Now I'll Tell You Everything (Alice) (39 page)

“Right,” said Patrick.

“So when a guy and a girl—well, a man and a woman—want to have sex, who asks?”

That was a new one. I deferred to Patrick, trying not to smile.

“Well . . . uh . . . I’m not sure asking is actually necessary. I mean . . . if their sexual activity is that far along, then it’s the next
logical step and . . .” He looked at me helplessly. “Of course, I would expect they’d known each other for a long time. . . .”

“Actually, either one could suggest it, Patricia, and the next logical step would be to make sure the boy was using a condom,” I said.

“Okay, thanks,” Patricia said quickly, and disappeared.

Patrick sat staring after her. “Did that just happen?” he asked. “Is
that
the kind of question you get from students?”

“You’ve no idea. A few months ago she wanted to know if you can tell by a girl’s fingernails whether or not she’s a virgin.”

“
What?
Did you have all those questions when you were in seventh grade?”

“And then some,” I told him. “And I’ll bet you did too. You just don’t remember.”

*  *  *

It was only October, and the critical decision coming up for spring semester was whether the sex ed course should be canceled until a committee had a chance to study the issue further. Never mind that the committee had studied it to death before it was ever decided to teach the course in the first place. The TTT group wanted even more, however. Not only did they want it canceled, but they wanted an abstinence-only course to be taught in its place, and they already had the materials they felt we should use.

I already knew of half a dozen middle schoolers who had engaged in intercourse and countless others who, according to their peers anyway, “fooled around.” Did we abandon these
pseudosophisticated kids to a no-sex rule even after they had experienced the thrill of it and then trust that our admonitions and persuasions would be sufficient? Or did we equip them for their soon-to-be-even-riskier sexual life so that they would have a basic knowledge of what “a pimple down there” means and other matters? At the very least, we felt—and experience bore this out—the fact that we were talking in the classroom about sex meant that it was okay for kids to discuss it with us.

As the battle became more heated, Emma Butler became more strident. Every other day, it seemed, the
Post
reported a new allegation or statistic from TTT, and because there was such emotion on both sides, a reporter was always around to pick up the next newsworthy pronouncement, and these would land on my desk seeking a rebuttal.

And then one night the phone rang still again. As soon as I said hello, this steely-sounding woman said, “Am I speaking to Alice Long?”

“Yes,” I said, trying to be pleasant. “And you are . . . ?”

“Emma Butler,” she replied. “And I think you should know what you are doing to young minds in the schools.”

“Oh, Mrs. Butler,” I said, “I’m glad to have the chance to talk with you personally. Would you like to come to the office and we could have a discussion?”

“No, I would not want to waste my time. Everything I have to say to you I can say over the phone,” she replied.

I’ve learned when to let silence bring out feeling, and when I didn’t reply, her words came out in a rush: “Little children
enter middle school just after fifth grade. They come as innocent youngsters off the playground, used to skipping rope and playing kickball. Most of them don’t even know what a condom is, and
we don’t want
them to know! Call us old-fashioned, but we think of ourselves as sensible; with all the sex going on on television, magazine covers that make you blush, stories about priests seducing children and homosexuals hugging right out in public, someone has got to say, ‘Enough.’ We can’t stop the movies and TV and the perverts, but with God’s help, we can stop the schools from the early sexualization of our children.”

She stopped for breath, and her voice was trembling. I think she had just coined a new word, but I really felt for her then. In my mind she was one woman struggling to hold back a crumbling dam, water already pouring over the top.

“Do you have children, Mrs. Butler?” I asked.

“Yes, I do—a ninth-grade daughter and another in seventh. Sex is the last thing on their minds. I know, and our daughters know, that the only way they’ll get a car when they graduate from college is if they remain virgins till then.”

“Well . . . back when we were in middle school, and certainly when our mothers were,” I said, “many of us didn’t menstruate until we were twelve or older. Now puberty begins earlier. For some girls, it’s ten or eleven. And with it comes sexual maturation and all the normal feelings.”

