Beet (17 page)

Ferritt could barely form the words. “I would say,” he inhaled, “what did he do?”

Now Matha inhaled. Ferritt was certain she was choking down a sob. “He…” She had regained her composure. “He called me a hysterical female,” she said.

“A hysterical female?” said Ferritt. “He said that? He really said that?”

“Or
an
hysterical female. I'm not sure,” said Matha, because she was not.

HOW QUICKLY, HASTILY, IT ALL HAPPENED. PACKING GAVE
way to moving men with massive upper bodies stuffed into girdles, and the sudden appearance of a moving van like a whale washed up at their door, and the hundred or so boxes of books, and Livi's dresses and sweats and scrubs and the Nikes and the pumps, and the chest of drawers they had picked up in Brattleboro for seven dollars, and the ampoules, tubes, and bottles and the loofah brush from the bathroom, and the bunny bath mat and the squishy yellow ducks and more toys, games held together by rubber bands, Monopoly and Stratego, a basketball, a nerf football, a baseball glove with Bobby written all over it in ballpoint pen, and Skunkie and Care Bear—all boxed and stacked like the houses of the Pueblos in the back of the van, which grunted, exhaled, then receded down the road, away. And Livi and the children tottering in the doorway as though they were about to enter the house rather than leave it. And stoic Peace, hauling the duffel bag on his shoulder in the fireman's carry, and lugging two battered blue Samsonite suitcases to Livi's Civic. And the kisses and embraces and the tears, and the worst of it—the driveway empty, the road empty, and the roaring silence of the house.

He had wanted to drive them to New York, and see them safe
in the sort-of-furnished apartment in Murray Hill that Livi had rented online. Online, too, she'd enrolled the kids in the Dalton School, which happened to have two vacancies due to its out-of-state quota. (Because of the kids' ERB scores, the school waived interviews, for which their parents thanked their lucky stars.) He'd wanted to see them settled and then take a train home. But Livi assured him she could make it on her own. And he was exhausted. Besides, she said, it would be harder to see him pull away from her. He poured himself a beer and flopped down in front of the TV, which he failed to switch on.

What was Livi wearing? He pictured her. Keds, jeans, one of his sweaters—the blue cardigan—and for no good reason, a red beret.

Not to worry. It was Saturday. He would drive down to New York next weekend, and a week would hardly be unbearable. If only he'd ever practiced and spent one day without them before.

He would take a walk. Yes. There was so much to see. There was nothing to see. The flowers at the side of the road were gray buttons on sticks. The stones on the road, gray. The road itself, hard as an anthill. The skeleton trees, shorn and brittle. Dry, dry. Past the cord of wood and the stack of kindling beside the house. A shot of wind cut through his Pendleton and his chinos. A crow complained. Past a broken wheelbarrow. Past a shed scorched in a fire and covered in creosote. Over the frozen puddles. Past the defunct Esso station with the rusted pumps and cement porch.

Know what he'd miss most? Besides the children's brawls and never-ending whys and the sight of them sleeping? He would miss Livi's toes touching him in bed—she asleep, he not quite. He would be lying awake, worrying. And then she would twitch and her toes would graze his legs between the ankle and the knee. He would never turn away. He would hold his leg very still and absorb the casual presence of his wife.

He was aware he was thinking like an exile—a state of mind that made him uncomfortable, because it was larded with self-pity and self-aggrandizement of the worst sort, the moral. Yet he could not help feeling as though he were standing in the stern of a ship
with the land disappearing behind him and none ahead. That's where the exile came in, the word meaning not so much what one is as what one no longer has. Peace no longer had Beet College, or vice versa. No matter what transpired before Christmas, that was indisputable. But to have nothing in its stead…Even Archimedes needed a place to stand on, or the lever was useless. And Peace's aspirations were no way near as grand as moving the world; he just wanted his family.

Only an hour did he walk. Tired of playing Heathcliff, he returned home and to the task before him, taking notes longhand, thinking, then writing some more. The strangest thing had happened at the last CCR meeting, after Matha and her crew had been dispensed with. The committee sat and met as they always did, and as they always did, accomplished nothing. But he was not listening to them. Their mouths opened and closed and their arms moved up and down like a belly dancer's, and they made every sign of speaking, even passionately. But they were underwater; he heard them not. When the meeting concluded, he did not even acknowledge them. He stood and walked out. The others, not knowing what to make of his barbaric indifference, steamed off in a huff.

