CIVICS LESSON by Howard Luxenberg
Why would a middle-aged man, a prosperous middle-aged man, a partner in an architectural firm, the father of two – Sarah, 16, and Noah, 10 – husband in good standing to the lovely Rebecca, a man faithful and considerate (but firm when the occasion warranted), a macher in the local conservative synagogue, my long-standing friend and neighbor – why would such a man, a pillar of the community, or at least the embodiment of those pillared qualities, if not a pillar per se – why would such a man, why would this man, Gideon Stern, place on his lawn a chiseled granite statue of two dogs fucking?
The dogs are whippets. The bottom dog wears a look of profound canine indifference while the top dog expectantly sniffs the air, hoping for something better.
I ask Gideon what his wife thinks.
Gideon says: “She’s humoring me. Plus she gets sympathy points from all her friends. The only time she lost it was when she heard me telling someone it was her idea.”
Gideon and I are on his lawn next to the statue. It’s a late spring evening, the grass is green-gold with the setting sun. Behind us shrubs snuggle up to a large white colonial. Two chimneys, like bookends, with the house between them. We are facing the street, watching as passers-by take in the statue.
I ask Gideon what his kids think.
“Sarah loves it. Her friends come by to have their pictures taken with it. Noah’s uncomfortable with the attention. He’d like it better if it were on someone else’s lawn.”
A car slows up. Gideon waves. They speed away.
“Someone you know?”
“No.”
I realize, a little too late, that I have been petting the statue, and that this, more than the statue itself, is what caused the car to slow down. I was petting it because it was a dog; and the cool granite just begged to be touched.
Citing the growing coolness of the evening, I say goodnight to Gideon.
* * *
Gideon’s mute on the subject, but I know the ostensible reason for the statue that graces his lawn is this: a high school girl, a friend of Sarah’s, has shown up at school with purple hair, has been expelled, and has been championed by a wave of First Amendment letters in the Town Crier, our local rag. Gideon took the girl aside when she was visiting after dinner and told her that her hair looked stupid. “And that’s okay. But if you really want to piss your parents off eat lots of red meat and join the Young Republicans. Leave the school out of it; they’ve got enough trouble without your purple hair.”
Shortly after Gideon dispenses his advice, my own daughter, Jessica, returns from softball practice.
“How was practice?”
“Okay. Can you believe they still won’t let Stacy back into school? Even after all those people wrote letters.”
“I can believe it. I still can’t believe she hasn’t done the simple thing and colored her hair back.”
My daughter is aghast. “What about her First Amendment rights?”
How to explain that First Amendment rights are the least of Stacy’s problems. “This isn’t about her First Amendment rights.” Jessica flops into a chair; she recognizes what she calls my sermon voice and she will hear me out, but she needs to do it sitting down. “Do you think Stacy woke up one morning and said, ‘Whoa, I wonder if my First Amendment rights are in working order?’ No. This is about Stacy trying to take a short-cut to identity.”
“What?”
“This is about Stacy trying to create an identity for herself with hair color.”
“I’m going out.”
“With David?” David is her sometimes boyfriend.
“With Sarah and some of the other girls on the team. Chicks before dicks.”
“What?” I’ve got to do something about my hearing.
“I’m. Going. Out. With. Sarah.” In deference to my hearing problem, my daughter has learned to speak in one-word sentences.
“I thought you said ‘Chicks. Before. Dicks.’”
A new tack from Jessica. “Her parents are getting her a lawyer.” This is my daughter’s trump card.
“I know what’s next: ‘How come I never get you a lawyer.’” I am pleased with this remark, but my daughter isn’t. I’m not taking her seriously. Still I worry sometimes about my daughter’s sense of humor.
She gets up from the table and heads toward the stairs. She turns and mouths some words. Just moves her lips, but doesn’t say anything. To piss me off. Argue with that.
It’s nice, though I don’t share this with Jessica’s back, to have the luxury to worry about First Amendment issues. I generally worry about receivables – a worry I could eliminate by factoring them at 95% of face, but there go the profits. I worry about John, my youngest – I worry about his eagerness to go along with the crowd. I worry that my hearing is getting worse. I worry about the occasional pain when urinating. I worry about my parents, whose physical failings are more advanced than, and presage, my own.
I worry about my wife. Barb is beginning menopause. I’ve heard bad things about menopause. I suspect I’m going to be called on for heroic feats of patience and compassion. (Such, no doubt, as my wife routinely performs for me.) I worry that I’m not up to it.
