“What we do here,” he says, “can hardly be referred to as a racket.”
“I would apologize for my choice of words, sir, but the selection of the right word at the right time just happens to be my business.”
He lets out the tiniest of snorts. “Yes, well, for the New York Star.”
Now he’s stepped in it. His face flames up and he regrets what he’s said, but it’s too late. He’s insulted a customer, and the customer is always right—and at this school, the customer is almost always white.
“Well, sir,” I say, “you may not think highly of the product I help produce, but like it or not it’s what makes it possible for my son to be educated within these hallowed halls.”
He holds up his hands, palms out. “Forgive me.”
“Forget it. I knew how you felt about it before we ever met. Not all of us get to write about sailboat races. Somebody’s got to crank out the ugly stuff. That’s just the way it is.”
His face gets even redder. He’s surprised that I know about his sailboat book. I don’t look like the kind of parent who reads school bulletins.
He clears his throat and gets to his feet. This is a pretty good tactic on his part, I must admit. He’s easily six inches taller than me, and what he wants is that rush he’ll get from glowering down at me.
But it can only work if I stand up and go toe-to-toe with him. So I remain seated, gazing straight up into his remarkably hairless nostrils. He must use one of those rotary noise hair clippers.
He’s in a bad spot. After a few moments he sighs, sits back down, and does the only thing left for him to do.
“What do you say we call your son in here?”
“I think that’s a good idea.”
He tells his secretary to send for my son, then drags a chair over and sets it so that the distances between all three chairs are equal. A perfect triangle. The loyalties could go any which way.
And then, silent as a sailboat, my son glides into the room.
I’m jolted by his appearance. I hadn’t seen him over the past weekend, because the whole senior class had been taken on an overnight trip to the Catskill Mountains, and in the less than two weeks since I last saw him he’s actually grown a beard. It’s a fairly thick beard for a kid not yet eighteen years old, as black as coal and startling against his light complexion. His hair is nearly as dark as the beard, shoulder length and parted in the middle. Jake’s dark features come from his mother, who’s Spanish. That creamy white Irish skin comes from me. His sea-green eyes are anybody’s guess.
Those eyes have a serenity I can only dream of for my bloodshot brown ones. He’s wearing corduroy pants, a black shirt, and scuffed boots. The mandatory school tie hangs around his neck in a big, wide loop, as if he’d been condemned to death by a hangman who’d suddenly changed his mind and let him go. He’s as slim as a jackrabbit and if he held out his arms and crossed his feet, you might just think him capable of changing water into wine.
As always, the sight of him makes my heart ache. How can he suddenly have a beard, this boy I remember with peach-fuzz cheeks? In the time his beard was growing in I was working late, or getting drunk, or watching old movies in the middle of the night. What was he doing, besides not shaving? Did he think about me even once during the two weeks I haven’t seen him, not counting the pathetic “How’s everything?” phone calls I make every day or two? It’s just the latest in an endless series of gaps in our relationship. The gaps have jagged edges, and they bite right into my soul, if a fallen Catholic like me can be said to have a soul.
Jake doesn’t seem surprised to see me. He looks at me and nods, not happy, not sad, and most amazingly, not nervous.
“Hey, Dad.”
“Hello, Jake.”
He turns to the headmaster and gestures at the empty chair. “Is this for me?”
“Yes, it is, Jacob. Please sit down.”
Almost nobody calls him “Jacob.” He’s been “Jake” ever since he was a baby, but not to his mother, who chose the name and loathes the nickname. “Jake sounds like the name of a cardsharp,” she always complained. In any case, Jacob-Jake sits in the chair, leans back and crosses his legs, the very poster child for Not a Worry in the World, Inc.
The headmaster, on the other hand, looks as if he could use a drink. “I was talking to your father about your essay.”
“I figured, Mr. Plymouth.”
“As I recall, you said you stand by what you’ve written.”
“Yes, I do.”
“And you’re not sorry about what you’ve written?”
“Of course not.”
“So what you’ve written here is how you truly feel about this school. You believe it to be a sham.”
“Yes, totally.”
“And you really would like to see the entire system collapse, as you say, under the weight of its own bullshit?”
Jake shrugs. “Well, it wouldn’t bother me if it did.”
My son is both abrupt and polite, an unusual combination. He stares at the headmaster, whose forehead, I now see, glistens with a light glaze of sweat. He turns to me and spreads his hands.
“You can see the position I’m in,” he says. “Can’t you?”
“It seems to me that your position is fine,” I reply. “I’m a little more concerned about Jake’s position.”
Jake uncrosses his legs. “What is my position?”
The headmaster hesitates. “Well, Jacob. Unless you have a change of heart about what you’ve expressed in this essay, I do not see how you can continue attending this school.”
Jake doesn’t exactly sit up straight, but he takes most of the slack out of his slouch. “You’re expelling me?”
“That’s what it would come to, yes.”
“Whoa, whoa,” I say, “hang on a second. Nobody got shot, nobody got stabbed here. A few opinions were expressed, that’s all.”
“This was more than just a few opinions, Mr. Sullivan. This was an indictment of the system that’s worked at this school since 1732.” He holds up Jake’s essay. “With concepts this subversive, he becomes a potential threat to the rest of the student body.”
“Oh, come on, man!” I say. “If anything this essay helps you sell the school’s ideology!”
“I’m afraid we don’t see it that way.”
When a man is cornered, I’ve noticed, he’ll often turn to the collective noun for comfort.
“If there’s a ‘we’ involved in Jake’s fate,” I say, “I’d like to meet the people who compose it.”
The headmaster is about to say something, but Jake speaks first.
“Subversive,” he says, “is the very word they used throughout the McCarthy hearings. Funny we should be studying that in history class just now.”
The headmaster doesn’t much like being compared to Senator Joseph McCarthy, and my son clearly does not think much of the headmaster, who gazes at Jake for a moment before turning back to me.
“I