| The UnAmerican3 Have you noticed how popular high-school reunions have become? I receive invitations from Hadrian Exxis High School every five years, but I do both myself and my classmates a favor by throwing them in my trash basket. What could I reminisce over with fat and ugly nostalgics eager to revive the fun they think they had in their youth? Hardly did I cherish those two years, although I had suffered no major disasters, no more teeth knocked out, no more repudiations by girls who had just told me “I loved you.” Occasionally I encountered Sheila’s eyes in the hall between classes and they seemed to ask:
If she had asked me, I hope I would have answered: ‘I’m not waiting.’ Stopping and speaking to me didn’t seem to occur to her, however, so I ignored her and went my way. Aren’t appearances deceptive? Thelma was my antidote. We sat together in History while her boy friend How was taking Health, which he hated, from a basketball coach, whom he also hated. How’s hatreds made Thelma and me laugh. When he came to take her away from me after History, she asked him about his health. The weaker the evidence of competition from me, the worse his jealousy. I regretted it because I liked him and we had right much in common. I could have discussed Claw’s opinions with him as well as Thelma. When I brought them up in History, they seldom failed to shock the teacher and the other students. Avoiding me like the carrier of some contagious disease, they either glared at me or ignored me. Rather than dispute or refute my assertions, Ms. Weaver dressed them in comments that stretched to fit any shape or size. Her method consisted in veiling nudity wherever she found it. Easier to learn and therefore to teach, twentieth-century history since World War II suited her fine. Senator McCarthy’s zeal in defending our democracy from the Communists, who were determined to overthrow it, drove him to persecute innocent artists and writers like Arthur Miller. His enemies accused him of using the Senate UnAmerican Committee to increase his power and extend his influence. Despite his victims’ complaints, they suffered little harm and went on to enjoy successful careers. Arthur Miller even married Marilyn Monroe. I raised my hand and, reluctantly, she called on me. According to books on her reading list, I objected, McCarthy drove a few to suicide and ruined others’ careers.
50 © Ms. Weaver guessed nonetheless. She recognized freedom of speech by an ironclad smile that made the outspoken wonder:
How did she intimidate us? It couldn’t have been her appearance because her weight had shifted to the bow and the stern, raising the hem of her skirt at both ends. It couldn’t have been her cheeks which flapped like the sails of a tacking ship. Certainly not her whirring voice or her eyes targeted by mascara. Her insight? In response to my remark about McCarthy and Miller, she spoke the higher truth of controversy confusing right and wrong on both sides of an issue. Thelma and I exchanged a look that the Weaver had noticed before. From then on, the other students stared less and smiled more. How told Thelma they were calling me “the unAmerican”. Since five syllables took more effort to say than two, however, they soon abbreviated it to “unAm”, pronounced at first as un-am and then as you-nam. People have been calling me “You” ever since, often without knowing how to spell it or even what it means. When I answered to “Robin Gibbons” at graduation from Exxis, it surprized everyone who hadn’t known me before I went to school there. Although my grades would have allowed me to enter a private college or university, my experience with St. Bernard’s dissuaded me. Zenia University satisfied both me and my parents, who weren’t eager to pay two or three times as much. Thelma and How were going there, so I had “one and a half friends” as she joked. For once, How laughed too. We were standing in a line together during Freshman Week at ZU, when I discovered Sheila’s eyes focused on me. Why hadn’t she gone to a private college or university? And why hadn’t Keith, who was with her? Had he filled the void left by me? I hadn’t forgotten Laura’s advice. During the next two weeks, my bad attitude to everything from football to required courses gave me a radical reputation. On Friday afternoon of the second week, five radical students entered my room without knocking.
“ Yes,” I said standing up. Neither of the two boys had had a haircut or a shave in a month. Nor had two of the girls had a hairdo, but the third one had shaved her head, now covered with fuzz. This one had shiny green fingernails grown long enough to curl downward at the tips, which she had serrated, while large green crescents swung from her earlobs. Silver spirals dangled from another girl’s, springing up and down as she nodded her head. She nodded it more or less frequently and 51 © vigorously according to her excitement over what she or someone else was saying. The second girl and the other boy were shaking their heads to get their hair away from their eyes. All this nodding and shaking reminded me of so many horses chasing flies. All three girls wore overstretched jeans with rips and tears in almost decent places and patches over the entirely indecent ones, such as an American shield in front and a British flag in back. All three wore bosom-swollen sweatshirts: one displayed “Zenia University” over the official naked golden zeno running across a blue field; another, “Berkeley” in palm-tree letters with protest signs scattered over it; the third, “Nanterre” in flaming letters over a crowd of protesters with their mouths wide open and shaking their fists. Small metal, ceramic or glass buttons decorated noses, eyebrows, lips, navels and maybe other places as well. White Teeth didn’t have any, but the other boy did, a red one on the tip of his tongue. Tatoos covered White Teeth’s biceps. He wore camouflaged fatigue pants and an undershirt streaked with rust-colored paint which left his hairy shoulders bare. Black hair also covered his arms and emerged from his armpits. Red Button wore Turkish trousers and an orange sweat shirt displaying “ZTech” over a steam locomotive trailing smoke. “00” appeared on his back. They were inviting me to a party that evening at Slash and Burn.