* * *
“All my friends talk about is menopause.” Barb is speaking. The four of us, Rebecca and Gideon, Barb and I, are eating dinner at Cartucci’s, salmon-colored tablecloths and dark green napkins, silverware that thuds if you drop it on the linen tablecloth. A nice place. The table we are seated at is square, and each of us sits opposite the other’s spouse. Light, what little of it there is, is provided by the small flame of an oil lamp. The food is good, helped along by the conscious numbing of the other senses.
Barb and Rebecca are comparing notes on menopause; Gideon and I, outsiders to this new and all-consuming new world our wives have entered, are groping for a position peripheral to theirs, something respectful but removed.
There are allegiances here, not just to each other, but to ways of looking at the world, allegiances that may soon be in conflict. Barb and I share a liberal compassion that we hope has grown mellow and tolerant towards life’s vicissitudes, but Gideon and I share an ironic detachment to most of what life serves up. In the matter of each other’s spouses, Gideon enjoys an easy flirtation with Barb, who likes to be flirted with; but I will not flirt with Rebecca, who doesn’t, except that I take her more seriously than Gideon does, a Trojan Horse sort of flirtation that Gideon recognizes and Rebecca doesn’t. I am the most gentlemanly of Gideon’s friends, Rebecca always says, which – knowing Gideon’s other friends – is less of a compliment than it seems. But Rebecca means it to be a compliment.
But the subject is menopause, and Barb is holding forth: “Did you know that Japanese women don’t get hot flashes; it’s the soy in their diet. They did a study.”
Gideon looks up from the menu. “They were hot-flashed for all time at Hiroshima.”
All conversations have their subtexts. Gideon is a patriot, fonder of America than is fashionable among the upper middle class. Partly this is his anti-intellectualism; partly it is belonging to a family that came here from an inhospitable Europe.
Nobody wants the next line. Gideon has stopped the menopause conversation, nuked it. A glassy, crater-like silence settles on the table. The waiter asks if we need another round of drinks. We do.
Rebecca is both lovely and elegant. Her hands, when she does not consciously attend to them, behave as if they were arranging imaginary flowers, and her look, when she doesn’t fix you with it, seems to be admiring her handiwork. People remember their manners in her presence.
“To me,” Rebecca says, “menopause is like an obnoxious relative at a dinner party, a boor who shows up drunk, disheveled, loud and crude, but who cannot be turned away.”
My Barb is more philosophical. “To me,” continuing the metaphorical strain, “menopause is part of the great female life cycle” – Gideon has no patience for this outlook, and rolls his eyes to say so; but Barb sticks out her tongue at him and continues – “a dowager aunt, eccentric, intrusive, flighty, petty, but somehow an essential member of the family, a desert that defines the oasis.”
“For me,” Gideon says, “it’s the Pied Piper of Hamlin, come to take the children away.”
Barb sips her drink and tries to resurrect the conversation: “My friends are all buying soy milk.” I think I hear something contemptuous in this remark. Of the soy milk, not her friends.
I say: “I’m sure there will be flavors. Chocolate, at least.” It occurs to me that menopause is going to be the next great growth industry. “We should buy stock in whoever makes this stuff. In fact – I’m warming to a whole new aspect of this menopause business – we should open The Menopause Store. Get a little kiosk in the Mall. We could call it Victoria’s Other Secret. Sell soy milk. Lots of flavors. Calcium supplements. What else? Books. There must be lots of books about this.” I know we won’t do this, but someone will. They’ll make a fortune. I think I see a faint smile on Barb’s face.
* * *
It’s Tuesday, poker night. But Gideon and I are at the Town Hall, in the corridor, waiting for the 7:30 meeting of the Town Planning and Zoning Commission, the TPZ. Fran, the Chairwoman, heads directly for Gideon. She is the size and shape of a fire plug. She is legendary in town for her ability to settle disputes without rancor. She grabs Gideon by a cheek, and pulls his face down to her level. “Gideon. Gideon. What’s with these fehcachta dogs? D’Matteo is so excited he got his robe cleaned for this meeting.”
“D’Matteo is a putz.”
“Yes. Yes. We know this, Gideon. He’s a little putz. But this will make him a big putz. He’ll run for council on this.” Fran still has Gideon by the cheek.
Now she pats the other cheek with her free hand. “Take it down. Put it away. Once a year, on Halloween, you bring it out. Okay?”
Gideon removes Fran’s hands from his head so he can shake it.
