Free Beet by Roger Rosenblatt Page A

sunk?”
    â€œSell the property, I guess.”
    â€œTo pay the bills?” Livi crossed her eyes. “And how could they sell something as old as Beet College? Who owns the land?”
    Peace ate two brussels sprouts, chewing very slowly. Should he have paid more attention to money matters?
    â€œWell,” said Livi, “if the CCR’s dumb-ass report is supposed to save the place—something I must tell you I find hard to swallow—why don’t you write it yourself? Let your committee yak away, you create the report out of your own good mind, then tell ’em they did it.”
    â€œThey’re not stupid,” said Peace.
    Livi said nothing.
    Beth and Robert were approaching the end of a breath-holdingcontest, and glowed like radishes. “Out!” said Livi, to the children’s satisfaction.
    â€œBesides,” said Peace, “it’s not playing fair. The report is supposed to be a collective decision.”
    â€œOoo la la, M. Candide! I love collective decisions,” said Livi. “Love love love!”
    She examined her husband’s troubled face. “Have you ever heard of Dupuytren’s contracture?” she asked. “It’s a disorder of the palm. Thick tissues, like a scar, develop under the skin. It takes a while to grow and eventually it restricts the motion of the hand, causing one finger to drop involuntarily. The condition starts out invisible, with no pain, and winds up very serious.”
    â€œThis is a metaphor?” Peace asked.
    â€œCould be.” She gave him her business smile. “There’s only one way to get rid of Dupuytren’s contracture.”
    â€œAnd what is that, Doctor?”
    â€œSurgery.”

CHAPTER 5
    THE OCCASION OF THE PORTERFIELDS’ NIGHT OUT WAS THE visit of B. F. Templeton, known as The Great, the most popular poet in America, there to give a reading in Lapham Auditorium. The hall was named for the funder, the inventor of the asparagus tongs, who was also a Gilded Age press lord and amateur cornet enthusiast lampooned by political cartoonists of the day, including Thomas Nast, for blowing his own horn. Lapham sat six hundred in the orchestra, and two hundred more in the loge—the necessary capacity for the throng expected for The Great Poet Templeton. That was how he was always billed, as The Great Poet Templeton. Friends and critics sometimes referred to him as Templeton and B. F., but fans knew him as The Great.
    â€œI suppose we have to go,” said Livi when they finished their meal, hoping Peace would hear that as a question.
    â€œYou don’t, honey, but if I didn’t show up, that’s all the committee would talk about at tomorrow’s meeting.”
    â€œFascinatin’ group,” she said, adopting her best Jean Harlow. “So cultchered, don’t ye know? So refoined.”
    Cindy the sitter appeared at six, as promised. Beth and Robert hooted and cheered.
    â€œDon’t let them get the best of you,” said Livi as she put on her parka.
    â€œI came armed this time,” said the teenager. “A .38, a .45, and an Uzi.”
    â€œYou’re sure that’s enough?”—the parents in unison.
    No one was more thrilled by The Great’s appearance than Matha Polite, who had selected herself to introduce the reading. This was The Great’s second visit to Beet, his first occurring over twenty years ago when he was just starting out, yet recognizable as a rising literary star. His poetry—even his detractors and competitors had to concede—was very good, a concatenation of colloquial Frost and mythological Seferis, with the mathematical precision of Empson and yet the boisterous lyricism of Dylan Thomas. He had much of Thomas in him, including a distant Welsh ancestry (though he had been born and reared in Point Pleasant, New Jersey). He drank as lustily as Thomas had, and lunged at as many undergraduate breasts as well, and as