White teeth: “Yeah, Slash and Burn.” Fuzz Head: “A sorority for girls who hate sororities.” Red Button: “A fraternity for guys who hate fraternities.” Spirals, nodding: “You will like it: anti-government, anti-corporation, anti-university... ” Shield: “We aren’t against everything! We love fun, peace, the people... ” White Teeth: “Hey! We got refreshments.” Fuzz Head: “Pecker Jack!” Red Button: “Cunt grease!” Spirals, nodding faster: “Orgasm Oil!” I didn’t want to make any more enemies, so I agreed to go. Following their directions that evening, I came to a big frame house disfigured by incongruous alterations and additions. In front, I saw a narrow portico with four tall columns lit by floodlights. It stood in the middle of a long screen porch, behind which loomed a two-story structure with large windows ablaze on the first floor and a hodgepodge of dissimilar and disproportionate volumes on the sides. A pounding rhythm and a twanging guitar accompanied a howling voice that echoed in the night. Inside, my visitors and others like them greeted me 52 © with the same politico- social enthusiasm. Some of them were jiggling to the music around a bathtub full of “orange juice, gin and a few other things,” as White Teeth explained. Invited by him, I took a plastic cup, dipped it in the drink and sipped it cautiously, wishing germs and worse away. Then I saw Sheila’s eyes focused on me from beyond the bathtub and I felt that I was blushing. While riveting me, she approached the bathtub, kneeled behind it and lapped with her tongue. Both disgusted and fascinated, I couldn’t bear seeing her demean herself. I ran around behind her, took her arm, stood her up and hurried her over to the open floor where others were dancing. Without a word, we faced each other, twitching, wiggling and twisting. Burning with feverish intensity, her eyes tantalized me. Although she had the same flat figure and plain face, a diabolical enthusiasm enlivened her features and invigorated her dancing. Both to escape her gaze and talk to her, I closed with her on the excuse of slower, but no less fiendish music. She threw her arms around my neck, pushed her head up next to mine and pressed against me. Nudging me in the groin, she gave me an erection and soon I was panting so loudly I was afraid others would hear me. All of this in a quarter of an hour after two years of neither speaking nor touching! “What were you waiting for?” Though expecting just that question, I had forgotten the answer that I had rehearsed. Finally I managed to reply:
She laughed as if I were joking.
Again she laughed. “We were kids. We are grownups now.”
She lifted her face up to mine, smiling and looking me in the eyes. “About the healthcare industry?”
“ I love you even more because I don’t agree with you.”
She laughed so loud the other dancers stared. We spent that night in her bed, while Teddy, her pretty roommate who made an ugly face, slept on the couch in the room next door. What a night! It was my first time, but not Sheila’s. She knew how to make the most of it and enjoyed it so loudly that she must have disturbed Teddy. Exhausted, I tried to sneak out without waking Teddy up, but she sighed angrily and rolled away from me. 53 ©
Reminded of Sheila lapping gin and juice, I felt so disgusted I avoided her for three days despite her stare and the smile that accompanied it. What had she been up to during those two years of no further contact with me? Seeing Keith in the Student Union, I didn’t avoid him as I would have before my night with her, but sat down with him and listened politely to his banter. Nor did I have to prompt him, since he soon got around to Sheila. She was a nice homely girl on the lookout for a guy she could plug into. When she powered up, though, she was neither nice nor homely any more, but wild and woolly. Until she blew a fuse and reverted to nice and homely again. Judging by his ironical tone, I wondered:
“ No. Do you?”
“ Oh, she’s changed all right. She rattles the dishes and the windows now.”
He smiled: “She’s not. When the sexy ones come after me, why should I go after the others?” So she hadn’t plugged into Keith and he was jealous. Since he hadn’t been her guinea pig or her teacher, then who had? I imagined more than one and I felt jealous too. What was I going to say when, sooner or later, she ambushed me wanting to know why I was neglecting her? In line at the coffee dispenser, I heard a girl behind me say:
Teddy was smiling at me, not resentfully but mockingly. I blushed, which increased the curiosity of the guy in front of me and the girl behind her. Finally I managed to mutter: “I’m sorry I... unh... disturbed you.”
My turn at the coffee dispenser and I overfilled the mug burning my hand, jumped and spilled some on the floor.
But she came promptly to the rescue, borrowing a rag from the woman behind the counter, wiping the floor dry, pouring two mugs of coffee, putting them on a tray with sugar, creamer, teaspoons and paper napkins, all of that in no time.
Bewildered, I followed her to a table where I saw Sheila’s eyes on me. Teddy put the tray down in front of her, pulled the chair next to her out and told me: 54 ©
As soon as I did, she added:
It took Sheila and me a minute to recover.
“ So did I. She called us ‘alley cats.’ She just called me an ‘alley cat.’ Maybe we were... ”
“ ... Maybe.”
I had never seen her cry before and I felt ashamed: “I’m sorry, Sheila!”
“ Teddy said to purr.”
“ ... Two years went by between the time we didn’t and the time we did.”
Sigh: “I hate confessions. They scare me.”
I felt as if the blood had drained from my body.
“ ... You didn’t give me a chance.”
“ I thought you were looking at me like that to gloat over the damage you had done.”
“ Revenge scares me even more than confessions.”
What happened was that I took her to my room. Hadn’t Claw warned me against sexual enslavement? The more Sheila and I struggled to free ourselves, the worse our slavery. The frequency and intensity of our quarrels indicated the extent of our despair. What didn’t Claw’s disciple and the surgeon’s daughter disagree on? Everything from the power of big corporations to our plans for the next weekend. Did the relevance of the subject to the relationship between us really matter? We had one bitter quarrel over Lady Diana, whose death Sheila considered a tragic loss and I, a media 55 © bonanza. I started it innocently by calling the princess “a royal alley cat.” Sheila blew her top, shrieking and hammering me with her fists. Startled, I retreated at first, defending myself with my arms, but then I lost my temper too and shoved her around the room until she fell down. Teddy entered and found me standing over her, whereupon Sheila rushed to get up and I, to get her up. Although we were trying to achieve the same end, our efforts conflicted with each other. We were so clumsy that Teddy couldn’t help laughing. Mortified, we stood there at a loss until Teddy went to the CD player, put a slow one on and told us:
We obeyed sheepishly and, if anyone else had entered the room then, they never would have guessed that we had just had a violent quarrel. In a conversation with Teddy, I admitted that Sheila and I had a personality clash.
We would miss our guardian angel when we moved into a room of our own in the second semester. From then on, we had a plenty of quarrels in which we would have welcomed an intervention by her. They usually started without warning and ended just as unexpectedly. I have forgotten the subject of one I remember only because of how it ended. As usual, Sheila was pitting a conviction instilled in her by her parents and friends against arguments that I was founding on information I had read. For once, I managed to convince her that she had no effective argument against me.