But now he worked. For the rest of that bleak Saturday he worked—his thoughts flapping around like Wilbur's bat, bumping into this or that and redirecting their course, little by little blundering toward something worthwhile—in his terms, useful. Everything was available to correction, Peace believed, even Beet College. The place was a mess, but it wasn't such a mess as all that. Nothing is. Life wasn't all fog, and it wasn't all cant. Some things always remain clear and true. How to live in the world? Play fair, do good, harm as little as possible, trust in human capability, help the helpless, laugh when you can, find a few to love. How to teach? Settle on the valuable things, and dream into them. Learn to imagine what you know. What was so goddamn hard about that?

So that was Peace on that Saturday afternoon. And, as he worked on his project, others worked on theirs.

Akim, for one, was wandering the campus, attempting to pick his spot. He had decided not to go home to Scarsdale for
Thanksgiving, though his mother wrote that his father was becoming a changed man, and this “stupid chess mishegas” might at last be over. Akim loved his mother, but thought her note might be a trap, so he stayed put. In any event, he was on a mission, and the campus emptiness and quiet over the holiday worked in his favor.

He must find the best place to blow himself up. The explosion had to do maximum damage, not merely to Beet, but symbolically to America, to the West. That course he'd taken with Professor Porterfield on Conrad: he recalled
The Secret Agent
, where the anarchists' target was the Greenwich clock. Brilliant, no? To strike at the heart of the West's source of time? It was the sort of target he was looking for—a site of equal magnitude, the obliteration of which would announce to the corrupt, depraved Western world and more locally, to Beet College, who Akim Ben Laden is, or was. He envisioned the
Times
subhead: “Device Was Work of Straight-A Student.” But the bomb in
The Secret Agent
went off too soon, which caused an even greater disaster. None of that for Akim. He checked his watch.

Gregory eyed him warily from the gates. He was about to call the campus guard till he realized he was the campus guard. He called him anyway. As much as he enjoyed his conversations with Akim, there was something different about the boy. “Grynthe,” he called out. Akim waved but had no time for small talk.

He was down to cases. His explosive act had to occur in the coming three weeks, before Christmas, Hanukkah, and—he was pretty sure—Ramadan. If the college closed after that, even if he succeeded, who would know what he did? he asked himself, phrasing it: “If a suicide bomber blows himself up in the forest…” Should he blast off in the forest?

It would be especially nice and fitting if he could do the deed on December 18, which was Osama's birthday, at least he thought it was, and Kiefer Sutherland's and Ty Cobb's.

Bacon Library was big. That could be a good target. MacArthur House was where Professor Lipman had her office. That could be better than good. What would the college do without
Communications Arts? He could always stand at the center of the Old Pen and make a crater of himself. They would notice that. But no harm would be done to the school. Lapham Auditorium? Perhaps. Bliss House? Nathaniel's Tomb? The man was dead anyway. The Faculty Club? The Faculty Room? The
Pig's Eye
? Homeland Security? Sure, if he could find it.

And that was another thing that needed doing. The random search for the Homeland Security Department code rolled on, numbers and letters appearing and disappearing,
ACCESS DENIED POPPING UP ON HIS SCREEN, MOCKING HIS EFFORT. ACCESS DENIED.
The story of his life. All afternoon he spent in his peregrinations. The answer would come to him. He had faith. Only one thing bothered him as he scanned the campus: the Passover song “Dayaynu.” He could not get the chorus out of his head.

“Akim!” It was Chaplain Lookatme, who was so happy to have found a position at Beet, he never left the campus night or day. “You look as if you're searching for God. Our Friend is with you in your search. Will you remember that?”

Akim said he would.

Then toward evening, an amazing thing happened to the boy. Someone said, “Hi.” It was Max, who didn't have the money to go home over the holidays, and was out for a walk. So he walked with Akim, who could not remember the last time anyone did that voluntarily. Seemingly oblivious to his companion's idiosyncratic appearance and behavior, Max chatted on about his courses, his folks, how outrageous it was that the college was going under. Though Akim held opposite views of Beet, he found himself listening appreciatively, even nodding in agreement from time to time; in short, behaving normally. The experience was rattling yet not terrible. Under the kaffiyeh and the robes, did little Arthur Horowitz still breathe? He invited Max back to his cave to watch the random searches, which might not be the most entertaining thing Max ever saw, yet had its hypnotic appeal.

