Once we’d all sat down and passed the serving platters, David announced to the family that this would be his last year at VU.
“That’s a surprise,” I said. He couldn’t have been older than about sixty-seven. “With no mandatory retirement age, professors often keep teaching into their seventies and eighties.”
“I don’t want to make you nervous on your own account,” David said, “but the financial situation at VU is dire. The university had been heavily dependent on foreign students, who pay far higher tuition. But applications from abroad have dried up. Wealthy Nigerians, Asians, and Indians no longer want to send their kids to American schools.”
“Gosh,” Felicity said. “I wonder why.”
“Many would say because of cognitive prejudice,” David said dutifully. “So the administration’s official line is good riddance to a bad lot. But high-mindedness doesn’t fill the hole in the budget.”
“I guess it would depend on your politics whether this is a silver lining or a catastrophe,” I said, “but the same thing’s happened at the southern border. Mexicans, Central and South Americans—they’ve done a U-turn. A colleague of mine flew through JFK recently and said it seemed different somehow. It took her a minute to realize that the airport had practically no foreigners in it. Think of it. JFK.”
“Maybe a pause on immigration could be good for this country,” Emory speculated. “So we could catch our breath and assimilate the immigrants already here.”
“It’s not a pause,” I said. “It’s a tidal reversal. You can’t assimilate immigrants who are on their way out the door. And then there’s the domestic brain drain—”
“As for why else I’m looking at retirement?” David cut me off.
I’d made him anxious. Any mention of America’s “brain drain” to the very countries that once sent their most promising graduate students and professionals our direction could be career-ending. If there is no such thing as exceptionally smart people, then all the exceptionally smart people leaving their country for elsewhere is a nonevent.
“It’s an admirable intention,” David continued. “Nevertheless, I’m afraid this ‘decleverization of the curriculum’ is proving too much for me. I’m supposed to stop focusing on traditionally towering figures of history. John Locke, Adam Smith, Rousseau . . . Even the ‘Age of Enlightenment’ is out the window. It’s been rechristened the ‘Age of Arrogance.’ In fact, I don’t know if you’ve encountered these people, Pearson, but there’s even a growing student movement on campus to rename not only the university but this city.”
“After whom do they want to name Voltaire instead?” I said. “Beavis and Butthead?”
“Beavis, Pennsylvania,” Felicity said. “Has a ring.”
“I think I’d prefer Butthead, PA,” I said. Felicity was growing on me.
“The point is,” David said, “in my courses, I’m now meant to celebrate all the historical figures we’ve customarily overlooked.”
“You mean the people who never achieved dick,” Felicity said.
“Now, that’s much too harsh a way of putting it,” David abjured with a shut up glare at his younger daughter.
“Yes,” Kelly said. “And a more rounded version of the past, one that tries to include all those people who weren’t singled out as special—it’s much more equitable.”
“But there are . . . logistical problems with following this rubric,” David said. “We simply don’t have records of all these otherwise folks who were callously dismissed in their time. I can explain to students why a host of erstwhile distinguished figures have been acclaimed unjustly, but I’ve no idea how to go about digging up biographies of, you know—”
“Nineteenth-century knuckleheads,” Felicity filled in.
“Honey, you know we don’t talk like that in this house,” Kelly said.
“I’m simply saying that, however lofty the project,” David said, “it’s beyond me in purely practical terms. I’m too old a dog for new tricks. It’s easier to call it quits and let someone raised on all these fresh ideas take over.”
The David Ruth of times past would have railed to the high heavens about “decleverization”—pouring another round of wine and alternating between raucous ridicule and table-pounding rage.
“Of course, I have to admit,” he added, “it’s painful for me to eliminate the likes of Copernicus and George Washington Carver from the syllabus. Even Martin Luther King is too off-puttingly eloquent. I can see making room for the unrecognized. But”—again he flicked a nervous glance at Emory—“I wonder if in suppressing study of Albert Einstein and Charles Darwin—your son’s namesake, Pearson—the pendulum has swung too far the other direction.”
“God, Einstein has become Public Enemy Number One,” Felicity said. “And he’s not even vilified because of a vague association with nuclear weapons. He’s just a notorious smart-ass. He’s offensive for having ever been born.”