“ Yes, he certainly would, but not necessarily by showing me that I’m wrong. How could I argue with a distinguished surgeon, a gentleman who treated me kindly... your father?” To my surprise, I had confounded Sheila. She loved her father even more than most daughters do and my respect for him had undercut her anger against me. Sex reconciled us. As we lay together afterwards, she murmured in my ear:
I sighed noisily.
“ Isn’t that what happened to me?” Our quarrels over plans for the weekend usually began on Monday. She always wanted to do something with her friends, including Keith, but I either wanted to do something with Thelma and How or be alone with her. With Thelma and How, we seldom got further than lunch or dinner in the cafeteria, because Sheila didn’t feel at ease with them and vice versa. The three of them settled 56 © for polite conversation and refrained from kidding each other, a bad sign. Although Sheila had racial inhibitions, I think she could have overcome them if Thelma and How hadn’t agreed so much with me. She felt outnumbered and outgunned, hence a lack of friendly enthusiasm. Alone, we went to movies, plays and concerts, but, when she proposed a football game, I declined. Although I encouraged her to go with her friends, she preferred to stay with me. Her friends were always going to a party on weekends, they asked her to join them and, for courtesy’s sake, to bring me. I objected that they didn’t like me, so she suggested that I was alienating them. Sincerity didn’t alienate real friends, I complained, but she replied that I could avoid disagreeable subjects without being insincere.
“ Why don’t you change the subject?” This argument lost us in a labyrinth where we forgot plans for the weekend. When we finally remembered them, our disagreement continued. Oh we tried compromises, such as alternating between being alone and meeting her friends. That didn’t work because they would urge her to attend a particularly exciting party on an evening when a particularly interesting film was showing. We also tried going to parties with her friends on Friday and keeping each other’s company on Saturday, when many of them went home. That option hit snags too, such as invitations to parties in Mapleton on Saturday. I liked these parties even less than the others because they attracted friends from colleges or other universities. Since I didn’t know many of them, I felt isolated and indolent despite my wish to please Sheila. Although we didn’t drink much, some of her friends did and they made disagreable remarks they wouldn’t otherwise have dared. One Saturday evening, we met them in the overflow parking lot of the Mapleton Country Club. We could see the big windows of the ballroom, where people were sitting at tables, drinking and dancing to the music of a band. We were drinking and dancing too. Now a student at ZTech, Richie organized a contest to see who could drink the most vodka in the least amount of time. I told Sheila we should leave, but she replied that we shouldn’t let a few drunks ruin a nice party. I wasn’t the only guy who refused to play Richie’s game, Keith for instance. The wilder the bingers, the greater the contrast between a few girls who cheered them on and the others like Sheila and Laura. When two of the drunks vomited, the others laughed and continued to guzzle. At other parties, I had noticed that Richie’s drinking troubled Laura; that night, tears were streaming down her cheeks. After much shouting and running around, Richie assembled the drunks and told them something we couldn’t hear. Then they tore their clothing off despite the autumn chill and lined up at the edge of the parking lot for a footrace. After a few false starts, which incited laughter and obscenity, Richie shouted in a voice that broke: 57 © “Laura! Hey, Laura! Come and get us started. [Even louder:] Hey, Laura!” Although she had a robust physique, her body looked frail against the light from the Clubhouse as she walked over to the starting line. In a voice I hardly recognized, she called:
And off they dashed, all seven of them, yelling at the top of their lungs, and down into the hollow between the parking lot and the Clubhouse terrace, where they disappeared a few seconds. Led by Richie, six of them soon emerged struggling up the slope on the other side and started running again when they reached the terrace. Filthy and out of breath, the seventh reappeared staggering up the near side after tumbling and rolling down in the hollow. Silhouetted against the windows, the other six pranced along them, shouting, waving their arms and stopping to face the window and shake themselves like striptease artists. They turned back at the end of the last window and, with the intervals between them increasing, ran back down into the hollow and struggled back up to the parking lot. The first to reappear on our side, Richie stared at us and shouted: “Cows!” No one laughed, but Laura whimpered and Sheila hugged her. A car with lots of flashing lights turned down the road across the golf course towards the parking lot. The streakers jerked their clothes back on with much profanity and obscenity. The police car stopped across the entrance to the lot and soon another car approached from the other side and closed the gap. A minute later, a second car with flashing lots stopped on the road. Two cops wielding big flashlights and the Club guard separated the boys from the girls, inspected us and asked us what we knew about the indecent exposure on the Club terrace. The guard, who recognized me, came up to me and demanded: “How about you?”
Scowling, he came so close I could feel and smell his breath. One of the cops shined his light on me. “Don’t waste your time on him. He isn’t sweaty, his buttons are in the right holes, his belt is buckled, his fly is zipped up, his shoelaces are tied... ” The two cops had separated the boys who answered this description from the others. Together with the guard, he questioned each of them in his car, while the other cop watched the other suspects. They looked humiliated except for Richie, who displayed his insolence. Charges against the six of them would depend on recognition by the people in the ballroom. Five of these belonged to the Club along with their families, so the director feared an immediate scandal 58 © more than another such incident. She wrote an apology which all seven signed and published it in the Club newsletter without their names. Three of them, including Richie, already had a reputation for such behavior, which most members condemned but some thought amusing. Shocking the people in the ballroom didn’t hurt them much, I admitted to Sheila, and the only harm was the effect of binge drinking on the drunks’ health. Me: “Why go to parties with Richie and his cronies?” Sheila: “I can’t avoid Richie without avoiding Laura.”
“ He isn’t the only one who doesn’t go to ZU.”
“ We all grew up together, from kindergarden to high school.”
“ Please don’t make me decide between you and them.” She had her eyes on me. I guessed she would choose me, but it would worsen the relations between us, so I let her have her way. Imagine my reaction when I heard that Laura had invited Richie to ZU for the next weekend! He had scowled his resentment over what I had told the Club guard. At a party that Friday, Laura came over to talk to Sheila and me while he went to the bathroom. He returned with a sarcastic smile and, turning Laura away from us, pointed his thumb over his shoulder:
Me: “See no evil, hear no evil, do no evil.”
