October 6, 2007 (revised February 15, 2008)
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�Hey,� I said.
�I got cut from the lacrosse team this afternoon,� he said.
�Really?�
�Yeah.�
�I�m sorry to hear that.�
�Thanks.� He sat on his bed, across from mine. �I was the only one that got cut. The coach said, he said, �Sorry, you�re a good player and all, but I have too many people playing midfield. Nothing personal.�� Peyton tried to grin. �Nothing personal. I think I actually got kicked off cuz I wouldn't pledge Theta Pi.�
Theta Pi was the most prestigious fraternity on campus.
�I went to their rush party my first week here, but I thought they were a bunch of assholes, so I didn�t join. Well, it turns out you don�t have to join Theta Pi to remain on the team, but it�s highly recommended. Everyone on the team belongs to it. The coach still belongs to it. He wears a Theta Pi ring as big as, like, two-and-a-half of his heads put together.�
�Only two-and-a-half? Pretty understated.�
�Yeah, ha ha�.You know, it won�t be easy telling my parents I got cut. I don�t know if they like lacrosse, but they love the fact that I play it. They went to all my games in high school and always cheered the loudest for me, win or lose. More like lose. The team lost a lot, especially last season. We didn�t win one game last season.�
�But you had fun, right?�
�Yeah, loads of fun. Especially in our last game. We lost 14 to nothing, our worst game ever. We all sucked that day, but I really sucked. I kept dropping the ball and running into my teammates. I could hear my parents weren�t cheering as much as usual, as if I deserved any cheers. Anyway, after the game, they took me to Burger Chef, which was unusual, cuz we always ate at Winky�s after each game. We never ate at Burger Chef, but there we were. As soon as we went in, my dad yelled �ATTENTION! ATTENTION!� He announced to everyone there that I was his son, and that I was the best lacrosse player in the county. A few people clapped. Then my mom, she actually raised her fist and cheered.� Peyton raised his fist and cheered. �WOOOOOO!�
�Ha ha!�
Peyton lowered his fist. �Then we left the restaurant. We didn�t even order anything. My parents were so proud of me, they just wanted to brag to someone at the first place they could find. Then we went to Winky�s as usual, and once again, my dad said the same thing about me, and my mom raised her fist and cheered.� Peyton raised his fist, said �Woo,� and lowered his fist.
We�d never told each other much about our personal lives; we�d implicitly wanted to stay in fun-loving roommate mode.
�You must have a good relationship with your parents,� I said.
�Mm-hmm� he said.
�Weirdo.�
�Excuse me?�
�My parents and I have a normal relationship. That is, a lousy one. We get along only when they ignore me, which they do most of the time. Otherwise, they�ll point out my faults to me in excruciating detail. I'm weak. I�m fat. I�m lazy. I don�t take care of my sweater vests. I should be more like my father. They want me to be an exact duplicate of him. I couldn�t apply to any other colleges because he�d gone here, and my parents wanted to create a family tradition. A family tradition. He even pulled some strings and got me assigned to this room, the room he himself had lived in as a freshman. Big deal.�
�Well�I�m sorry you don�t get along with your parents, but it sounds like your main problem�s with your father. I learned in psych class that the father-son relationship is pretty important. The mother-son relationship is, too, but you learn how to adopt the male gender role mostly from your father.� Peyton, like me, hadn�t declared a major. �If you have a dysfunctional relationship with your father, that can mess up the way you behave in your male gender role as an adult.�
�Oh really, Dr. Freud?�
�Yes, really, and we study Carl Jung in that class, too, but never mind. The point is, you have to overcome your relationship problems with your father. Now, maybe you should cut off all contact with him or maybe not, but you do need to escape from his shadow, form your own personality, if you want to become a productive adult male in this society.�
�And how do I escape from his shadow and form my own personality?�
�I dunno. Maybe go to a therapist first?�
�Yeah, I�ll do that after I pay for my Rolls-Royce.�
�Or you could try some symbolic gesture. Dr. Jung talked about symbolic gestures, I think.�
An idea blazed into my head.
