Wilde Lake(39)
But also: Tough, Caring, Wary, Supercool, and Practical.
Okay, maybe not practical. But AJ was, as were his friends. Now in their sophomore year, they were doing practice runs for the PSAT, in hopes of scoring high enough in their junior year to win National Merit scholarships. They were beginning to game the college application process, ensuring they had a balance of extracurricular interests, visiting the guidance counselor and coming away with glossy brochures. Future generations would be more practical still. They would have to be. Whereas it was considered ambitious to set one’s sights on Stanford, as Davey had as a freshman, it verges on impossible dreaming now. Last year, Stanford admitted slightly more than 5 percent of applicants. Harvard was at 5.9 percent. Yale, AJ’s alma mater, was 6.26 percent. I used to tell myself that my twins, if they fancied Yale, at least had a sort of double legacy with their father and uncle. But maybe I shouldn’t count on that anymore.
At any rate—because AJ and his crew had serious plans for their future, they were dismayed when they read the actual article. A series of unattributed quotes grouped under headings—“Sex,” “Alcohol and Drugs,” “The Future,” “Clothes”—it coalesced into a portrait of aimless, disaffected youths. (“Pot is, like, everywhere.”) AJ was now appalled that he and his friends were so easily identified in the group photo that accompanied the article, front and center in the bleachers. For several days at dinner, he held forth about how the piece had been unfair and slanted. He worried that it could affect his chances at the college of his choice, or cost him the summer job he coveted, as an intern at the Columbia Flier. Finally, our father said to him: “Why not write a letter to the editor, making all these arguments? Or, better still, write your own piece, tell the truth as you see it.”
The gauntlet thrown, AJ did just that. He wrote an article for the Flier, in which he described his friends and their interests. He broke down their days, hour by hour, detailing the life of the overscheduled child long before such a concept was fashionable. (He conveniently left out the information that they did, in fact, smoke pot all the time.) The piece, which appeared under the headline THE CLASS OF ’84 HAS ITS SAY, argued that AJ and his friends were making their way in the world, as every generation had, and were entitled to their mistakes and missteps. “The influences that will shape us are unknown at this point,” AJ wrote. “We will probably never go to war—it’s unlikely there will ever be a war again that involves Western countries.” (Yes, people believed that in 1977.) “We will almost certainly enjoy a higher standard of living than our parents, and isn’t that what they want for us? But how will we get there? What is the path we will take? Most of us have learned life from the Game of Life, and the only thing we know for certain is that taking the shortcut that allows you to bypass college means you will have less earning power. But, according to the rules, anyone can end up on the Poor Farm with just one bad spin.”
A few weeks after his piece appeared, an editor from a New York publishing house contacted our father and asked if AJ could expand his piece into a memoir. A few years earlier, a young woman had enjoyed success with such a book, published when she was only nineteen, and AJ was younger still. A book-length treatment of the same issues could be a sensation.
Our father brought the offer to AJ, advising him: “I don’t think you should.”
“Why not?” AJ asked. “I might make a lot of money.”
“We don’t have to worry about money.”
“Everyone has to worry about money,” AJ said. “Almost all the scholarships are needs-based now. You make just enough that I can’t get one, no matter what my grades or SAT scores are.”
“You would have to give up your privacy. Can you put a price on that? And”—a significant pause here, the kind he used in closing arguments—“you would have to tell the truth.”
We were at the dinner table. It was not a serious conversation. When our father was intent on serious conversations, he took us into his room and closed the door. Yet there was something about his tone that sounded grave to me, as if he were suggesting that AJ did not always tell the truth.
“Of course I would be honest,” AJ said.
“Then it’s your decision.”
For a week, AJ came home and attacked our father’s manual typewriter with great focus. But he was in the fall play, Zoo Story, and rehearsals began to run later and later. And he was trying to study for the PSATs, while still playing soccer. The memoir was discarded. AJ was a magpie in his youth, saving everything in a file cabinet. But when I went to look for those pages recently, there was no trace of them. I wish he had saved his nascent memoir. I would have loved to read his version of his life, then and now. My brother was achingly sincere. That’s the thing that no one understands. I’m not sure even AJ grasped that part of his nature, and what a burden it was to carry into adulthood. People say it’s hard to be good. It’s harder still to be famous for being good, to find that balance between sincerity and sanctimony. But I believe AJ managed to do it.
JANUARY 14
Lu makes her way carefully up the walk of the shabby house on Rain Dream Hill. There is a fine layer of sleet on the sidewalks this morning, and although some of the homeowners have treated their sidewalks with chemical melts, the walkway in front of the Drysdale house is untouched. Besides, she’s always sore the day after a “lunch” with Bash. She may have a gymnast’s build, but she doesn’t have the elasticity. Lu is that rare modern woman who doesn’t exercise, not in any organized way. She doesn’t have to. She walks in the morning, sometimes before the sun comes up, but that’s more for her mind than her body. There’s no compelling reason for her to work out—her weight is steady, all the markers of good health are where they should be. Blood pressure, cholesterol. But the day after an afternoon with Bash, her body reproaches her for not taking better care of herself. A little yoga at the very least, it begs her. But when would she have time?