The Newman Resident (4 page)

Christopher had been five and a half months old; two weeks later, he’d be going to Newman. Richard’s parents kept insisting they take pictures throughout the day. It wasn’t easy—not because they couldn’t get Christopher to smile, but because they couldn’t get him to stop giggling. Christopher had laughed and laughed, for no reason the adults could see. It was like there was some extremely funny private joke between him and his stuffed Winnie
the Pooh bear. When Richard bought it, Carol had pointed out that he would be in Newman by the time he was old enough to have anything to do with the bear, and that the staff didn’t allow stuffed animals from outside for health reasons—whatever that meant. But Richard put it in the crib every night. And, as far as he was concerned, the baby and bear adored each other.

They sent copies of the pictures to Richard’s parents and Carol’s mother. Carol’s parents had divorced years before, and she had nothing to do with her father, but Richard had secretly sent him one. He’d never met the man, but he couldn’t help feeling a grandpa had the right to see his only child’s only child.

Two weeks after the picture was taken, the three of them were in the Newman lobby. The attendant kept trying to make Richard take Pooh Bear, telling him it would be discarded once the baby became an official resident, but Richard fought hard. His boy was going to keep it to comfort him on cold nights. The attendant took Christopher and the bear through the oak doorway and closed the door. Richard never saw the Pooh Bear again. He asked about it two or three times, but no one ever knew what he was talking about.

Richard placed the picture back on his desk. It was his favorite picture of his family, but he often found it difficult to look at it. Rather than reminding him of what he had, sometimes the picture would just accentuate his feelings that he’d lost his son—that, in a very real sense, he’d lost his family. The picture reminded him of a different photo he hadn’t seen for years—one of his parents and their two sons, standing on the deck in the back of their Vermont home. His younger brother, David, was a junior in high school, and Richard had just started college. It was autumn, bright gold and red leaves covered the deck, and the four of them were laughing. They’d spent a half-hour trying to take the perfect family
picture. His father had made some bad joke about something, they’d laughed, and the camera timer went off at just the right time. The perfect family picture.

He turned back to his computer and clicked on the video. Christopher was on the screen, now four or five years old, sitting on the floor of a classroom with six other children. They were surrounded by a rainforest wallpaper, bright green trees full of gorillas eating bananas and swinging on vines. The children wore their colder weather uniforms now, the same khaki, safari-style clothes, but with long sleeves and long pants. They watched one of the teachers as he used two hand puppets, a giraffe and a zebra, to teach about being polite.

Richard had almost memorized the video, so he busied himself with searching out details, hoping for clues—clues for what, he had no idea. For a moment, he focused on the pockets on those safari uniforms. The pockets never had anything in them. Shouldn’t they have bulged a little here and there? These were little kids, for crying out loud. Shouldn’t there have been a rock or a crayon or something in a pocket?

He studied the plush green carpet. Several of the children stroked the carpet as they watched the puppets. They would laugh, and sometimes laugh even more as they looked at one another, but they kept stroking the carpet. Reaching out to it. Feeling it. Richard kept watching the screen. Even though he’d seen this video many times, he still hoped something would be different this time. The children all seemed happy, but maybe a boy would frown for a second. Or maybe a girl would look distracted. He knew nothing would change, but he kept watching.

The phone rang. Richard picked it up without thinking, forgetting to look at the screen and see who was calling.

“Richard, are you there? This is Hunter.”

Richard closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Hunter was the head psychologist at Newman, and one of Carol’s friends from college. She felt like they owed the world to Hunter because he’d pulled so many strings to get Christopher into the school.

“Hello, Hunter.”

“Look, I’ll get to the point, Richard. Ms. Garrett told me you came by Newman today.”

Richard didn’t say anything.

“It’s not a good idea,” Hunter said. “The sabbatical. It’s just not healthy for the resident to be taken out of the environment he’s grown up in. Too disruptive.”

“You didn’t seem to mind taking him out of the environment he grew up in when you enrolled him.”

