I SHOULD HAVE BEEN worrying less about the car and more about myself, because on that same night, Cleo called and reported that there’d been a problem. “Frank caught me returning the silverware. I didn’t see him, but he’d been spying on me as usual and he told my mom.”
“So how did you explain it?”
“I tried to come up with some reason for why I’d take the family silver and then sneak it back into the drawer, but you have to admit it must have looked pretty weird.”
“It’s all my fault,” I said. “I should have had a plan.”
“It was my fault. I’m the only girl I know who’s no good at lying to her mother.”
“What did you tell her?”
“That I got it from you guys. I’m sorry, Daniel.”
“You said we’d stolen it?”
“I wanted to tell her there was a misunderstanding, but that was my grandmother’s wedding silver, so she didn’t take it well. I have a feeling my dad’s going to hear about this, so I wanted to let you know.”
That night I tossed and turned, and throughout the week while we finished our art-car project I had one eye on the collage and another on the corner of 16th and Hill, where I feared that Bailey could turn up at any moment. If he knew we’d tried to steal from him, that could mean the end of our school. He’d stop at nothing to find out who had raided his silver drawer, and implacable as he was, he’d probably press charges. Sol Kurtzman hadn’t crossed him half as badly as this, yet Bailey slapped him with an eviction notice. And I knew my father couldn’t explain that Tino, a member of his faculty, was a petty thief; such an admission would only lead to more—the stolen food, the marijuana growing in pots upstairs, the bogus credentials of this merry band of “educators.” So I decided I couldn’t wait another day for Bailey to come to us. I would go to him.
For the first time, I was the one to call a meeting of the Fellowship of Chester, but instead of sharing a secret, I confided an outright lie. We were in the parlor just after lunch on the first day of April. That morning the school had voted that science and technology would be the subject of the month, and my father had made the unprecedented suggestion that Quinn and the twins take over the leadership, which was approved by a narrow vote. Tino continued to badger Quinn about Angela, and Molly complained to my mother that this school was too disorganized. Why should she have to take a class taught by a bunch of kids when D.C. was full of good schools like Pilgrim Hill and Our Lady of Perpetual Help? My mother said we couldn’t afford a private school, and where was her pluck, her pioneering spirit? Molly consulted her Casio Biolator and reported that she felt fatigued, and my mother promised, as much for herself as for Molly, that life would get better soon.
Winter had nearly surrendered to spring—that was a start—and though we had yet to open the storm windows, we hadn’t built a fire in more than a week. My mother and Molly had left to get group tickets to the Air and Space Museum, and the rest of the school was outside gluing plastic beads and stars to the KING TUT RULES / OUR HOUSE car and putting on finishing touches of blue, green and gold paint. I had decided on the final two presidents for the White House lawn: John F. Kennedy and, for the sake of optimism, number thirty-nine, Jimmy Carter. His term had just begun, but give him a chance, I thought: he could go down as one of the greats.
My father and I, standing so we could keep a lookout, swore our vow, and I wasted no time with my confession: “At the election party I took some of the Dornans’ silver. That was before we had tuition money, and I thought we were desperate.” I spoke fast and avoided my father’s eyes as I told him how I held on to the cache for months, never intending to pawn it but wanting to have a treasury of silver bullion, just in case. But the guilt had gotten to me, and I’d returned the silver to Cleo, only to learn soon afterward that she’d been caught sneaking it back. “I’m worried that Bailey knows,” I said. “Can you call and tell him that I did it before all of us get in trouble?”
My father looked around to be sure no one could hear us, then grabbed my biceps, pulling me down onto the brocade sofa with a force he’d never used before. “What the hell were you thinking, Daniel? This isn’t like you.”
I was not a practiced liar, and this was the most illogical lie, designed to get me into, rather than out of, trouble. So I stumbled over my words and could come up with no explanation other than I was trying to protect our family.
“That’s my job,” my father said. “Mine and your mother’s. Don’t you think we can handle ourselves?”
I wanted to say that they hadn’t done so hot up to now. We’d been on a whistle-stop tour of the Midwest since the day I was born. We’d come east to open a school where the teachers were kids and the kids teachers, but despite our claims about democratic education, we were putting the students to work more for our own survival, and it was only a matter of time before they’d ask questions. On the bright side, my parents seemed to be cooperating, but I didn’t have to be reminded that my mother had told my father, “This was your idea,” his one last chance, and if the school tanked, their marriage would follow. Woodrow Wilson said, “Loyalty means nothing unless it has at its heart the absolute principle of self-sacrifice.” I’d made up my mind to take a fall, to “Act First. Ask Permission Later” for the good of the community. “I just wanted to help,” I said.
