Suburban Renewal (23 page)

I didn't try to deny it further.

“I don't know what's wrong,” I told him. “I guess I'm just plain old jealous. You've become such a grand success and everybody's talking about you. And I'm the little wife, an average, ordinary elementary school teacher. It sounds pretty blah.”

Sam laughed at that.

“It may sound that way to you,” he said. “But that's not the way it is. I see how the other teachers, especially the younger ones, come to you for advice. Everybody admires the way you think through your classrooms. Your students do better because they love to come to school. This classroom-design thing you do—it's unique and special.”

“Oh, you're sweet, Sam,” I told him, waving away the compliment.

“I'll never forget that fishbowl you put together in that very first classroom in Candy Cane School. Remember that?”

“How could I forget it?” I answered. “It got me fired.”

“But it meant so much to those kids,” he said. “I know that they learned more and loved learning more because it was such a cool place to hang out.”

“Thanks.”

“It's just too bad,” Sam went on, “that it's only twenty kids a year that get the benefit of the way that you look at a room. I wish there was a way that you could design every classroom in the country.”

That fall we drove Lauren down to Mississippi to start college at LWBC. And I started up my own part-time classroom-design firm, EducationEnvironments.com.

1997

C
orrie started her dot.com business. That was good news. I started branching out Okie Tamales all over the state. That was good news, too. By the end of our first year of wholesale/retail production we were providing jobs for ten full-time employees and cooking 10,000 dozen per day. I retired my makeshift sausage maker for a shiny, stainless steel $45,000 tamale maker imported from Mexico. For that authentic Okie Tamale flavor, every one was still hand rolled and cooked in cornshuck.

Nate started his last year in high school. He was even more secretive than usual, but we kind of knew he was dating. He started showering before he went out on Saturday nights. And although he was still far from preppie, his oversize jeans and T-shirts were more often clean and fairly new. He never said a word to us. I'm sure he thought it was none of our business. But Lumkee is a very small town and secrets don't stay secrets forever. I thought Nate having a girlfriend was great until Hye Won broke the news to me that it wasn't.

“My parents are very upset,” she told me. “They won't approach you directly, because you are their
boss. But they are very upset and want you to put a stop to what is going on.”

“What's going on?” I asked her, completely clueless. “Everything seems to be running smoothly. Is it the production increases?”

“It's not about work,” Hye Won assured me. “My father would speak to you if it were about work. It's about your son, Nate.”

“Nate?”

“He and my sister, Jin, have been dating,” she said. “They tried to keep it a secret. But Chano knew that he had an obligation to speak to my father about it.”

“Nate and Jin are dating?”

I admit I was delighted to hear it. Jin was smart and hardworking, as well as sweet and personable. I would have loved for those qualities to rub off on Nate. At the least, I was delighted that he found those qualities attractive.

“I haven't heard a word about it,” I told Hye Won.

I was grinning and realized that she wasn't. I immediately became serious myself.

“Your parents don't like Nate?” I suggested.

“We do not dislike him,” she assured me. “My family has no opinion of your family at all.”

I doubted very seriously that could be true, but I didn't call her on it.

“But you don't want Nate dating Jin,” I said.

Hye Won was very straight-faced, obviously trying to be diplomatic. “My parents are a traditional Korean family,” she explained. “They love America and take great pride in their American citizenship and the American citizenship of their children.” Here she hesitated. “But among traditional Korean families…we do not date non-Koreans.”

“Ah,” I said.

“It is not about Nate,” she added hurriedly. “We would feel exactly the same about her dating any non-Korean boy.”

I nodded, accepting her explanation.

“But you know, Hye Won, there's not a whole lot of Korean boys around here,” I pointed out. “If she only dates Koreans, then basically, she doesn't date.”

She didn't immediately respond, and with sudden unexpected insight I wanted to slap myself in the head.

“Of course! That's why you don't ever date,” I said.

Hye Won shrugged. “I just haven't met the right guy,” she said.

“The right Korean guy,” I amended.

“Yes,” she admitted quietly. “My older brother has a friend who knows someone. They are hoping to arrange an introduction for us very soon.”

Her offer of information was defensive. It pricked my own conscience.

