Regardless of the cost, I was all set to make every home game for the next two years just to see her.
Damn these groups! They get their teeth in you and won’t let go until you’re a carbon copy of them.
Desperate to find out what this all means, I call Amy and launch into a feverish description of what Sarah has been doing.
“It just sounds like they’re trying to make her feel guilty about being who she is,” I say, without letting Amy get a word in edgewise.
“In one paragraph she goes from screaming about the cosmetics industry to pornography.
I don’t get it. It sounds like if you’re beautiful, you should burn yourself at the stake to make these women happy. What the hell’s going on up there?”
“Whoa, boy!” Amy commands, giggling at my hyperbole.
“I suspect you’re like a lot of people, including women, and are pretty confused by what’s going on today in what passes for the women’s movement. I’ll grant you it’s pretty weird. At one end you’ve got
people like Catharine MacKinnon, a law professor, who truly believes there is a relationship between pornography and violence against women and would ban it; but, then there’re women like Camille Paglia who say that women are buying into a victim psychology that wrongly defines us as weak and powerless. I can identify especially with the part about her physical appearance. I’ve spent my whole life trying to look, as my mother says, perky and cute, since I don’t have a chance of looking like the Sarahs of this world. As a case in point I’ve barely eaten anything since I gorged myself Saturday night, so I know how Sarah feels.”
“But she’s never been fat a day in her life!” I say, remembering all the times when Sarah complained about her appearance although she looked perfect.
“Society has made us worry about it constantly,” Amy responds.
“You’d have to be a woman to really under stand it.”
I sip at my beer, which I have brought into the kitchen.
“I don’t see why she quit cheerleading,” I gripe.
“That seemed harmless enough to me. It’s not like they got out there naked.”
“I admire her for it,” Amy claims.
“It took guts to give it up. Most of us don’t do anything but talk.”
A lot of people are better off that way, too.
“When this dies down,” I predict, “she’ll regret it.”
Amy says, quietly, “It sounds to me like you don’t take Sarah too seriously.”
“I do, too,” I reply hastily.
“It’s just that I don’t want her to be overly influenced and do things
she’ll wish she hadn’t” “Gideon, you want her to make mistakes you approve of and not her own. Don’t forget she’s twenty years old.”
That must sound old to Amy.
“She’s still a child,” I respond
“I know her. She’s like a lamb being led to the slaughter.”
“How ridiculous!” she says affectionately.
“I forget how melodramatic you are.”
“When it comes to Sarah,” I confess, “I don’t have much perspective. I guess it’s just that I’ve got her close to being grown up, and I don’t want her to blow it.”
“Are you crazy?” Amy says, sounding almost smug.
“You know there’s no magic age when humans stop screwing up. Look at us.”
In the last couple of days Amy and I have talked on the phone, and I have probably confided in her more than I should. I find myself telling her about Rosa, Sarah, even discussing my relationship with Rainey. She seems wise beyond her years, but it comes as no surprise to me that most women have more insight into relationships than men. But, as she says, it doesn’t keep them from messing up their lives. Her abortion was a case in point. Only last night she told me about an affair she’d had with one of the men in the prosecutor’s office when she worked there.
He was terrible, but she’d fallen head over heels in love with him.
“I thought you’d be more sympathetic,” I complain. Rainey, with a daughter older than Sarah, would have been reassuring.
“I am sympathetic to her,” Amy says dryly.
“You don’t want her to grow as a woman because it threatens you. I think you should be proud that she’s involved in some thing more than
boys or cheerleading. She’s trying to deal with things that are important to women, and she’s willing to challenge you. Lots of girls her age would keep their mouths shut and their hands out.”
“Sarah’s never done that,” I say.
“She’s always been on my case.”
“Poor Gideon!” Amy teases.
“What a hard life he has!”
“Wait’ll you have children,” I say irritably.
“It’s not as easy to raise them as you apparently think.”
“Don’t be such a baby!” Amy says uncharitably.
“Sarah’s doing great. If you have any sense, you’ll sup port her in this.”
I’m ready to end this conversation and am rescued by Woogie, who is scratching at the front door. I hang up after telling her that I will call her when I get back. We’re supposed to go out again this weekend.
While I am giving Woogie his dinner (a good reason not to be a dog), the phone rings again.
“Mr. Page,” Dade says, his voice anxious, “I’ve been trying to get hold of you. I got something in my mailbox telling me there’s gonna be a hearing on Friday at ten” “Who’s it from?” I ask, thinking how inevitable it was that the university would get involved. Despite the signs, like an idiot, I had harbored the hope that somebody would make the decision to let it be resolved in court. I should have started preparing for this last week.
“A woman named Clarise Dozier. It says she’s the Co ordinator of Judicial Affairs. It says to contact her for a pre hearing conference where she’ll explain my rights.”
“I want you to call her tomorrow first thing and tell her you and I’ll be in her office at ten. Find out where to go.”
“Am I gonna be kicked out of school?” Dade asks.
“Can they do that?”
He is scared. I can hear it in his voice. That damn group WAR. The university couldn’t stand the heat. Yet, if I were the father of the girl, I’d be screaming they should have done this five minutes after criminal charges were filed.
“No,” I tell him, “you’re not going to be kicked out of school. Let Coach Carter or one of the coaches know what’s going on. I’ll call you about nine thirty tomorrow morning and find out where to meet you.
By the way,” I add, trying to relax him, “you had a great game against Tennessee. Think y’all can beat Georgia?”
“I don’t know,” Dade mumbles.
He sounds as if he is in shock.
“Listen to me,” I say sharply.
“Until somebody in authority says otherwise, you’re still on the team. So you have to make the most of it. How you did last Saturday is going to affect some of the people who will be sitting in judgment on you, no matter how much they’ll pretend it doesn’t. I’ll try to get it delayed so that you can keep playing. Maybe we can drag it out until after the season is over. You’ve got to practice and stay focused like you’re playing for the SEC title this weekend, you hear me?”
“Yes, sir,” Dade answers. I can barely hear him.
After he hangs up, I realize I didn’t even ask him what else the notice said. I try to call him back, but his line is busy. It doesn’t matter what the paper says. We both know what can happen. The university can do whatever it wants if it takes the trouble to go through the motions.
Yet, who is really the boss hog? The chancellor? Hell, the governor may be calling the shots for all I know. I fight down a panicky feeling. If he does get kicked out of school, the effort to keep him playing will have backfired.
