Red Clover (6 page)

“Thanks a heap.”

“I’m sorry. What did they get you with?”

“Public lewdness. And they asked me for the name of my school. Why would they need to know that?”

“What’s your school’s policy on students having an arrest record?”

“I have no idea. This may come as a surprise to you, but that subject has never come up for me before now.”

“I don’t blame you for being mad at me. I never should have taken you there.”

“You got that right. And you could have called me over the weekend…you know, to see if I made it out okay. I would have called you, but I don’t have your number.”

She jotted down her number and handed it to him.

I don’t need it now.

He thought he knew her. Now he wasn’t so sure who she was—a friend who panicked and ran or just some self-absorbed girl who couldn’t care less about what happened to him. He didn’t know if he was supposed to forgive someone for doing something like that.

Lee and Robin were cordial to each other as they finished up their internship that summer. The charges against Lee were dropped, and Robin offered to compensate him for any expenses he had incurred due to the arrest. He declined the offer. They shook hands on their last day and wished each other well.

* * *

Back at Cornell, Lee was assigned to the same private dorm room he’d had the previous year. When he arrived, an envelope with his name on it was waiting for him, summoning him to the office of the dean of students.

Lee’s stomach churned as he walked across campus to get there. Since the lewdness charges had been dropped, he didn’t think that was why he was being summoned, but he couldn’t think of any other reason.

Dean Larsen was an older man, with an expressionless face and imposing demeanor. His six-and-a-half-foot frame towered over Lee.

He led Lee into his office. “Sit down, son,” he said to him.

The dean stared at Lee for several seconds and then looked down at the open file in front of him.

“Public lewdness.” He crossed his arms over his protruding belly and peered at Lee over his reading glasses. “What do you have to say for yourself?”

“Those charges were dropped, sir.”

“I didn’t ask you that.”

“A bar I was in was raided. Maybe there were people in there guilty of lewd behavior. I don’t know. But I wasn’t one of them. They just hauled us all to the station.”

“You go to Rosco’s often?”

“That was my first time.”

“How was it for you?”

Lee felt his throat tighten. “I was clearly outside of my normal element, sir. A so-called friend invited me there as her guest. I had no idea what I was getting into. And I can assure you I was not involved in any lewd conduct. That’s not me. Never has been nor will it ever be.”

“But being there does demonstrate poor judgment at the very least. Wouldn’t you agree?”

“Yes, I agree.”

“Are you aware of the school’s admission policy on applicants with arrest records?”

“No, but I can guess what it is.”

“When was the last time you read our Student Code of Conduct manual?”

“I read it at the beginning of my first year here.”

“I suggest you read it again.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I could recommend a suspension to the Disciplinary Committee, and given who’s on that committee, I’d say your chances of being suspended are pretty good. You could get up to a year.”

“But the charges were dropped.”

“Doesn’t matter.” He looked down at the file. “Says here the case was dismissed after you were arrested.” He leaned back in his chair. “Or I could recommend a year’s probation. Of course, probation means exclusion from all extracurricular activities.”

“Like attending football games and such?” Lee couldn’t care less about football.

“Like you’re off the karate team for the year.”

What?

“Sir, once you’re kicked off the team, you can’t rejoin.” He was one belt away from a ninth-degree black belt, the highest skill level attainable.

“Maybe you should have thought about that before you went into that fag bar.”

Lee stared at him, not believing he had heard right.

“Is your so-called friend a Cornell student?”

“No, sir.” As perturbed as he was with the way Robin had abandoned him at the nightclub in favor of her own self-interests, he wasn’t going to say anything that would vilify her for being different.

“Were there any other Cornell students there with you?”

“Not with me.”

“But they were there?”

“Not that I’m aware of. I was there for only—”

“Do you really think it’s relevant how long you were there?”

“No, sir.”

“I’m going to recommend probation. You’ll hear from us in writing.”

“With all due respect, sir, I don’t—”

“Wanna go for suspension?”

“No, sir.”

