“I believe there are fewer independent courses than there once were,” my father said. “Most young people were not well suited to what’s called open space education. I remember when the school first opened, the promise was that students could go at their own pace. Now it’s more along the lines of-go at your own pace, but there is a minimum speed limit.” He chuckled at his own joke.
“Math and science don’t have as many self-directed classes,” AJ put in. “But if you’re supersmart, they make allowances. There are kids who come down from the middle school to take math because they’re so advanced. Dad, can’t you do something?”
“AJ, it would be unseemly for the state’s attorney to intervene in school district policy. However-Davey, have your parents call me. I can certainly give them advice about how to deal with county bureaucracy.”
Davey became a fixture in our house, the twosome of AJ and Noel easing seamlessly into a threesome. The other friends-Bash, Lynne, Ariel-were more like satellites. AJ, Noel, and Davey were the triumvirate, their group’s ruling power. It made sense for Davey to come home with AJ after rehearsals, as they could walk to our house from Merriweather Post Pavilion. The others in AJ’s group of freshman superstars approved of him, welcomed him. Bash liked having a guy who wanted to shoot hoops in our driveway. Ariel and Lynne flirted with him, although he didn’t flirt back. Davey’s parents didn’t want him to have a steady girlfriend.
The addition of Davey made their group even more outstanding. He was just so darn noticeable, taller and darker and, maybe, handsomer than the rest. (It’s hard to know if one’s brother is handsome, especially at age seven. But even Noel’s beauty-there’s no other word for it-was eclipsed by Davey’s good looks.) AJ was the undisputed leader within the group, but Davey was its beacon, drawing attention to them. It was odd when that Life magazine article about Wilde Lake High School came out later that year and Davey wasn’t in the photo. We had already become accustomed to looking for him. Have you ever tailgated at a big football game? In order to be found in the crowds, some people plant distinctive flags, then say things like: “Find us at the Flying Crawfish.” The College Park crowd that Gabe knew flew Testudo, the fighting Terrapin mascot of the University of Maryland. Anyway, Davey was like that. Spot him and you would find the rest.
Merriweather Post Pavilion had been endowed by the cereal heiress of the same name and was intended to be the home of a serious symphony. But by Columbia’s tenth year, the Frank Gehry-designed amphitheater was a venue for pop concerts, from Jimi Hendrix to Frank Sinatra. You could sit in seats under the shell or bring a picnic basket and camp out on the surrounding lawn. The night of the birthday concert, my father and I had seats. I was disappointed, but my father was never going to be the picnic-blanket type of father. Even on a warm June night, he insisted on wearing his work clothes, or part of them: seersucker pants, a long-sleeved white shirt, a bow tie, and a hat. At seven, I was still too young to be horrified by a relative’s clothing choices. My disastrous fling with fashion would not be for another two years. And I was not embarrassed by my father, not yet. I did not see that he was older than most parents, or that he, like me, had few real friends. Many collegial acquaintances, but no real friends. I did not realize how much of a loner he was, in contrast to AJ. Even then, I sometimes wondered if my brother courted Davey because his talents in music and sports exceeded AJ’s. One of the few mean things I ever heard AJ say about anyone, back then, was when Davey was offered a free ride to Stanford three years later: “Well, he plays football. I’d get a lot of scholarship offers, too, if I played football instead of soccer.”
Noel had given him a look. “Not to mention that he’s black, right?”
“There’s not a prejudiced bone in my body,” AJ said.
“Of course there isn’t.”
But that was later. That night, the chorus, sixty-six strong, sang stirring anthems of patriotism and community. One of them, oddly, was the title song from the musical Milk and Honey, rewritten to fit the occasion and scrubbed of its Israel-specific lyrics. Davey’s voice soared over the rest: This lovely land is mine. This lovely land is mine. This lovely land is mine. I officially abandoned my crush on Noel and fixed my affections on Davey. As the song reached its climax, a scrim depicting the Tree of Life fell and somehow it seemed as if the chorus had become a living, breathing Tree of Life.
My father, in his seat next to me, allowed himself a quiet snort, which he masked with his handkerchief as if it were a sneeze.
“Wasn’t that great? Didn’t you love it?” I asked my father.
“I can’t help thinking of another tree of people, another song,” he said. “A much darker song, but a truer one, called ‘Strange Fruit.’ I guess I’m just an old grouch.” My father squeezed my shoulder. “Do you want to stop at the 7-Eleven for a Slurpee?”
I did.
Sometime over the summer, it was worked out that Davey would attend Wilde Lake. I never knew the circumstances. I think I just assumed AJ made it happen. He had that kind of power. He had decreed that they were to be a group of six now, and so they were. (The truth was more prosaic. Davey’s parents had found a large house in Hobbit’s Glen, much more to their taste, and although it was zoned for Centennial High School, the new school was so oversubscribed that they had no trouble getting Davey into Wilde Lake-at Davey’s insistence.) The six did everything as a group. When Lynne and Bash started pairing off, AJ didn’t approve-not because he was prudish about sex, but because he thought it bad for the group. Luckily, Lynne and Bash didn’t really care that much about being boyfriend and girlfriend. They just liked to have sex.
I saw them once, that summer between their freshman and sophomore year of high school. Our father had to go out of town for an annual meeting, something to do with being a state’s attorney. Teensy had a wedding in her family and my father decided that AJ, although only fifteen, was old enough to be in charge for a night. No parties, my father said. Of course, AJ said. And had a party. Bash found a burnout college kid who was happy to buy them beer and liquor at the Village Green. They weren’t really drinkers, but it was almost obligatory to have booze at a parent-free party. AJ put me in my father’s bed with a pound of peanut M &Ms and the remote control for the small black-and-white TV on top of what our father called a chifforobe. He told me that I could do whatever I wanted, but that I must stay in my father’s room except to visit the bathroom that connected it to my room. I wasn’t sure what they were doing that was so secretive. There was music and conversation, that sweet burning smell I had noticed before. I watched a horror film, one in which Leave It to Beaver’s dad ended up underground with the Mole People. I wanted to go to the bathroom, but what if the Mole People were under my father’s high, old-fashioned bed? If I climbed down from the bed, they would reach out and grab my ankles and drag me down to that terrible place, where I would be enslaved. But I had consumed almost a gallon of orange soda. There was no way I could make it through the night. I calculated that if I leaped from the bed, I might land out of arm’s reach of the Mole person. I jumped, landing on my knees, then made my way to the bathroom without incident. The house was quiet. I assumed everyone had gone home. I decided my own room would be a cozier place to sleep even if it didn’t have a television, so I cracked the door, checking carefully for any sign of Mole People.