Furious, Richie was raising his hands to grab her by the shoulders when Laura stepped between them and, wrestling with him, pulled him away as he looked back threateningly.
From then on, angry glances showed me that he blamed me for Sheila’s rebuke, but he kept his distance, drank less and behaved better than last Saturday. When another guy asked Sheila to dance, I knew better than ask Laura, the only one of the other girls I felt at ease with. So I went to the refreshment counter, drank ginger ale and ate peanuts with my back to the dancers.
I turned and saw Keith with a short, plump girl, more pleasant than pretty.
She had a chirping voice and she reminded me of a wren. While listening, she looked up at me, wrinkling her brow. Although I suspected Keith of trying to start another quarrel between Sheila and me, Letta convinced me that she really was interested in Claw. I couldn’t demonstrate his emancipation and enlightenment without exposing some of his opinions. So I invited Letta to dance, she accepted and I stayed in a corner where we couldn’t be overheard. Claw’s ideas of how the government should be reformed fascinated her. Eagerly, she asked me what he thought of the Lewinsky affair. I told her he considered Clinton’s acceptance of the girl’s perverted favors a blunder and not a crime. The president’s reactionary enemies in the House were inciting the revulsion of their Christian supporters, who conflated their morals with the law. They had succeeded in imposing a special prosecutor who shared their prejudices. At the expense of millions, he was drawing his investigation out to sabotage the president’s agenda. The Republicans were also exaggerating the importance of some lies Clinton had told under oath, which only concerned his relations with certain women and by no means any presidential affairs. Enthusiastic, Letta agreed with Claw and so did I, but I warned her that everyone else at that party embraced the illusions fomented by Starr, DeLay and their cronies. In the corner of my eye, I saw Keith dancing with Sheila and watching me. As tactfully as possible, I explained the trick he was trying to play on me.
“ He’s after me, not you.”
Surprized, he stopped dancing.
He and Sheila approached, the others as well, including Richie and Laura. Evidently Keith had led them to expect a confrontation, but not one between Letta and him. Her chin raised, she wrinkled her brow at him. After a few breathless seconds, she chirped:
Tense silence. Keith’s smile implied that I had misled her.
60 ©
No one else protested. But then Richie snarled at Letta:
He reached for her again, but Laura wrestled him away from her. Struggling with her, he glared at Sheila. I had to say something: “Sheila didn’t offend you. I did. I’m the one who refused to drink with you, strip, run over to the Clubhouse and expose myself in front of all those people. I’m the one who told the bouncer I saw it and didn’t do it.” Wrenching himself loose from Laura, Richie knocked her down, rushed me and threw me down on my back. He sat on me and started slapping me with both hands alternatively. Sheila and Letta grabbed his hair with all four hands and yanked his head backwards so that his slaps were missing. Laura joined them and they pulled him off of me. Except for Laura, Sheila’s friends regretted that I had ruined a nice party. Why provoke Richie? Didn’t I know he was drunk? Keith approached Letta to walk her back to her residence, but she turned her back on him and left on her own. Sheila and I joined her and, while the three of us had little to say, we felt congenial. When Sheila cut the light on, she saw a bad cut on my lip, which had bled down my chin and dripped onto my shirt. No nurse ever treated her patient more tenderly and yet, even as she swabbed my lip, she was saying:
“ Right!”
“ Right again!”
“ I agree with you.”
61 © “ You and your friends are saying what you hear from your parents and their friends. They have a vested interest in saying it. Aren’t they getting what they pay for in campaign contributions? It comes at the expense of a majority of Americans who can’t afford to buy favors. They won’t put up with this injustice forever, they will follow the first demagogue who appeals to them.” Conventional wisdom holds that lovers study worse when they study together. It didn’t apply to us because we concentrated better when we didn’t miss each other. A cane-seated stool wide enough for both of us suited our purposes. We sat behind each other while preparing the two courses we both took, though in different sections. For English, I sat behind her looking over her shoulder with my legs straddling her. She turned the pages and I took notes on a table beside me. We exchanged positions and tasks for French. In both cases, we raised questions and tried to answer them, made comments and discussed them, read passages aloud and interpreted them. When something tickled one of us, the other wanted to know why and when something tickled us both, we could feel each other laughing. To prepare for our other courses, we sat back to back and each of us at a table. We were enjoying the contact, the warmth and the movement of each other’s body. Concentrating on our studies distracted us from the disgreements threatening us at other times, whether we were walking, sitting or lying together. Our quarrels astonished us, lightning out of a blue sky followed by thunder. Why such sudden, unprovoked resentment, such bitter suspicions and accusations, such mad determination to punish each other? So violent were our recriminations one night that she accused me of sex with Thelma and I accused her of sex with Keith. Instead of taking pleasure in the distress I had inflicted on her, I felt humiliated by my recourse to such an injustice. After a sleepless night, I slipped out of bed as if to avoid waking her, although I heard her sobbing quietly so she could to hide it from me. I made two cups of coffee and brought them to her on a tray with some cereal bars. She sat up and moved over so I could sit beside her. After a few sips, I kissed her on the cheek, she looked at me sadly and kissed me back. An hour passed before we said a word. Sitting with us one day in the cafeteria, Letta told us that The Student Advocate, on which she collaborated, needed reporters. Would we be interested? We said we would and Sheila added:
