Free Beet by Roger Rosenblatt

good old Beet had been rescued by its own resourcefulness and goodwill.
    On the road leading to his house, he drove past other professors’ houses, which looked much like his own. Past the cords of wood and the mounds of mulch and the separated garbage. Pastthe swirls of smoke from the chimneys. Past the conversations in those houses, which, when they diverted from the threatened closing of the college, focused on an upcoming trip sponsored by the Boston Museum of Trips, or on the incomparable can-you-believe-it spaghetti squash at the Natural Nature Food Shop, or on the antique birdcage in the shape of a pagoda acquired at last Sunday’s Isn’t This Precious! Flea Market, or on the latest “fascinating if plodding” book they all were reading; or on one another.
    Peace took a wrong turn, the first time that had ever happened.
    â€œSold the Moore?” Livi said at an early supper that evening. “Jesus! They really must be strapped. I must say, I really don’t get it. I mean, it’s okay by me if they close the joint tomorrow. But I don’t see how a college can go out of business like a falafel stand.”
    Whenever they looked forward to a rare night out, they pushed up the family dinner hour so they could dine with the children.
    â€œI think it’s losing too much,” said Peace, as he passed the brussels sprouts to Robert, who made the gag-me sign and passed them to Beth, who pretended to vomit.
    â€œEat right or die,” said their mother. The pair were now attempting to cause each other’s water glasses to topple over by kicking the table legs.
    The children were still fuming over the previous night’s Halloween costume fiasco. Weeks earlier, they’d planned to go trick-or-treating as Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson. Beth, the elder, naturally assumed she would be Sherlock; besides, she looked beyond cute in the deerstalker cap. But Robert too thought he would be going as Sherlock, precisely because Watson was the elder. In the end, after a shouting match that lasted an hour, they both went as Sherlock, each pointing out the other to their trick-or-treat patrons as an impostor.
    At least Livi had not contended with the Concerned Parents of Beet, which annually published a list of unacceptable and inappropriate Halloween costumes. The offensive outfits were hobo, witch, gypsy, old man, old woman, devil, and Indian princess. Last Halloween Livi threatened to dress up herself as a half-Jewish princess, but Peace persuaded her to let it alone.
    â€œTell me something,” she said to her husband, attempting to ignore the brother-sister act at the table, which now consisted of each plunging a pencil into the other’s mashed potatoes. “What difference does it make if the college carries a deficit?”
    Peace admitted he did not understand the complexities of the matter, or very much at all about college finances. He had no knowledge of discounted tuitions, earmarked donations, or fund accounting, and until lately, had never supposed he needed any. All he knew was that Beet had an operating budget of around $60 million, which depended on sustaining an endowment of $265 million, which had held steady until Bollovate, Huey, and the new board came in. But now the trustees complained that more money than ever was going toward scholarships. Health care costs were up. Equipment—everything from computers to staplers—was way up.
    â€œI guess it’s easiest to think of the college as a mom-and-pop store,” he said, unhappy to make the analogy. “With zero in the endowment, there’s nothing left to invest. All the profits, which pay the bills, come from tuition and gifts. We need more students and more gifts.”
    â€œHow do you lose $265 million in a couple of years?” Livi asked. “That’s a hell of a lot of staplers. And what will the esteemed board of trustees do if it should turn out that Beet is