Good for the Jews

9. September-December 2006

Chapter Nine September–December 2006 Valerie felt a little sorry for Hyman Clark. He’d struck her as scared, the one time she met him: the measured way he talked, how tightly he gripped his coffee cup, as if it were a ballast in the storm-tossed ship of the high school’s hallway. She wondered how conscious his errors had been, if he knew he’d gone after minorities in the school system. For there had, indeed, been a pattern to the faculty members who were denied merit raises: the two Jews at Sudbury, the Cuban Spanish teacher, the African American woman in guidance. Hyman said it was just a coincidence . Hyman’s life seemed dry and unhappy. He had no children. His wife—who wrote crossword puzzles for a living—never came out with him. She had some social phobia and a bowel disorder. How odd to know these two things about her. The one time Valerie had met her was at a New Year’s party at the university’s art museum. Hyman’s wife had been drinking too much—and she clearly wasn’t a drinker, was just trying to loosen herself up. She’d latched onto Valerie, then started to confess ridiculous things: that she had a recurrent dream about throwing up shit, that she’d wanted children but had been traumatized by miscarrying on an Omaha bus, blood running down her legs and everyone stepping away from her, as if she spontaneously bled just to shock others. 259 Valerie had worried about Mrs. Clark as she told these stories. Mrs. Clark! Valerie didn’t even know the woman’s ‹rst name. She’d been wearing an A-line skirt, thick brown shoes and a white blouse with a Peter Pan collar and a ribbon at the neck, a girlish out‹t. Not that Valerie was on Hyman’s side. But she saw how he lived for his job and, too, how readily people took to the idea of an evildoer, how nicely another’s guilt absolved one. The newspaper headlines were accurate and damning, without necessarily resolving the matter: “Hyman Clark Denies Wrongdoing,” “ADL Cites ‘Code Words’ for Jewish,” “Minorities at Sudbury Denied Raises,” “Hyman Clark Calls History Teacher ‘A Woody Allen.’” And then the trial started. On the stand, HoHo Coombs admitted to setting the ‹re. There was no point in denying it, given all the evidence against him. But he said he hadn’t wanted to hurt Brandi Carter. He thought the synagogue was empty. He was sick of how the Jews got everything. And who told him that the Jews got everything? Why that, he said, would be Hyman Clark. Hyman Clark had taught him a lot of things about America and the rights of white people. He showed him how certain people talked about their rights, but what they were really doing was getting special treatment, ‹nding a way to keep the white man down. And those swastikas on the synagogue last fall? Yeah, HoHo had done that. At Hyman ’s instruction. Hyman had even told him where to buy the boots he was wearing. There was a “For Sale” sign outside of the Clarks’ home. Valerie supposed there’d be a moving van soon enough and a quiet departure. Any future employer could type Hyman’s name into a computer and ‹nd all he needed to reject Clark. But the Clarks couldn’t leave for good till HoHo’s trial was over. The trial started in September. By October, the newspapers were speculating that Hyman would be named a co-conspirator. Of course, Valerie should stop referring to the fall as the Season of Hate. Of course, of course, of course. But when people rang to ask about the season’s schedule, she actually had to dig her ‹ngernails into her palms to stop herself from blurting out the words. Now they were well into the season. The photography show on torture would open 260 next week. Later in the month, the Hate Plays, speci‹cally geared to high school students, would open. The Center’s book club would be reading David Grossman’s The Yellow Wind. They’d had so many documentary ‹lms to choose from that they were starting a new series—a ‹lm and discussion, the ‹rst Thursday of each month, sometimes with the ‹lmmakers on hand. The theme for the season had been...