“Gideon. Gideon. A little statue. For the coffee table. That’s what you want. A tchatchka. A conversation piece. But small. Proportion, Gideon, proportion.”
The meeting is packed with people who don’t like dogs. D’Matteo’s people. The gist of the TPZ’s objection is that the statue is obscene. Gideon expected this, and his response is brief: “What are you going to do, Fran, call a TPZ meeting every time two dogs start sniffing each other’s assholes. D’Matteo . . .”
Gideon lets D’Matteo’s name hang there a moment, keeping company with the dogs’ assholes – this is an old lawyer’s, an old orator’s trick – and then continues: “D’Matteo will have to buy another robe.”
D’Matteo shoots Gideon a look that says, I think you’re an asshole too. Fran suggests they get a legal opinion from town council, and adjourns the meeting.
* * *
The fact is that Gideon had purchased the statue years ago. He intended it for the cottage he rented each year (and intended to buy) on Otisco Lake. Cottage art tends to be raunchy or in simple bad taste. Black stable boys with Steppin-Fetchit grins, pink flamingos, aw shucks urchins fishing in wishing wells, – well, the dogs would not be out of place. The cottage deal fell through, leaving Gideon’s dogs festering in his garage. Among the cottage folk, people whose idea of a compliment was to tell Gideon he wasn’t like other Jews – ”This from people,” Gideon remarked, “more familiar with ‘Jew’ the verb than ‘Jew’ the noun” – among these people Gideon’s statue would occasion a no more hostile feeling than envy.
* * *
The Channel 11 Newsmobile pulls up first. A tall white man, at least 6’10”, gets out and retrieves a boxy video camera. He pauses to shoot the furry remains of a squirrel flattened against the road.
“Why are you shooting road kill?” I recognize the voice of Kim Sung, our buxom Asian news reporter and weekend anchorwoman.
“Just testing.”
“Test on the fucking dogs. That’s what we’re here to cover.”
A blue Lincoln pulls up behind the Newsmobile. I hear a pop and watch the trunk open. Then D’Matteo gets out of the car. He’s wearing a white, short-sleeved shirt, his forearms covered with curly black hair. He waves at Kim and the camera guy. Then he ducks his head into the trunk. When it comes back out it’s wearing a yellow construction hat.
Gideon’s daughter Sarah is walking toward the front lawn, aiming a camcorder of her own. Gideon comes out of front door and sits on his front step. Ms. Sung has begun speaking into the microphone. D’Matteo strides purposely toward the statue, holding a sledge hammer by the throat in one hand and a drop cloth in the other.
Gideon thinks about confronting D’Matteo, who is now, technically, trespassing. But D’Matteo has a full head of steam, he has called the news crew out, he’s holding a sledge hammer, which he gives every appearance of knowing how to use. Gideon doesn’t think D’Matteo will use it on him; further, he judges himself to be stronger than D’Matteo, certainly taller and more fit. And better-looking. That should count for something with the news crew. Still he makes his usual discretion/valor calculation and decides on retaliation. He shouts to D’Matteo, “Come Christmas, your crèche is toast.” He resigns his dogs to their fate.
When D’Matteo reaches the statue he looks at Gideon, puts the sledge hammer down and places a foot on it. He then drapes the drop cloth over the statue.
“Cut!” Kim gestures to her camera guy. Then to D’Matteo: “What are you doing?”
D’Matteo is preparing to take his first swing. He turns to Ms. Sung. “What?”
“What are you covering it for?” She remembers to turn off the mike. “I didn’t come here to video you sledge-hammering the shit out of a drop cloth.” The camera guy and Sarah are getting all this on their camcorders.
“Miss Sung. I can’t have chips flying everywhere. What if a piece flies off and puts your pretty eye out. I’m in construction. This is how you do it.” He motions her to move back, out of the way. She does, shaking her head. D’Matteo lines up a shot to the higher bump beneath the drop cloth, and then quickly rocks the sledge hammer back and swings it against the statue. The first blow apparently decapitates the male dog. D’Matteo raises both arms, sledge hammer and all, and does a little turn of triumph.
Then he sets about demolishing the rest of the statue. This proves to be hard work. Dark circles spread beneath his arms. His forehead glistens. And soon his initial fury subsides into a steady rhythm, like a convict on a chain gang.
Kim Sung tries to interview Gideon, who replies cryptically, “When your enemy rides in on a donkey, it’s enough to remind everyone the donkey’s the one on the bottom.”
