Perhaps Sarah has remembered stories of these letters and has decided to use this uninterruptible and unpressured medium to explain herself. Apparently, this school is designed to stretch kids in ways they don’t experience in school.
In her first letter Sarah had said one of the teachers her first week made the students prove they existed. Descartes in Arkansas.
Usually we are not so fond of outsiders with intellectual pretensions. It doesn’t hurt to be dead a few centuries.
I throw my sweaty undershirt into the hamper. As bad as it smells, surely it proves something. I call Woogie, who scurries to the front door. Outside, it seems cooler than the house and both of us are glad to escape its heated emptiness.
Typically, Woogie stops in almost every yard to piss and is a willing participant in my transgression of the leash law.
Naturally, his freedom and eagerness to trespass incense the neighborhood canine population held in captivity out-of-doors, and a chorus of howls trails after us as I walk down the quiet street alternately pleading with and threatening my dog to keep up with me. Were it not nearly dark, I would have him on his leash in deference to the almost painfully law-abiding tendencies of the neighborhood, which is an unwitting model of middle-class racial harmony. In the late sixties, I’m told, a housing project two blocks east was finally desegregated, and since that time, this area has been a blockbuster’s fondest dream come true, with whites selling out and blacks buying in, until, finally, the only whites left are the ones who can’t afford to move away (my mortgage is 6 percent) or, perhaps, people like my late wife, who was color-blind.
As we tramp in the dust at Pinewood, the neighborhood elementary school Sarah never attended (she was bused out of our neighborhood), I wince upon hearing what sounds like a gunshot from the housing project, now called “Needle Park,” located only two blocks east I call Woogie, who is lifting his leg over some playground equipment, and we jog the two blocks back to the house. I have no desire to stop a stray bullet intended for someone delinquent on his or her drug bill. After the sun goes down, black drug dealers (there are almost no whites in the project now) control Needle Park.
I don’t see the point of risking an appearance on the ten o’clock news, since I should be on tomorrow night when the Chapman case breaks big time.
In the kitchen I snap open a Pearl Light and sit down with Sarah’s letter, while Woogie, who seems to prefer company while he eats and drinks, laps at his water dish. Sarah’s letter, neatly typed on my ten-year-old Olivetti portable, I’m delighted to see, is over two pages in length, and, in the style of her first letter, punctuated with an abundance of exclamation points:
Dear Dad,
I can’t believe I’m actually sitting down and writing you another letter! Yet, so much is happening that it helps me to sort it all out if I write it down. Unfortunately, I’m finding out that I’m really kind of shallow-especially compared to some of these kids. In the first place, a lot of them know so much more than I do. There’s one kid who must read five newspapers every day! For the first time in my life I feel like the kind of girl everybody makes fun of.
You know, the dumb but peppy cheerleader, kind of like a dumb football player! I just listen a lot of the time so they won ‘tfind out what an ignorant person I am.
But it’s not only that. I don’t even know what I think about religion and politics and things like that. They talk about stuff like that a lot to challenge your beliefs and really try to make you think about what you believe. My problem is, I don’t even know what I believe. You always let Mom make me go to Mass, but I was too young to understand what the priest was saying, and after Mom died, you never made me go. I mean, I don’t even know if I believe in God! Do you believe in God? You never really answer questions like that. You just blow stuff like that off.
I’m not trying to hurt your feelings, but I think you kind of cop out on things like that. There are some kids here who say they ‘re atheists, and they can really make you think that we ‘re just animals and that’s it! I mean, I know we ‘re animals, but it just knocks me out to think that’s all we are. You never talk about things like that. I don’t want to sit around at home all gloomy and have boring discussions all the time, but I kind of feel like I’ve missed some things.
I think you like me not knowing what’s going on. Life is more than high school! But we never talk about anything really important! We talk about whether I have a date on the weekend, Woogie, whether my clothes are too tight, who you have a date with, how dirty my room is, junk like that!!
They talk a lot about Freud here his theory that sex is the basis of everything a person does. How civilization and works of art come about because we sublimate our sexuality. That seems so gross to me! Can’t a person do some thing just because it’s right or good? The trouble is, I can’t prove anything I say! I start to talk, and somebody ties me in knots in two seconds! They question everything here.
I’ve never thought about it much before, but the revealed religions like Christianity are really kind of shaky. One of the girls in my dorm says that scientific and logical thinking has made Christianity a big joke, and she just waits for someone to argue with her so she can tear you up. I don’t think Mom really believed a lot of the things Father Brian said. It was a crutch for her, especially when she was dying. (That’s another thing we don’t talk about!) Freud said that religion is just a wish. When you think about it, you see what he meant.
Another thing they talk about a lot up here is the Holocaust.
There’s a Jewish kid here who’s an atheist, too.