“How do you manage it?”—referring to the cave.

“I just did it. If a cave is good enough for Osama—”

“Isn't that horseshit?” Max said, patting Akim on the back. “I mean, who would model his life after bin Laden? You're joking, right?”

For the first time, Akim allowed that he could be joking. The thought had not occurred until Max had presented it so bluntly. “Well, I like the beard,” he said.

“The beard! The beard's ridiculous! Makes him look like a hooch dealer, if you ask me.”

Akim allowed how that was true, and changed the subject. He seemed to have found a friend in Max, so he kept talking. He would not mention the suicide bombing in his plans, of course, though he brought up Matha, how she spurned his affections.

“Matha Polite's a jerk,” said Max.

And Akim had to allow some truth to that as well. This was a brand-new experience—straight talk. He found he liked it. “What do you think of the Homeland Security Department?” he asked.

“Sounds worthless to me.”

And Akim felt a pain in his face. The muscles ached. He hadn't used them in years. He was smiling.

“But you say it's protected by a security code?” asked Max. The computer geek was intrigued.

As for Matha: after her malicious gesture against Peace, she determined to take Thanksgiving weekend with her sister Kathy, for whom she expressed a sudden conversion of feelings. She only hoped Kathy would do the same. They had been at each other's throats too long. “Don't you think so, sister?” What would Kathy say to their spending the holiday together, just the two girls, who, after all, had so much to be thankful for?

“And it shames me that Ah've never laid eyes on the East End of Long Island, or should Ah say, your empire?”

Kathy smiled as she put down the phone, and continued smiling throughout the weekend. She met Matha at the Hampton Jitney—“Jitney! I swan! Such an elegant name for a bus!”—that stopped in the center of Quogue, where Kathy lived and worked. Her house was a postmodern postcolonial, with a gambrel roof and a view to die for, just steps from the ocean; that is how she would
have described it had it been on the market. Her office was another “gem” on Jessup Avenue, where she reigned as queen of real estate, not only in Quogue and nearby Westhampton but throughout the East End. Her special form of advertising—skinny-dipping off her boat in plain sight of would-be buyers—worked like a dream.

“And this office is precious!” said Matha as she flitted from desk to unoccupied desk, pausing at every one and patting it like a dog. “So this is where all the people who work for mah big sister sell the houses! Mah oh mah! It's thrillin'! That's what it is. Thrillin'!”

Kathy hunkered down behind her own desk in the back, hands supporting chin, still smiling in every feature but her eyes.

“This work interests you, dear? Why, Ah thought you were a poet!”

“Ah am! Ah am a poet!” said Matha. “But woman cannot live on poetry alone.”

“Ain't that the truth. Would you like to see some of the places Ah'm sellin' right now?”

Would she! Matha beat her sister to the cream-colored Mercedes and fidgeted with whoop-de-do excitement in the death seat. Kathy drove her from property to property, including the monstrous 36,000-square-foot home (“Oh, it's yummy!”) belonging to a multimillionaire named Lapham, the great grandson of the man for whom the Beet auditorium was named. She also showed her the writer Harry March's old island, which had been lost to a fire last summer and lay like a long blackened log in the creek.

“What was he like?”

“Harry March? He was nuts but high-minded. Nothing underhanded about him. Nothing sneaky, if you know what Ah mean.”

Matha said she did.

Kathy answered all her sister's many questions about interest rates, fixed and adjustable, and about when a jumbo mortgage should be recommended and how to talk to buyers when they first approached and how to check up on their net worth. Lots of questions like that. Kathy responded to all in ample detail, often tossing in an endearing anecdote to emphasize a point. She also fielded
questions about how she liked her work, and did she think she'd be doing it forever.

In the late afternoon, while back at Beet College Peace was working on the curriculum, and Akim and Max were in the cave staring at the rolling numbers and letters, Matha sat with her sister on a dock on the canal in Hampton Bays near the entrance to Peconic Bay, their legs dangling. Gulls patrolled the pilings. The sun flamed in its descent. The sisters sipped Tanqueray gin.