Stephan Clark - Sweetness #9

Shortly after swallowing my first anti-anxiety pill, I went into the break room and found him and Koba bargaining over a tube of summer sausage that had arrived in a gift basket delivered by Federal Express. I was so focused on their conversation (“Would I lie to you, Koba? Americans consider the summer sausage far more valuable than chocolate”) that it was only as I reached for the kettle that I realized what Beekley had done.

“Oh dear god,” I said. “Your hair, what on earth did you do to your hair?”

He’d shaved it down to the skull in a fashion he described as a “fade” and said was very popular in the late-eighties hip hop community.

“Do you like it?” Before I could answer, he’d turned back to Koba to give him a new homework assignment. “Listen to Kid ’n Play and Kris Kross, then interview no less than five people of color about hair, reversed blue jeans, and the placement of the other in white culture.”

Koba was taking this down in a tiny notebook he carried with him every day in his breast pocket. “Did you say reversible blue jeans?”

“Reversed,” Beekley said. “As in worn backwards.”

For a moment, Koba looked no less stupefied than I did. “I don’t understand,” he said.

“Of course you don’t,” Beekley answered. “That’s why you need to do your homework.”

“Is this because of the new dress code?” I asked him.

I had announced it a couple of days earlier, saying in a memo that all hair should “be trimmed and neat, suggesting one word above all: Business.” Beekley, though, as only a small child or an egotist could, had taken this all too literally. He’d had his barber etch a variant of that word into the side of his skull: Bidness.

“It’s one thing after another with you, isn’t it?” I said.

“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.”

“Just as you didn’t know you were parking in the Kraut’s old space this morning?”

“Oh, I’m sorry, David, I didn’t realize that type of thing meant so much to you. Perhaps you could send out another one of your memos. How does that new color-coding system work? Is it orange that’s below red in terms of urgency, or is that yellow?”

“I believe yellow requires a response,” Koba said, before seeing my expression and returning his notebook to his breast pocket. “I think I’ll just take my summer sausage and go.”

When he had turned out into the hallway, I filled the kettle and put it to a boil, telling Beekley if this was a game of chicken, I wasn’t the one who’d be driving off the cliff. “You’re only hurting yourself, you know. Or tell me: You think you’ll ever go on a third date looking like that?”

It wasn’t just his hair that made me say this. Today he wore burnt-red polyester pants, a seasick green button-up dress shirt whose collars stuck out over the shoulders of his unbuttoned lab coat, and a mustard-yellow tie so wide it could have doubled as an apron.

“A Mormon missionary wouldn’t wear that tie,” I said, swatting at the thing. “A teenaged boy from Provo, Utah, would rather sin before the Angel Moroni than walk the streets of Mongolia looking like that.”

“‘All flavorists and food scientists,’” he said, quoting from the dress code, “‘should wear business casual clothing, with women’s outfits not too revealing and men expected to wear ties.’”

“You’ve read the words, but you don’t understand a thing.”

He snatched a card out of the gift basket then, saying there was one thing he did know. He cleared his throat and read: “‘As our new line of children’s medicine debuts in the marketplace, I wanted to send your team this small token of our appreciation. By the way, our test panels were especially enthusiastic about the wild cherry! I’m so glad we stuck it out until finding the right one.’”

Beekley handed me the card. “‘With gratitude,’” he finished, “‘your Corporate Overlord, etcetera, etcetera, P.S. Do give Beekley a raise.’”

Eliza popped her head in then, saying I had “a Mrs. Goldfarb” on three.

I didn’t recognize the name, so I asked her to take a message. But Eliza said she’d already tried to do that and been told it was important. “She’s the vice principal of your son’s school.”

I marched into my office and grabbed the receiver while punching the flashing button marked Line 3. “David Leveraux,” I said.

Mrs. Goldfarb got right to it. After acknowledging how valuable my time must be and saying she’d try not to waste it, she told me she was only calling because “it seems your son has stopped using verbs. Were you aware of this?”

I sat stiffly in my chair, as if a sniper had me in his sights. “Yes. Yes, I was,” I said. “May I ask how you found out?”

“We administer routine testing to ensure our students are being properly served. Now”—I imagined her flipping through a folder at her desk—“your son did quite well on the written portion of his exam, but his scores on the oral portion…”

I stood. “Did you say ‘oral’?”

“…were not exactly up to standards.”

“Of course not. He doesn’t use verbs.”

“Yes, we’re aware of that now, but it’s not what causes the score that’s important, it’s what we can do to bring it up to the state-mandated level.”

She spoke in a steady, precise manner, as if being deposed by the legal offices of Jackson, Dean, and Hershowitz.

“It’s the student we must look out for, you understand, and so to ensure that he receives the help he needs, we’ve reassigned him to a classroom for students with language-based learning difficulties.”

“Pardon?”

“A letter saying the same will go out in the mail today, but I thought it important that I call you and let you know.”

I had walked as far as the phone’s cord would allow. “Do you mean to say he’s in ESL?”

She laughed. “Oh, we don’t call it that anymore. It’s English for Speakers of Other Languages.”

“Other languages?” I imagined a room in the basement with low overhanging pipes, condensation on the walls, and Jeremiah sitting in the back row, holding a thick pencil in one hand and drooling freely. “But Ernest doesn’t— you don’t think he’s a foreigner, do you? ”

She seemed amused by the question. “We don’t investigate the immigration status of our students, Mr. Leveraux.”

“Well, maybe you should! He’s an American! Born in Battle Station!”

Her voice tightened. “I think you should know, your son has become something of a distraction. Just last week he was humming during an exam. He got up and started pacing.”

“Was this an essay test?”

“I’m sorry?”

I sank down in my chair, still holding the card from the gift basket, I realized. “Perhaps he was composing his thoughts,” I said. “Ambulation — it’s well known to aid the writing process.”

She spoke as if not having heard me. “We believe your son would be best served if he were placed on Ritalin.”

“What?” I flung the card across the room. “You think you’re going to put him on drugs? Have you talked to our doctor about this?”

“We have our own specialists.”

“As did Hitler, but that’s no reason—”

“Mr. Leveraux!”

“—to put my child on Ritalin!”

“I lost many relatives to the Holocaust!”

“And my father was a member of the 4032nd Mobile Baking Division! He stormed the beaches of Normandy and passed out the first loaves of bread at Buchenwald!”

Our emotions got away from us. We had to settle down with some heavy breathing and a few conciliatory remarks. As we recovered, I opened my desk drawer and reached for the bottle of lorazepam, telling Mrs. Goldfarb as I unscrewed its cap that we’d spent the last several weeks visiting many, many specialists.