The Street Sweeper (21 page)

‘Sorry, Adam, but if I don’t take these calls I have to return them later. Then the list mounts up till I can’t face it. Same with email. It’s a curse.’ Charles scrawled a note to himself on a pad beside the phone.

‘How’s your dad?’ Adam asked. ‘After the Supreme Court decision, I mean.’

‘I’d be lying if I said I didn’t worry about him … which he doesn’t like. Frankly, he’s been pretty shaken by it. Terribly shaken, actually. We’re going to try to see more of him for a while. I know you’re going through a rough time yourself, obviously, but if you can spare any time –’

‘Of course, I was worried about him too.’

‘Well, one good thing to come out of it … you can see how mentally acute, how sharp, he is. He’s been on the internet reading all about it, reading the decision. It’s all he wants to talk about. He wants to write letters.’

‘I can only imagine how he must feel.’

‘He’s so angry at the Supreme Court. Don’t get him started on Clarence Thomas. I’m worried someone in the media’s going to find him and get him to defame somebody. He’s good copy when he’s angry.’ The telephone rang again. Charles looked to the ceiling, apologised again and took the call.

‘Sorry, Adam,’ Charles said, putting the phone down and scribbling another note to himself.

‘It’s fine … really,’ Adam half whispered to Charles, to Diana and to himself.

‘Have you had much to do with anyone from MEALAC?’ Charles asked.

‘What’s MEALAC?’

‘Middle East and Asian Languages and Cultures Department.’

‘No, I don’t think I know anyone from there. Why?’

‘There’ve been some … complaints …’

‘From MEALAC?’

‘Complaints
about
MEALAC.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘There’ve been complaints from students – complaints of harassment … of anti-Semitism. Jewish students have reported being harassed.’

‘By other students?’

‘No, by faculty.’

‘Oh shit. Is there any validity to it?’

‘I don’t know … but I’m going to have to find out.’

‘What does it have to do with you?’

‘I’m the President’s go- to guy on stuff like this,
one
of them, anyway. I’m on a committee, yet another one.’

‘You’re the black one, right, the black go-to guy for stuff like this?’

‘You got it, boy wonder!’ Charles stood up. ‘That’s why I’m going to have to wrap this up. Sorry, Adam, I really am. The meeting I have to go to now …’ Charles exhaled.

‘That’s about MEALAC?’

‘Yeah,’ said Charles, shaking Adam’s hand. ‘We got to have you for dinner again … soon. Thanks for looking in on Dad. We really appreciate it.’

‘No, it’s fine. You know how much I … It’s … No … really no … problem.’

Adam had planned to call William. He promised himself he would call him just as soon as he was able to do anything. But he couldn’t predict when that would be. Even doing his laundry seemed to require a capacity for organisation that was beyond him and he couldn’t imagine a time when it would not be this way. The author of his PhD thesis, of his successful book on the lawyers of the civil rights movement, the person who had spoken on public television documentaries and who had successfully applied for a position in the History Department at Columbia, who had years before worked as a journalist for several newspapers and magazines in Australia, that had to have been somebody else.

‘I know you always said I shouldn’t ball my socks when they come out of the dryer. I know it stretches the elastic and shortens the life of the socks,’ he told Diana, who was not there, ‘but it keeps the socks together better than tying them. Laziness exists along a continuum. You always knew that. And we always knew that lazy is my default position but it’s not laziness now. I can’t go looking for the strays any more and as for their lifespan, well, they’re going to outlive me anyway.’ No one else was ever again going to care about the state of the elastic in his socks so why do anything about it, or about anything?

He really had planned to call William McCray because even a finished man has moral obligations, however hard they might be to fulfil. All conversation was hard now; whether trivial or significant, superfluous or necessary, it was hard like lifting rocks, boulders, hard like lifting the phone. But when the phone rang for him he answered it. It could have been anyone. It could have been Diana. It was William suggesting they meet for coffee. So they met where they always did, at the Hungarian Pastry Shop at 110th Street and Amsterdam.