Half jokingly, I suggested that we investigate weekend parties at ZU and both girls approved. Seeing Thelma and How in line, I recommended them to Letta, 62 © who proposed that I invite them to sit with us. They hit it off at once with Letta and agreed to join us in our investigation. Welcoming her four recruits, the editor approved our project and discussed it with us. I surprized him and myself by my suggestions about how we could do it. Working as a team, we would divide our investigation into three phases. Before the weekend, we would find out about intentions and expectations; during it, go to the parties and observe the participants; afterwards, look into reactions and consequences. Then we could review our notes, discuss our findings, decide what points to make and, with Letta as our secretary, dictate a text. We followed this plan and, despite mistakes and wasted time, we made it work because we liked and trusted each other. Sheila was feeling more at ease with Thelma and How. Since the football game was away, the weekend attracted few out-of-town guests and offered nothing special to celebrate. Most of the seventeen parties turned out as the organizers expected, whether they took place in a fraternity or a sorority house, a residence lounge, a dining room in a restaurant, a church annex or an apartment. The expectations ranged from drunken brawls to civilized behavior; the refreshments, from grain alcohol to lemonade; the music, from techno to country; the dancing, from disco to square; the dress, from naked men painted blue and naked women painted pink to Sunday best; the duration from all night to an hour and a half. The naked blue men and pink women had done the square dancing at Slash and Burn. One party had flopped because only a small number of couples came and, finding the atmosphere, the music and the refreshments boring, drifted away in search of more excitement. The Dean of Students had told us that he expected a few students in jail and a few more in the hospital even on such a weekend. His prediction proved true since three landed in jail for drunken driving and two, in the hospital when one of the same drunks hit their car. He also admitted that such routine debauchery worried him less than a disastrous prank, which he considered as predictable as the next earthquake in California. Well, such a prank occurred over our weekend. On Sunday morning, early walkers and joggers discovered a mural on the backside of the ZU clock tower that hadn’t been there on the previous evening. It showed a well-dressed man sitting back in a chair behind his desk, holding a telephone to his ear and grinning. A young woman with an ample, low-cut bosom was kneeling at his feet with her hands on his thighs and the head of his penis in her mouth. The likenesses were stunning. The composition and colors suggested Art School students, but the height and the stone face indicated mountain climbers, rather few of whom attended ZU. Art students who climbed mountains? An early jogger herself, Letta had already thought of it when she called me on her cellphone. To find some promptly, I submitted, we had to 63 © search both categories. Why didn’t all five of us get on a phone and call every art student and mountain climber whose number we could find? She took the mountain climbers on herself, while the other four of us concentrated on art students. The preliminary reactions ranged from annoyance to astonishment, but nearly everyone we called yielded to fascination and gave us more names to call. Before lunch, How reached an art student who, delighted by our curiosity, offered to tell us everything we wanted to know, on condition that we keep his and his friends’ identity secret. In an off-campus restaurant, we dined with two mountain climbing painters, two mountain climbers and a painter. All were eager to explain how they had done it. The painters showed us their cartoons, told us how they had spray-painted the outlines and filled in the colors. The climbers explained how they had secured their ropes on the observation deck, rappelled down the side of the tower and lowered the paint cans. Spraying from the bottom up to avoid walking on wet paint had taken careful planning and over three hours of meticulous labor. No wonder two paint cans had slipped out of their hands, fallen on the pavement below and left big splotches, a red one and a blue one.
Thanking our informants and reassuring them on the secrecy of their identity, the five of us went to the café in the Student Union and sat at a remote table. Letta called the editor of The Advocate, who agreed to publish an article about the clock-tower mural on the first page of the next morning’s edition. He dispatched a photographer to shoot an illustration. Encouraged, we reviewed our notes, discussed the story and, after a little haggling, decided what we wanted to say and in what order. Then, to my surprise, Letta told me she wanted me to write the draft. Thelma and How supported her and, when I hesitated, Sheila grasped my arm with both of her hands and turned her eyes on me:
Both embarrassed and pleased, I did so and we talked our article onto my screen with less trouble than any of us had imagined. I insisted that all of our names appear in the by-line. When our article appeared in The Advocate the next morning, a paroxsm was raging over the mural and it had pervaded the university. The excitement exhausted that edition in a little over two hours, which prompted the editor to publish a rare second one. Several newspapers republished our article, including The Concordia Semaphore, The Mapleton Vigilant and The Mammoth Mercury. A reporter from Channel Eight in Mapleton interviewed us and her interview aired on the local news program that evening. The pleasures and chagrins of sudden fame startled us. We not only 64 © received enthusiastic congratulations, but also accusations of aggravating the scandal and encouraging the perpetrators. Some phone calls demanded our sources, while others threatened a suit or retaliation. Sheila’s parents laughed with us, while mine gnashed their teeth. My four collaborators encouraged me to cover the controversy caused by the scandal over what should be done about the mural. Most students and many faculty argued that it should be left alone. It was a work of art and an appropriate monument that honored the university. Other professors, all administrators and most alumni demanded that it be removed at once. Wasn’t it intolerable, a disgrace, an insult, an obscenity? The Board of Trustees, who agreed, were throwing their weight around, both in Concordia and in Mapleton. A third opinion united a small number of compromisers among the students, the faculty and the alumni. Leave the mural intact until summer vacation, then remove it while everyone was on vacation. The state government in Mapleton and the population of Zenia divided among these three positions and by similar percentages. The president of the university, a political scientist, acknowledged the artistic value of the mural as if he knew what he was talking about, conceded the moral necessity of removing it provided the work was preserved by photography and followed the advice of the compromisers without admitting it. After delays attributed to the difficulties of removing the paint and finding the right workmen to do it, the mural disappeared during the week between the last day of final exams and commencement. Our articles on this aftermath enjoyed as much success as those we wrote on parties at ZU. I wasn’t looking forward to Thanksgiving because my parents would expect me to stay with them. I hadn’t told them I was living with Sheila, but they suspected I was and hinted their disapproval. I knew they wouldn’t let Sheila stay with me and would try to stop me from staying with her. Sheila and I didn’t want to be separated, not even for five days, not even if it kept us from quarreling. Convinced that she was treating us kindly, Mom phoned and told me she wanted to invite Sheila to Thanksgiving dinner. I would tell Sheila, I replied, and she would appreciate the invitation, but her parents would probably want her to celebrate Thanksgiving with them. How could I expose Sheila to Mom and Dad? Mom had belittled my relations with her as “puppy love” in a tone of voice that implied disgust with mating dogs. More worried than angry, Dad had spoken to me while Mom was in the bathroom, warning me of the consequences if Sheila were pregnant.
