Fervently
Do We Pray
The lobby
of the Hyatt Place was quiet, nearly deserted at half past nine. A half-life of radiant urgency lingered around
the complementary coffee station laid waste.
Tom tried the carafes; Starbucks Blonde, Dark and Breakfast Blend, bled
dry. A chocolate chip cookie lay forlorn
beneath a clear plastic dome. Through an
arrangement of hushed sliding doors a family of five were framed, huddled at
the curb waiting for the parking valet.
The mother elegant in some hybrid of contemporary Western fashion and
traditional Indian dress. Kids in Nike
sandals and high performance sportswear.
Father trim in eggplant colored Polo and linen ecru slacks. All of them fingering plus-size smart phones.
Tom stepped
into the mounting heat of a September day, ushered out on a great palm of cold
lobby air. He smiled at one of the kids,
a teenage girl, the only one to look up from her screen. His sudden corporeal presence seemed to confound. Her gaze plunged quickly back into the luminous
pool of her device. Tom angled into a
breach in oncoming traffic, made the opposite curb licking the last bit of
gooey chocolate chip from his thumb. The
refrigerated conference rooms of the hotel receding with every step, he strolled
off bound for parts unknown.
Bridging
The Chasm, a big three day educational conference, was in its second day. A keynote speaker had kicked things off the
previous morning, prowling the stage in a suit resplendent with patterned
color. The effect was jarring for that delicate
hour. Writer of books on revolutionary
educational change, self-described “disrupter”, he had exhorted six thousand
delegates to seize the levers of learning from a stultified old guard. As he warmed to his message, a rhythmic cadence
set in, punctuated by a bushy beard, trilby hat, and elaborate hand gestures. His projected image loomed behind him, nose
glazed by a sheen of perspiration. Che
meets Tupac by way of artisan urban pickle maker, Tom had thought. He restrained himself from sharing this with
a woman to his left who appeared in thrall to the performance piece.
What had
followed was a long day of breakouts, make and takes, and round tables. Technology playgrounds and tech hangouts
radiated out from a humming vendor fair.
An onslaught of lunch options from gluten free to halal to vegan to
non-GMO to tuna on rye tested delegates’ strained capacity to choose. Battalions of icy tubs of soft drinks, coffee,
tea, warm bottled water, and assorted cookies deployed to combat flagging late
afternoon spirits. Tom had gamely
soldiered on, conference tote bag digging deep into the fingers of his left
hand by the time he probed the card reader and gained entry to his room, green-lighted
on the third try.
He
had last visited Washington, D.C. to protest the invasion of Iraq. He and his then wife, Denise, had boarded a
packed charter bus for the ten hour overnight trip, arriving in College Park, Maryland,
dawn breaking over the Chesapeake. A short
train ride later they joined a throng of people streaming from Union Station
toward the Ellipse. A carnival
atmosphere had prevailed. Rain
threatened but never fell. War had ensued
nonetheless, wildfires of unintended consequences engulfing East and West for a
generation. The two of them had limped
along for another two years. The split was
amicable, anticlimactic, like leaving the Church long after having given up on
Mass.
Today
promised sunshine and blue skies. Tom
walked west on K Street to Washington Circle, executing a full circumnavigation. He wandered up New Hampshire N.W. to Dupont
Circle, took an outdoor table at Le Pain Quotidian. Neighboring tables turned over times three, clocking
shadows in full retreat toward noon. Tom
paid the bill, and crossed P Street to browse the sidewalk carrels at Second
Story Books. He considered a dust
jacketed Dalva, the fine novel by Jim Harrison, uncertain whether he already owned
the paperback.
Larry Donovan, Tom’s
principal, had authorized his conference request months ago on the strength of
a budget flush with school improvement funds. Tom and Larry went way back, over
twenty years. Larry had been elevated to
his current position six years ago. Tom had
shepherded Larry through his own divorce a few years after he and Denise split. They played golf on weekends Larry didn’t
have visitation with his youngest daughter.
Both of them contemplated retirement.
The conference was, perhaps, a token of friendship, the gift of a last
hurrah.
“You’re
okay doing a twenty minute dog and pony at October school improvement,” Larry said
as he signed the request.
“A
small price to pay”, Tom said.
“I should
go with you. Great links course near
Tysons Corner.”
The rarified
delights of Georgetown, a pleasant walk out P Street, were momentarily
entertained. Steep streets, glimpses of
the river, grand antebellum architecture, he could explore for a couple of
hours, find an outdoor place for a quiet beer.
Last evening he had sat in the hotel bar looking over today’s schedule with
a trio from upstate New York, two language arts specialists and a school social
worker. The menu of offerings struck him
as esoteric nonsense or old wine in new bottles. He woke this morning to discover the day’s
possibilities had flowered overnight into something altogether new and
unexpected. He took a long shower, aware
midway that he was actually whistling.
He had set off then, conference badge left hanging from the desk lamp.
Tom
commanded the classroom with soft spoken ease the way a veteran saloon singer
claims and holds the room night after night.
His repertoire, the standards, delivered convincingly to an audience
forever in need of selling. He could
still make it swing. But these last few
years, singing behind the beat fell increasingly flat on the ears of the note
for note crowd.