“Good day, Mr. Winekoop.”

* * *

When Lee found it hard to concentrate on his studies in his third week of the new quarter, he knew it was more than just a matter of getting back into the swing of things after having had the summer off. And he was having other problems: constant nausea, lack of sleep, and a general feeling of inadequacy and helplessness—shades of his childhood he had thought were behind him. By week five of the ten-week quarter, he was failing most of his classes.

Following the student counselor’s advice, he dropped two of his six classes, agreeing that it was too heavy a course load but knowing in his heart that wasn’t the problem. After all, he had carried the same number of classes, in addition to karate, the previous year and had maintained a 3.0 GPA, a requirement to remain on the karate team.

He missed karate. On his way from his dorm room to class, Lee occasionally stopped by the exhibition room to watch his former teammates sparring. His longing to be back in it made him wonder if he would have provided the dean with Robin’s name and school if he would have lessoned punishment. He thought about calling her to let her know that, but in the end, decided against it.

Karate had given him that smidgen of self-confidence—more than he had ever had before. It had allowed him to void all thoughts from his head during performances except for two things—responding to his opponent’s moves and finding opportunities to make his own. That sort of mindfulness was such a welcome reprieve from his usual insecurities.

Now that was gone.

He considered dropping out of school. Maybe he was just fooling himself about being able to get a college degree. Maybe he was still caught in that trap of trying to meet someone else’s expectations. The more he thought about it, the more sense it made to drop out. He had no plan for after he graduated, so what was the point? Why postpone the inevitable?

Lee stopped by the karate exhibition room one last time. Instead of the usual sparring going on, the room had been set up with hundreds of folding chairs and a dais. Students were streaming toward the building. He walked toward the front door to check it out.

“Who’s speaking today?” he asked one of the students rushing into the building. He ignored Lee. He had to ask several others before getting an answer.

“Grandmaster Tatsuo Suzuki,” someone shouted at him.

Lee was aware of him—anyone who studied Wado-Ryu was aware of him. One of the youngest men to achieve the highest rank attainable in Wado-Ryu, Susuki had gone on to form the first Wado Federation in England and had been instrumental in spreading Wado-Ryu throughout Europe. A scholar of the Zen doctrine, the man was highly revered in the karate community.

Tickets would be required, of that Lee was certain. Determined to get in, he hid out in the men’s room until the nearest half-hour on the clock and then went through the now-closed double doors of the exhibition room. He stood in the back of the room and waited for the lecture to begin.

Suzuki’s topic was the significance of fear. Fear arises out of helplessness, he explained, and when we feel helpless, our instinct is to run. But if you train yourself to transform all that valuable energy into a positive motivating force, it turns into self-confidence that allows you to face the fear. Suzuki defined anxiety as nothing more than drawn-out fear. Lee had never looked at it that way. Suzuki went on to say that anxiety arises from the mind’s perception of stress as a danger to the body, causing the body to respond by going into panic mode—a lot of wasted energy.

Lee had heard ideas like these expressed before, but for some reason, they hadn’t completely resonated with him until now.

An hour and a half later, on his way back to his dorm room, Lee stopped by the Office of Student Affairs to inquire about getting help.

With the benefit of a private tutor, Lee raised his GPA to 3.3 by the end of the second quarter, and that was after adding back the two classes he had dropped the previous quarter.

* * *

With graduation less than a year away, Lee knew he had to have a plan for what to do next, whether to continue with more schooling or something else, before he visited his parents during spring break. During the taxi ride home from O’Hare Airport, he practiced what he planned to tell them, ignoring the taxi driver’s periodic curious looks in his rear-view mirror each time he tweaked his speech.

 “It may be a long shot, but I’ve applied to Cornell’s grad school,” he told his parents after they had engaged in a suitable amount of small talk. “I can’t get in with my current GPA, but if I can score at least in the ninety-fifth percentile on the GRE, they’ll let me in on a conditional admission.” Lee had always tested exceptionally well—it was class participation, written assignments, and class presentations that typically brought down his grades.