65 © I understood. Mom and Dad equated birth control and abortion to murder,as the minister of their church loved to preach. Sheila told me her parents accepted our relationship and respected her choice. Her father had even complimented her on choosing a young man who wasn’t one of their friends’ children. He thought “social inbreeding” was unhealthy. Mrs. Kepp probably had a merely tolerant attitude since Sheila didn’t elaborate on it. They not only invited me to Thanksgiving dinner with them, but also to share Sheila’s room with her. Although she had already told me, they insisted on telling me themselves. Was I dreaming? Although I had intended not to mention my parents’ attitude, I couldn’t resist the temptation to explain that they had traditional expectations of me that I had never been able to satisfy. They disapproved of the changes that had taken place in the relations between young men and women since their youth. I would upset them if I didn’t stay at home with them during Thanksgiving vacation. Having heard that Mom had invited Sheila, however, Mrs. Kepp suggested that she accept. We could dine with the Kepps some other time: “Why make a sacrement of Thanksgiving dinner?”
All three Kepps laughed. Emboldened, I admitted that I hadn’t reached the point where I could support myself, let alone a wife and children. No sooner had I said it than I blushed red hot. They laughed even more merrily, then Sheila gloated:
I told Mom that Sheila appreciated her invitation, but she felt obligated to have Thanksgiving dinner with her parents.”
“ ... You disapprove of her.”
“ How can a girl accept an invitation from her boyfriend’s mother if the mother objects to the relationship between them?”
“ You wouldn’t? Sooner or later you would call it ‘puppy love.’”
“ No. We aren’t puppies.”
“ Your morals, not ours.”
“ Your culture, your religion, not ours.”
“ I don’t have to go to ZU to recognize religious meddling in sexual mores.”
“ You said Sheila has a good family. You mean a wealthy, prominent family, don’t you?”
“ Well, the Kepps are decent and respectable all right, but they don’t go to church if that’s what you mean by religion. You wouldn’t like their morals either. They didn’t just invite me to Thanksgiving dinner; they also invited me to share Sheila’s room with her.”
“ No.” Mom’s lips were trembling, her face was livid, her eyes were blazing, she was gasping for breath, she no longer seemed like a woman. Was that my mother? Thanksgiving, Christmas. I spent as little time as I dared at home, where Mom punished me by her sarcasm and Dad, by his resentful silence. Blame for the chilly inner pink of her roasted turkey and his replacement of our usual live spruce by a plastic one settled on me without a word. Serving the turkey and decorating the tree had always ensured rare intervals of happiness in our family. Ever since, I have hated undercooked meat and artificial trees. Yet I cherish that Thanksgiving and that Christmas for the relief they gave me from keeping my parents’ company. The ordeal of going to church with them imposed the hypocrisy of participating in the service and speaking with their friends afterwards. The friends felt all the more congenial with my parents because they shared their self-righteous mediocrity. Of all the annual mishaps, however, the worst was the gift Mom and Dad had chosen for me. I can guess the drift of the discussions that resulted in their choices, since Mom’s severity always conflicted with Dad’s indulgence. The only notion they always agreed on and never admitted was the son they would have preferred. By the gift under the tree, they tried to encourage me to approach this ideal. An entertainment or advertising hero; a sport, film, television or musical star; the smuggest participant in talk shows, the most opinionated expert in forums, the glibbest seducer in soaps, the cutest clown in sitcoms; the stand-up who gets the loudest laughter, the preacher who fanaticizes his congregation, the professor who 67 © fascinates his students; the quarterback who throws touchdown passes, the forward who slam-dunks, the baseball player who hits homers. In sum, a people! Last year, Mom and Dad had given me a tennis racket. This year? An Illustrated Encyclopedia of Courtship and Mariage in the Bible by Willoughby Kringelbarger (Jackson MS, 2000). I still have it. At a loss for something to do, which happens more often as I grow older, I reach for it, open it at random and get a good laugh every time. Sometimes I return to a passage I can’t forget, such as Naomi sending Ruth to lie down on the foot of Boaz’s bed while he’s sleeping off a harvest binge. Once I had thanked Mom and Dad for their present, I looked Ruth 3 up and read Kringelbarger’s account of the incident. Never since Sunday school had I suspected this story, but his emphasis of Naomi’s, Ruth’s and Boaz’s innocence tickled my curiosity. Innocence perhaps, but certainly not Kringelbarger’s, even less Mom and Dad’s! The probable omitted or discarded details of the tradition have been intriguing me ever since: What else did the mother tell her daughter to do? What else did she do? What else did Boaz do? It would have taken a miracle to guarantee Kringelbarger’s innocence. My interest in the gift pleased my parents, but imagine their shock if I had told them I had found a parallel with Sheila’s innocence in lapping gin and juice with her eyes on me! She and I had avoided the subject until two or three weeks later, when we were lying side by side after sex and she said: “You never asked me what I was doing at Slash and Burn.”
“ What did you think you knew?”
“ I didn’t know that at all. All I knew was that I was as crazy as ever about you. Otherwise, wouldn't I have done anything as crazy as that.”
“ I didn’t. All I knew was that I had to show you how sorry I was.”
What if I had told Mom and Dad about Sheila’s kitty-cat innocence? Hardly did they enjoy my company that Christmas and yet they resented my leaving them as often and as long as I did. I felt guilty enough to regret the pleasure of visiting Sheila and her parents. Not only did I enjoy my intimacy with her in her bedroom, but also my conversation with the three of them in their living room. They made me feel at home in front of a fire in their magnificent fireplace with snow on the other side of the window wall. While 68 © Sue Kepp treated me with cordial reserve, Mason Kepp willingly discussed the issue that had incited his daughter to turn me out five years ago. Never did I feel that he was talking down to me, often did he amaze me by admitting the problems of the healthcare industry raised by Claw. Constantly, he admitted, he faced conflicts between the need for his services and the inability of his patients to pay for them. Despite his skill and authority, the exersise of his profession depended on the collaboration of others whose interests contrasted with his, such as hospital administrators, health insurers, bureaucrats, drug and equipment manufacturers, etc. Lawyers watching for excuses to sue for malpractice forced him to take precautions and pay exorbitant rates for insurance, both of which raised the cost of surgery. Although he took every opportunity he had to voice or write his misgivings, they received more polite attention than serious commitment. Sometimes he felt that a nurse who belonged to a union had more influence when she spoke up at a meeting than he did when he addressed an auditorium full of fellow surgeons. Yet the frustrations of his profession didn’t outweigh the satisfactions of restoring the diseased or damaged bodies of his fellow human beings. The very complication and difficulty of surgery fascinated him. “I entertain some of my patients by telling them the fun I had bypassing their clogged artery or replacing their defective valve... But only those I think capable of digesting such enlightenment. U U would understand.”
