Warm Wuinter's Garden (9 page)

“He’s missing his life.”

“He’s not missing it. He’s just having one
different from what any of us expected.”

Dilly looked to her mother’s face to see what
meaning had been intended.

“What about Nita?”

“Late on Saturday.”

“Lise?”

“I’m not sure. She said that something might
happen.”

“Is the something the mushroom man? I can’t
even imagine how someone could want to get a Ph. D. in fungus. I
see fungus I just want to get a sponge and some bleach, not a lab
coat. Have you met him?”

“No, no one has. I don’t think the one you’re
talking about is the same one. I think this is a new one. Lise said
he’s very interesting. Very nice.”

“Mother, Mother, everything Dizzy Lizzy dates
is interesting. She’s like those tourists on the beach who bend
over for every funny colored stone. Just think of the kinds of
people she’s dated. That Damien guy, which couldn’t have been his
name. He probably read Hesse as a freshman and changed his name.
Remember the hair? Purple dreadlocks. He looked like a fuchsia
plant. Interesting religions? What was the name of the Druid?”

“That was Sean.”

“All trees were his brother. And interesting
colors? Was that Dewitte?”

“Honey, don’t. Don’t do that.”

Without lifting her eyes from the growing
mound of shelled nuts, in the kindest flank attack, Bett asked,
“When do you expect Bill?”

After deciding that her mother didn’t intend
anything more than a simple question, Dilly answered resignedly,
“He said that he might have to go in for a couple of hours
tomorrow. Already he feels that they’re losing the race on this
one. Remember the new gas line project? There’re too many people
involved.”

* * *

Lise ran up to her father and gave him a
quick hug.

“Dad, this is Brad.”

“Hi, Brad. Glad you could make it.”

Brad took Neil’s hand.

“My pleasure, Mr. Koster.”

“Just Neil.”

Brad nodded his head.

“I’ll try.”

“Brad, are you ready for some chaos?”

“I love chaos.”

“Chaos sera sera.”

“Dad, you look great.”

“Tell your sister. She thinks it’s Guten
Morgue for me.”

“No way. You’ll bust one hundred and still be
making terrible puns. Brad hopes he can get some time with you to
talk about the bank.”

“That’s right. You said something. What are
you looking for, Brad? Here, drop those bags. We’ll get them later.
Let’s take a look at the water.”

“My area of concentration is the interaction
between public policy and business policy. One idea I’ve had for my
dissertation is to research depositor protection in the banking
system. There’s been so much change in banking public policy in the
last ten or twelve years. All the deregulation has led to a lot of
new practices. We’ve seen all the problems with the S&Ls and
there’ve been systemic failures in Ohio, Maryland and Colorado with
private insurance. I’m thinking of focusing on New England. See how
this region is the same or different from some of the other problem
areas.”

Neil stopped the nodding that he had been
doing while Brad had talked.

“Well, Brad, there’s no doubt it’s not the
industry it used to be, but at my bank, we’re still pretty
conservative. We still do a lot of things like we’ve always done.
How do you think I can help you?”

“I’m not quite sure, yet…Neil. I need to get
in the library, do some reading, hone my ideas. I might end up
asking you to use your bank as a case study or as part of a sample,
or, maybe, you might be able to introduce me to people I’d like to
interview.”

“Well, everybody knows everybody in this
state so the introductions shouldn’t be a problem. Using South
Coastal for a case study might not be to my boss’ liking. He tends
to be a close-to-the-vest Yankee.”

“Is your bank FDIC?”

“No. Kenyon’s like a lot of swamp Yankees.
Doesn’t think too highly of the feds. We’re one hundred and
eighty-seven years old. We’ve never had a major problem and that’s
saying something in a state that’s been in industrial decline for
more than a hundred of those years. A lot of our clients are small
businesses, farmers and fishermen. That’s a definition of boom and
bust incomes, yet we’ve never had a problem. About ten years ago
the assembly passed a law that all banks, credit unions, and loan
companies had to have depositors’ insurance. We didn’t want it, but
there was no way to avoid it. We joined a private insurer that got
going at that time.”

“Is that R.I.S.D.I.C.?” Brad spelled out the
letters.