“I understand,” I said.

“Many Caucasian Americans don't want their young people dating Asians,” she pointed out.

“Yes, for some families that's true,” I told her. “I'll talk to Nate. I can't promise anything, but I'll do what I can.”

“If you order him not to see her, then he won't,” Hye Won told me with certainty.

“I'm not sure that'll work,” I admitted. “We'd probably have more luck at keeping them apart by trying to fix them up. But I'll talk to Nate. Please tell your father that I'll talk to him.”

Before I did, of course, I talked to Corrie.

She was defensive. “So the Chais don't think our Nate is good enough for them!”

“Corrie, you sound like your mother,” I told her. “Mr. Chai is trying to do what he can to help his children.”

“By not allowing them to date whomever they might fall in love with?”

“We don't know that these two are in love,” I said. “All we know is that they're dating.”

“Well, kids ought to be able to date anyone they want,” she stated firmly.

I grinned at her. “And if Nate comes home with a hopped-up cocaine addict with six tattoos and five illegitimate kids, can I quote you on that?”

She stuck her tongue out at me.

“It's some kind of reverse racism or something,” she said.

“I don't think it's racism,” I said. “I don't think they hate us or our son. I think all Mr. Chai wants is a happier, easier life for his children than he's had for himself. Dating is ultimately about marrying. And marrying somebody that doesn't share your culture, your religion, your history, even just your background is just plain harder. He doesn't want things to be harder for his kids. As a father, I understand it. But it's like trying to hold back a river flood with a rope and a couple of pieces of plywood. I'm sure he's looking for any help he can get.”

“He won't get any help from me,” Corrie said. “As a mother, I think my son is good enough for anybody anywhere! And anyone who says otherwise, well, they better not say it to my face.”

I laughed. She was a lot like Edna. It was amazing to me—after being married to Corrie for twenty years to see one of the same traits that had so intimidated me in her mother.

Corrie was working a lot these days. She would come home from school, start dinner and get to work answering e-mails and laying out rooms for clients. She tried to grow by word of mouth. She wanted to do such excellent work that it would loudly speak for itself, and that required a lot of commitment from her.

She began to travel more. Attending conferences and trade shows, where she could connect with the market for her services, was essential. The school system was amazingly cooperative, allowing her to take an inordinate amount of unpaid leave to pursue her sideline. I thought they were just being generous until the principal let it slip that their lawyer was investigating whether or not the school system was due a percentage of future profits based on the intellectual-property clause in her teaching contract.

Corrie and I were both stunned, but as there were no profits yet forthcoming, we let it ride.

I cheered her on and urged her to go, but I missed her—both when she was away and when she was home in front of her computer screen.

In May both Nate and Corrie graduated. Nate wore shorts and sneakers under his cap and gown. It was easy to pick him out of the crowd for photographs. He had written in Wite-Out across the top of his mortarboard:
Hell Froze Over!

“That's our boy!” I told Corrie, rolling my eyes.

“And we are so proud,” she countered facetiously.

He had made no moves whatsoever as to his future prior to graduation. He took the SAT only because we insisted. But he'd made it very evident to us that he was not remotely interested in pursuing a college degree.

The summer after graduation, Nate spent lying
around. He went out every night and stayed late, which kept him sleeping most of the day. I didn't know if he was still seeing Jin. I hadn't heard any more from Hye Won, so I figured their romance had cooled. That was okay with me.

But living as a bum in my house, that was not okay. On a hot August evening as he was getting ready to leave the house, I confronted him.

“I'm willing for you to live here as long as you like,” I said. “But if you're not going to school, then you have to go to work.”

He just looked at me curiously and made no response.

“I'll find a job for you at Okie Tamales if you want one,” I continued. “But it will be a real job. And you'll really have to work at it.”

“No thanks, Dad,” he answered. “I'm leaving day after tomorrow for Maine.”

“Maine? You mean like the state of Maine.”

“Yeah,” he answered. “There's a woodworking school up there, it's one of the best in the country. It's a twelve week course.”

“You're taking a woodworking course?”

“Yeah?”

“How much is this going to cost?”

“I've already paid for it.”

“Where are you going to stay?”

“Room and board is included.”