Mason laughed more spontaneously than Sue, who appeared uneasy about him confiding in me and Sheila showing me so much affection. I couldn’t blame her for thinking it was too early to treat me like a fiancé. On the other hand, Sheila took obvious delight in her father’s confidence in me. Although I wanted to return her affection, I didn’t dare in front of her parents. Later, when we slipped away to her room, I made it up to her. I cherish my friendship with Mason, which began with that conversation, as much as much as my friendship with Claw. Both lasted many years and, when they died, I wondered if surviving them was worth the effort. One morning between Christmas and New Years, Dad followed me upstairs after breakfast while Mom was cleaning up. “I want to talk to you,” he said pointing at my room. Shutting the door behind us, he made an effort to control his voice and language. “Rob, your mother and I find the present situation... absolutely intolerable. You are living with this girl at ZU and we have never even seen her. You are spending most of your vacation at her house. The least you can do is introduce her to us. We would really like to invite her to dinner and we will do everything we can to make her feel at ease. Your mother has promised not to say anything that will embarrass her.” 69 © I agreed to speak to Sheila. Although I dreaded asking her to accept an invitation from her worst enemies, she accepted at once and, with an impish glance at me, predicted a pleasant surprise after all she had heard from me.
What happened inside the front door has been haunting me ever since. Though unaccustomed to good humor, Mom and Dad were smiling, nodding, semaphoring and babbling like puppets. I almost grabbed Sheila’s arm and ran away with her, but she accepted this farce as genuine hospitality and responded with genuine appreciation. To my relief, her charm and good manners inspired a return to dignity and sensibility. Mom had tried too hard to prepare a dinner that would make the right impression on Dr. Kepp’s daughter, but Sheila didn’t seem to notice. She sweetly disagreed, for instance, when Mom apologized for overcooking her filet mignon. Dad had asked me if Sheila drank wine and I had replied:
“ Hunh?”
“ OK.” Unfortunately, he had bought a California red that tasted rusty. I hope he didn’t notice the face I made. The conversation went beautifully because Sheila sincerely agreed with every opinion expressed by my parents. I agreed with practically none of them, of course, so they enjoyed teasing me together and I played the disgruntled comic they expected of me. Never talk politics with people you don’t know. Taking pleasure in the violation of this principle, Sheila looked forward to the next election when she would be old enough to vote for a candidate worthy of the presidency. Mom hoped that the Republicans would nominate the governor of Texas, who, in contrast with the current president, really cared about morals and religion. “ We could use a little sincerity in the White House,” said Dad. I couldn’t resist: “Then Bush is your man. Nobody lies more convincingly when he denies his previous lies. Nobody talks blunders into successes with a more reassuring smirk. Nobody solves problems more convincingly by forgetting them.” Savoring the consternation around the table, I added: “What do you think? Will the Republicans keep us waiting until the end of his presidency before naming an aircraft carrier after him?” Laughing, the surgeon’s daughter amused my parents by a cheerful diagnosis of periodic bad humor that required such a purge. This pseudo-medical response charmed Mom into passing up a rebuttal that she thought devastating. But Dad couldn’t resist making a point that seemed decisive to him:
“ We could use a commander-in-chief who has served in the armed services.”
Mom, whose hair was shaking, turned to Sheila: “Having a child is the ultimate leap of faith.”
All three of us managed to laugh.
Unwittingly, we had refuted Mom’s allegation of puppy love. Our leap of faith inspired an unpredictable friendship between Sheila and Mom. After a triumphant chocolate mousse, for which Mom savored our compliments, Sheila insisted on helping her clean up. The conversation in the kitchen must have been more interesting than the one between Dad and me in the living room. He was trying to persuade himself as well as me that Sheila was every father’s dream of a daughter. By daughter, he evidently meant daughter-in-law and I tacitly agreed with him. Now wouldn’t you expect that my parents’ enthusiasm over my girlfriend would reduce the tension between her and me? On the contrary, every time we quarreled, she claimed my parents as her allies. We had looked forward to returning to our room for the winter semester. How often did one of us threaten to leave or leave in a huff, letting the other one wonder whether he would return. When she threw her jacket on, she shook her hair loose from her collar so angrily and yet so charmingly that, more than once, I hugged her. Sometimes she yelled at me and beat me with her fists, sometimes she yielded to me, sobbing in my arms. Sometimes she forgave me and sometimes she struggled to free herself and ran away. Twice she not only put her jacket, cap, scarf and gloves on, but also took her handbag and caught the bus to Mapleton. The first time, our argument began with a disagreement over going to church. Although she and her parents only went at Christmas and Easter, she admired my parents for their attendance every Sunday. I objected that self-delusion and hypocrisy deserved no admiration and she deplored my contempt for my parents. Why should my relations with my parents, I objected, affect those between her and me? She regretted of my satisfaction with an adventure instead of a commitment. I replied that meddling in my relations with my parents threatened to turn my commitment into an adventure. If she wanted to go to church, my parents would welcome her any time. Her shriek was 71 © ringing in my ears even after she had slammed the door behind her. Since I hadn’t heard from her by that evening, I felt desperate enough to call her parents. Recognizing my voice, Mrs. Kepp told me:
She found me alone in the cafeteria. We ate all the more quickly because we wanted to be alone. The second time she took the bus to Mapleton, we quarreled over religion again, but, this time, we avoided personal implications. Relating it to to politics, however, proved just as dangerous. A photo of Clinton going to church with a bible under his arm inspired an agreement between us. The hypocrisy of his smile disgusted us both and we deplored the demagoguery of appealing to voters satisfied with such a charade. Seeking to expand our agreement, she contrasted Clinton’s smile with W’s. How could anyone doubt the sincerity of W’s faith? Since I did doubt it, I tried to generalize our conversation. The smile of any politician seeking votes and compaign contributions didn’t prove his sincerity. Even so, Clinton’s smile was more convincing than W’s. Instead of showing his teeth, W separated his crooked lips slightly in a crocodile smirk.