“That’s my point, Richard. We enroll them early so we don’t have to waste time retraining them.”

“I have the right to take him out on the sabbatical.”

“Look, let’s not talk policy, let’s talk Christopher.”

“Yeah, tell me about him. It’s tough to know someone you never see.”

“Richard, if I had the slightest doubt about the Newman Home, you know I wouldn’t have my own son enrolled there.”

Richard looked over at the paused image on the screen. All the children were frozen in their laughter, in their delight. All looking up at the teacher and the two puppets, a giraffe and a zebra. The children—their sweet, innocent, clean faces, paralyzed in pleasure as they watched two animals talking to each other.... What did a giraffe have to say to a zebra, anyway?

What did Richard have to say to Hunter?

“...but I’m part of something big,” Hunter continued, “really important. And so are you. These kids are from the smartest parents....”

Richard noticed something he’d never seen before. Something stuck out of one of the pockets on Christopher’s shirt. He looked harder, trying to make out what it was. It looked a little shiny. He zoomed in.

“It’s a pen,” Richard said.

“What?”

“A pen. I’ve got a video of Christopher on the computer. He has a pen in his pocket. No one else has one.”

“So he has a pen.”

“Maybe he draws with that pen.” Richard pointed to the screen. “Or maybe he writes. Maybe he does something with it without having any official approval.”

“Or maybe he just left a pen in his pocket.”

“Maybe there’s a rule that you can’t have a pen in your pocket,” Richard said, “and he’s breaking the rule. Wouldn’t that be great, Hunter!”

“Breaking rules really doesn’t lead to much success in life.”

“It could. Happy little clones. Look at them.”

“I’m on the phone. I can’t see them.”

“That’s the point. You don’t even have to look at them, Hunter. They always look the same.”

“They look like students at the finest private school in the world. What’s the problem? How could you possibly find anything wrong with a picture of happy children? Just admit it: there’s nothing wrong with Newman, you just miss your son.”

“I do miss him,” Richard said, “but that doesn’t mean there’s nothing wrong with Newman.”

“You know what the studies show. Public schools failed a long time ago.”

“If that’s true, it’s because we made them fail.”

“It’s taken government and business working as a team to save our children.”

“Let’s see, government mandates without funding. Vouchers. Privatization. They weren’t trying to save our schools or our children. They were trying to create a new profit center. No child left behind? All the kids were left behind.”

“Always the cynical lawyer.”

“Newman tuition is the highest in the world, I bet,” Richard said. “And there’s all that fundraising. Makes you wonder if Newman isn’t really about all the money.”

“It’s about the best education in the world. Worth every penny.”

“I never went to a boarding school. I lived with those people... what do you call them?...oh yes, parents. Parents who loved me, who wanted what was best for me, who wanted to be with me.”

“Newman parents love their children, too. That’s why they enrolled them. They wanted what’s best for their kids—the best education possible.”

“Don’t give me that spiel,” Richard said, sitting up taller. “Those parents sent their kids to boot camp because they were too busy with their beloved careers to mess around with nuisances that had to be clothed, fed, and held. They have enough money to make their kids one less thing to worry about before staying late at the office or going out for dinner and a play.”

“Or writing their novel?”

Silence.

“I didn’t enroll Christopher so I could write my novel.”

“Nobody held a gun to your head to get Christopher into Newman, Richard. You signed your name just like Carol did.”

Richard slammed down the receiver. Hunter was an idiot. There was no way Richard agreed to let his son enroll in Newman
so he could write. If someone told him he could have his son back if he gave up ever writing another word, he’d drop his pen and grab his son in a second.

The pen in Christopher’s pocket now stood out in the picture. How could Richard have missed it before? He cherished the possibility, however slight, that his son had the same connection to writing that he did. He smiled. Maybe writing would be the key to bringing them together.

