Philly Stakes (2 page)

Pregnant pause. In the last few years, quiet Laura’s father, Alexander, car tycoon, real-estate developer, political animal and who knew what else, had risen like our city’s own star over Bethlehem. He was famous both for his personal success and for his acts of charity. He guaranteed that fame via a public relations firm and an omnipresent photographer, both of whom documented his every generosity. No trees, not even saplings, fell in a Clausen forest without being heard. In fact, they were recorded in video and released to the press. Somehow, his rosy cheeks and largesse had even convinced media folk to adopt the nickname he used in his ads. Everybody called Alexander “Sandy” Clausen, Santa Claus. Now there was talk about running Santa Claus for mayor.

“Don’t you teach the Clausen girl?” Dr. H. murmured.

“Yes…”

“Her father mentioned you. Said the girl is fond of you.”

Havermeyer rhapsodized. “Clausen has a real flair for this kind of thing. I’m sure he’ll have lots of ideas about it. And once he’s more directly involved in the, ah, image and welfare of our school, well… He can be a very giving man.”

I understood. I was the good elf who’d get Havermeyer onto Santa’s gift list. “But the idea was for the students to give of themselves,” I said. “People to people. A quiet holiday gesture, a learning experience, a—”

“We are never too old to learn, are we? Adults also benefit from giving.” He paused. “And, I dare say, in this case, so might Philadelphia Prep.”

Why be subtle? Or bother with poor people and students at all? Instead, why not sit outside Clausen’s house crying “Alms, alms”?

And why didn’t I express more objections instead of worrying about how I’d pay my rent if I thwarted Maurice Havermeyer?

On the way to my car, I passed Laura Clausen holding hands with a twelfth grader, Peter Shaw. They were quite a contrast. He was dressed to menace in all-black clothing, a wild mane of dyed black hair, and a scowl as dark as the rest. She was mouselike and much younger looking than her fourteen years, bundled in a baggy time warp—Peter Pan collar and fifties skirt. I inspected them with too much interest and for too long, and Laura noticed. I tried to hide my embarrassment by mentioning that I’d be seeing her father soon.

“Why?” Her pale little-girl face pinched up even more. “Did I do something wrong?”

She was so withdrawn, so young and naive looking and so bright and articulate when she wrote, that I’d forgotten she was another of Philly Prep’s special cases. Her records spoke of slow social development, academic underachievement, periodic eating disorders, attempted runaway. Off the record, she was rumored to be either guilty of arson or the victim of a flammable accident that had seriously scorched her home. Whatever it was had also scarred her left arm.

“No, no,” I said. “Your dad might work with me on a project.”

I was wrong. Shortly after I made that remark, I came to realize that nobody works with Sandy Clausen. In fact, the very word “with” was not in his vocabulary. Neither was “listen.” I rebelled, reacted, bargained and protested, but even so, my innocent plan mutated like something in a science-fiction movie.

* * *

“It’s a fairly simple project, Mr. Clausen,” I said. We met in the teacher’s lounge in the late afternoon. Sandy Clausen made it clear that he’d come back early from a business trip to keep this date. Dr. Havermeyer responded with reverence, almost scraping his forehead on the floorboards before backing out of the lounge, leaving matters in what he called, “your more than capable hands.” I didn’t think he meant my hands, somehow.

“Now, now. We’re going to be working together, shoulder to shoulder, so there’s no room for formality.” Clausen’s voice and face were so jovial I smiled back automatically. “I certainly want to feel free to call you Amanda, if I might, and I want you to call me Sandy.”

He seemed an agreeable enough man. “Sandy. There are a few charity kitchens that are relatively close to school, and I thought we could pick one, then choose a night to cook and serve a Christmas dinner we’d planned. That’s it, the whole thing. Nothing very fancy, of course, but substantial. The students could collect food donations and then—”

“Very interesting,” he said. “Brilliantly simple and to the point.” He reached over and shook my hand. “I’m impressed.”

I thought, foolish me, that shaking hands meant it was a deal. And it was, only not my deal. Or, as Sandy Clausen might have put it, it was my deal—with a few adjustments.

