“When does Dave get home?” What a stupid thing to say. It sounded like a line. But it wasn’t a line. Not entirely. “I mean, what kind of work does Dave do?”
“Junior administrator at the junior college.”
“You guys wouldn’t happen to know a visiting anthropology professor named Bob, would you?”
“Bob Barrow?”
“Skinny guy, deep-set eyes.”
“Sure, we know Bob.”
I sipped tea. What was the right tack? Were Barrow and the Jordans friends? Or did Dave’s business bring the Jordans routinely into contact with faculty, in which case it mightn’t be personal. Test the waters.
“He seems like a nice person.”
“Bob’s brilliant. His theories about intracranial cross-speciation are groundbreaking. But the psych research community is very hostile to people like Bob. He poses a threat. That’s why he’s guest-lecturing at the jaycee, and not holding an endowed university chair.”
The splashing of the children was becoming intense. Dripping faucet water plinked in the sink basin. We sat at the kitchen table. I spread my legs and leaned back. Jenny held her teacup at chin level, near her face, giving herself a miniature steam facial. We talked about this and that. Jenny’s breasts showed beneath the fabric of her dress. She had graceful arms and slender hands. What kind of animal might she be? Ocelot? Sea otter? Certainly not a ruminant. Her breath blew steam from the top of her cup. I maintained an expansive lounging posture of alpha male insouciance, keeping my distance while subtly displaying, in the language of the body, mild assertiveness, a sexual openness. And I allowed my feet to come close to hers beneath the table — I was sure Jenny was aware of them by her chair. Her elbows rested on the table, her face floated. Her voice was mellow and inviting. “Well, Mr. Robinson, I mean Pete, what brings you on this visit?”
“School.”
“School?”
“Grades K through six, starting next week, at my place.” I put down my cup and leaned forward, facing Jenny across the table. We were inches from one another. I told her everything about the school except the political part, the “junior achiever” mayoral-campaign strategy. Also, I didn’t mention Freedom Field. My plan was to avoid that thorny subject altogether. I spoke freely on topics like moral guidance, A. S. Neill and alternative education, the Jeffersonian concept of the honor system, box lunches, and so on. It was a pretty speech, lasting about ten minutes, which was a pleasant surprise to me, seeing as I’d neither planned nor rehearsed. I wrapped up, “Jenny, let me assure you, it’s going to be amazing.”
“What’s this going to run?”
“Tuition will be enrollment-dependent. We’re looking to offer top-dollar education at economy rates. That means special emphasis on each child’s distinctive needs, within a friendly, traditional, family-style setting. That’s the home school advantage.”
“Susy! Brad! Come in here!” Suddenly the two sopping pink children ran howling from pool to porch to kitchen; the screen door slammed and daughter and son stamped in, streaming water. They stopped and stood in the dirty puddles they made, before us.
Jenny leaned over to address them at eye level, “Susy, Brad, what are you supposed to do before you come in the house after swimming?”
“Um, dry?” This from Susy, assuredly the leader, by virtue of age and intelligence, of the sibling pair. She clasped her brother’s arm and began tugging him roughly back toward the screen door.
“Hang on,” called her mother.
Without letting go of Brad, Susy turned, her quick and forceful motion requiring Brad to race around her in a half-circle, like a cruelly led dance partner. He almost slipped and fell. Jenny scolded, “Brad, be careful, the floor’s wet. That’s why you’re supposed to towel off.”
Susy said, “I’ve got him, Mom. I won’t let him fall.” It was one of those beautiful family moments, the elder child’s urge to nurture and protect.
“Guys, this man wants to be your teacher. How do you feel about that?”
I couldn’t believe it. Was Jenny going to leave the education of her children, aged five and seven, in their own hands? The kids watched me with blank expressions. Susy seemed to be squeezing down on Brad’s arm — she was giving him an Indian burn. I smiled benignly, winked in a charming, avuncular, fun/conspiratorial way, generally nodded and grinned, as Jenny pressed her offspring, “What do you think? Want to study with Mr. Robinson?”
It was all about trust. I was being judged. By babes. It hadn’t occurred to me that I might have to win over the kids. But of course that’s always the way. Parents seem to embrace, almost unquestioningly, this bizarre, superstitious belief in infant clairvoyance, as though their “innocent” offspring have access to deep truths lost to them, to the parents — lost to maturity, cynicism, compromise. It’s one of our most esteemed cultural archetypes: the Prescient Child.
Brad and Susy didn’t strike me as a couple of oracles. In fact, they looked a little stupid. Even Susy looked stupid. Her mouth hung open, her hair stood up in wet spikes. I wanted to come to her defense, to hers and to Brad’s, to say to their mother, Don’t lay this on them, it has to be your choice, you’re their mother.
But then Susy spoke, in syllables soft and quiet, too quiet, almost, to be heard. “Okay.”
It was sweet, I could’ve hugged her. The home school was now officially in business. Enrollment, two.
“What will you call your school, Mr. Robinson?”
Good question. “We’ll see when we get farther along. A school is a place to make sober inquiry into the workings of the world and the mind. The name of the school, the right name, should reveal itself through this inquiry.”
Robinson Country Day? The Robinson Academy of Arts and Letters? The Robinson Institute? It was, after all, my idea, my ideology. It was my school, in my house.
I made a total of seven recruitment visits that day and the next, was successful at each, and in danger of dying only once, when Deborah and Carl Harris’s automatic garage door/catapult discharged a fusillade of calcified coral fragments, missing my head by inches.
Deborah Harris cooed apologies from the house, “Yoo-hoo, Pete, sorry about that. I told Carl to turn that thing off. He must’ve forgotten.”
“I’m fine,” rising from the Harrises’ lawn and brushing myself off. “That’s quite a device.”
“Hey, Pete.” It was Carl Harris, emerging from the dark garage with a crescent wrench in his hand. This man had once spent twenty days adrift on the high seas in a rubber raft, with no fresh water, surviving on the blood and flesh of fish caught bare-handed. LOST PLEASURE BOATER LIVES! ORDEAL CALLED “HARROWING,” ran the headline. Looking at Carl now, you wouldn’t guess such a thing possible. His skin was white, he had a gut; he ambled splayfooted on short, bowed-out legs. “Almost plugged you, Pete. I’ve been experimenting with a new garage-door-to-air gyroscope.”
We shook hands, and I said, not discourteously, “I guess it’s a good thing you’re still experimenting.”
“Hell, Pete. I had no idea you were out there. Please believe me. Please, accept my apologies.”
“Apologies accepted. It’s my fault, too. We’ve all got to be more careful these days.”