e are on our way, up the two-lane back road alongside the tree-shaded Housatonic River above Kent, driving toward the private boarding school that will cost me $11,000 a year for the next three years, where my son will be obliged to learn algebra, French, history, English, art and how to say, "Yes, sir," and look you in the eye, and not mumble, and wear gray flannel trousers and a blazer.
Good luck. I have changed my own trousers and am feeling better.
My daughter is with us. She who wears the pink frost lip gloss. She is wearing it today, I can see in the rearview mirror, in the hope, no doubt, that it will serve as an enticement to some poor lonely prep school freshman, already homesick and wandering forlornly about the greensward in front of the administration building.
My daughter is the one who should be going off to prep school. She approves of the whole idea, imagining it as a glamorous world of rich kids who go to Jamaica on spring vacations and Chamonix to ski at Christmas. She is half right. But since she is the one who gets all A's and Bs, instead of Cs and D's, she gets to stay home. There is no justice. Next year maybe, if Frank gives me a raise.
My daughter thinks I am funny, and when I stretch my neck slightly to catch a glimpse of her in the mirror, she has anticipated me, and stretches her neck exaggeratedly in mimicry. My son observes the interplay, but turns away from it, indicating that he is above this kind of silliness, although it was he who first initiated the routine just a year ago.
I don't concern myself about my daughter very much. This could be male chauvinism, I have considered it. But I think I am being truthful when I tell myself that I am leaving her alone because of a favorite maxim: If it works, don't fix it.
I would die for my daughter. Laura. Her bright and cheerful demeanor, her general easiness with the world, are precious to me, the most precious things in my life. Nevertheless, precisely for the reason that I feel so comfortable with her, I tend to take her for granted. The way, for example, that I take the country of Canada for granted, even though, I must say, Canada is not precious to me, nor would I die for Canada. Still, there is value in the image. As with Canada, I feel comfortable with her. I am glad she is nearby. Her reasonableness, her willingness to tolerate, even find amusement in, my assertiveness and dominance, I cherish, even though I spend very little time attending to her. I understand that she is a growing and vital young lady, with underlying growth pains that are her own, and separate, and having very little to do with me. Although she can be critical, she is not challenging me; she is not punishing me for my dominant position. She is not a terrorist, for Christ sake. She doesn't want my balls. She probably will be happy to grow up to marry someone just like me (What better choice could she make?) and lead a wonderful civilized and upwardly mobile existence, with our two families living in fairly close proximity, visiting occasionally on week-ends, respecting each other's privacy, and helping one another whenever possible. Is that too much to ask?
This is a point of view that any self-respecting radical feminist would probably label chauvinistic. Am I a male chauvinist? My wife is a pretty good judge of these matters. If I were to pose the question to her directly, in front of other people, she would feel obliged out of self-respect to say that I am; but with a look of amusement that, if not totally belying, would forgive all. If I should try to argue and defend, in front of other people, she would feel pressed to harden her position, and we would then find ourselves in a good half-hour heated exchange about who does the dishes, the cooking, the cleaning, the breadwinning, etc., etc., ad nauseurn, which would ony be half serious, and change nothing. It would, however, make us both feel, and the people with us feel, that we are engaged in serious conversation about serious contemporary matters.
In private, the subject, as such, would never come up. Rather, on some weekday night, as I most likely would be watching the seven o'clock news on the TV in our "country kitchen/family area" while my wife was preparing dinner, I might be made aware that she was setting dishes on the kitchen dining table with more than the usual gusto. This is a tacit signal of hers that she is pissed off, that she feels she is working too hard, doing all the dirty work, being taken advantage of, and is tired of being a house slave to the lord and master; that she has creative projects of her own, too, you know (photography), and she can't take photos, spend the whole day in the darkroom, and then do the laundry, the shopping, cook the dinner, and all the rest of it, while I sit with a drink in hand, eyes glued to the day's ravages on TV while she has to step around my feet to set the.table.
