It was a Van Meer Rhetorical Question followed by the Van Meer Pregnant Pause, so I simply waited, pressing the receiver against the bottom of my chin. I'd heard him use such oratorical devices before, the few times I'd gone to watch him lecture in one of the big amphitheaters with carpeted walls and buzzing light. The last time I'd heard him speak, on Civil Warfare at Cheswick College, I remember, quite distinctly, I was horrified. Without a doubt, I thought to myself, as Dad went on frowning center stage (occasionally breaking into a variety of showy gestures, as if he were a deranged Mark Antony or manic King Henry VIII), everyone could see, plain as day, Dad's embarrassing truth: he wanted to be Richard Burton. Butt then I really looked around, and noticed every student (even the one on the third row who'd shaved an anarchy symbol into the back of his head) was behaving like a feeble white moth spiraling through Dad's light.
"America is asleep," Dad boomed. "you've heard it before -- perhaps by a homeless man you passed on the street and he smelled like a Porta-John so you held your breath and pretended he was a mailbox. Well, is it true? Is America hibernating? Getting forty winks, a bit of shut-eye? We're a country of boundless opportunity. Aren't we? Well, I know the answer's yes if you happen to be a CEO. Last year, the average compensation for chief Executive Officer soared 26 percent, compared to blue-collara salaries inching up a pitiable 3 percent. And the fattest paycheck of all? Mr. Stuart Burnes, CEO of Remco Integrated Technologies. Tell him what he's won, Bob! One-hundred-sixteen-point-four million dollars for a year's labor."
Here Dad crossed his arms and looked fascinated.
"What's Stu doing to warrent such a windfall, a salaray that would feed all of Sudan? Sadly, not much. Integrated missed fourth-wuarter earnings. Stock prices fell 19 percent. Yet board members picked up the tab for the crew on Stu's hundred-foot yacht, also paid the Christie's curator fees for his fourteen-hundred-piece Impressionist art collection."
Here Dad inclined his head as if hearing faint, far-off music.
"So this is greed. And is it good? Should we listen to a man wearing suspenders? With many of you, when you come and chat with me during office hours, I sense an air of inevitability, not of defeat, but resignation, that such iniquities are simply the way it is and they can't be changed. This is America and what we do is grab as much cash as we can before we all die of heart disease. But do we want our lives to be a bonus round, a Money Grab? Call me an optimist, but I don't think so. I think we hope for something more meaningful. But what do we do? Start a revolution?"
Dad asked this of a small brown-haired girl wearing a pink T-shirt in the front row. She nodded apprehensively.
"Are you out of your mind?"
Instantly, she turned six shades pinker than the T-shirt.
"You might have heard of various imbeciles who waged war on the U.S. government in the sixties and seventies. The New Communist Left. The Weather Underground. The Students for the Blah-Blah-No-One-Takes-You-Seriously. In fact, I think they were worse than Stu, because they smashed, not monogamy, but hope for productive protest and objection in this country. With their delusional self-importance, ad hoc violence, it became easy to dismiss anyone voicing dissatisfaction with the way things are as freaky flower chiles.
"No, I contend we should take a cue from one of the greatest American movements of our time -- a revolution in itself really, nobly warring as it does against time and gravity, also accountable for the most widespread perpetuation of alien-looking life forms on Earth. Cosmetic surgery. That's right ladies and gentlemen. America is in dire need of a nip-tuck. No mass uprising, no widespread revolution. Rather, an eye lift here. A boob job there. Some well-placed liposuction. A minuscule cut behind the ears, tug it up, staple it into place -- confidentiality is key -- and viola, everyone will be saying we look mahvelous. Greater elasticity. No sags. For those of you who are laughing, you'll see precisely what I mean when you do the reading for Tuesday, the treatise in Littleton's Anatomy of Materialism, 'The Nightwatchmen and Mythical Principles of Practical Change.' And Eidelstein's 'Repressions of Imperialist Powers.' And my own meager pice, 'Blind Dates: Advantages of Silent Civil War.' Do not forget. You will be pop-quizzed."
Only when Dad, with a small self -satisfied smile, closed his worn leather folder full of chicken-scratch notes (placed on the lectern for effect, because he never looked at them), removed the linen handkerchief from his jacket pocket, and delicately touched it to his forehead (we'd driven through Nevada's Andamo Desert in the middle of July and he hadn't needed to blot his forehead like that a single time), only then did anyone mover. Some of the kids grinned in disbelief, others walked out of the lecture hall with surprised faces. A few were starting to page through the Littleton book.
Now, Dad answered his own question, his voice low and scratchy in the receiver.
"We are under an invincible blindness as to the true and real nature of things," he said.
