That Saturday morning, the weekend Conrad came home from Williams, Lydia and Marshall sat at breakfast, reading the Times and waiting for the children to straggle down the back stairs. Conrad and Jenny, twenty-one and eighteen, were usually the last; Oliver, fourteen, was usually first.
Marshall and Lydia sat in the little breakfast room off the kitchen, overlooking the garden. The paper was spread messily across the table, Classifieds and Real Estate already discarded on the floor. On the windowsill stood a jug of spring flowers: bleeding hearts and Jacob’s ladder. Beyond the jug lay the brindle cat, Murphy, her eyes shut, her white paws tucked neatly under her chest, feigning disinterest in their food. Lydia was deep in the crossword, Marshall pored over the op-ed.
They heard movement upstairs, and then they heard someone descending. They saw bare feet, legs in loose gray sweatpants, someone jolting down the back steps. Lydia expected Ollie, gangly and loose-jointed, his face shimmering pink with hormones, his mouth complicated with braces. But the steps were light and controlled, the feet tidy. After the gray sweatpants she saw a faded T-shirt that declared in orange letters, WILLIAMS TRACK. Conrad.
“Good morning,” Lydia said. “You’re up early.” She moved the newspapers to make room for him. “Want me to make something to eat?”
“No, I’m good.” Conrad went past them and fixed himself a bowl of cereal. He brought it back to the table and sat down across from his parents.
“Good morning,” Marshall said, raising only his head. His torso was cantilevered over the paper. He was poised, ready to dive back into it.
Conrad took a spoonful of cereal, then leaned back and folded his arms across WILLIAMS TRACK. “I wanted to tell you something,” he said. “I have an announcement to make.” He seemed awkward and self-conscious.
They waited, Lydia holding her coffee mug, Marshall poised over the paper. Neither was alarmed. Conrad was their eldest child, an achiever, responsible and conscientious. He trusted the world and had faith in the way it worked. He was always on the honor roll, always captain of the team. He completed the task before him; he moved beautifully through life.
Why would they be alarmed? What he was facing was his future. They’d had many talks about it. Conrad was majoring in classics, and he was drawn to everything in the ancient world: literature, history, art. He’d talked about going on to study archaeology or history; he’d talked about becoming a classics professor himself. He’d talked about law school and following his father’s path.
Lydia was proud of his wide interests. She was proud that he’d moved into regions that were unknown to her, mastering knowledge that would never be hers. This was one of the delights of being a parent, wasn’t it? Watching your children stride steadily past, outstripping you, knowing that they were carrying on the life of the family—whatever it was, the essence, genes, some kind of tribal presence—into another region, one that was distant, rich, remote. Astrophysics, intellectual property, ancient Greece: places where her mind would never go would be explored by her children.
Lydia waited, ready to applaud Conrad’s decision. This was like unwrapping a present.
“I’m joining the Marines,” Conrad said. His arms were crossed like a barricade across his chest.
Marshall sat up straight and carefully folded the paper closed. His eyes were pale and intent, like a benevolent hawk’s.
“The Marines?” Lydia said, stunned. Her mind went blank. “The real ones?” she asked stupidly. She had no idea what she meant. She tried to think what exactly they were. Why were they called that, marine? What connection did they have to the sea? Why did they wear those white gloves?
“The real ones.” Conrad looked from one to the other.
“Well,” Marshall said soberly. “That’s quite a decision.”
“When do you go?” asked Lydia.
“Right after school, this summer, I’ll go to officers’ training school at Quantico,” Conrad said. “Next year, after graduation, I’ll go in for good.”
“Quantico,” Lydia repeated, mystified. For good? How could it be good?
“That’s where the training school for officers is,” Conrad said. “It’s in Virginia.” There was pride in his voice: another shock for Lydia. He was proud of this.
“Tell us more, Con.” Marshall folded his hands on top of the paper. “Tell us why you’ve decided on this.”