“You’ve obviously done some reading. We say
RISDIC. We belong.”

“Let me see if I can get it. Rhode Island
Share and Deposit Insurance Corporation.”

“Close. Indemnity.”

“Okay.”

“It’s been a pretty good organization. Been a
lot of help with marketing.”

As Brad and Neil stood talking to one
another, Lise dropped to her haunches to pick and smell the grass
and the white blossoms of a rosa rugosa. She insinuated herself
under her father’s arm and a minute later under Brad’s. Finally she
went back to her father and tugged at his sleeve.

“Excuse me, Dad, but can we take the SureBett
out?”

Neil smiled at Brad.

“You must consider yourself lucky to have met
such a subtle woman.”

Lise sang, “Sail in the sun, talk in the
night.”

“It’s very nice to be here…Neil.”

“We’re glad you’re here. It’s a great place
to recreate. I just hope you didn’t think it was going to be
restful.”

“I’m learning.”

Lise grabbed Brad’s hand and pulled him
toward the water.

* * *

“Pass the salt, please,” Brad said as he
looked up and down the picnic table. Bett and Neil, Nita and Lise’s
heads turned in search of the salt. Bill continued to look at the
food on his plate. Dilly stared at Brad. Finally, Bill said, “I
wouldn’t bet on salt. Everyone, with the exception of Brad who
didn’t understand the implication of Bill’s remark, looked at
Dilly.

“Mother, Mother!” said Dilly and, then, she
stopped as if that were admonition enough.

Nita caught Brad’s eye.

“Dilly’s dream is to preserve the family.
Forestall all our deaths. Her love is so great she imagines us
gathering here as nonagenarians. Senescent from boredom, but with
our salt-free, fat-free systems intact.”

“Mother, Mother!”

“Nita.”

Caught between Bett and Dilly, Lise fell
backward off the bench, rolled a backward somersault, leaped to her
feet, and raced to the house for salt.

Brad smiled his widest smile at Dilly.

“Who’s responsible for a person’s health?
That’s definitely a tricky issue. I’m going to get into it this
fall in the ethics course I’m teaching. Should corporations screen
job candidates on whether they smoke or not? Should firms ban
sugared or caffeinated drinks from the premises? Do businesses have
the right to compel employees to exercise? Or lose weight? Should
an employer have the right to monitor the blood pressure or
cholesterol level of workers, especially the highly paid ones?
Should firms be able to compel workers to adjust diet or exercise
until their levels are within the safety zone? Does the employer
have the right to demand good health habits from its employees?
What do you think, Delia?”

Dilly said nothing while she tried to decide
if she could accept anyone or anything other than herself giving
health orders. Finally, she said, “I think that everyone’s health
is everyone’s concern.”

“Waffle,” laughed Nita.

Brad nodded his head at Dilly. “Then you
would support giving work organizations the power to compel healthy
behavior?”

Neil laughed, “As long as Dilly gets to write
the rules.”

Dilly put an overly large piece of celery in
her mouth so that politeness could protect her from talking. She
didn’t know what she thought except that she would like to take a
comb and scissors to Brad’s hair.

“Aren’t we using work organizations as a more
benign looking, more voluntary seeming, more reasonable sounding
version of a totalitarian government?” asked Nita. “The
Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the courts keep the
government from doing a lot of things that may be in our best
interest. That’s what freedom is all about—getting to choose
something that someone else thinks is bad for us. But what we’ve
done is set up a situation where employers, especially large
corporations, are compelled to act as government’s hired hand. The
government can’t come into our homes and say, `You have to hang out
with women and blacks and vets, and the handicapped; you have to
set your thermostat below 70 degrees and you can’t smoke in your
living room, and, by the way, stay away from BLT’s.’ They can’t
tell us that directly. That would be unconstitutional. But they can
tell a business to require those kinds of behaviors because a
business is a legal fiction. It’s not protected. So, for thirty or
forty hours a week at work, the government can have
unconstitutional control over us.”

“But, if the government is going to be
picking up the tab for someone’s health care, shouldn’t it have
some control over the person’s behavior? Doesn’t it need to have
some leverage over people’s lives so that it can contain costs?”
asked Bill. He seemed to have to make an effort to keep his voice
calm.