“Maybe so, but they don’t have to act on them. If schools start giving out condoms, you’ll see them all over the playground for children six and seven to pick up. Girls will start
having babies before they graduate eighth grade. This is only the start of the degradation of America, and I and my committee intend to stop you and your agenda for our county. I have nothing more to say to you.”

And Mrs. Butler hung up.

I sat down with tears in my eyes for her daughters. What a shame we couldn’t have a responsible dialogue, I was thinking. She had brought up a number of points that many parents worry about—risque-looking clothes designed for nine-year-olds and younger; child molestation by the clergy; movies depicting sexual violence toward women. But we can’t deal with problems if we pretend they’re not there, as well as normal sexual feelings that arise naturally in adolescent youngsters. I wished Nicole could have gone through the sex education course I’d had in my church as a teenager, where I learned that sex and love and respect and responsibility go together, and I wondered how we could incorporate more of that in the course we give in the spring. Was I in this battle now, heart and soul? Absolutely.

Both Emma Butler and I appeared on the local news from time to time, and I was shocked one evening to see a brief ad for TTT, showing Emma Butler with her husband and both daughters by her side. “The abstinence-only philosophy works for us and our family, and I’ve never had to worry about my daughters,” she announced. The younger daughter looked beatifically up at her mother, but Nicole stared stonily at the camera as the letters TTT took over the screen.

*  *  *

The middle of November, with both Christmas and the abstinence-only decision hanging over me, Patrick excitedly announced at dinner that IBM was entering a partnership with Spain to provide more grants to Latin American countries to start business courses in schools. He would be actively involved in helping set up the program, and IBM wanted to send him to
Barcelona
.

“Patrick,” I said, my body frozen. “You’d be there for . . . ?”

“Two years! All of us! We’d all go!”

“What?”

“Think what a fantastic opportunity this would be for you and the kids. I’ve always wanted to take you there!”

“Dad! Wow!” Tyler cried excitedly, not waiting for my reaction. Even Patricia Marie, who I thought would never want to leave her friends, looked interested.

I couldn’t believe it! “Barcelona! Oh, Patrick! They’d take care of the move and everything?”

“Down to the last dresser drawer. All we’d have to do is give them the key and walk out. The kids would be in English-speaking classes, of course.”

“It’s . . . it’s wonderful!” I gasped.

“We’re going to Spain, we’re going to Spain!” Tyler said, his voice riding up and down.

“I can even speak a little Spanish,” Patricia said, repeating something she’d learned in Scouts:
“¿Cómo está usted?”

“No comprendo,”
Patrick said, and we laughed. He was still looking at me.

“My head’s spinning,” I said, and I had to admit that almost
every day since the sex ed debate began this fall, I felt I would take the first plane leaving for almost anywhere, as long as I never had to put up with Emma Butler and TTT again. “Of course I want to do it! I’d love to live in Spain, Patrick! Especially Barcelona. How did you manage that?”

“They’re simply expanding their program and offering more grants. Of course, they think that partnering with Spain on this one would also increase their business. Actually, I’d be based in Barcelona, but also working in Madrid. I’d be with the family a lot more, though.”

“Let’s do it, Mom!” Patricia Marie said. “I could e-mail all my friends in Spanish.”

I looked at Patricia Marie and Tyler, then at Patrick. “When do they want us to go?”

Now Patrick looked a little sheepish. “As soon as we can get there. They thought maybe . . . over Christmas vacation.”

“Over Christmas! Patrick? That’s less than six weeks away—are they out of their minds?”

“No, but I think it’s time we did something fantastic and out of our minds, don’t you? They said they’d even provide a housekeeper.”

I thought of the job I’d be leaving behind—how lucky I’d been to get it. The big vote on the sex education course scheduled for the end of January. How could I walk out now? It would be like I couldn’t face it.

“Patrick, I—I can’t! I need to be here! I’ve worked so hard, given so much time to this.”

I could see the disappointment in his eyes, the children’s fallen faces.

“Aw, Mom!” said Patricia Marie.

“We never do anything fun,” Tyler said, and strangely, that made us all laugh because he says that five minutes after riding a roller coaster.

