Letters to the Editor : Bayard Godsave
OCTOBER, 8th 19—
To Whom It May Concern:
Most of you know me, or know my family. My wife Renee, a member in good standing of the PTA for going on seven years now. My daughter Claire, and my son Scott, who has gotten into his share of trouble over the years, but who is, as those of you who know him are well aware, at heart a good kid. This letter before you is in regards to Proposition 520, the approval—or, hopefully, blockage—of the appropriation of village funds toward what’s come to be called the “Downtown Revitalization Project.”
The DRP is the brainchild of Bob Hannity, the self-proclaimed Tri-County Home Appliance King, and calls for the razing of nearly one half of our current downtown area in order to make room for, among other things, a parking ramp, new Village Offices (And I ask you, What’s wrong with our old Village Offices? As my father used to say, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”), and a “high density dining and commercial outlet,” essentially a strip mall, which we are told will yield “unparalleled cultural and economic dividends.”
As many of you know, Mr. Hannity and myself were business partners for the better part of 20 years, until the two of us had a falling out, the details of which I will not go into here—let me just say that our disagreement was over an issue of a moral nature, that it was ethical, and leave it at that. So I know first hand what the word of Bob Hannity is worth.
Years ago, his son, Chip, was on the same Pee-Wee Hockey team as my Scotty. He was what is often called a “hockey parent,” and was eventually banned from attending games after running out onto the ice—well, “running” probably isn’t the right word here, it was more of a “duck-walk” really—whereupon he tackled the ref and, red faced and screaming (“Open your f***ing eyes, Ref!” he kept yelling), he beat the man with his own helmet. Play, by this time had stopped, and the children all looked on, his own son amongst them, shocked it seemed at what awaited them in adulthood.
I took a drive out to West Davenport this past weekend. Do you remember, my friends, ten years ago, when they first broke ground and began erecting the Outlet Mall there? How excited they all were? How excited all of us here were as well? Like most of you, I’m sure, I don’t get over there as much as I used to, and when I do, I’m usually in and out quickly. When was the last time any of you took a trip into the town of West Davenport proper?
As you travel along 73, you can see the outlet mall from as much as three miles out, and after you wind slowly down the exit ramp you’re dumped right into the middle of it. Recall, if you will, all that talk of the business the mall would bring in, to the community at large, the revenue it would generate for the town and her citizens—we hear echoes of such talk these days, do we not? The mall thrives, certainly, benefiting as it does from its location, as do the chain restaurants immediately surrounding it. But beyond that, as you follow Broadway Boulevard south, lie vacant storefronts, long stretches of empty and emptying houses, a town quiet and lifeless, like some cast off shell, the exoskeleton left behind after the insect has molted. Is this, then, the price we pay for progress? Is this, truly, what we want for our town?
Let me share with you this memory I have of downtown. I am ten years old. My mother and I have just stepped out onto Main Street, after having taken in a matinee at the Paladium, on a brilliant Sunday afternoon, and everything for a moment is alight like phosphorous. On Sundays, patrons of the Paladium are given free China with admittance, and my mother is two pieces away from completing her set. As we walk, I cradle our new gravy boat in my hands, stare into its blue glaze, a blue so dark, so chilling, it must be unreal, a blue that can only exist somewhere far away, at the very bottom of Lake Superior perhaps, or in the farthest reaches of space. And my stomach turns as I picture myself falling into that glaze, plunging, tumbling to its depths—of course, I know now, some forty-seven years later, that that intensity, the depth of that blue, was the result of a process that would leave in the glaze itself a trace amount of radium… but what did we know then of cancer? Of those things our bodies keep hidden from us until it’s too late? Of those things that bloom up inside of us like nightmare flowers? What did we know then of such things?
It’s gone now, the gravy boat, broken or lost or sold off years ago at some rummage sale. But there are times, and I don’t know why—who knows why or how those memories that haunt us choose to do so?—when, with eyes closed, it’s as though the inside of my eyelids are glazed with that very same blue, and I’m back there, with my mother, staring into it, the blue China glaze, my ten-year-old reflection staring back at me.
I don’t know, it’s silly I suppose, really, the idea that, if the Paladium still stands, somehow all of this will remain long after I’m gone—no, I know I take it with me, that that’s the real tragedy, that there’s so much we must take with us, and it’s those things that we wish to leave behind, those things we wish to have carry on after us, that are bound fastest to us. Forgive me my sentimentality—I am entering that age where it just starts coming over you, starts to catch you off guard—I’m sorry—but really, can you imagine your own children, some twenty, thirty years from now, looking back on that walk—as if any of us actually walks anymore—they shared with you, home from the Papa John’s? From the Futon Parlor? From the Eastside City Quadplex?
