions. As one of my fellow scientists said, ‘The brain uses heuristics that allowed humanity to survive saber-toothed tigers. Those heuristics don’t translate to complex messy problems like poverty.’ Most of the time, the Sentinel works just fine, but complex problems like poverty or civilization collapse don’t fit how the brain likes to work.”

  Lea straightened from the camera. “That wasn’t in the script the dean approved.” She stopped filming. “Give the students more hope. The advances you mentioned can’t go by the wayside . . . because you think intuition is the solution.” At least she had cut the camera off before she interrupted. We wouldn’t have to tape all that introduction over again. I doubted I could recapture those moments.

  “Not intuition, Lea. Insight.” I wasn’t surprised at her intrusion or the dean’s. “We’re already deep within a cycle of mass extinction. The evidence is quite clear. That can’t be denied.”

  “Just because we are, doesn’t mean that we will continue to be,” she said.

  “I’m not alone in thinking civilization is precarious. Atomic scientists have moved the Doomsday Clock closer to midnight. Silicon Valley startup executives are having Lasik done, not for cosmetic reasons but because when collapse comes, and they are certain it will come, they don’t want to be compromised physically. Glasses and contact lenses won’t be available because manufacturing businesses will have shuttered their stores. Those executives are also buying motorcycles instead of Teslas and Mercedes to get them to their getaway properties in small towns across the West.

  “Silicon Valley executives don’t understand that the brain has a built-in negativity bias. It helped us survive back in the days of saber-toothed tigers, but it doesn’t do so well with modern day problems. The brain is working through evolution—a slow process from a human standpoint—to develop more tools like insight, but our democracy is a wonderful, grand experiment that is starting to fail because our brains haven’t caught up with the world’s complexity. That’s what I’m trying to explain.” I glanced at the clock. Arguing with her wasted time.

  “Let’s finish this,” I said.

  At her nod, indicating she was ready, I told the students about how the Sentinel held us to beliefs and not facts. Then I explored insight and poverty, and outlined the course’s intent. “For the rest of this semester, we’ll examine research on what keeps people impoverished—religion is one culprit but not for the reason you think. Food is another. Some of those discussions might make you angry. I ask one thing only, that you understand the purpose of this course, to examine all angles, to explore all possibilities and to not reject or accept but to consider the material presented in this course as a starting point for your final project.

  “To help you with that, we’ll scrutinize a popular belief about how to alleviate poverty, the Robin Hood theory, and discount it. We’ll also discuss why love can keep you in poverty. That class will make you uneasy, but that’s what university classes like this one do; we enter into a negotiation of ideas that forces you to consider alternatives you normally would not.

  “As St. Augustine said, ‘People travel to wonder at the height of mountains, at the huge waves of the sea, at the long courses of rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motion of the stars; and they pass by themselves . . . without wondering.’

  “By the end of this course, you will no longer be able to do that.”

  Lea shifted to the last slide that offered all the contact information as well as where the syllabus could be found. “Lea, Katya, Greg, and Howie—plus other graduate students who are helping me with this course—will be online, and should you have any questions, please let us know. See you next week.” I waved goodbye.

  Lea stood up, gave a relieved sigh, and said, “They’ll love it.”

  My laugh was the last image on the television monitor in the back of the room. Then it too disappeared. I waited as she finished tinkering with the camera, and then asked before she busied herself with the next steps of production, “Who told you I was crazy, Lea?”

  FIVE

  LEA LOOKED BEWILDERED until she remembered what she’d said. She stopped smiling. I could tell she regretted that frustrated outburst, and that she’d hoped I’d forgotten. No matter how miserable this made her, I couldn’t give up. Whoever fed my self-doubt kept me chained to a childhood I no longer wanted to live. “Your loyalty is to me, Lea.”

  “Prominent thought leaders haven’t cracked these issues. A group of old women who call themselves The Raindrops can’t either.”

  She almost diverted my intent with that comment, but again, I bit back my response. Reliance on fast and frugal heuristics stymies insight. How many times had I told her that? Lea had a first-class brain, but her failure to think around her biases disappointed me. Those green eyes turned defiant when I told her I expected her to recognize sloppy thinking, even her own.

  “Older women can’t solve our world’s complex problems, Dr. Sommers. You should step aside and let younger, stronger women take up the challenge.”