“You know, Darwin—I mean my Darwin,” I said, “got into huge trouble about three years ago when he wore a sweatshirt to school printed with that classic portrait of Einstein, with all the hair? You remember, they used to be everywhere. It was a perfectly innocent birthday present, from back when Darwin got so involved in the Deepwater Horizon spill. Since then, the image has become ‘hate speech.’ So my son would never make the same mistake today. He’s even wondered if he’s going to have to change his first name. I’m pleased to say that he still loves his name, but it’s attracting the wrong kind of attention, and Darwin has a hard enough time disguising the fact that he’s a fucking genius.”
“Stephen Hawking’s house was vandalized last week, did you see that?” Felicity asked me. “Eggs, red paint everywhere, windows smashed. As if his life isn’t lousy enough already.”
“He’d been . . . provocative,” Emory said. She’d been unusually reticent so far.
“He’s not having it,” Felicity said.
“Too late for that,” Emory said. “He will have to have it.”
“Yes, thanks to the assistance of certain people,” Felicity said icily to her sister, “it’s been shoved down all our throats.”
“Now, girls, let’s try to have an amicable meal,” Kelly said. “More peppers?”
“I can see how coming to appreciate different varieties of intelligence is a good thing,” David said. His wife shot him a look. She wanted to change the subject. “But I’m not sure why that necessitates denigration of people with the more standard kind.”
“I think the idea,” Emory said, employing the diplomatic tone she used during panels on which a contrary thinker had, against the odds, managed to gain a spot, “is people with a ‘more standard’ intelligence have had their day. Einstein, Darwin—they’ve hardly been underfeted in the past.”
“We’re thinking of getting a new car,” Kelly introduced firmly.
“Boy, about time,” I said. “What are you considering?”
“Possibly a Nissan Skyline,” Kelly said. “Or we’ve even thought about importing a Tata Nexon or Beijing Auto Senora.”
“The Chinese used to do cheap knockoffs of every popular model in the U.S.,” Felicity said. “Lately it’s the other way around. American manufacturers are copying Chinese cars.”
“Well, what about an American model?” Emory asked her mother.
Felicity guffawed. “For a high-flying journalist, you sure don’t keep up. That Ford pickup that burst into flame on I-75 and caused, like, a ten-car pileup? All those Chevrolet minivans whose entire chassis have dropped off? There’ve been so many recalls of U.S.-made cars lately it’s a wonder we have traffic jams anymore. The roads should be deserted.”
“We’ve flirted with a Lada,” David said. “Classic. Longer-lasting than you’d think.”
“Do you really want to buy Russian right now?” I asked.
“Putin has helped himself to Eastern Europe, whether or not we buy one of his cars,” David said sorrowfully. “But I’m not sure about a new car, even if the Volvo is on its last legs. Kelly and I have a difference of opinion on this, but with my stepping down from VU, we might think bigger picture. Things in this country are getting so . . . politicized. I want a peaceful old age. I could definitely see moving kit and kaboodle abroad.”
“Come on, Dad,” Emory said. “I can’t count the people I’ve heard threaten that they’re going to leave the country. A whole passel of my friends swore in 2004 that if Bush won again they were moving to Europe. Guess what. Bush won. No one moved to Europe.”
“Not Europe,” David said. “The east belongs to a totalitarian thug, and the west . . . is too much like here.”
“What’s wrong with here?” Emory asked.
“Perhaps it’s a matter of taste,” her father said, and declined to elaborate.
“Dad’s mentioned Thailand,” Felicity said. “Sexy ladies.”
“But it’s uncomfortably close to Taiwan,” David said.
“New Shanghai,” I corrected glumly.
“Moving to any country within throwing distance of China at this point,” David said, “is probably foolhardy.”
“You mean ‘imprudent,’” Kelly said.
A trace of the old David Ruth shone in his rolled eyes. “I’d consider Australia or New Zealand, but they’ve both gone in . . . the wrong direction. The Seychelles?” He added under his breath, “I’d entertain Brazil, but I’m not sure it’s nearly far enough away.”
“Isn’t the biggest issue the language?” I asked.