�Yeah, that Dr. Jung�quite a guy,� I said as I stood up. �I�m going out for a walk.�
I left the room. I walked to the lobby, to the picture next to the snack machine. The picture of the dorm�s ribbon-cutting ceremony from �55. I was the only one in the lobby. I took a breath. I took down the picture. I turned it over, slid off the cardboard backing, and removed the photo. Pretty cheap frame�it looked like plastic. Still no one else around. I took another breath. I tore the bottom of the photo, a slight tear below my father�s image. I paused. I continued tearing, pretty rapidly, until I�d torn him out of the photo, taking Spruger with him. For some reason, I thought the authorities would have suspected me first had I just torn out my father. I slid the photo back into its frame, slid the backing back on, and rehung the picture in its original location.
Then I stared at the piece I�d torn out. My father�s smile had been a little endearing back then, at my age. Spruger still looked like a jerk. I tore the piece into tiny pieces and dropped them into the trash can next to the snack machine. I rearranged the other trash to hide them.
I was now a miscreant.
��The FBI reported today that the crime rate in America in 1978 rose two percent over the previous year,�� Mr. Taft told us in class one day in late October. He was sitting behind his desk, reading us an Associated Press article from that afternoon�s edition of the local paper, The Henning Herald. The front page covered the local Presbyterian church�s recent fall harvest festival. The front page always had something about a festival or a pancake breakfast or a bachelor auction or a pet fashion show.
��Violent crimes, the bureau said, increased five percent and property crimes rose two percent.�� Mr. Taft didn�t use a textbook. Instead, he would occasionally read us articles from the Herald in a disgusted but beaten-down manner. ��More recent preliminary figures show that the crime rate has jumped sharply in 1979, rising by nine percent for the first half of the year when compared with the same period in 1978.�� He closed the paper, folded it into quarters, and dropped it onto his desk, squinting his eyes. He would squint his eyes after reading something he�d found especially repulsive, as if to squeeze the words out of his head. �This is life under liberalism. Liberalism equals crime.�
�But doesn�t crime occur under conservatism?� I asked. �Wasn�t there a lot of crime during the Nixon years?�
�Sure, but he was essentially a liberal, what with all his social programs and his d�tente with the Russians. He talked a good game about law and order but never followed through.�
�Maybe that�s because he was breaking the law himself, with Watergate.� Mr. Taft didn�t assign homework or give tests. Instead, he based your final grade first on how well you played devil�s advocate, prodding him on during his rants (the better the rants, the higher the grade); and second on how well you kissed his ass.
�The hell with Watergate,� he said. �Just a bunch of misdemeanors compared to the violence on our streets. Yes, Nixon was careless enough to get caught committing these crimes, these so-called crimes, but the real crime was caving in to his fellow liberals instead of burning the tapes and cracking down on murderers, rapists, druggies, and other scum. His approval rating would have gone through the roof. He should have fought for the death penalty more than he did. Getting rid of the death penalty was one of the worst mistakes of the past 25 years.�
�But does the death penalty really deter crime?� Peyton asked.
�Of course. If you�re executed, you don�t commit any more crimes.�
�But does it prevent noncriminals from becoming criminals?�
�I�ll admit I don�t know. Nobody knows, but it doesn�t matter. The death penalty has symbolic value. It�s a symbol of civilized society.�
�Symbols are for losers,� Lissi said, the first time she�d said anything in this class.
�Pardon me, Miss Kernahan?�
�Symbols are for losers. Symbols don�t get anything constructive done, other than making people feel good. Symbols don�t actually reduce crime, in other words. I know how to make the death penalty a true deterrent, rather than just a symbol.�
�Do tell us, please.�
�Well, every few months, the government should choose a prisoner at random from anywhere in the United States. Maybe have a computer do the choosing, to make the choice more impartial. The government should choose someone who did something minor, like shoplifting or pot-smoking. Something nonviolent. The government should make a big deal about choosing this prisoner, then a day later, execute him or her, live on national TV, so to speak. The execution should be as slow and painful as possible. Maybe the president could do it himself. Yes, he should do it himself, then say that if the government can do this to Public Enemy Number One Million, think of what it can do to a really serious criminal when it comes to the death penalty.�
Mr. Taft leaned forward in his chair.
�You can bet people will think twice before committing any crime and winding up behind bars,� Lissi added.
�But wouldn�t, say, the ACLU sue the government over this?� Mr. Shaft asked.