  Her attack surprised me, but I didn’t give her the satisfaction of responding to that diversion. She waited though, hoping that I would; then desperation overcame those expectations.

  “You’re foolish to think older women have an advantage,” she said, “just because they’ve managed to live past sixty. They don’t have the intellect for this kind of work.”

  Disdain now. How I hated disdain. The emotion made me feel less than, and I’d fought my entire life to conquer that.

  “We’re all biased,” I told her.

  “So what?” she said. “The Raindrops got a bit of publicity. That doesn’t make them right.” Now she was scrambling for any diversion to keep me off balance so she wouldn’t have to answer the question.

  Her response was a textbook example of how the brain, confronted with a rare probability, decides things aren’t quite right and goes with the status quo. Since I’d formed The Raindrop Institute, I’d stumbled more than once over that belief. Nor had TRI’s successes diminished its power. Did she believe that men alone could save the world? If so, they’d had centuries of male leadership to craft a better world, and it hadn’t worked.

  “Has my accuser read my books? Looked at the data? Attended my conference lectures?”

  She shook her head and had the grace to look ashamed. I’d told her time and time again that sloppy thinking made humanity vulnerable.

  “You believe older women don’t have the capacity to think, and you won’t question that belief despite evidence to the contrary. The Raindrops have made a difference in Brunswick County and in North Carolina. School leaders are taking new approaches, questioning old models, overturning silo thinking because of our influence.”

  Lea looked as if a pigeon flying overhead had dropped excrement on her blouse. Disgust is a strong negativity dominance in the brain—and infectious. I resisted the urge to look down at my own attire to see if any imaginative crap had landed on me.

  “Who told you I was crazy, Lea?” My voice was soft enough that my demand was heard this time.

  I didn’t miss that I’d been trapped by my own belief that Lea should have been loyal to me. Sometimes, when I think about what the Raindrops and I are trying to accomplish, when I push aside my own beliefs and peek into the reality they hide, I’m so unsure we’re doing the right thing that my insides quiver. Those moments when the beliefs subside, those are the moments when I know I don’t have a chance at making a difference, because the Sentinel stumbles, searches, and sneaks away when pressed too hard for answers. But I can’t back away from my quest. The stakes are too high.

  When, after a long silence, she told me what I wanted to know, I wasn’t surprised. My colleague Hendrix had been very busy, but then she’d had it in for me since she�
�d lobbied the dean to deny me tenure all those long years ago. But I was surprised when Lea’s eyes telegraphed a rush of compassion for my involuntary wince.

  “I shouldn’t have told you,” she said.

  “Dr. Hendrix is always candid about colleagues.”

  Brutal is more apt. Hendrix had used emotional words, like crazy, to engage minds which are never indifferent to threats, including verbal ones. Reputations were everything in academe. You know that old rhyme, sticks and stones can break my bones but words will never hurt me—it’s an outdated myth. Words hurt more than sticks and stones ever will. That’s what made Hendrix so dangerous. She attacked reputations.

  More troublesome was the implication for Lea that aligning herself with me was a gamble. If I was wrong . . . Lea’s career would stall, and all that time and money she’d spent would come to naught.

  Research like mine challenged what was accepted, and that included Hendrix’s legacy, her decades of research. Unfortunate, perhaps, but after reading Hendrix’s work, I didn’t think her findings stood up to scientific debate in light of advanced brain research. Maybe that was why she hated me. But that’s how science works. Nothing is sacred.

  “She didn’t say you were crazy, Dr. Sommers, just that no one supported your research.” More emotional words that translated to unstable and beware. Academic research into threats, even symbolic threats such as those emotionally laden words, went to an aversion to loss. Like disgust, loss aversion has a strong negativity dominance.

  I should have protected Lea and dropped the subject, but Hendrix got away with audacious innuendo because no one questioned full professors. No one. Destroying another’s reputation was a tactic in distraction to keep herself viable, because controversy kept the focus on others instead of her own lack of intellectual rigor. But badmouthing me to Lea was wrong. Students look up to professors as intellectual warriors. We shouldn’t use them as minions for our own advancement.

  “You’ll let me know if Professor Hendrix mentions me again?”

  Lea didn’t meet my gaze. “I didn’t want to tell you.”