“That’s not the kind of help we need. You’ve been spending too much time with the hippies. Digging through garbage, learning how to steal. I warned your mother not to bring them here, and now look what’s happened.”
I hated to misrepresent myself. I was no Dear Abbie Hoffman; I’d never taken the five-finger discount. “It’s not their fault, and it’s not Mom’s either. It was all me, and I’m sorry.”
Chester was kneading my father’s pant leg, digging in with his claws. My father lifted him with one hand and flung him off the sofa. “You’ve left me no choice, Daniel. I’m going to have to make an example of this.”
I recall, later that same afternoon, how we all gathered in the living room to listen to Quinn read from a microfilm copy of the Hitidenburg's original brochure. It talked about the size and speed of zeppelins—nearly twice as fast as steamships—and the whisper-quiet ride, what must have been, in 1936, a revolution in luxury. I tried to concentrate, to drown out my father’s threat, but as Quinn turned to a page entitled “A Day On Board,” a portentous feeling, a sense of peace before disaster, came over me.
‘“The enjoyment of airship travel makes people sociable, friendships are formed,”’ Quinn read aloud. “‘You finish breakfast and walk to the windows. Down below, you see the long shadow of the airship passing swiftly over the sparkling foam-crested waves of the blue Atlantic, and the joy of experiencing this wonderful achievement in modern travel surges through you. The air is delicious and fresh; in fact you seem to have been transported into another and more beautiful world.’”
Quinn said the Hindenburg used to take people on cruises over New York City, and would park on the needle of the Empire State Building, where at the top there used to be a “Zeppelin Room.” From the deck, passengers would take the flight of stairs that wound down through the needle into a huge banquet area, and there they’d have a private party, high above the rest of the world. Quinn passed around the brochure and a book of photographs. He talked about the potential for a new fleet of airships filled with helium rather than flammable hydrogen, and everyone seemed to be getting into it, until Tino interrupted. “Far out,” he said. “But you told us your sister was going to school us in graffitiology, and I aim to cash in on that promise.”
“I never promised you anything.” Quinn scowled.
“Like hell you didn’t.” Tino tried to rile up Brie, the twins and the bishop’s kid by threatening to march over to Quinn’s house right now and demand to talk to Angela.
“You don’t know where I live,” Quinn said, and it occurred to me that neither did I. After school I’d watched him cross into Shaw and continue on before hanging a right down 14th. I’d asked him where his house was, and he’d said not far from here. Once or twice I’d brought up his family, but he’d spoken only in the most general terms about his mother and father, both city employees, and his hot-tempered older sister. The rest Quinn had stashed away, just like Anthony and his secret hiding place of misbegotten things.
To get Tino off his back once and for all, Quinn led everyone out into the bright sunshine to the KING TUT RULES / OUR HOUSE car and asked Tino’s students where they’d discovered each piece of graffiti they had copied: on a bridge in Rock Creek Park, behind Senedu’s parents’ restaurant in Adams Morgan, on the side of a city bus in a Capitol Hill depot.
“I know enough from my sister to give you the basics, but we’re on to science now, so stop bugging me about Angela.” He pointed to a cutout Brie had done of a wrecking ball crashing into the words “Fight for Your Home.” “This is stencil graffiti, just protest stuff, nothing too complicated,” he said, then moved on to the hood. “And these are supposed to be wildstyle tags, but there’s not enough life. Graffiti’s got to flow. It should look like the cherry tops were breathing down your neck and you had no time to throw up your paint. The best tags are frozen motion. You want to know how it’s done? Get me cans of red, orange, yellow and gold and I’ll show you.”
The class got all excited and rushed into the house to look for spray paint.
“Not on the car, though.” Cinnamon stepped in. “This project is complete.”
“And not in the living room, either,” my father said.
“Go ahead and use our bedroom,” my mother suggested offhandedly.
Quinn climbed the steps to join his classmates. Tino, Cinnamon and my mother followed in his wake. “Not so fast.” My father grabbed my elbow. After everyone else had gone with Quinn up to my parents’ room for the graffiti demonstration, my father led me to the corner of 16th and Hill. “We have some business to take care of with the Neighborhood Watch,” he said.
We walked past Florida Avenue and took a right on V Street, where the whole block was lined with police cars parked in front of the Third District Station. Inside, my father caught the eye of Officer Trammell, who came over and gave him one of his bone-crushing handshakes. Trammell didn’t bother to shake my hand or so much as look at me as he led us down a long hallway that seemed to narrow and darken the farther we went.
Officer Mazzocca, it turned out, was a lieutenant. He had his own office, decorated with trophies and plaques and pictures of Little League baseball teams. “I coach at the Boys’ Club,” he answered when my father asked about one of the larger trophies. “We took the ten-to-twelve championship last year, went nineteen and one.”