I was tempted to reply: ‘How do you know he says one every morning?’ Instead, I said: “Do you say a prayer every morning?”
“ How about me? I say one every morning.”
“ You don’t believe me?”
“ Why? Do you think I’m lying?”
“ How do you know Bush isn’t kidding you?”
“Hah!”
“ His sincerity depends on the number of people who believe him.”
“ Clinton’s sincerity depends on the number who believe him.”
“ The candidate who wins the election is the one who is sincere. His opponent is a liar.”
72 © I haven’t forgotten. He wants you to believe it because he knows you think a man who does that wouldn’t lie to you.”
“ No, but, when an actor overplays his role, the audience assumes that the character he represents is a deceiver.”
“ There are always a lot of people fooling themselves. You didn’t believe me a few minutes ago when I told you I say a prayer every morning. Would you have believed me if I had said it with a crocodile smirk?”
I made a crocodile smirk.
“ You wouldn’t credit vulgar histronics in your boyfriend, but you do in a presidential candidate who favors your class.”
“ I refuse to be taken for a sucker. Why are you letting yourself be taken for one? You don’t say a prayer every morning, you don’t go to church every Sunday. You don’t swallow all that propaganda that God’s self-appointed representatives claim they get from God or books supposedly inspired by him. And yet you believe a bald-faced liar because he tells you he says a prayer every morning.” Sheila ran to the closet, jerked her jacket off the hanger, which clattered on the floor, and struggled to get her arms into the sleeves as she staggered towards the door. I grabbed her handbag, which she had forgotten, and snarled: “Where are you going this time? To my parents?” She gave me a look that froze my blood, snatched her handbag, opened the door and ran down the hall. This time, I didn’t dare call her parents. Nor did I hear from her for three days, which seemed like three weeks. I was feeling desperate in the cafeteria, when I heard Thelma behind me:
Twisting in my seat, I saw her and How standing behind me with trays in their hands. I blushed and stood up: “Have a seat!” Thelma sat down next to me and How, next to her.
I tried, but I was moving food around on my plate more than I was raising it to my mouth.
73 © I nodded.
“ Sheila went home. This is the third day I haven’t heard from her.”
So did I, to my surprise.
“She told me Bush is telling the truth because he says a prayer every morning.”
I shrugged.
Thelma and I laughed.
No wonder Thelma was laughing, but I was too and I don’t laugh much. “ I didn’t know How was a clown.”
74 © I didn’t have a guitar or know how to play one and I didn’t know any sad Spanish love songs -- aren’t they all sad? -- in fact I didn’t know much Spanish since I had only studied French and a little German. Too bad: Sheila might have gone for it. I did catch a bus to Mapleton and a cab once I got there. All I had told the driver before I paid him was the crossing near her house where I got out.
He was grinning back at me as he drove away and I stood there with my mouth open. Ever since Concordia I had been wracking my brain to imagine a way to attract Sheila’s attention. Her bedroom window was two stories over the driveway, which sloped down from the street and turned towards the garage under the house. Strumming a guitar and singing Spanish love songs might have attracted her attention without waking her parents or the neighbors. How long did I stand there looking up at her window and shivering in the cold? Somewhere, I had read that you threw pebbles at your girl friend’s window, but I couldn’t find any. Next to the driveway, however, I saw a flower bed with dead chrysanthemums planted in it. I yanked one out of the ground along with the clump of earth clinging to the roots. Swinging it underarm, I threw it up at the window, but missed and missed again four more times. I was making a mess on the wall beside the window and on the driveway below it. My sixth chrysanthemum clump thudded against one of the lowest panes. Nothing happened for a minute, but then a light went on, probably the one on the table beside Sheila’s bed. Another minute and her silhouette appeared at the window, where it made a rapid little shrug of irritation and delight. I would have laughed if my teeth hadn’t been chattering. Raising the window, she leaned out and said in a barely audible voice:
“ I’m sorry! I will pay for it.”
The silhouette pulled the window back down, hurried to the back of the room, moving a shadow across the ceiling, and disappeared. Nothing happened for a few minutes while I waited shivering and chattering my teeth. Then I rushed around picking up the clumps and tossing them back in the bed. Still no further sign of Sheila as I waited with my head back. Suddenly the windows high on the garage door lit up. A door opened on the side, silhouetting Sheila in a thick woolen bathrobe. As soon as she had shut the door behind me, we hugged each other desperately and her flesh and bones warmed me. Nothing was said, all was forgiven. Without a word, she took me by the hand upstairs to the kitchen, sat me down at the breakfast table, made tea and toast, sat down beside me. 75 ©
The blood was draining from my face. “You did?”
“ I haven’t heard any sirenes.”
“ They were?”
“ What were we fighting over?”
Never have I felt as embarrassed as when we came down to breakfast the next morning. My face was on fire, yet the Kepps were smiling, both sympathetically and ironically.
It took me a few minutes to screw up my courage: “We are supposed to be adults and we keep on behaving like children.” My voice had a pathetic tone I hadn’t intended. The Kepps burst out laughing and she laughed tears into her eyes. They got Sheila laughing too and she leaned over to kiss me on the cheek. It took me a while to realize what was so funny. After breakfast, Sheila helped clean up, while I swept the dirt on the driveway into the flower bed. Sue drove us back to ZU. My parents never heard about this incident.
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