He says that if there is a God who is good and really cares about people. He wouldn ‘t have let the Jews and other groups be slaughtered like that. What I don’t understand is how Germany let Hitler come to power and stay there.
They were so smart and civilized! Their excuse was that they didn ‘t know what was going on. Just like me! I know you want to protect me. You want me to be happy and smiling all the time. Like the biggest tragedy in our lives is supposed to be if I’ve gone two days in a row without making up my bed!!
I’ll see you Saturday. Please don’t wear that goofy hat.
It’s no big deal you ‘re going bald. There ‘re a lot worse things that have happened to people!
Love, Superficial Sarah, your mindless daughter
I put down my daughter’s letter and drain half the can of beer. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. What on earth are they doing in that school? At this rate she’ll come home either clinically depressed or a revolutionary. As long as she doesn’t become pregnant, like Amy. Saturday, not a moment too soon, I will pick her up for a three-day break. The first letter should have begun to prepare me, but I’m not ready for this new incarnation of my daughter. What’s wrong with being a beautiful cheerleader? We get old and ugly and serious soon enough.
I shove myself up from the table and look in the refrigerator for something to eat. All this worrying over the meaning of life. I’ll be happy if I can find a ripe tomato. I decide I only have the energy for a frozen pizza and open the freezer.
So I’ve copped out, have I? What was I supposed to do-read Immanuel Kant to her for a bedtime story? I take out the pizza and try not to think about my failures as a parent as I pop the frozen slab of glue into the microwave. The box reads like the contents of a chemistry set. What do I believe?
It depends on the time of day. In the morning I am reasonably fresh and optimistic, and so I put the odds on a God at fifty-fifty. How could somebody as marvelous as Sarah exist if there wasn’t a divine spark at work somewhere in the universe?
The gratitude I feel is, by itself, worth the price of admission into this world. But somewhere around six o’clock in the afternoon the odds (as I calculate them) start to go way down. By then I am exhausted, and what I’ve usually seen during the day is hardly reassuring as evidence of anything except that the cosmic plug has already been pulled, and if there is a God, He turned off His television set and went to bed a
long time ago.
This cheery thought convinces me I need another beer to go with the inorganic meal I’m steeling myself to ingest. I gulp the last few ounces of my beer and drop it into the paper bag Sarah has insisted we reserve for cans. Too bad they can’t recycle humans. When scientists are able to start doing that, the preachers really will get the shakes. I open the refrigerator again and take out another beer. What is important to me about religion is the way Sarah handles it. I ‘m much more interested in her being happy than in her thinking she has to discover the meaning of life. Actually, I’d rather my taxpayer’s money be spent on her learning to work our VCR, but I guess Arkansas has to try to keep up appearances on this score, too.
I decide the pizza isn’t so bad and chew and drink contentedly seated at the kitchen table, while I stare out the window into the growing darkness. Saturday morning, be fore we pick up our kids, the parents are invited for a session to learn what is supposed to be going on, and then hear one of our U.S. senators (I forget which like old married couples, they have all begun to sound and act alike) surely tell us how wonderful our children are, a fail-safe topic if ever there was one. I know I will not be permitted to make fun of all this sound and fury. It is serious stuff. Yet maybe I’m afraid of it (or jealous) and am minimizing my daughter’s experience by making light of it.
Missing Sarah desperately, I rinse off my dish and then call Rainey McCorkle, my best friend. In an ideal world Rainey and I would be married by now, but we are still working things out. We seem to function better as friends.
Since my wife’s death, even the most sympathetic of observers would concede that I have behaved on the erratic side when it comes to women. Rainey, I think, would like nothing better than to be able to trust me, but like the most promising politician, I bear some watching. Apparently she has decided I am a long-term project, and since about four months ago, when we made the decision to relieve our relationship of the stress of courtship and simply be friends, we have gotten along better.
“Be sure to turn on the ten o’clock news,” I say when she answers the phone.
“It’s been a busy day for me.”
Rainey, who likes to tease, says brightly, “Oh, was there a big pileup on the interstate?”
“You can do better than that,” I reply. Rainey’s distaste for members of my profession is not a well-kept secret. A social worker at the state mental hospital, who, at the time we met, counseled patients I had unsuccessfully represented at civil commitment proceedings, she thinks lawyers are licensed leeches.
“Actually, I was fired today, went into private practice, and picked up a client whose case is so big he’s going to put me on TV, but probably not until tomorrow.”
Rainey zeros in on what sounds most like the most important news to her.
“What happened at Mays amp; Burton?”
she asks, immediately serious.