Sincerely,
Herb Nordquist
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November 6th, 19—
To Whom It May Concern:
As many of you know, as those who read the Police Blotter in this paper are, I’m sure, aware, my son Scotty has recently run into a bit of legal trouble. On October 31st, Halloween night, he was arrested and charged with possession of a controlled substance. Marijuana. A thing like that affects so many people, more than just the offender, as my own family can now attest.
We sat quietly around the dinner table on the night following Scotty’s arrest, none of us, it seemed, wanting to be the first to bring up the subject. My Wife, Renee, had made a lovely meal of baked chicken and asparagus and salt potatoes. She ate slowly, her eyes cast down to her plate. Scotty slouched in his chair and moved his food around without really eating it. It was my daughter, Claire who finally spoke. She’s fourteen and smarter than I am, and still wrapped up in what other people think of her—I’m sure you can remember what it’s like at that age.
“You know, Scotty, it’s real great you decided to become a burnout.”
“Shut up, Claire,” Scotty said.
Claire stabbed at a piece of asparagus, dipped it gingerly in the little pool of Hollandaise sauce at the edge of her plate, and looked at it without eating. She so closely resembles her mother, looks almost exactly as Renee did when I first met her, that it sometimes scares me a little bit. She has that subtle meanness, that hard edge to her that Renee had too, before we had children, before we were both forced to become less selfish.
“No. Really,” Claire went on. “It’s totally great to be the girl whose brother is a druggie. Thanks.”
“Your brother isn’t a druggie,” I said then. “He made a mistake.”
Claire dropped her fork to her plate. “Is that what you think, Dad? That this was just a one time thing? That he was unlucky and got busted? He gets high in the backyard, you know. When you’re still at work, he goes out behind the pool and gets high.”
Scotty stood. “Shut the f*** up, Claire.”
“I can see him from my room.”
Renee had set a platter in the middle of the table, and there were three or so chicken breasts left lined up on it, and a fork and a steak knife for serving. Scotty grabbed the knife and held it up, little whorls of grease still clung to the serrations. “I’ll f***ing kill you, Claire,” he said.
My wife and I were standing now, speaking at the same time. “What is the matter with you?” my wife was saying. “Give me the knife, Scotty,” I was saying. “Give me the knife. Your sister loves you, and so do we.” “Oh, God, Scotty. My Scotty,” Renee was saying. She was in tears now. Our family has become for her, for all of us, a source of pain. But even then, as my son, who has problems, but who is a good kid, threatened my daughter with a steak knife, I knew that none of us would turn our backs on any of these people here, that we loved one another all the same.
Eventually, I got the knife from Scotty’s hand and he fell sobbing into the arms of my wife. It felt so light, so insignificant, the knife. I looked at Claire, who looked at me, and then seemed all at once to come out of some sort of daze. She looked at Scotty and Renee, then back at me. “There’s something wrong with you people,” she said. “All of you.” And with that she backed slowly out of the dining room and went upstairs and locked herself in her room. We didn’t see her again until the following night, around dinner, when she came downstairs again, prepared herself a plate, and went back up to her room. “I don’t feel safe here,” she said as she was walking away, her back to us.
I know none of this explains to you why Scotty did what he did, none of it excuses his bringing drugs into our community. But I want you to see what’s happening to us as a result of his actions. I want you to look at the reality of the situation, to see it in a way that would be otherwise impossible, if you were simply to read the police blotter, and nothing else. I want you to know that a family is being torn apart. My Scotty isn’t bad. He’s frustrated, and he’s confused, and despite all that, we love him a great deal. So please, don’t pass judgment on him, or on my family, until you’ve at least considered that.
Sincerely,
Herb Nordquist
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November 8th, 19—
To Whom It May Concern:
To many of you, my opposition to the Downtown Revitalization Project comes as no surprise. Most of my friends, no doubt, have noticed my erratic behavior in weeks past, have had the misfortune of mentioning the DRP in my presence and finding themselves trapped for the better part of a half hour as I ranted, on and on, without stop. To all of you, I am truly sorry. I am particularly sorry to you, Mrs. Vitale. I’m sorry for how I behaved in the Pick-n-Save the other day, when you said, simply as a means of making conversation, that you’d heard somewhere that the DRP might mean we’d be getting a Pier 1 and a Bennigan’s.
