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The playing fields of Eton
Mar. 28th, 2003 05:27 amOne gets seen at the oddest times…
Went to Max's track meeting yesterday. The only RLS meet this season, the other schools with track teams locally all seem to be in Gonzales and Soledad, those dried up little towns just before 101 takes its dip through low desert. I'm afraid if I get into the car to drive there, I'll just keep on going.
I'd never seen Max run before though I knew he was supposed to run fast. At Bayview he broke some kind of sprinting record – well, who cares? It's elementary school – and I'd seen him on the soccer field, of course. Last year, Gabe L__'s mother – a cheerful, attractive woman whose first name I can never remember – cornered me in the parking lot. "He took first place in the four on four. I've never seen anything like it. I kept thinking to myself, 'Is that Max?' Who knew?"
So, dutiful parent that I am – hey! I've gone to every single one of his football games – I showed up yesterday. Sat with the Cheever ladies. Gorgeous day, sharp breeze bringing high contrast mode to the green of trees and the blue of the sky.
Watched the girls and boys, prancing like ponies. Class warfare on the playing fields – RLS is a prohibitively (in the literal sense of the word) expensive prep school whereas Gonzales High is a public school in the state whose public school system is now the 51st worst in the nation, though still the Land of Milk and Honey to the various farmworkers whose kids go there.
Suburban ladies did their chat thing. Gabe L__'s mother in gray running gear, shining with diamonds, talked about the nursing classes she teaches at MPC. Another petulant blonde woman made disparaging remarks about her daughter – "I think she stopped for appetizers. When is she going to get to the finish line?" – and engaged in sniping cell phone battles with a husband she obviously doesn't like very much. A black woman had driven down from Oakland to watch her kid.
The voices were still resounding in my head when I got there – Iris and Ivashko Blagodatskii aka Johnny Blessing, stars of my newest fictive effort, they were talking about Afghanistan, the death of a climber central to the plot – and for a while it was annoying listening to the ladies chat. I wanted to be alone in my head.
Then the voices subsided and what came in their place was a kind of X-ray vision. Don't know how else to describe it. Looked at Gabe L__'s mother – Eileen, her name is Eileen – and all of a sudden I saw that she was the eldest of nine children, that she'd married into money, that she was kindly and shrewd under that diamond-encrusted veneer, and that she had something of a benign witch quality to her. Saw that the black woman had struggled and saved to scrape up the money to send her kid to Caucasian Academy. Saw that the blonde woman's husband was cheating on her with one of the junior secretaries at the chemical plant.
Projection, bien sur. You can take the writer away from the novel, but you can't take the novel away from the writer.
It had gotten colder as the afternoon grew later. The last heat of the day was a one-mile relay, Max's big event. I watched him lope around the field. He was amazing, edging out the other runners.
"You know, he really is an extraordinary kid," said Eileen L__.
"You are very sweet to say such nice things about my son," I said. "Music to a mother's ear."
"Oh, I'm a big Max fan. He is really an amazing kid. You done good," said Eileen cozily. "You know what I like to watch? The guys are kinda hey! good race, man. Macho man. But the girls are always checking on each other: are you okay? I like your hair! I'm sorry that I beat you!" Then Eileen looked at me for a long second and said, "You look shut down." She took a blanket out from her bag, settled it around my shoulders and hugged me. "Take care of yourself, okay?"
What was she seeing? I wondered. It was unsettling.
Max did the quarter lap in 60.4 seconds. Fastest on his team. And I thought, well, okay – I've given him this. This perfect day with the wind blowing and the sun setting and the distant view of an unpolluted ocean, a perfect memory to sustain him in this New World Order of marching feet and lurching tanks and messianic leaders, and that's all I can do.
Went to Max's track meeting yesterday. The only RLS meet this season, the other schools with track teams locally all seem to be in Gonzales and Soledad, those dried up little towns just before 101 takes its dip through low desert. I'm afraid if I get into the car to drive there, I'll just keep on going.
I'd never seen Max run before though I knew he was supposed to run fast. At Bayview he broke some kind of sprinting record – well, who cares? It's elementary school – and I'd seen him on the soccer field, of course. Last year, Gabe L__'s mother – a cheerful, attractive woman whose first name I can never remember – cornered me in the parking lot. "He took first place in the four on four. I've never seen anything like it. I kept thinking to myself, 'Is that Max?' Who knew?"
So, dutiful parent that I am – hey! I've gone to every single one of his football games – I showed up yesterday. Sat with the Cheever ladies. Gorgeous day, sharp breeze bringing high contrast mode to the green of trees and the blue of the sky.
Watched the girls and boys, prancing like ponies. Class warfare on the playing fields – RLS is a prohibitively (in the literal sense of the word) expensive prep school whereas Gonzales High is a public school in the state whose public school system is now the 51st worst in the nation, though still the Land of Milk and Honey to the various farmworkers whose kids go there.
Suburban ladies did their chat thing. Gabe L__'s mother in gray running gear, shining with diamonds, talked about the nursing classes she teaches at MPC. Another petulant blonde woman made disparaging remarks about her daughter – "I think she stopped for appetizers. When is she going to get to the finish line?" – and engaged in sniping cell phone battles with a husband she obviously doesn't like very much. A black woman had driven down from Oakland to watch her kid.
The voices were still resounding in my head when I got there – Iris and Ivashko Blagodatskii aka Johnny Blessing, stars of my newest fictive effort, they were talking about Afghanistan, the death of a climber central to the plot – and for a while it was annoying listening to the ladies chat. I wanted to be alone in my head.
Then the voices subsided and what came in their place was a kind of X-ray vision. Don't know how else to describe it. Looked at Gabe L__'s mother – Eileen, her name is Eileen – and all of a sudden I saw that she was the eldest of nine children, that she'd married into money, that she was kindly and shrewd under that diamond-encrusted veneer, and that she had something of a benign witch quality to her. Saw that the black woman had struggled and saved to scrape up the money to send her kid to Caucasian Academy. Saw that the blonde woman's husband was cheating on her with one of the junior secretaries at the chemical plant.
Projection, bien sur. You can take the writer away from the novel, but you can't take the novel away from the writer.
It had gotten colder as the afternoon grew later. The last heat of the day was a one-mile relay, Max's big event. I watched him lope around the field. He was amazing, edging out the other runners.
"You know, he really is an extraordinary kid," said Eileen L__.
"You are very sweet to say such nice things about my son," I said. "Music to a mother's ear."
"Oh, I'm a big Max fan. He is really an amazing kid. You done good," said Eileen cozily. "You know what I like to watch? The guys are kinda hey! good race, man. Macho man. But the girls are always checking on each other: are you okay? I like your hair! I'm sorry that I beat you!" Then Eileen looked at me for a long second and said, "You look shut down." She took a blanket out from her bag, settled it around my shoulders and hugged me. "Take care of yourself, okay?"
What was she seeing? I wondered. It was unsettling.
Max did the quarter lap in 60.4 seconds. Fastest on his team. And I thought, well, okay – I've given him this. This perfect day with the wind blowing and the sun setting and the distant view of an unpolluted ocean, a perfect memory to sustain him in this New World Order of marching feet and lurching tanks and messianic leaders, and that's all I can do.