“I’ll tell you what,” I said, my brain on overdrive. “Let’s fly there right after Christmas and find a place to live, and you kids can stay there with your dad while I come back and finish out the school year.”

Patrick looked stunned. “Would that work?”

“If we get a good housekeeper who can run things when you aren’t there, Patrick. I think you guys can manage till I come in June.”

“Are you serious, Alice? Would you do that?”

“Why not? Let me be the one who travels back and forth. I can come in mid-February, I can come again over spring break, and I’ll ask for a leave of absence come summer because . . . we’re going to
Barcelona
!” I shouted out the last word, and the kids took up the chant.

Patrick was like a little boy himself. I was in the other room when he called work and told his boss we were going. All evening he seemed dazed—we all were—and kept grinning at me as we prepared for bed that night.

“That’s a solution I’d never thought of, and I’m not sure what I’m in for, taking on the kids by myself,” he said.

“They’re potty trained,” I joked. “They can dress themselves
and comb their own hair. I’ll drop in now and then to see how you’re doing.”

“Come here,” said Patrick, pulling me over to his side of the bed. “I was worried you wouldn’t do this for me.”

“I’m doing it for us, Patrick,” I said. “I think it’s going to be great. I
expect
it to be great. I’m going to be a Spanish woman with a basket on my arm, doing the baking, and eating flan, and looking out over the sea.”

“And I’m going to be a very proud Spanish papa when I show you off to the locals,” he said, reaching over to turn out the light.

The years we spent in Barcelona were some of the best of our lives. I was truly away from home and family—my childhood home and family, I mean. Even when I was away at college, I was only a half hour from Dad. Now I was a world away.

The first six months, of course, I was still working, traveling back and forth at IBM’s expense. I was the one taking cabs to the airport—and even flying first-class. I was there over Christmas vacation to help choose the rental flat where we’d live and to approve the full-time housekeeper. I was there to meet Patrick’s associates, and best of all, I was there to announce the school board’s decision to reaffirm our sex ed course for the county. As a result, Emma Butler had appeared on local TV, declaring that she was enrolling her
youngest daughter in a private school. She did not mention Nicole.

And the children will never forget the months alone with their dad in Spain.

“I was walking right where Columbus was when he got back from discovering America!” Tyler said over the phone.

“And Dad lets me walk to the
panadería
each morning to buy rolls for breakfast!” Patricia boasted.

Patrick bought a motor scooter and had taken each child on a sightseeing trip around the city. On the phone at night, they argued over who got to tell me about the spiral staircase and the building that looked all wavy and the huge Ferris wheel and roller coasters at Tibidabo.

I couldn’t wait till the semester was over, and the very next day I was on the plane to Barcelona, this time to stay out the remainder of the two years. The housekeeper greeted me with exclamations of either welcome or relief, but she was joyful, and so were Patrick and the children.

What happened was that we all grew closer—Patrick and Patricia and Tyler and I. Patrick loved his work, Patricia had a couple of Catalonian boys flirting with her, and Tyler blossomed into a lanky, self-confident kid who drew his own map of our new neighborhood, adding streets as he discovered them. Each day I could see his little world expanding there on paper. For my part, I recorded our adventures as a personal travelogue and enjoyed the family’s response when I read them aloud at night.

Patricia and I bought a traditional Spanish outfit for her—the
embroidered skirt, fringed shawl, and lace mantilla to wear over her hair. I took her picture to enclose with our cards at Christmas, and we bought a toreador costume for Tyler. He consented to put it on but, in typical Tyler fashion, insisted on posing cross-legged, sitting in the grass beneath an actual cork tree, with a flower in his mouth, like Ferdinand, the peaceful bull—and what better message to send at Christmas time, anyway?

Because none of our close friends were here, Patrick and I relied more on each other, asking each other questions in Catalan, exploring together on weekends, eating paella, shopping for sangria pitchers or chocolates or fans for gifts. Our time there seemed more like an extended vacation. Patricia wanted to attend a Catalan school her second year, and she was so warmly received that it seemed the perfect thing to do—she could catch up if she fell behind once we got home. And it was wonderful when Les and Stacy came for Christmas.