“Congratulations,” my father said.
Mazzocca beamed, sat behind his desk and folded his hands, suddenly serious.
Trammell ducked out of the room, and in his place, to my surprise, came Bailey, just back from the water cooler with a conical paper cup. He swallowed the water in one gulp, dropped the cup in Mazzocca’s trash can and shut the door behind him.
“You want to meet a ballplayer?” Bailey asked. “Pete Truitt was the best third baseman you’ve never heard of.”
“I had no idea,” Mazzocca said.
My father brushed it off. “Sure, I used to play.” He offered Bailey a seat, and just as I was fantasizing that they’d wile away the afternoon talking about baseball, my father added, “But that’s not why we’re here.”
Since there were no other chairs in the room, I stood while the three men looked me over with a mix of perplexity and fascination, as if I were some reptile that had dropped its tail or changed color before their eyes.
“So I understand we’re in the presence of a thief.” Bailey loosened his tie and undid the top button of his shirt. He wore a camelhair blazer and tasseled shoes and had the rumpled, slightly put-out appearance of having stopped by the precinct on his way home from work.
I looked toward my father, who had said nothing about this ambush, only that we had some business with the Neighborhood Watch. “I thought we’d give you a chance to explain yourself, Daniel.”
I didn’t know what to say. I had learned from observation that lying only twisted one’s life into knots. I recalled George Washington and the apocryphal story of chopping down his father’s cherry tree. I cannot tell a lie, Father, you know I cannot tell a lie! I did cut it with my little hatchet, six-year-old George had said. My son, that you should not be afraid to tell the truth is more to me than a thousand trees! Yes, though they were blossomed with silver and had leaves of the purest gold!
But I was no George Washington, and I had overestimated my father, who apparently was not so quick to forgive. Faced with this jury of three, I made up a story, one of the first and last lies I’d tell. I said that I’d been walking through the Dornans’ dining room that election night and the silverware drawer had been slightly open. Through the crack I’d seen a glint of the beautiful mother-of-pearl handles and had an inexplicable need to study them. So I opened the drawer and slipped some of the forks and knives into my pocket. I’d intended to shut myself in the bathroom and admire the pretty silver under the light, but the bathroom was locked and the party turned boisterous and before I knew it a bottle rocket was screaming toward me and my hair was on fire. After returning from the hospital and recuperating, I recalled the silver in my pocket, and so began months under the weight of guilt, not knowing how to give back the heirlooms. Only after seeing “The Treasures of Tutankhamun” did I come up with an idea. “It wasn’t fair of me to ask for Cleo’s help, but I did, and I’m sorry,” I said.
“That’s a crazy story.” Bailey knitted his heavy eyebrows. “We’ve all been foolish teenagers I guess. It’s part of the contract.”
“But when you do something reprehensible you should have to pay for it,” my father added.
“You’re sounding like one of those law-and-order Democrats, Pete. You sure you don’t want to come over to the Grand Old Party?” Bailey checked his watch and stifled a yawn with the inside of his elbow. I was astonished that he wasn’t more upset. “So, do you need anything more from me? I should be getting home.”
“The lieutenant and I have talked, and we thought you should know that the Neighborhood Watch takes petty theft seriously.” My father nodded at Mazzocca, who got up from his desk and asked me to put out both hands.
“I’m sorry,” I repeated, and thought for a moment that Mazzocca would understand why kids with no money might take from the rich. I remembered the Boys’ Clubs of Indianapolis and Chicago; they were full of regular kids like me, whose parents both worked, whose sneakers came out of the discount bin at Turn Style, and who couldn’t begin to imagine a house like Bailey’s, with whole rooms shipped in from Africa.
The handcuffs pinched my wrists.
“You get one phone call,” Mazzocca said.
I looked at my father. His face betrayed no emotion. I thought of my mother, at home watching Quinn spray-paint graffiti all over her bedroom. Tino, whose ass I was covering, leering at underage girls. Cleo would be returning from school around now, unaware of my predicament.
“So?” Mazzocca asked, handing me the phone.
I considered calling my mother but didn’t want to disrupt the school or cause any more embarrassment. “I don’t know anyone,” I said.
My father tensed his jaw. Mazzocca put the phone back in the cradle, took off his Buddy Holly glasses and cleaned them with a handkerchief. Outside the window, a squad car pulled out and flipped on its siren.
“Well, it’s time to take those last steps of freedom.” Mazzocca got up from his chair. “You want to do the honors?” He handed Bailey a ring of keys, but Bailey passed them to my father.
We walked through a large room where policemen were digging into their takeout dinners. The precinct smelled like old newspapers and charred meat. I was grateful that none of the officers except Trammell seemed to notice us.