Because subsequently, without consulting me, he dropped the idea of having the students cook dinner. “Up for lots of possible legal problems,” he said. “They aren’t professionals, they could undercook or add something bad, or—”

“They’d be supervised, they’d be using recipes. Most of them know the basics of cooking, anyway, and those centers use volunteer cooks all the time, so—”

“They could burn or cut themselves, and they’re our children.” His voice was tender. Made you imagine tiny babes, wee urchins straining on tiptoe, not girls with half-shaved heads and black lipstick.

“But if we don’t cook,” I said, feeling suddenly weary and apprehensive, “then how do we feed people?”

He gave his Santa smile, all but patted the top of my head, told me not to worry and hired a caterer.

“A catered dinner in a shelter?” I asked. “Palate Pleasers? They did my cousin Grace’s wedding! Their current specialty is nouvelle Indochine cuisine and, forgive me, I cannot imagine them in a soup kitchen!”

“Well, Amanda, I absolutely agree with you. In fact, I’m glad you brought it up, because I’ve had my people check out those three centers you mentioned, and in all honesty, it turns out they aren’t in the best neighborhoods.”

“Of course not! They’re shelters for homeless people—”

“And I’m sure when you think it through, it will become apparent that we’d be subjecting our parents to a great deal of anguish about the security and well-being, both mental and physical, of their children. After all, most of our children are not what’s called ‘street smart,’ not used to what they’d see and be around in those—”

“But that’s the whole point of—”

“And why have we worked so hard to achieve so much if we’re going to expose our children to the very dangers we’ve been fortunate enough—and hardworking enough—to escape?”

“But it’s because these children have no idea of how privileged they are, of what real life is for most people that I wanted to—”

“And what, frankly, is festive about a shelter? ’Tis the season to be jolly, Amanda, and those places are downright depressing.”

It was like conversing with a steamroller.

“So,” he said, “I’ve volunteered my own home, and Maurice Havermeyer agrees that that is a better idea. I promise you, I’ll make it festive, a real celebration.” He beamed another all-is-well-with-the-world at me, but I refused to acknowledge or return it, my own feeble form of passive resistance.

We continued along those lines. I couldn’t back out and I couldn’t move forward with what I wanted, so I wound up with an inflated, embarrassing carnival featuring handpicked poor folk. Need I say that it wasn’t my hand that picked them, either? One more good intention paving the road to hell.

* * *

By now, enough time had passed since Marigold Margolis and Charles Dickens had started the thing two and a half weeks ago, for me to have moved squarely into Scrooge’s camp, to have become Santa Claus’s only nonfan.

Now, with the Sandy and Mandy show minutes away, the only Christmas spirit that interested me was waiting to be guzzled later, after the mortifying business was over.

With twenty minutes before lift-off, I ignored my snaggled stocking and screwed in earrings while I read compositions. I was beyond tired and the night was young. Right after school, I’d zoomed to the other end of the city to do my last “Rediscovering the Classics” class with a group of forty-five retirees. I’d become “the Thursday lady” at Silverwood Retirement Community, subbing as a favor for a pregnant friend. Now that her baby was born, she would be returning to the once-weekly stint with the new year, and I was going to miss my retirees. What a change from my daily dose of adolescents. The old men and women, some reading in braille, some entering class on walkers, all so frail yet so resilient, were eager to think and discuss and appreciate or criticize. And what fun to teach without grades or assigned papers or tests—but with stimulation and an exchange of ideas. I’d learned a lot from them.

We’d all promised, teary eyed, to keep in touch, but I wondered if we really would. Two of the women had baked an assortment of Christmas cookies for me. I eyed the tin, but kept it closed to prove I was a self-disciplined and honorable woman.

More proof—I continued to read essays. I wanted to start the new year fresh, wanted everything marked and returned before vacation, which gave me fourteen hours before class began tomorrow. Minus a sizeable chunk for the wretched party. Minus a few much more pleasant hours if/when C.K. Mackenzie appeared later tonight. That depended on whether somebody decided to murder somebody else between now and the end of Mackenzie’s shift. Talk about being out of control concerning the logistics of love, or like, or whatever one should call our condition. I had not yet become either adjusted or resigned to life as a cop’s exceedingly good friend. Actually, I would never have met Mackenzie had it not been for a murder, but I wasn’t always sure if that had been my good or bad luck.