“Honestly, Pearson, my dear,” David said wearily, “being surrounded by people jabbering away in a manner I find indecipherable sounds like bliss.”
“Any picking up of stakes is well down the road,” Kelly said. “For now, I can’t face the prospect of packing and finding a new electricity provider in Bali or something. Besides, in case it’s escaped everyone’s notice, I’m still working.”
“Yes, how’s the practice going?” I asked.
“Contract law has become rather complicated,” she said, taking a moment to regroup and choose her phrasing with care. If the editorial function occupied a particular location in our brains, then the lobe was bulging against our craniums from overuse. “Nowadays, when one party fails to fulfill its side of the bargain—delivers an unsatisfactory service or, say, builds something to the wrong specifications—the delinquent party will often claim that being held liable for this deficient performance is smartist. Any number of cases have been successfully defended on these grounds, especially since the 2013 Supreme Court ruling upholding affirmative action for people with a perceived mental deficit. But of course, anything complicated is good for lawyers, and our practice has more work than we know what to do with. That’s why all this talk of flying the American coop is premature. What’s much more immediately pressing is David’s hip replacement.”
“Finally,” I said. “David, that hip has bothered you for years. Fortunately, the Voltaire Medical Center has a fantastic reputation for joint replacements.”
“Yes, um,” David said. “It once did.”
“I haven’t read much about it in the press,” Kelly said. “But we have friends . . . I wouldn’t usually put much store in isolated anecdotes, but when they accumulate . . . Oh, most of the surgeons know what they’re doing. The problem seems to be the younger nurses and residents. The second tier of support. Wrong doses of anesthesia. Infections from inadequate aftercare. We have the resources, so we’re planning to book the surgery in Delhi.”
“You’re going all the way to India for a hip replacement?” I asked.
“They have good doctors,” Kelly said. “And we’ve never been to India, so it sounds like fun.”
“You’re not going to Delhi to have fun,” Felicity said. “You’re in flight from a medical system that’s increasingly infiltrated by alternative processing. And no one wants an alternative hip replacement. Like, they install an artificial shoulder on your thigh bone instead.”
“I think at this point that term ‘alternative’—” Emory intruded.
“Oh, fuck your terms, Emory,” Felicity cut her off. “You MP losers only want to talk about words for things, and meanwhile the fucking country is in a state of collapse! You can’t get anything done here anymore, because nothing works! We’re promoting total fucking morons to be CEOs and presidents and Chiefs of Whathaveyou, thanks to which the postal service has imploded, you can’t get a driver’s license or a passport, the cars are exploding, and Mom here won’t even buy a box of Ritz crackers if they’re baked in New Jersey!”
Felicity’s prandial pugilism with her sister struck the no-holds-barred note that my latter-day conversations with my best friend lacked. I envied the rough-and-tumble between them, the absence of a constraining caution. Still, I’d never have leveled “you MP losers” directly at Emory. She may have been a collaborator, but she was surely a double agent. She was an opportunist, all right, shamelessly so. She hadn’t lost her mind.
“I did a long opener on this, because I’ve heard that dirge so often,” Emory said. “Big social change always creates teething problems. But this ‘the country is going to the dogs’ thing is a wild exaggeration. Keep your shirt on. The U.S. is huge, and it’s always had problems. So, shocker: it still has problems. Overstating them doesn’t solve anything.”
“At this point, I don’t think it’s possible to overstate them,” Felicity said.
“Typical projection,” Emory said. “Things aren’t going great for you right now. So you look out the window, and all you can see is divorce and unemployment.”
“There’s a reason I’m divorced and unemployed: the pandering political quackery you broadcast night and day.”
“Oh, for Pete’s sake!” Emory exclaimed. “Selwin is my fault? Pfizer’s my fault?”
“Yes, and yes. Selwin started listening to your stupid show. You personally convinced him. He’s a convert. And Pfizer is just mindlessly following the logic, or illogic, of the goofball gospel you and your crackpot pals have imposed on the whole Western world.”
“Felicity, stop it,” Kelly intervened. “You may have your differences, but Emory’s still your sister—”
“I’ll stop it, all right,” Felicity said, screeching out her chair. “I can’t stand being in the same room with the fucking cunt.” She marched off and then the front door slammed.