“So, I want to do something big. I don’t want to just go into some graduate school and get another degree. I want to do something that has consequences. This is the biggest challenge I know,” said Conrad. “I want to see if I can do it.”
Marshall nodded. “I can understand that.”
Lydia looked at him, betrayed. Marshall had nearly gone to jail for protesting the war: How could he suddenly understand this strange martial urge? The wish to join the Marines.
All of it bewildered Lydia: the pride in Conrad’s voice, the understanding in Marshall’s. Suddenly she was confused and excluded. This was something the two of them seemed to have been sharing all along, a private language she didn’t speak. She’d thought they’d all shared the same world, but they had not. Her son, her husband: Where had they been leading this secret life? The one that only they knew about.
“This is a big change, isn’t it,” she asked, “from majoring in classics?”
She tried to sound supportive and interested instead of appalled and frightened. Conrad was an intellectual; how could he choose to enter a totalitarian system? And he was compassionate. She remembered him as a child, coming into the kitchen and carrying a tiny wounded rabbit, soft in his hands, bright-eyed and desperate. Rabbits, chipmunks, snakes—Conrad was the one who tried to save them all. Saving had been his mission. Why would he now choose a world of violence and killing?
And anyway, weren’t the Marines a last resort—for misfits, people who were so violent and misanthropic they couldn’t function in the outside world? Weren’t they for someone who needed a rigid iron rule to suppress antisocial urges? Conrad wasn’t like that. Their family wasn’t like that. Their family was bookish and liberal, not martial and authoritarian.
But Conrad shook his head. “Not really. It’s kind of a continuum. The classical writers love war, that’s their main subject. Being a soldier was the whole deal, the central experience. That’s what first got me interested. Sparta. The Peloponnesian War, the Iliad. Thucydides, Homer, Tacitus. I wanted to see what it was like.” He shrugged uncomfortably. “It seems like it’s the great thing. The great challenge.” He looked at them.
Traitorously, Marshall nodded again. “I see.”
“But that was different,” said Lydia. “The Greeks were all at war with each other. We aren’t at war. Being a soldier isn’t central now.”
“It’s the idea,” Conrad said. “Being a soldier is elemental. It’s kind of primal. And I want to defend our country.”
“Defend it from what?” Lydia asked. “This is 2001, not 1941. We have no enemies.”
Conrad shook his head. “It’s the idea of it,” he said again. “I want to do something serious, something that will make a difference.”
It all seemed adolescent to her, that absurd male sentimentality about violence. There were other ways to make a difference, why choose something so hostile, so alien?
“Aren’t there other things you can do?” she asked. “What about the Peace Corps?”
“The Peace Corps is lame,” Conrad said. “And ineffective.”
“But this is so violent,” Lydia said. “The millitary is a culture of violence. Every solution is violent.”
“First of all, no it’s not,” Conrad said. “Second of all, the military is called in only when all other solutions have failed. When it’s necessary. Do you think nonviolent resistance would have worked against Hitler?”
There was a pause.
“What does Claire say about it?” Lydia asked. She was hoping for solidarity.
Conrad swallowed. “She’s fine with it.” He nodded. This was not en
tirely true.
Lydia nodded, watching him.
“I mean, she was surprised,” Conrad admitted, “but she’s supportive.” Also not entirely true, but anyway they hadn’t broken up over it.
Lydia said nothing.
“I can see you’re horrified by this,” Conrad said.
“No, no.” Lydia shook her head. She was horrified.
Conrad began to explain, stroking the cat. Electricity began to crackle in Murphy’s fur. Irritated, the cat jerked her head with each stroke, swishing her tail back and forth while Conrad told them about the Marines. The language he used reminded Lydia of ancient myths, Nordic sagas, King Arthur. Courage and loyalty, Conrad said. Commitment, a code of honor. All straight from the ancient world, from Sparta. Semper Fidelis.