�Yes, but so what? More publicity for the government. Plus the ACLU wouldn�t win. The public�s sick of crime. The president would be so popular after this, that Congress and the courts couldn�t touch him.�
Mr. Taft smiled.
�Even a liberal president would be popular, but then liberals don�t have the guts to do stuff like that,� Lissi said.
�I suppose they don�t,� Mr. Shaft said. He glanced at his watch. �Well, I�d like to discuss this further, but our time�s up.� He intoned his usual closing line: �Have a good day, and may our country flourish.�
Lissi, Peyton, and I left the room together. I�d never had any contact with her outside of class, by choice. I didn�t know about Peyton.
�So how would you execute pot-smokers?� I asked her as we walked down the hall. �By cutting them up with the shards from broken Cheech and Chong records?�
�No, I�d use Robert Goulet records�more brutal,� she replied.
�Who�s Robert Goulet?� Peyton asked.
�He�s the next Delford Dawes, minus the bell-bottoms.�
�Hmph.�
�No, seriously,� I said. �Were you serious in there?�
�Indeed I was,� she said. The three of us got to the building exit. �I was serious about offering up political views from a feminine perspective.� She trotted through the door and across campus. Peyton and I stood watching her.
Gerald receives a call from his father. Gerald's father has gotten Gerald a part-time job as office assistant at the Administration Building on campus, starting the next morning at eight. He needs to learn some responsibility, in his father's opinion. Gerald hadn't been looking for any job.
The morning after my father's call, I paid my first visit to the Administration Building, the most Eastern Bloc-style building on campus: a hypertrophic dirty-brown slab with a few gray vertical slits for windows. The building housed the Office of Payroll, the Office of Accounting, the Office of Purchasing, the Office of Mail Distribution, the Office of Career Guidance, and something called the Office for Theoretical Development.
I reported to the front desk exactly at eight. The receptionist sitting there looked like that generic age all adults were in those old educational films Mr. Keene showed us in class. Actually, the receptionist looked generic in every way for the Seventies: generic hair helmet, generic frilly blouse, generic peasant skirt. Only her bulging cheeks looked out of the ordinary. Before I could say anything, she greeted me with �Good morning! I mean, good afternoon! You must be our new assistant. Gerald, Gerald Blanchard, right?�
I nodded.
�Of course. You looked ready to work, all serious and stuff. I�m Martha Seebert. You can call me Martha.� I saw the nameplate on her desk�MRS. MARTHA SEEBERT in needlepoint, blocky beige letters, light pink background almost the same color as her bulging cheeks. �I ordered that by mail,� she said about the nameplate. �Nice, isn�t it?�
�Yes.� I decided to start hating her. She didn�t really bother me, even with her bulging cheeks, but I decided to start hating her anyway. I never passed up an easy target. I�ll admit I was pretty pathetic; I actually felt a little bad about hating her.
Anyway, I started working. For three hours a day, three days a week, I sorted mail, placed it into its proper burlap sacks, typed out purchasing orders, typed out files, filed files, cleaned our office machinery, took out the trash, and hand-sweepered the plush throw rug Martha had under her chair. Then, to kill the hour or two I�d have left after completing these tasks, I would read the women�s magazines Martha always brought to work (their Cool Whip-intensive recipes looked delicious) or listen to her talk about her family life. She and her husband Grant and her �one and only child,� her eighteen-year-old daughter Jill, would have endless fun together watching movies at the Henning Twoplex, or playing Monopoly, or taking trips to Presque Isle, and by the way, I should meet Jill some time, the two of us would get along well, she gets along well with everyone.
I earned minimum wage, two dollars and ninety cents an hour. Better than nothing. But not better than something.
Lissi continues speaking up in Mr. Taft's class, making reactionary and bloodthirsty remarks that he dotes over. Peyton thinks Mr. Taft is screwing Lissi, or so Peyton tells Gerald.
The day before Thanksgiving, Peyton leaves to catch the bus for home. The same day, Gerald receives a call from his mother saying he has to stay on campus over the four-day break, to build his character and to save money on gas. Both parents have decided he should stay on campus.
TO BE CONTINUED
I am the epitome of mental health. Just ask the invisible, anthropomorphic, seventeen-foot green buzzsaw that I keep running into whenever I roam around the University of Pittsburgh....Fiction, Home.
� 2006-2007 David V. Matthews