Tom’s step lightened with
every block he put between himself and the conference center. Terms like core competency, deep dive
and synergistic were, he was willing
to wager, being uttered into neck mics.
Earnest, well-meaning people were doubtless urging audiences to embrace
the bleeding edge, spoken, pinged in the parlance, from their various
wheelhouses. One of
the language arts specialists had seemed very keen on a two hour presentation
on the disruptive possibilities of holographic interactive mimes in urban ESL
classrooms.
High
noon a distant memory, Tom waited for the light at 19th Street and
Pennsylvania Avenue, trying to remember having crossed K. George Washington University off to his
right, White House blocks away on his left, his eyes searched high for the
spire of the Washington Monument.
Denise had
remarried. A Ford salesman who had sold
her a new Explorer, loaded, a tick above sticker. Dennis.
Denny and Denise. Tom liked him,
had even considered buying a new F-150 from the man. Owen, the couple’s six year old son, had his
mother’s eyes, her crooked smile. Tom
knew better, but on those rare occasions when they were in each other’s company,
he would gaze at the boy searching for a betraying glimpse of himself.
Tom,
as a young man, had missed the draft by a couple of years. Years later he had taught with guys who spoke
passionately of deferments, protests and high stakes lottery. One guy, a business teacher, had been up
north at a Marine firebase near the DMZ.
Memories of unrelenting squalor, fear, and rage sometimes slipped
through perimeter wire weakened by Friday after work drinks. Once,
Tom had found the man weeping alone at his desk during planning period, lights
off, door ajar. He had quietly stepped
back into the hall having decided he could make do without an overhead
projector.
Looking back, Tom would allow
that perhaps the day’s circuitous route had been determined by the workings of
some celestial clockworks. The Vietnam
Veterans Memorial, The Wall, that understated glyph carved into the earth just
beyond the Reflecting Pool, ambushed him.
Tom had wandered onto a meander off Constitution Avenue NW. A column of silvery tour busses, appearing coupled
like train cars, lined the street. Clots
of tourists narrowed the veins of winding pathway. He entered the memorial from the east,
descending into a silent congregation set apart. Treachery, vanity and hubris flocked
overhead, the native fauna frustrated, unable to penetrate the veil.
The man was standing near
the apex, the panels there towering over the heads of those filing past. He was stooped, a bit thick in the middle,
dressed in a light jacket open over a blue button down shirt, hands burrowed deep
in the pockets of his chinos. He wore rimless
spectacles, his grey hair combed straight back brushing the back of his collar. Thin wisps on top lifting in the breeze were
the only thing animating him. Here and
there people extended arms, pressed hands or fingers to the black marble. A boy riding high on the shoulders of a tall
man refused entreaties to look, arms twining and re-twining around a tow head, his
malleable features at play.
Tom found himself carried
along, the man an immovable object parting the river of humanity. He seemed not to register a presence at
first, Tom fetched up behind him, snagged on some superseding contingency. Tom was at a loss to discern what came
next. He studied the panel before him
trying to divine which name had drawn the man, and from where, and why. Letters seemed to float to the surface,
shimmering into focus from the bottom of a very deep well. In turn, the man studied Tom who stood a full
head taller reflected in the polished surface.
Names of the dead overlaid their combined daguerreotype image. The man’s moist eyes captured Tom’s own and
held them for interminable minutes.
Something rare, wrenching, yet rendered dear with hard won grace, passed
between them, or so it seemed to Tom.
Pinned there, specimen in some forlorn display, he gradually became
aware of his now solitary reflection. Tourists and pilgrims streamed past in
counter flow, the old man having slipped back into time, resumed. Vanished, or had he only imagined him, Tom
wondered.
The nearby Lincoln Memorial
promised a stolidity that Tom desperately craved, fixed as it is in the
firmament. How many steps? He tried counting them, tried to recall
whether their sum total symbolized some historical significance. By now, the conference would be done for the
day, presenters and delegates retired to their rooms, hotel bar, or regrouping
for evening hijinks along U Street. The
Great Emancipator, having just eased himself down, it seemed to Tom, seemed to
contemplate shedding those enormous boots before closing his weary eyes.
Tom read the Second
Inaugural Address a second time.
Sunlight chrome plated the Reflecting Pool. A broad color palette of visitors struck
selfie poses, wandered in thrall to screens.
“With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the
right as God gives us to see the right….”
So fortified, Tom nodded farewell to the President and made his way back
to the hotel. He had, at the very least,
undertaken an extraordinary journey today, of that he felt certain. If underlying intention was belatedly
revealed, deeper revelation, if such a thing were even available to him, stubbornly
demurred.
The Indian family milled
in the hotel lobby as Tom made his way to the bank of elevators. Exhausted looking parents laden with shopping
bags, the children whispering, laughing among themselves. The girl Tom had greeted earlier that morning
was absently dancing in place, her head bobbing, small glossy bag swinging at
the end of her extended arm. They
exchanged glances as Tom skirted the throng.
The girl smiled shyly, then lost herself again in silent music, a melody
Tom strained to hear, faint but gathering.
The
End