Lydia watched him as he talked, the early light flooding in from the window, across his face. He looked like both of them: he had Marshall’s wide jaw, his long, straight nose, his light coloring, pale hair, smooth, creamy skin. He had Lydia’s slanting eyes, though Conrad’s were blue. He was theirs, he was of them, he represented them. He was carrying them into the future. How could he be so wrong, so unlike them?
His body had become solid. She saw that it was, really, now a man’s: the chest springing strongly outward, the arms muscled and firm. His face was lit from within by youth; his features were precise. The brave, mournful eyes, the smooth, powerful arms, the slanting cords in his neck: his beauty was borne in on her. He can’t be risked, Lydia thought.
He talked earnestly, looking up at them, looking down at the cat.
Someone had come to Williams and given a talk about the Marines. It was inspirational. A professor stood up and challenged the speaker, saying that the military shouldn’t recruit on liberal arts campuses—that they were trying to militarize the academy. The speaker had argued back: on the contrary, he said, he was trying to liberalize the military. Conrad had been offended by the challenger. Weren’t you meant to choose for yourself in college? Weren’t you meant to consider everything and then make your own decisions? It was the challenger who had made him think more about the Marines.
Conrad talked about Homer. War was his great subject, how it shaped history, affected families, changed young men. War was the route to nobility. Before Aeschylus died, he asked for his epitaph to mention only his achievements as a warrior, nothing about his plays. War, not art. As he talked, Conrad ran his hand hard down Murphy’s spine and her tail sprang up with each stroke.
It was too late for Lydia to say anything, she could see that. Conrad was immersed in this, lost to it, in full spate. He was in love; it was in his voice.
When he finished, Lydia said tentatively, “So is it done? Final? Have you committed?”
“I’ve signed up for this summer at OCS.” Conrad sealed his lips shut over the words. “It’s done.” He stroked harder. Murphy stood up in a distracted crouch, unsettled, swaying, her coat rippling.
He was leaving the world Lydia knew. He would enter another, alien to her: the strange, violent life of soldiers, where killing was the right thing to do. This was anathema, the very opposite of everything you brought children up to believe. Don’t you remember, she wanted to say, what we always said about the military?
Conrad saw her expression. “It’s not dangerous,” he said. “Don’t worry. This is peacetime.”
“It’s not just that,” she said. “It’s a different world.” It was as though he were declaring his plans to join another family. You can’t do this, she wanted to say; you’re one of us.
Conrad watched her as he stroked the staggering cat. She could see that he could do as he chose. His life would unroll into the future.
And in this way, watching her son stroking the twitching cat, Lydia came to understand that the national memory did not work the way she’d thought. She saw that the shapes of ideas changed, slowly, like clouds, within the public mind. First the shift of an outline, the blurring of edges; then, mysteriously, according to some unseen current, the whole form alters. What had certainly been a high-heeled boot becomes unmistakably a swan. The idea of war as unacceptable, the military as unreliable, which seemed to Lydia fixed, immutable, had changed completely. Those concepts—war, and the military itself—were no longer scorned, not even among liberal intellectuals, not even among classics majors at liberal arts colleges. Somehow, while Lydia and Marshall were not looking, those ideas had become plausible, possibly necessary, maybe even laudable. Anyway, acceptable.
More than that, they had become honorable. It was a mystery to her.
Later, Jenny and Oliver came down, and Conrad told them. Jenny came slopping in wearing a ripped-neck T-shirt and sweatpants, earbuds in her ears. The whistling slither of the music was audible to everyone, and though it was strictly forbidden to wear these at the table, Jenny made herself toast, brought it back, and sat down without removing them. Lydia was too distracted by Conrad’s news to say anything, but Jenny started eating and then realized that Conrad was talking to her. She took off her earbuds and said, “What?”
“Pay attention,” Conrad said. “I’m joining the Marines.”
Jenny stared at him. “You must be out of your mind.”
“Or just maybe,” Conrad said, “you don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“The white gloves, right?”
Conrad shook his head. “You have much to learn.”