Fifty years ago she would have borne it silently, or committed suicide. Today, they slam down dishes, and when you ask what the trouble is, because you can only ignore it up to a point without being ridiculous, she tells you. And then, if you give a damn, which I do, you get up off your ass, and try to help out. Sometimes it has already gone too far, and merely helping out for the moment will not do. In our case, invariably this means the initiation of a discussion, the initiating coming from me, since my wife, too angry by this point to discuss anything, would prefer to sulk for a day or two, which she knows is the worst punishment she can inflict on me. Passive-aggressive behavior they call it, I read that somewhere, probably in the dentist's waiting room. But from long experience, I have learned that she can stay angry only for a certain period of time; goodwill and patience and a willingness on my part to put up with her passive-aggressive abuse finally break through to the point. Male chauvinism then is discussed—not like at the party—the words themselves are never raised, and we forge out a new set of demands, most of them made on me. And, in truth, most of them reasonable. And thus, another new step forward for women has been taken. Until the next lapse, when we go through it again.
If I take my daughter for granted, as, I say, I take Canada, I would have to add that I take my wife for granted, too, but differently, probably more along the lines of the way I would take Great Britain. I don't mean to say that my wife is British, or in any way like the English. She is, in fact, descended from Austrian and Czechoslovak peasants. But I think of her the way I think of Great Britain. It is as if none of us would be here without her. Annie. She is the mother country; handsome, though somewhat worn; just and fair in most matters (except when threatened directly, at which point her judgment is no better than anybody else's); dignified, to the extent that she does not involve herself in petty matters such as gossip and squabbles; and proud, deep-down proud, and therefore impossible to take advantage of for any extended period of time. She is patient, and somewhat wise, and when she tells you that you are wrong, and behaving badly, most of the time you had better listen. She is, in fact, my right arm, as the expression goes. And maybe more.
At this moment she is seated next to me in the front seat of the Pontiac, gazing placidly out the open window. It is a beautiful day, with sunshine glinting off the rippling current of the nearby Housatonic, even as it brightens fields of goldenrod spreading out in the distance, and throws deep dappled shadowing onto the highway through the overhanging trees. The foliage is just beginning to turn to fall coloring now, with small patches of brilliant red, orange and yellow showing up here and there amidst the thick summer greenery. She is wearing a gray flannel suit, very stylish, with a beige blouse. Frank should see this family now. Me, in control, behind the wheel of the new Pontiac station wagon, wearing a regimental striped tie and a brown Harris tweed jacket (that is too damned hot). When I drive, I sit erect, so that all nearly six feet of me is on view to the passing world. Strong features, smooth-shaven, graying temples, with hair razor- trimmed stylishly long. My wife, trim and small, beside me. Daughter in the back seat, wide-eyed, alert, bright, in a summery dress, with black patent leather shoes, the heel raised about an inch.
And my son, peering out the tailgate, feet forcibly stuffed into real shoes (instead of sneakers), wearing corduroy pants, a shirt and tie (which I tied for him). A jacket that he has yet to put on is draped over the back seat. He has refused to wear it during our passage through any part of western Connecticut for fear that someone he knows might see him.
For sure, the gang he has begun to hang out with back home would not win any sartorial awards. A motley bunch, who do not come to the house, but, rather, loiter about in the nearby vicinity of the Grand Union shopping center. These are kids of high school age, some still in school, some who have dropped out, who gather each afternoon, rain or shine, and mill about aimlessly and sort of camp out on the edge of the parking lot under the trees near the town public park. When you park your car to do your shopping you see them in the shadows imbibing from bottles barely concealed in paper bags, and generally acting like Bowery bums. My son will not, or cannot, explain what he sees in these kids, but there is no doubt that there is an attraction to them. And we are scared shitless.
Dressed somewhat like rebels of the '60s, from my distant vantage point they seem to be the last remnants of that tattered rebellious army of radical hippies, but arrayed not so much now against any cultural organizations or systems of life, as against life itself. I cannot be sure, but from what I can gather from my son's new empathetic feelings toward them, they seem to have no convictions about anything, except sadness, and death. Images of the human skull dominate their drawings, their music, and probably their dreams. A straw of hope is that their raggle-taggle performance in the parking lot could be a last desperate, if pathetic, effort to act out their sadness in life rather than to succumb to suicidal impulses as so many of their more straightlaced contemporaries seem to be doing. What is the rate of suicide among the young? It seems to be rising every year to alarming proportions. Or is that just another media hype? I know that my son is sad; that in his sadness he has turned from his cheerful sister with whom he was always so very close, and from us, as if whatever cheerfulness we manage now to summon up and pro'ect to the world is a fraud, and unworthy of his attention, not to mention his love.