“More gardening?” his father asked, with more than a hint of sarcasm.

“Henry! If you would take the time to understand what horticulture is about...and stop being so ignorant.”

It was just like his father to ignore the fact he was about to graduate from college, so his father’s reaction didn’t surprise him. What surprised him was his mother calling him ignorant.

“I do apologize,” his father said in an arrogant tone. “Your mother is right. I have no right to criticize. Why don’t you tell me about all the stimulating facets of horticulture so I am enlightened.”

“Maybe some other time, Father.”

* * *

Lee studied the entire summer, scored in the ninety-seventh percentile on the GRE, and was accepted into Cornell’s graduate school’s Department of Horticulture. Following in Dr. Rad’s footsteps, he decided to concentrate on plant genetics.

The summer after his first year, he interned again for Dr. Rad. One day, as they were readying some slides in the lab, Lee asked the doctor if he knew much about the genetic modification of tobacco plants being done in Holland.

“It’s fascinating work,” he responded. “I’m envious of their freedoms.”

“How so?”

“You see what I’m up against here. The research is expensive, and funding is a constant problem. The money the Dutch earmark for this kind of research is significantly more than they will ever make available here. In fact, I’m not sure how much longer I will be able to continue. I try to stay six months ahead of the game. It’s the best I can do.”

In the course of their work together, Lee picked Dr. Rad’s brain as much as he could. He maintained copious notes from their discussions. Dr. Rad’s most fascinating research involved the study of cancer in the plant kingdom. The doctor was sure that once they found a cure for crown gall disease in plants, they would be on the way to finding the cure for cancer in humans. For this research, Dr. Rad preferred to use red clover, a perennial herb particularly susceptible to crown gall.

Two other interns worked alongside Lee that summer—a foreign exchange student from Guatemala whose English was barely understandable, and a bookwormish young man who had even worse social skills than Lee. No one joked about Dr. Rad’s absentmindedness. No one went to dinner with anyone else. They didn’t even make chitchat with each other. Lee reverted to being socially withdrawn with constant feelings of restlessness and nervousness—feelings he had thought were behind him.

Lee thought about Robin often that summer. In spite of the ill will he still felt toward her, he couldn’t get her out of his mind, and that bothered him. The fact that he had dreams about her confused him even more. When he had a dream about making love to her, he called his childhood psychologist, Dr. Jerry.

“Dr. Jerry, I realize you specialize in counseling children, but since we have such a long history together, I wonder if I could talk to you about something that’s been bothering me.”

“Of course, Lee. What’s on your mind?”

Lee told the doctor about Robin and the disturbing thoughts and dreams he was having about her.

“Tell me about her good points.”

“For starters, she accepted me for who I am from the beginning and continued to even after she got to know me.”

“Anything else?”

“She didn’t appear to have any expectations of me.”

“Go on.”

“I felt comfortable with her, and...I think I see where this is going.”

Dr. Jerry laughed. “Tell me where it’s going.”

“Consciously, I’m confused with why I’m thinking about someone who I would never be with—she’s a homosexual, has a wild side to her, and can be inconsiderate. But what I’m really drawn to are her good points.”

“Not bad. Let me add a couple of things to that analysis. Sometimes we are drawn to relationships we can’t have. Why? Because they’re safe. Afraid of relationships? Then go for someone you can’t have.”

“Because then there’s no chance of having to face that fear.”

“Yes, and even if the unlikely relationship does take off, and it fails, there’s a logical explanation for it.”

“All tied up in a nice, neat little package.”

“Mm-hm.”

“Using avoidance to maintain the symptoms of anxiety.”

“So you really were listening to me some of the time back then,” he said, laughing.

“Some of it sunk in.”

“As I recall, we talked a lot about your childhood fears. Most people stop identifying themselves as a child when they’re faced with responsibilities that scared them as a child. Facing your fears—allowing them in, understanding them, learning from them—is a sign of maturity and helps you transform into an adult.