The holding cell, on the basement floor, sat at the end of a long hallway of spartan offices. It had a bench built into the wall, a toilet and a sink.
“Which key is it?” my father asked. None of us had said a word.
Lieutenant Mazzocca pointed to a key that could have been any office key, and my father opened the holding-cell door.
I stepped inside and stood behind the bars as my father clanged the door shut. I gazed at him steadily, but he did not look back.
Mazzocca reached through the bars into the cell and with a small key released my handcuffs. “Good night,” he said, and the three men walked down the echoing hallway.
Years later, around the time I was in graduate school, at one of those holiday dinners where we brought up old stories, I asked my father if he and Mazzocca had planned to keep me in jail overnight. It couldn’t have been legal, since no one had booked me or read me my rights. My father said no, they’d just wanted to give me a scare. But even now I can’t be sure, because within a couple hours of the bars locking in front of me and the men retreating down the hallway, a new set of footsteps returned, and there in front of me were both of my parents and Lieutenant Mazzocca. My mother’s cheeks were wet with tears—I almost never saw her cry—and when my father tried to explain, she said, “Shut up, you bastard! How dare you!”
By the time they’d brought me back to Our House, the rest of the school had gone home. My parents took me up to their room and shut the door, a weak effort at privacy in a place where nothing was private and all secrets eventually would be revealed. Quinn had spray-painted a word that I couldn’t make out—anthem, antonym, antipathy, anything—just crabbed cacography, the letters dancing along the side wall like flame. My mother called my father a coward and said he’d thrown me under the bus just to satisfy Bailey. “How could you not talk to me first? You’re always acting on your moral imperatives without consulting anyone. Have you forgotten why Lake Bluff let you go? No one likes surprises, least of all me.”
“Daniel had to learn a lesson.”
“You’re one to talk about learning lessons. You’ve learned nothing for as long as I’ve known you. And how can you expect to run a free and equal school when you’re locking your own son in jail? Imagine. What kind of hypocrite are you?”
My father said that Bailey would have called him about the silver before long. “It was a preemptive strike. I had to do something dramatic.”
“Like deliver up your family?”
“I’m sorry,” my father said, and he looked it. He seemed genuinely stupefied.
“You bet you are. Now both of you get out,” she demanded, and I went up to my room and my father went down to the sofa, where he would spend the next two nights.
Perhaps his exile would have lasted longer had he not received the good news in the mail from the Braitmayer Foundation: the grant he had applied for months before had come through. We were awarded eight hundred dollars, less than we’d hoped for, but enough to cover rent for May and June. Talk had begun about summer plans, and the prevailing idea was to open a coffee shop downstairs, charge admission for open-mic nights, and sell arts and crafts or anything else the students could peddle. “The trick is, have them do all the work, make the crap we’re selling, and put the proceeds back in the till,” Tino said one night at dinner.
“Spoken like a true Maoist,” my father sneered.
“Tell me,” Tino said. “When will we get another chance to screw the carriage trade?”
The good news about the grant cheered my mother only briefly. She spoke to my father in clipped sentences and threatened again to take a job, this time leaving a long message and our phone number with Linda Silvers’s secretary in Senator Gaylord Nelson’s office. To compensate, my father was extra solicitous: bringing my mother coffee in bed each morning before the students arrived, finding ways to steer conversations back to the grant award, cooking his bland pastas so she could relax and watch Hepburn and Tracy films on Channel 20 at the end of the day.
I regretted how my self-sacrifice had backfired, and not just because my parents’ tentative détente had returned to a cold war. I wanted to announce to the whole school that Tino was a thief. On top of everything else, he’d taken to taunting me for returning the silver. “What kind of chickenshit goes sneaking into people’s rooms like that?” he said to me one night in the third-floor hallway. “I know you took my Abbie bible, too. That you can keep, but you should read it more closely. You’re supposed to stick it to the plunderers, not give back.”
But I said nothing about these encounters or Tino’s guilt, and as the days went by I began to harbor bitterness toward my father that only grew. It’s taken nearly until now for me to recognize, but from that moment when he shut the cell door in my face and walked down the echoing hallway of Third District Station, a part of me knew that I could never trust or believe in him the same way again. My mother was right—he had thrown me under the bus—and I would never understand how he even came up with such a punishment, particularly against me, his steady aide-de-camp and confidant. Would he stop at nothing to please Bailey? Would he sacrifice his own family to prove to this old teammate that a small-town midwestern nobody could come to clubby, backbiting Washington, D.C., and make it? And what’s more, he still didn’t seem to grasp what he’d done, even after my mother had told him he’d betrayed me. He just seemed baffled, as if detached from all responsibility.