When Adam arrived he saw William already sitting there, looking out the window staring up at the spires of St John the Divine. The place was quieter than usual, sparsely populated with people reading newspapers, magazines and their laptops. William must have been the oldest person there by around sixty years until Adam sat down and reduced the gap by twenty years.

‘Sorry I was late.’

‘You weren’t late, I was early.’

‘How you doing?’

‘I could ask you the same thing.’

‘I asked you first.’

‘But I’m older.’

‘So then I’m allowed to be more impatient.’

‘No, after eighty all bets are off. Hasn’t Charlie told you; I’m regressing?’

‘Humour me. You first. Are you feeling any better?’

‘You mean about the Supreme Court decision? I could lie to you but … I can’t get it out of my mind.’

‘Charlie said you read the decision online.’

‘I read the decision, I read
about
the decision, all from my own home. The internet; what a tool! All these technological advances giving people ringside seats to the world’s regression. This was the final day of John Roberts’ first full term as Chief Justice. And this was how he marked it, by trying to turn back the tide of desegregation. Can you believe it? And, you know, he has the temerity to say that he and the other four majority justices are being
faithful
to the 1954 decision in
Brown
. Faithful! He wrote that the way to stop discriminating on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race. The evil in the sophistry!

‘There is racism in society, right? Always has been. Among its myriad ways, it manifested itself traditionally, institutionally, formally and legally in substandard education for African American children. The decision in
Brown
sought to change this. But Roberts and the majority deliberately confuse
negative
discrimination with the
positive
discrimination that seeks to be its antidote.’ Adam smiled to himself. Whenever the conversation turned to injustice William sounded as if he were still addressing the full bench of the US Supreme Court.

‘You see, when someone first hears that “the way to stop discriminating on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race”, it sounds like a simple tautology so you can’t argue with it. Its simplicity is beguiling. And it’s pernicious.’

‘Well, what about the dissenting judges? They must provide some hope. There are four of them.’

‘Justice Breyer, Stephen Breyer, wrote the principal judgement for the dissenters and he saw it for what it is. He got it right. He described the majority’s decision
not
as in line with
Brown
but as a radical departure from it. He said that its effect would be to remove from local communities their capacity to prevent resegregation. Stevens, also a dissenter – and he’s been on the bench since Gerald Ford – he went even further. He talked about the
cruel irony
of the majority’s decision. Listen, I wrote this down, listen to this.’

‘You carry it on you?’

‘It makes me feel better, lowers my blood pressure. Stevens wrote that
the majority opinion “rewrites the history of one of this court’s most important decisions … It is my firm conviction”, he wrote, “that no member of the court that I joined in 1975 would have agreed with today’s decision.” See, he’s not just talking
stare decisis
there; he’s having a dig at Roberts right there because Bill Rehnquist was one of the members of that court.’

‘So? I don’t get it.’

‘So, early in his career Roberts clerked for Rehnquist. It won’t do us any good, not one black child gets a better education from it but still it … Well, it wouldn’t have been lost on Roberts. This radical right-wing shift in the balance of the court now makes it the very monster the conservatives elected Bush to create. Now they’ve got it and we’re going to pay; not just African Americans, the whole country. Scalia’s been let loose completely. Scalia’s like a junk-yard dog. He even attacks Roberts when the two are
concurring
. Really! He says that while Roberts is agreeing with him, he’s being too coy about it. Can you believe that? Poster boy for the Neo-cons, our Italian friend! You know this all goes way back. You can see the pattern beginning in decisions of the ‘70s and ‘80s in cases like
Bakke
and
Patterson
.

‘Charlie thinks it goes back even further than that, as far as Nixon, to Nixon’s “Southern Strategy” to get southern whites to vote Republican.’ William took a sip of his coffee.

‘Well, I guess after Johnson signed those civil rights acts in the ‘60s he pretty much knew he’d given the south to the Republicans for at least a generation. I think he said as much. So, as with most things, I guess Charlie might be right. But none of that excuses this current crop.