“How are you going to get there?”

“Airplane,” he answered and then added. “Duh, like I'm going to hitchhike fifteen hundred miles. I'm a slacker, but I'm not stupid.”

I admit to being completely dumbfounded by this
development. Nate had, if not his future, at least his own plans all worked out.

Just before he left, Lauren came home for a two week visit, before heading back to Bible College. She'd spent the summer building a church/hospital facility in Oaxaca, Mexico.

Once the kids were gone it was just Corrie and I alone. Our first time alone together in twenty years. And it was busy.

Corrie's master's degree was almost anticlimactic. She was becoming so widely known and respected in her field that being a master was a given. At her orals exam she defended her thesis so well that two members of the faculty committee asked if they could recommend her company to their own administrative board. It was shortly after that at a national education technology conference that she was approached by a venture capital firm. They were blown away with what Corrie could do. They wanted to help her do it bigger and sooner.

She called me on my cell. I was delivering a minivan load of tamales to our grocery distributor. Between her excitement and the terrible static on the connection she was literally screaming at me over the phone.

“They want to give me $500,000 in start-up money!” she said.

“What! You're already started up. Why would you need that money?”

“It saves me from having to bootstrap my way up,” she said. “They believe in me, they believe in my company. They want to help me make it work.”

I know that it felt to Corrie as if she'd won the lottery. Better. This was a lottery awarded not by chance, but because you deserved it. What an endorsement!
But as I wandered around our house and worked at my job, I began to think about it more and more.

By the time Corrie was back in Lumkee, I was certain it was the wrong way to go.

“Look, Corrie, you don't need this money,” I told her. “If you were strapped for employees or equipment, okay, but you're not. You're doing all the work yourself and I'm not sure you'd want to take on ten people and teach them what you know.”

“But think how much faster we'll grow,” she said.

“There is such a thing as growing too fast,” I said.

“Changing the landscape of American education can't be done quickly enough,” she shot back.

“I'll give you that,” I said. “It would be nice if your vision could be implemented overnight. But would it still be your vision? If it's yours, then all the success is yours and all the risks are yours and so all the vision can be yours. If other people are putting in their two cents or their half-million dollars, they are taking most of the risks and seeking most of the success, so they're going to want most of the vision.”

Corrie didn't have a response, but she was angry and disappointed, and in her eyes, I was the culprit.

“Look at your own business plan,” I said. “The revenue streams are iffy at best. Schools, even expensive private schools, are not big money-making machines. They don't have big discretionary funds for improvements. And they don't have incentives for doing a better job. They won't improve their bottom line by turning out smarter kids.”

“I know teachers,” she insisted. “They want to do everything they can to help their students succeed.”

“Teachers may want to do it,” I pointed out. “But teachers aren't the target of your business plan, it's the
school administration and their priorities have got to be the bottom line.”

“Why are you so negative?” she accused. “Venture capital is what every dot.com out there is shooting for.”

“Honey, listen to me,” I told her. “We've been in this place before, almost exactly this place. During the oil boom, all the bankers wanted to give us money. It was burning a hole in everybody's pocket and they wanted it out there working for them. I couldn't have made a go of that business without the bank's money, I had no choice but to take it. And it came around to bite us in the butt. I can't help but worry that this may turn out the same way.”

“What do you know about it?” she shouted back. “You don't know anything about the new economy or public offerings or stock valuations. Why should I listen to you on any of this?”

“Because I am the one person you can always count on to be on your side in everything you do,” I told her.

“Oh, really? Well, it sounds to me like you're just jealous of my success,” she said. “Does it hurt your pride to think that somebody wants to give me a boatload of money for ideas I come up with on my very own? They are my ideas, Sam. Mine. And I don't need to smother them with salsa to get somebody to buy!”

More was said. Much more. It was a terrible fight, complete with long-ago grievances and even unexpected confessions.

She told me that she'd seen another man. She said she hadn't slept with him, but that she'd wanted to. She'd wanted another man because he was her intellectual equal. I thought the top of my head was going to blow off with that one. I was still reeling from that
when she got onto my father. I had brought him and his evil into the sanctuary of our home. He'd damaged the psyche of our son and Nate would never recover.