When Ollie came down, Conrad waited until he sat down with his cereal, then told him.
“The Marines!” Ollie said. “No way!”
“The ones with the white gloves,” Jenny said.
Conrad rolled his eyes, but Lydia could see that he was more confident now.
* * *
That night when they went to bed, Lydia and Marshall talked more about it. Lydia closed the door to their bedroom. The room had a bay window and a window seat looking out over the lawn to the barn. The walls were papered with a ferny green print, the curtains white. The furniture was honey-colored—an old maple bureau under a curlicued mirror, two carved side chairs. In the corner was an upholstered chaise longue, comfortable and inviting, on which no one ever sat. A white bookcase stood in the corner holding Lydia’s favorite books and photographs of the children. On the floor was a fraying carpet that had never been large enough for the room.
Lydia stood leaning over the bureau to look in the mirror as she took off her earrings. “So what do you think?” she asked. “I’m flabbergasted. The Marines.” She looked past herself in the mirror, at Marshall. “I don’t think I like it.”
“I don’t recall being asked if we liked it.” Marshall unbuttoned some of his buttons, and pulled his shirt over his head, straining the ones still buttoned.
“But this isn’t some summer job. It’s dangerous,” Lydia said. “We should have some say about it.”
“I don’t actually think we do,” Marshall said. “But it’s not dangerous. We’re not at war.”
“The military is always dangerous,” Lydia said. “What about those Marines in Somalia?”
“There are thousands and thousands of Marines. A few died in Somalia. That could have happened anywhere. They could have died in a car crash.”
Lydia turned to him. “But they didn’t. That was a horrible death.”
Marshall said nothing.
“It’s so strange of him. Where did he get the idea?”
Outside, the big sugar maples muffled the house in the darkness.
“We’re not supposed to know where our children get their ideas,” Marshall said. “It’s a mystery. If we’re successful parents, our children will invent themselves.”
Marshall stepped out of his pants and turned them upside down. He took them by the cuffs and swung them neatly, aligning the legs. He set them over the back of a chair.
Lydia sat down on the bed. She put her hands on her knees. “I really don’t like it,” she said. “I really don’t.”
Marshall sat down next to her. He put his arm around her. “It’s something
we didn’t expect. But I think his mind is made up. He’s twenty-one, he’s an adult. I don’t think we have much choice.”
“He has a year before he signs up for good. I hope he changes his mind,” Lydia said.
“I can understand the appeal,” Marshall said.
Lydia frowned. “Why do you keep saying that? You were a protester.”
“Because I thought that war was morally wrong. I’m not opposed to all wars. Some wars have to be fought, like World War II. And I can see why Conrad wants to do this. It’s the big test: I’m kind of proud he wants to take it.”
“In our generation, if you acted out of moral beliefs, you were a protester,” Lydia said. “Or you joined the Peace Corps.”
“So, maybe in his generation, you join the Marine Corps,” Marshall said. He stood up again.
Lydia shook her head. “It’s just insane. I know I’m supposed to adapt to this. I mean, I’m a family therapist. A mother has to let her children go. I know that.” She shook her head again. “But does she have to let them walk off a cliff?”
* * *
The colonel snapped his hand down at his side.
“Welcome home, gentlemen. Dismissed,” he said. “Go see your families.”
At once the platoons broke lines. The men of Dingo Three turned and waded into the milling families as though into the surf, the dense MARPAT brown mingling among the bright colors of the crowd.
Conrad swiveled, looking for his parents, at the same time watching the reunions around him. Haskell, a grunt from third squad, had barely taken a step before he was seized by a beefy teenage girl with heavy arms and long oiled black curls. “Bobby!” she screamed. She threw her arms around his neck, leaning against him and knocking his hat back on his head. Haskell drew back, tucking in his chin, raising his hand to his hat. But she was clamped full-on against his chest, and she pressed her meaty lips over his. A group of plump girls in bright tube tops stood nearby, watching and giggling.
Sparta Page 3