Brad gestured toward Bill. “Whoever writes
the checks gets to call the shots, right? That’s a common argument
by some. By many. It seems reasonable on the surface, but once a
person starts to think what it means, people get leery. You get
some old guy who’s going crazy because tax money is being used for
drug rehab, or abortions or to support a sixteen year old with a
baby out of wedlock.”

Brad began to talk in a gravelly voice.
`She’s not responsible. We’re encouraging immorality.’ Et cetera.
But, he’s sitting reading the paper with a huge gut from too much
beer and bacon, arteries clogged down to the size of pinholes,
thinking that it makes perfect sense for the government to ante up
$200,000 for his quadruple bypass. That’s about ten years’ worth of
welfare for someone. He doesn’t make the link. He’s positive the
unwed mother should be sterilized, but he’d go insane if someone
suggested higher taxes on alcohol and cigarettes and a new tax on
high cholesterol foods. He can’t even imagine banning bacon from
the grocery store. Freedom. His.”

There was something about Brad’s last
thoughts that made Dilly feel uncomfortable. She couldn’t tell if
his words and her family’s eyes really had been directed toward her
during Brad’s example, but it felt that way. She decided that she
should go on the offensive.

“People are dropping like flies, and your
solution is to tax bacon?”

“Sure, why not, and mayonnaise and eggs and
butter and cheese and Twinkies and the cracker sandwiches with the
powdered cheese. And…” as he took the salt shaker from Lise, who
had just run up with it, “salt.” Brad sprinkled salt all over his
plate. “I love salt. I want the freedom to use it. But, if it
contributes to my having high blood pressure, I don’t think that
you should have to pay for it.”

Nita had been nodding at Brad’s words. “It
makes a lot of sense, Dilly. Asking someone to `just say no,’
whether it’s to crack or driving drunk or scarfing bacon and egg
salad, or a sausage grinder, isn’t a real strong incentive for
someone to change behavior. Why not tax the bad food, or subsidize
the good.”

Lise had figured out where the conversation
had gone while she was getting the salt. “Lower income families
tend to have a lot of many diet-related health problems. You could
do a thing with food stamps where certain products could have a
symbol on them, like pareve for Jews. If an item had the symbol it
would be discounted at the food counter for those paying in food
stamps. One dollar in food stamps might buy two dollars’ worth of
food, if it were spinach or miller’s bran or fruit. The extra cost
would be made up in lower health costs. Right?”

Lise looked at Brad. She could feel herself
on the verge of taking off with the idea. She wished that she were
alone with him so that the ideas themselves, rather than the social
context, would be the focal point. There were health, primary and
tertiary economic, agricultural, family structure, cultural
imperialism implications, intoxicating implications that should be
worked through. She felt herself bursting with energy. She wished
she weren’t squeezed in between Dilly and her mother.

Neil stretched his neck out so that he could
see down his bench to Brad. He smiled. “Passing the salt gets more
complicated all the time. Well, Brad, we sure passed the time. I’m
guessing that your students will be having an interesting time in
that class. If you have a couple of bucks, you better pony them up
to the insurance kitty before we make ice cream later. Dilly keeps
track of the health effects. Just ask her, she’ll let you know how
much you’ll owe.”

“Da-ad, Da-ad.”

“Diiiill.”

* * *

“So, Mom, what do you think?”

“Honey, I like him a lot.”

“He’s very bright.”

“He certainly seems to be.”

“He’s not stuffy.”

“No, he’s not.”

“He’s kind of wacky.”

“We used to say, `He has an interesting
mind.’”

“He’s cute.”

“Lise, I think he may be too old for cute.
He’s very good looking, though.”

“What about the hair?”

“What about it?”

“Too long?”

“I think that we all get to an age after
which certain things don’t become us. With his hair, I don’t think
that he’s reached that age yet. What do his professors say?”

“I don’t know. It probably won’t be a problem
until he gets to the dissertation stage. That’s the time when
faculty really get into cloning themselves. So, Mom, what do you
like best about him?”