I decided to believe that the criminal element would ease up and give me a break tonight, so I took papers to mark and the unopened cookie tin downstairs and ate crackers dipped into peanut butter. I literally had no appetite for the catered extravaganza that lay ahead. Peanut butter was fine, except for the unfortunate smears it left on compositions.

Luckily, the day’s mail was so unimpressive, it couldn’t seduce me away from my work. No interesting Christmas cards—no personal notes, not even a mimeographed annual letter full of exclamation points, babies, vacations, acquisitions and promotions. Only two bills, one ad and, in an unmarked envelope with a Florida postmark, my mother’s missive. She had taken to mailing me articles about safe sex. I was sure that to her all sex was suspect, but she was trying to be contemporary, as uncomfortable as it made her. Hence envelopes with no return address and articles with nothing but “F.Y.I.” written on them, as if we were spies.

I left it all in a wicker basket, unopened, and continued marking papers. In lieu of A Christmas Carol, the tenth grade had read poetry. Although poetry is the written equivalent of zits to most sophomores, the substitute unit wasn’t intended as punishment. The students’ responses, however, their unit papers, did seem punitive.

I thumbed through the stack for Laura Clausen’s, knowing she would at least try to think about the subject. She didn’t disappoint me. She’d chosen Auden’s poem about Icarus falling from the sky. Her analysis of its structure was precise and intelligent.

The phone rang, but I ignored it. I had a brand-new, state-of-the-art answering machine to shield me from the outside world. After two rings, my recorded voice would take over.

Laura’s paper turned unsettling. “Daedalus was a murderer,” she wrote. “He made promises and wings, and they both failed. Instead of protecting his child, he sent him too close to the fire, to his death. Parents and children aren’t equals or ready to do the same things, and Icarus shouldn’t have been pulled into his father’s fantasy which, in effect, murdered him.”

The phone rang a third and then a fourth time.

“Nobody cared,” Laura wrote. “Icarus splashed into eternity and the plowmen kept working. As Auden says ‘…suffering…takes place while someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along…’ Nothing has changed since then. Nobody cares about anything except his own life and concerns. Icarus, unnoticed, still dies every day.”

I felt chilled. I read it through again, hoping the secret message that seemed embedded in it would come clear.

The telephone began again when I was halfway through. I cursed all machinery everywhere and my inability to comprehend it.

“I expected you to be out,” my mother said. I wondered if I could convince her that I was. I am fond of her, but it is fair to say that she was not far from my mind when I bought the answering machine.

My mother is a woman with overwhelming energy. My father has retired. She has not. She is president, founder and namer of the Hava Little Hu-Manatee League, bent on saving the gentle sea cows. She is active in Meals on Wheels, a cofounder of the Elysium Condo Square Dance and Discount Shoppers Association, a reader to the blind, a fairly bad but enthusiastic golfer and the second-highest winner in the Greater Boca Raton Perpetual Gin Game.

Any lesser woman would be too tired to closely monitor my social life as well, but she fits it into her schedule with amazing regularity.

The clock and Laura’s composition pressed on me.

“Good news about your sweater,” my mother said. I cringed. A year and a half ago, after lusting for a hand-knit number I could not afford in this lifetime, I bought expensive yarn with which to make my own. And then remembered that I had no knitting skill. On a visit north, my mother commandeered the yarn. But she rivals Penelope for the slowness with which she completes knitting projects. She declared my sketch “too plain” and added sequins and vintage bugle beads. After delicate diplomatic maneuvering, the glitz went back to her sewing kit and the yarn was pulled apart and remade into something she called “plain,” i.e., the sort of lumpy cardigan comic-book schoolteachers wear. Again it was unraveled and again she requested my measurements and again decided they were wrong. That attempt yielded the perfect puffed-sleeve pullover for Bwana, the orangutan. I’m not sure what virgin wool is, but I’m positive that what we have is the woolly equivalent of an old, tired hooker. Still, Mama knits on.

“It’ll be finished by the time you’re here,” she said brightly.

I didn’t ask what “it” was in this incarnation. I was winging my way south for part of my vacation, because, as my mother constantly pointed out, I had no reasons—such as husband or children—not to.