This is why we have made the decision to send our son to this costly school that we are now approaching from the long gracefully winding gravel driveway toward the brick and white Georgian administration building at the top of the slope—not for him to develop expensive spring vacation travel habits, nor even to wear that goddamn blazer thrown over the back seat with such deliberate carelessness (which I am rather pleased with myself for not having commented on), but to -please, dear God- enable him to go on and see some glimmer of hope—even if he has to break his heart ultimately in a vain struggle to make it come out right and human in the end. That's all we want, that he should hope, and strive, and survive. And therein perhaps is true dignity. Who knows? There is a group of what I suppose are upper classmen awaiting our arrival outside the dorm entrance where my son is to live. My heart gives a joyful thump as they greet us with smiles and firm handshakes, and with offers to help lug my son's gear up to the second floor of the building. They are the official greeters, and I note sneakily from a distance that they are engaged in easy exchanges of information with my son about his stereo, his BMX stunt bicycle, his set of barbells and weights, his skis and other teen-age paraphernalia that I had thought would be of no interest to anyone except the thugs in the Grand Union parking lot. (Where are the tennis racquets of yesteryear? The stacks of Fitzgerald and Hemingway books? At least, Catcher in the Rye, for Christ sake?)
I love the roommate they have picked for my son, a nerd if ever there was one. Shy, awkward, wearing glasses, and in no way ever a candidate for admission to the parking lot fraternity. The school has matched sophomore roommates by computer (they are very proud to disclose to us), and here we have my son, the urban guerrilla terrorist, with Mr. Nerd. Thank God for computers and the errors that they are constantly spewing forth.
But, of course, a dark cloud quickly scuds across the horizon. My daughter, with the finely attuned antennae of a modern teen-ager herself, immediately notes that the new boy has several faded jean jackets on hooks in the closet, a suitcase full of tie-dyed shirts, a collection of rock music tapes even more outrageous than my son's ("Hey, all right!" she exclaims. Which leads me to begin to wonder if she is going to turn on us, too), and an electric fan.
"So, what's the deal about the fan?" I ask. My daughter looks back at me with an expression of disbelief and something approaching contempt. For the first time in her life, I notice an ugly maturity is beginning to creep into her face. "Come on, Dad. That's to blow smoke out of the room."
"Smoke?! What do you mean, smoke?" I am all for going immediately to the headmaster, but my wife restrains me with the reassurance that she has already met the roommate's mother who has relayed the information that her son suffers from asthma and hay fever. The fan is for the purpose of blowing out the window pollen seeds of goldenrod that abound in these parts.
"Yeah, Dad," my daugher says. "Don't worry so much."
"Don't tell me not to worry," I snap at her. But almost immediately I realize that I am probably overreacting, and I manage to pull myself into a state resembling composure again. "I'm sorry, honey. You're right. I'm a worry wart."
We have transported everything up to my son's room. Gasping slightly from the effort, I stand for a moment and look about. It is a bleak little cell. One small window. A bunk bed against one wall. Two square frame desks with straight-backed chairs. No rug. No drapes. No pictures on the wall. Only that goddamn fan on one of the two identical bureau dressers.
I put on my most jovial smile, and stick out a paw at my son. It is time to go. He takes my hand, and then looking up at me from under the mop of black hair that has fallen across his eyes, he smiles at me. For the first time in weeks. Maybe months. Instantly I feet my face faillng apart, and involuntarily I let out a ridiculous indeterminate noise, and throw both arms about his shoulders. Only for a moment, and then we break.
"Keep your nose clean," I say.
His mother takes both of his elbows in her hands, and draws him to her for a kiss on the mouth. He voluntarily hugs her. Encouraged, his sister goes for a kiss, too, but is repulsed with a stiff arm and a cry, "No way!" It comes out in a high little boy squeak which his voice occasionally still slips into, and it is funny enough so that even he laughs, and my daughter goes in for another try, giggling, but gets nowhere. But it doesn't matter, because he is giggling with her, and she couldn't have asked for more.
New kids from down the hall have moved into the doorway to check out my son. Quickly we slip through them to give them their shot.
"'Bye, hon," his mother says.
"So long," he says, and offers a small cheery wave.
In the station wagon on the way down the long winding gravel driveway, past other station wagons and sedans parked alongside on the grass, our daughter, I observe in the rear view mirror, is looking back.
"It's nice," she muses approvingly.
Out of the corner of my eye I glance over at my wife. She is not looking back. She is directing her eyes straight ahead at the road, as I do now, too.
© Robert Riche