8 PM. I’m starting to become enthusiastic about attending law school as I think about the power being an attorney could give me. I see so many things in American life going in the wrong direction, and maybe legal skills can help me make more of a difference than I ever could as a fiction writer. As I go through the 80s with my diary book, I see I got progressively more interested in political and social issues.
At this point, when children are treated shabbily, when gay people and people with HIV infections are discriminated against, when women’s abortion rights are in danger, when health care is bankrupting
families, when young adults aren’t being educated properly, when racial minorities are victims of a backlash, when everywhere, it seems, the bad guys are winning, I’d like to work for change.
Right now that’s more important to me than expressing myself on paper. I don’t know. I don’t know. But there has to be more to life than writing hermetic fictions and resenting the world for not gasping awe of them, and I tend to think that’s what Tom does.
Yesterday he did show his mean streak in remarks about successful young writers like Amy Tan – I don’t know her work, I’ve never read her, and for all I know, she may be very good – and his calling Spike Lee “a nigger Nazi.”
I frowned at that, and Tom knew I disapproved. He’s been my friend and my literary champion, but with his rigid views, I can’t help thinking that if he was the one who ran things in the literary world, they would be no better than they are now.
Years ago I stopped bothering to disagree with him. I liked Jungle Fever, but even if Tom despised it, it’s only a movie. Books are only books, even the ones we ourselves write. Literature isn’t life.
Speaking of life – you remember life – today was cool and rainy. I used the dollars vans to get back and forth, along with the Nassau County buses, to and from Woodmere.
I took the N31, not the N32, for the first time today; it travels down West Broadway rather than stay on
Central Avenue, so I came to the home from the other way, past the LIRR tracks, and I stopped at Genovese Drugs and Key Food for some stuff beforehand. I couldn’t find Grandma Ethel I her room or in the hallway or TV rom, but an employee suggested she might have gone to Mass on the first floor. And as I peeked in the room there, I saw Grandma, her gray hair recently styled, sitting with her walker in front of her as a young priest celebrated Mass for thirty old people.
Not wanting to disturb anyone, I stayed out of the room, but I watched Grandma move her lips to the unfamiliar Roman Catholic prayers and I felt good that at least she was out among people. Her friend Christine in the next room had persuaded Grandma to attend.
Upstairs, Grandma showed me that her upper dentures wouldn’t stay on properly because she broke the hook that holds it one side. Hopefully, they’ll get her to a dentist soon.
She complained about her tongue and lips again, and of course uttered the sentence I never miss hearing, “I’m so disgusted with my life,” a sentence Aunt Tillie has taken to using, too.
I gave Grandma some candies I’d bought, and we talked until they called her into lunch, and I left Woodmere for Rockaway.
This afternoon I called Philadelphia and spoke to Ellen as she was monitoring Jesse in his bath; David and Gabriel were out. David again got turned down for tenure at Penn, but he was hired at every one of the schools he interviewed with at the MLA.
At first he thought he’d go to Purdue or DePaul or Tennessee or South Carolina, and at first he decided not to consider Texas A&M, but then he visited all the campus, and when he phoned from College Station, Ellen could immediately tell how he felt about the place after he’d found Purdue a drag even though he would have tenure there; West Lafayette felt isolated, and they couldn’t offer Ellen a job.
On the other hand, he was surprising impressed with Texas A&M, and Ellen went down there for her own job interview and liked the openness of the people. “So we’ll be Southerners again,” Ellen said. “College Station is a neat little town.”
They’ve met some nice colleagues and Gabe won’t have to be an outcast for being smart and liking school there. If David has had to adjust to what he perceives to be a comedown after Penn – and they’ve been in therapy (everyone in the same situation, being denied tenure, goes into therapy) – Ellen said there
are advantages she perceives in “not swimming with the sharks” in the topmost rungs of academic
superstars.
Texas A&M agreed to put David up for tenure right away and to hire Ellen, maybe on a tenure-track line herself. The McAllisters’ academic experiences are so far removed from mine.
Selling their beloved house in Regent Square was difficult, and the people they sold it to are horrible, but they bought a new house in Texas into which they’ll move in just three weeks, as David needs the money he’ll make teaching summer school in July. I’m glad the strain is over for the McAllisters and I told Ellen they should enjoy their adventure. “I think you’ll enjoy your own adventure in Gainesville,” she said.
Ellen and Sat Darshan hasn’t been close lately, and she’s not certain how her sister really is, given that Sat Darshan’s ex-husband will be marrying his girlfriend in a few weeks (even though, Sat Darshan told me on Saturday night at the party, her divorce papers hadn’t yet arrived): “She gets mad if I’m too concerned and gets mad if I’m not concerned enough.”
I know Sat Darshan doesn’t relish divorced status, and I think the worst part of the past year was when her Indian friend J.B. told her he didn’t want to marry
her. They’d met because he was a Sikh interested in marriage, but although he likes Sat Darshan as a friend, she’d hoped for something more, and I know how disappointed she seemed on Saturday when J.B. didn’t show up for the party.
But I didn’t say anything about this to Ellen. I always make certain not to get into the middle of family dynamics and took down the McAllisters’ College Station address. Ellen said if I ever get any money, I should pay Texas a visit.
Soon after that call, Josh phoned. Like hundreds of other city workers, he got his layoff notice on Monday. His boss was out, and it wasn’t till
yesterday that he learned she has planned to get him another position in the office down the hall.
It’s definite, at the same salary, but Josh was so miffed by the way it was handled, he’d contacted
headhunters and put out feelers for jobs in private industry. Probably he’ll end up staying at the agency because Josh needs the security, and there are very few jobs open for programmers and systems analysts right now.
As much as I love New York City – and Rockaway in particular – I’ll be glad to go to Gainesville in August.