When the show is over, the cameras put away, D’Matteo departed with the head from the statue, Kim comes over to Gideon one more time. “Off the record. Why does a man place a statue of two dogs fucking on his lawn?” I am struck by how eerily this echoes my own question. I think I know the answer, because I know Gideon. Her next question surprises me, but not Gideon. She says, “You weren’t born here, were you?”
Gideon smiles. “You weren’t either.”
“Because I’m Korean? I could have – ”
“But you weren’t.”
Kim nods. Her nod of assent is short, almost imperceptible. I can see that she thinks she understands. Kim has an anchorwoman’s perfection. Her hair is long and perfectly black. Her face is without blemish, its features small. She has no accent, and her voice has the pleasant sound of a small bell. She is dressed in a black pants suit, a tight violet sweater beneath it. And yet when our town turns on the nightly news, what they see in their eyes is unmistakably foreign. Kim says, “This isn’t about the First Amendment.”
It’s Gideon’s turn to nod. “Nothing is ever about the First Amendment. It’s always about something else.”
* * *
Barb and I are eating lunch together. I am squinting at Barb, a shadow haloed by the bright light from the window behind her. I’m not able to search her darkened face for clues. And my hearing is already suspect. She is telling me that Rebecca, Gideon’s wife, had an affair.
“What?” My hearing is suddenly acute, but now my comprehension is suspect. “I can’t believe it.” Which is true. I don’t deny it – how would I know? – but I refuse to believe it. If Rebecca could have an affair, could anyone’s wife be trusted? “Who? With who? With whom?”
Barb shakes her head. “Don’t know.”
“How do you know she had one, then?”
“I do. I know. She’s said some things.”
“So this is more than just an intuition.” I’m hoping that it isn’t.
“More than just an intuition.” Barb hits the “just” extra hard. We both respect her intuitions.
“Why?”
“Why not?” Barb’s teasing me with this. “She just wanted to feel a certain way again?”
“Sleazy?”
“Coveted.”
“Does Gideon know?”
“Maybe. He knows something. He knows something is wrong.”
“I still can’t believe it.”
“You’re just wishing it was you she was having an affair with.” Barb says this mockingly, tenderly.
“I can’t believe it.” The great challenge of my middle years, so I thought, would be my own fidelity. It never occurred to me that a wife of twenty-five years could be faithless. “Do you feel coveted?”
“Some of the time. Enough.”
“Does she get hit on a lot? Rebecca?
Barb says, “I get hit on a lot.”
I measure my response. Incredulity will not be well received and isn’t warranted. But I am incredulous. Barb’s well known to be married – to me! – and why would anyone hit on her, so clearly unavailable. But she reminds me: her former hairdresser, our son’s tennis coach. Those were direct hits, explicit requests for sex. But there were others, ambiguous gestures that, had I been making them, I would not have trusted my motives. Gifts, ostensibly expressions of gratitude from grateful fathers – Barb’s a child psychologist – that were off the mark: too generous, too personal, belonging to the unmistakable category of love offering: roses, chocolates, perfume. So of course the lovely Rebecca gets more than her share, maybe a constant barrage, and in a weak moment, or a brave one – which? – says, “Yes.” Meets the look and returns it. Responds not to the innocent surface of some gesture, but to its dark intent.
Barb says she thinks Rebecca initiated it.
Unthinkable!
Seeing my look, Barb offers this consolation: “Maybe she thought Gideon was having an affair and wanted to get even.”
“But he wasn’t.”
“How would you know?” Barb is constantly pointing out to me that we – the men – never talk about anything intimate.
How would I know? I wouldn’t. And yet, I know. Gideon is faithful.
I ask, “Will they get divorced?”
“No. I don’t think so. The affair is over.”
“Do you ever think about Gideon?” I want some conscience-balm for my own lust for Rebecca.
“He’s sexy. I don’t think about sleeping with him. And it would be no nookie for sure for as long as that statue was on my lawn.”
The sunlight, when we leave the restaurant, hits me like a hammer. Barb has sunglasses, and keeps going, but I am momentarily stunned. I squint, but it’s not enough; I have to close my eyes for a moment and stand still.
“Are you okay?”
“I’m okay. I just need some sunglasses.”
I hear Barb walking back toward me. I open my eyes and force myself to adjust to the sunlight. “This is New England. She should wear a scarlet letter.”
“This is the twentieth century.” Barb takes my arm. “Besides, she has those fucking dogs.”
Howard Luxenberg’s stories have appeared in Other Voices and The Iowa Review.