Lotty and I were sitting with Max Loewenthal, watching the interview in the back room where Lotty keeps her television. Max, who’s known Lotty practically her whole life, is the executive director of Beth Israel, where Lotty has her surgical privileges. The two have been lovers for many years, but since last fall they’ve become much closer. In a way, I resented not having Lotty to myself as much as I used to, but I like and respect Max.
Over roast chicken and a bottle from Max’s impressive cellar-which I was still too congested to appreciate-we talked idly about a number of things, including Max’s perennial struggle to find a way to bring more paying patients into the hospital. One of his board members had suggested getting designer hospital gowns for affluent patients.
“Great idea,” I applauded. “How can we really tell we’ve got a two-tier health care system if we don’t have outfits that demonstrate it? Armani in a soft gold silk for the privately insured, gray overwashed nylon for the wretched poor.”
Max laughed, but Lotty wasn’t willing to joke about the matter. She uses
her substantial surgical fees to fund a number of health programs for the un-or underinsured, but she’s acutely aware of how small a drop that is in the health care bucket.
I changed the subject hastily, describing my encounters with young Catherine Bayard. Lotty and Max had immigrated to America from Britain in the late fifties. By the time they’d arrived here, the HUAC hearings had pretty well died down, so she and Max didn’t know the names or histories of the key players, but they were interested enough to follow me to the television after dinner. We turned on the nine o’clock news on Channel 13.
To my surprise, the show started not with Olin Taverner’s death, but with the parents’ meeting at Vina Fields that Catherine had mentioned. I wouldn’t have thought that was newsworthy, but I guess angry rich people shouting at each other makes good theater.
The segment opened with Beth Blacksin standing in front of Vina Fields. “This discreet stone facade hides the entrance to a Chicago power institution. It’s here that Grahams, Bayards, Felittis and other Chicagoans whose names spell clout send their children. It’s a mile from the Cabrim Green housing projects, but a light-year from the turmoil of an inner-city school. No gangs, no guns here. But lately this calm building has itself been caught up in turmoil over whether they’ve been harboring not street gangs, but an international terrorist. Parents and administrators have been anguishing over whether student records, including what books students check out of the library, should be open to law enforcement agencies. At the center of this upheaval is an Egyptian dishwasher, Benjamin Sadawi, who disappeared three weeks ago.”
The station showed a photo of the youth in the white shirt and tie Mr. Contreras and I had seen last night. “The Justice Department claims he fled to his terrorist cell’s hideout. They want to examine all school records to see if these might shed some light on his disappearance. The First Freedoms Forum is trying to intervene to keep the justice Department out of school files. We spoke to lawyer Judith Ohana before the meeting. Judith, what’s at stake here?”
A tall, slim woman took the mike with practiced ease. “This is basically a witch-hunt, Beth. If one of the children from this school was in Cairo, and the army came in to confiscate books and papers and computers because of a rumor about a missing dishwasher, everyone in America would
be outraged. That’s what’s happening here: a few parents are fanning the flames of mob hysteria. Do they really want their children’s private thoughts to be the bedtime reading of FBI or INS agents?”
Beth then took us inside the school so we could watch the parents discuss what they wanted school administrators to do. People were screaming at each other with the hearty venom of a hockey game. An angry man came to the center mike to say his daughter was a student at Vina Fields. “My child’s safety is paramount. I won’t have the school sheltering terrorists because of some First Amendment gobbledygook that puts my child’s life at risk.”
Other parents jumped into the fray, then Renee Bayard came to the mike. She was still wearing the red dress, which stood out vividly against the gray suits and ties around her.