“Have you ever had the soup and Bennigan’s?” you asked.
I have not—though I do not doubt that it is, as you said, “delightful.” At any rate, I really flew off the handle with you, and for that I wish to apologize. I’m sorry that I made you so uncomfortable that you left your half-empty cart in the middle of Aisle Six—right there in front of Oriental Foods—and bypassed the check-out as you made for the nearest exit, the automatic doors donging as you hurried, almost jogged, through them. I am sorry too that I followed you out into the parking lot, all the way to your car, berating you all the while in front of our friends and neighbors as we walked—and just for the record: I don’t really think you’re what’s wrong with America, and I don’t think you would have us bulldoze and pave over our National Parks either. I can only imagine what I must have looked like to you: crazed, hair wild, my hands pressed white against your passenger’s-side window, flecks of spit plocking against the glass as I shouted. I am sorry, Mrs. Vitale, and I can only hope that you will find it somewhere in your heart to forgive me.
But to all of you, I say this: Consider the consequences. Tomorrow, as you stand in the voting booths, vote with your hearts. Vote to preserve the character of our town. Vote “No” on Proposition 520.
Sincerely,
Herb Nordquist
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November 25th, 19—
To Whom It May Concern:
I suppose I have to concede defeat. The town has voted, and voted in favor of progress. And I’ve simply got to accept that—I have come, actually, to accept it. I do not wish to be bitter in my defeat. I do not want to hold onto this, to let it into myself, to allow it to establish itself as part of me, as I have so many things in the past. That’s no way to live—I know that now.
I’ve spent so much of my life consumed with hatred. I’ve had so much hate for so long, and lately, it seems, I’ve been directing that hatred at the person of Bob Hannity. I’ve hated him for the chrome on his truck, for the square footage of his store, for the fact that his pool is an in-ground, rather than above-ground, pool. I’ve hated the way his voice booms in the Bonnaventure Café, his cell phone to his ear and all other conversation drowned out beneath him. I’ve hated his coaching philosophy and his annual Labor Day barbecue. I’d run into him sometimes at the bank or Kohl’s or Culver’s, and I’d spend days—literally DAYS—contemplating, meditating on my burning, chemical hatred for the man, a hatred that would just make my limbs go rigid, and worm down into the pit of my stomach. But I’m through with that.
It all came to me late last night. I’d gotten out of bed—I sleep so little these days anyway—and wandered down into the living room. A few years ago, we re-decorated so that everything in it is one shade of gray or another: gray wallpaper, gray sectional sofa, gray carpet, gray smoked-glass coffee table, gray flat-screen TV; Renee has taken to putting out dried flowers and plants in cut-glass vases, and to me they look, you guessed it, gray. In the darkness everything faded and blended together, and it felt like being in a blank room. I stood there staring into nothing, into the blankness of it all, and I was thinking how I might finally sway the people of this town, how I might force their deaf ears to listen—for a moment I actually contemplated chaining myself to the bike rack in front of the old Scoville building, of placing myself between the bulldozers and it—and that’s when it came to me, it came to me like a flash, like a fiery wheel in the sky:
LET IT GO, HERB
So that’s what I did. I let it go, and all at once this lightness came over me—do you remember when you were a child, and you would stand in a doorway with your arms at your sides and push your wrists hard against the frame for thirty seconds or so, and then step out and your arms would rise up away from you, entirely out of your control: imagine that over your whole body.
I’m ready. This town has chosen to march bravely into the future, and I too am ready to face that future now. I’m no longer scared; I’m prepared to meet whatever comes next. Oh, this must all seem so maudlin to you, it must seem crazy, I’m sure. That’s okay. Some day you’ll get it. To each of us, at one point or another, all of it shall be revealed. Just wait. Eventually, you’ll see what I mean.
Sincerely,
Herb Nordquist
Bayard Godsave is currently a PhD candidate in UW-Milwaukee’s Creative Writing Program, working on the completion of his dissertation. A lover of books, he can intermittingly be found at the legendary Harry W Schwartz Bookshop in Milwaukee, shelving books or secretly reading at the register. His name is authentic, and will be famous someday. His work has appeared in The Cream City Review, The Carolina Quarterly, Cimarron Review, and Red Weather Literary Magazine.