I tell her the story, trying to make light of it, but I am embarrassed. The humiliation of being let go has begun to sink in. I can tell myself and others that competence had nothing to do with it, but I’ll go to my grave believing that Martha and I were rookies who simply couldn’t make the final cut. After all, appellate courts reverse handsome jury verdicts a good percentage of the time. It comes with the territory in plaintiff’s litigation. A firm doesn’t take its broom out of the closet every time a case goes the wrong way.
“It’s probably the best thing that’s ever happened to me,” I bluster. I don’t want her pity. In her eyes I’ve already screwed up too much. Besides, she’s not the type to give sympathy to someone who begs for it.
She is quiet for a moment when I finally shut up. Her voice warm and genuine, she says, “If you need to borrow some money, don’t be too proud to ask me. I’ve got some put away for a rainy day.”
I shake my head, floored by her generosity. She is offering to lend me money she doesn’t have. At one point we were close enough to marriage to compare the condition of our bankbooks. Social-work salaries aren’t going to drive the state into bankruptcy.
“I’m okay right now,” I temporize, knowing I would sooner die than take money from her.
“This new client is going to be okay. I’m not kidding.” I tell her about the employment agreement I had signed with Mays amp; Burton. This confession is at the expense of my dignity, but Rainey has seen me at my worst and can handle it. If she were the sort of woman (or man) who could be counted on to throw my weakness back into my face, discretion would definitely be the better part of valor. But Rainey doesn’t hoard ammunition. She says what she thinks and moves on to the next round.
In response she merely says, “I doubt if this episode will make the chamber of commerce highlights film, but lawyers have done worse things than steal clients from each other.”
I wince. It wasn’t stealing at all. Yet mincing words is not part of Rainey’s behavior, and I’m not really in a position to put too fine a point on my own actions.
“I was furious,” I say, one ring an excuse since she won’t do it.
“You still haven’t told me the name of your big fish,” Rainey says, adroitly changing the subject. She knows she doesn’t need to make a speech on ethics. She has made her point.
I pause, knowing the Model Rules on ethics adopted by Arkansas technically require me not to disclose Andy’s name without his permission, but by tomorrow morning everyone will know I’m his lawyer (I’m surprised I haven’t gotten a call from the papers already), so a few hours don’t matter.
“A black psychologist by the name of Andrew Chapman, the guy who accidentally electrocuted the girl at the Blackwell County Human Development Center,” I explain.
“He was charged with manslaughter today. You ever hear of him?”
“I know Andy,” she says in a shocked tone.
“He’s a real neat guy.”
After this last contribution, I feel a pang of jealousy. Even in a prison jumpsuit Chapman looked impressive.
“It’s an awfully small world,” I say, trying not to sound irritated.
“He worked at the hospital briefly as a psychological examiner, before he went back to get his Ph.D.,” she explains.
“How could they possibly charge him? It was an accident.”
I nod, glad to get this response. Though she is a do-gooder when it comes to poor people, Rainey is no bleeding heart on the subject of crime. She is from the tough-guy school of criminal justice. A certain percentage of society is regrettably sociopathic. A water moccasin has a better chance of being rehabilitated than many adult criminals, according to Rainey.
“Politics, possibly, but I don’t know,” I say, not yet comfortable enough with Amy’s theory to regurgitate it. Amy may have an ax to grind that I don’t know about.
“Would you keep your ears open for me?” The state is small, and the network among state employees makes it even smaller for a good number of the population. Mental health and developmental disabilities are under the same organizational umbrella, and news from one spoke travels to the other at the speed of the latest computer.
“Sure,” Rainey says, shifting the conversational gears slightly.
“Have you told Sarah what’s happened?”
When we broke up, one of the major casualties I expected was Sarah. Rainey and Sarah became friends in a way I never thought would be possible. Rainey has come to know and love Sarah in a way I somehow can’t. Half the time I come home and see Rosa standing in the kitchen (and expect far too much in the way of maturity), but when Rainey comes over, she says she sees a dazzling young woman who reminds her of no one else. For her part, Sarah has blossomed under such attention like an exotic flower. She was crushed when I came home with the news that Rainey and I didn’t seem headed for the altar any longer, but they have remained good friends. I tell Rainey that I will be picking up Sarah on Saturday for a three-day break from her camp and get her to laughing over my reaction to my daughter’s letter.
With a daughter of her own who has done some rebe
lling (though now she is a docile education major in college), Rainey is convinced that I overreact to almost everything that involves Sarah.
“Gideon,” she says, “the only way you’ll be completely happy with her is if you could have her stuffed and mounted on the wall in your living room.”
I laugh, but there is some truth to that. I could quit worrying about what time she gets in, and it would be a lot cheaper than sending her to college.
“Who’s your taxidermist?”
Rainey giggles, sending a familiar, rich sound against my ear. We talk for a few more minutes, and then, sticky with a day’s sweat, I hang up to take a shower. Tomorrow will be an interesting day.
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