‘And as for Clarence Thomas … I don’t know where to start with that man. He was always a fool but now he’s an unbearably smug fool. I mean, listen to this. A black man in the process of overturning
Brown
writes, “If our history has taught us anything it has taught us to beware of elites bearing racial theories.” This is a black man who buys the conservative line that those with a liberal disposition are, by definition, the elites, while the ruling oligarchy he works for are on the side of the dispossessed. You want to talk about Uncle Tom? Let me introduce you to Uncle Clarence.

‘This man is unbelievable. And listen to what he says to one of the other dissenters, Justice Stephen Breyer, what he says
about
Breyer. I mean he didn’t just say this, he
wrote
it in his opinion, in a footnote, he wrote, “Justice Breyer’s good intentions, which I do not doubt, have the shelf life of Justice Breyer’s tenure.” Vicious! See, Breyer’s soon to retire, on his way out in a few months I think, and Clarence Thomas, the plantation owner’s favourite Negro, is saying the force of Breyer’s dissenting opinion will evaporate when Breyer’s time is up. There’s a viciousness there that he’s too stupid to hide. It’s not enough for Clarence Thomas to sell out his own people; he has to go so far as to put on record his character assassination of an honourable man who has the audacity to disagree with him. I tell you, the best argument against affirmative action
is
Clarence Thomas himself. Did you know a Jesuit school in Massachusetts took him in as part of a black recruitment program? And then after that he got into Yale Law on a minority program. He’s a hypocrite, one willing to turn his back on his people and worse, to fight
against
his people while
benefiting
from their previous victories, which he does his best to overturn. This is the man George W. Bush’s father appointed to the Supreme Court to replace Thurgood Marshall! I tell you, Adam, it makes me hope against hope there’s no heaven, just so Thurgood doesn’t have to see this. What kind of a world is it we’re living in? I ask you.’

‘I have no answer to that,’ Adam said quietly.

‘I’m sorry to go on about this, Adam.’

‘No, William, I agree with everything you say. It’s just that I have no answer, not one that would please you.’

‘Well, then at least I know you’re committed to telling the truth. I shudder to think what your father would be saying right now. Speaking of the truth, tell me it isn’t true about you and Diana. I was talking to Michelle about you two. I know this is personal and if ever anything is none of my business this is it. But you’re like a son to me. Tell me it isn’t true. Is it really over? What happened?’

‘There’s a lot to say but … she wants children and –’

‘Don’t you want children?’

‘Well … under different circumstances I do … I would.’

‘What do you mean?’

Adam took a moment to draw breath and to formulate the words to best express what had once seemed so eminently logical, prudent and even kind.

‘More than anyone I know,’ he began, ‘you knew what kind of a father my father was. I don’t mean what kind of man; I mean what kind of
father.’

‘Adam, you mustn’t doubt how much he loved you but, yes, he was a pretty terrible father and he knew it. Jake was a special man but part of what made him special made him unsuitable for being a parent. You suffered for this. But that doesn’t mean
you’d
make a bad father. You don’t think that, do you? Is
that
what this is about?’

‘William … I felt I needed to give her a chance to have children.’

‘With someone else?’

‘Yes.’

‘Why not with you?’

‘I’m … I’m … Where do I start? I’m probably going to lose my job. They can’t give me tenure. My work, my research has stopped.’

‘What do you think it is?’

‘I don’t know. It’s partly confidence, I guess.’

‘What do you mean? You’ve done so well. The book was a huge success and there’s the television …’

‘That was all a while ago and anyway … William, I feel … perhaps I’ve always felt kind of … fraudulent.’

‘Fraudulent?’

‘There is a part of me that feels I’ve been living off my father’s name. I feel that I have to constantly, albeit with varying degrees of subtlety, defend my professional interest in civil rights. I’m white, I’m Jewish … Even the way I talk requires an explanation.’

‘Your Australian
accent?
People love that accent.’

‘Some do and, frankly, most of
them
think it’s British anyway. But it all adds up to a feeling that I need to constantly justify my professional interest, even my position.’

‘At Columbia?’

‘Yeah, it’s like people are thinking I’m only here because of who my father was. He’s Jake Zignelik’s son. It’s like I haven’t earned anything myself.’