CHAPTER NINE

T
he secretary at Weatherford and Williams tried to stop him, insisting his wife was in an important meeting, but Richard walked past her. He finally had a plan for getting Christopher home and he didn’t want anything to slow him down. He knew himself well enough to know he had to keep his momentum before he talked himself out of his plan. He opened Carol’s office door without knocking, knowing he’d jump into the middle of whatever was happening. She was leaning against her desk, speaking with two attorneys who looked new to the firm, judging by the way they took notes on everything she was saying. Richard grabbed her hand and told her he was starving—they had to get something to eat together or he’d die. She complained, saying she couldn’t leave, but she went with him. She usually liked to call the shots, but he knew she sometimes liked it when he’d step up and lead the way, almost leaving her in the dark. For a little while, at least.

He was still holding her hand as they came out onto the sidewalk. Traffic was heavy, as always, and the street was noisy. Nameless people crowded the sidewalk. Richard walked quickly, and Carol had difficulty keeping up.

They walked two or three blocks without saying a word. Whenever they passed a restaurant, Richard didn’t even slow down. Finally, Carol let go of his hand and stopped.

“Richard, it’s almost four o’clock. I grabbed a sandwich a long time ago.”

“Then let’s call it dinner.”

“It’s too early for dinner.”

“For crying out loud, woman, live on the edge!”

“Where exactly are we going?”

“For the first time in your life, you’re not going to know exactly anything.”

He started walking down the sidewalk, leaving her standing. He turned at the corner and looked back at her. She was smiling, but stopped when she saw he was watching her.

“I hope we’re not going to eat vegetarian hot dogs again,” she shouted after him. “I hate green hot dogs.”

She caught up with him just as he was about to turn a corner. Richard paused for a second, as though out of respect or reverence, as he looked at the massive building straight ahead. The gigantic lions kept watch over one of the few places in the city where a person could find books that weren’t just on screens.

“We’re going to eat dinner at the library?” Carol asked.

Richard nodded and almost ran toward the library. He knew what he was doing, but he had no idea how to do it. How was she ever going to go along with this? Carol again tried to catch up, and finally got to him when he paused at the top of the steps. The two entered the library and headed straight for the huge reading room.

There were several rows of tables, with a number of people scattered among them reading or writing. Richard sat down at a table near the back, and Carol sat next to him.

“What shall we order?” Carol asked. “I’ve heard they’ve got great sushi.”

“What was the reason I gave Stuart for going to law school?”

Carol paused. Richard studied her face, worried for the least little sign she would build up her walls and refuse to talk.

“You told him you went to law school because you loved me,” Carol said.

“That’s what I said. And it was true. You know that, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“You wanted to marry a guy who’d get a real job.”

“Someone had to wake you up from your dream.”

This wasn’t the conversation he’d written in his head on the way over to her office. Richard looked around the room, watching the people sitting on the benches as they waited for the books they’d requested to be brought to the desk. They looked like intelligent, busy people, and here they were sitting and waiting. People seemed to waste half their lives waiting for things, but books were actually worth waiting for.

“But, Carol,” he said, “I hate my real job.”

“I know you don’t like it, but—”

“No, Carol, no. I don’t don’t like it. I hate it. I hated law school. I hated my summer jobs. And I hate being a lawyer.” His voice was getting louder with each sentence. “I don’t like pumpernickel bread. I don’t like shirts that scratch my neck. But I hate being a lawyer, Carol. I hate being what I am.”

“Okay, okay,” she said, trying to quiet him. “You made your point.” She glanced around the room. “Look, maybe you hate your job, but I didn’t force you to go to Columbia. It’s not my fault you—”

“I’m not saying it’s your fault. I take full responsibility.”

“Oh,” she said. “Well, good. Because it really isn’t my fault.”

“It’s not about fault. But it
is
about doing something because of love.”

“What are you getting at?”

Richard picked up a book not too far away on their table. He held it in one hand and shook it, like a preacher making his point with the Bible.

“You know how you’re always telling me I analyze things too much? That I need to get to the
doing
part of life?”