Pleasanton was a small town which was quietly turning into a bedroom community for the megalopolis growing nearby. It still managed to retain some of its charm through a fealty to its history. Though it didn’t have many claims to fame, it could boast that the woman in the famous Alfred Eisensteadt photograph, a dental assistant being kissed by one of the returning sailor on V-J Day in Times Square at the end of World War II, had returned to Pleasanton after the war (without that sailor), married, and had become something of the town matriarch. Her name was Elizabeth Miller when the picture was taken. She passed away in the 90s, but her two sons had become pillars of the community. Their names were Maxwell and Robert Birkshire. Max was one of the leading businessmen in town, owning the bowling alley and the movie theater, though his most profitable businesses were the fast food franchises located across the river in the city. Bob was the pastor of the Methodist church, the largest congregation in Pleasanton. As dictated by the town’s size and traditions, these leading figures were obligated to serve either on the city council or the school board, and both had chosen to run for positions on the latter. The only other member of the school board was Mary Patrick, a retired teacher who had earned the love of the town despite her stern demeanor and strict classroom discipline because, after forty years as the only math teacher, she was a unifying presence; everyone had served their time in Mrs. Patrick’s classroom.
Now, in addition to sharing parents and a hometown, Max and Bob were alike in many other ways. Max was a parishioner in Bob’s church, and Bob frequented Max’s bowling alley even more often. But the two men differed in one crucial way, and neither was aware of this distinction because each lacked the knowledge about himself. Bob knew his ability to distinguish colors had been fading, but he was unaware that he’d become completely colorblind. Max had slipped on the ice just a few weeks earlier and cracked his head on the pavement, and while he was being treated for the recurring migraines, no doctor had yet noticed a particular brain damage he’d suffered as a consequence of the fall. Max could no longer identify many shapes.
So the first part of the whole debacle should have been comical. Louise Vandercreek challenged the inclusion of a particular painting which was housed in the glass case outside the art room, and according to the school district’s policies, all such challenges had to be brought before the school board. She’d lodged the formal challenge back in November, but then Louise’s dog got his snout caught in some chicken wire, and she had to rush him off to the vet’s for some stitches, so she couldn’t make it to the December meeting to explain her objection. Since the painting had been on the agenda for three weeks and the planned choir recital had been canceled because of all the ice on the roads, the three members of the board decided to move ahead with the objection issue rather than push it off until the next year’s board calendar.
Ms. Rappaport, the young and timid new art teacher at Pleasanton High, brought the painting up to the podium covered in a white sheet, set it on top without revealing the image, and leaned over the microphone. Her voice was soft and hesitant, and she had trouble looking up at the three people on the stage, though she made an effort. “Mr. Birkshire. Mrs. Patrick. Rev. Birkshire. This is the painting that’s the next item on the agenda. As you know, we had a parent complaint. For obvious privacy reasons, I won’t name the student who painted it. I think it displays a great deal of skill, but I admit the content of the painting is a bit controversial. I don’t want my own biases to … um … color your judgement, so I will just show you the painting and let you decide.” Then, with a flourish that contradicted her mousey voice, Ms. Rappaport whipped the sheet off the painting.
The image under the sheet was not merely composed of a painting. It was a blown up image of Alfred Eisensteadt’s famous black and white photograph, with colored paint applied on top. Done with extreme care to match the shades of gray, the high school artist had matched very dark reds and greens to the darkest parts of the painting, and very light reds and greens to the lightest parts, but these colors were applied selectively along the angle of the young Elizabeth Birkshire nee Miller’s angled body and the crook of the sailor’s arm which held her head, and the shape of the colored portion was quite obviously that of an erect, veiny, gigantic penis. The artist (everyone at school knew it was that goth girl, Judith Molleur) had not done this by accident. She was attempting to comment on the fact that the image, long presented as an icon of celebration and patriotism, was in fact a depiction of sexual assault. This was a very fair critique; Eisensteadt and the sailor (whose identity is still disputed to this day because multiple men proudly claim to be the one in the picture) set up the image and chose a total stranger for the sailor to kiss. Eisensteadt chose Elizabeth because she was pretty and happened to be wearing white, and he knew that would make for a striking contrast. Elizabeth was not consulted in any way. The sailor simply ran up, grabbed her, kissed her, Eisensteadt snapped the picture, and then the men ran off. Elizabeth found herself on magazine covers and in history books being kissed by a total stranger, only the people of Pleasanton knew or cared, and they considered it an honor. Her opinion of the whole affair was never quite clear. Was she merely being humble when asked about it? Was she ashamed? Was she just tired of the attention? She took that secret to her grave. But Judith Molleur saw the image through modern eyes and recognized it for what it was, and she wanted the rest of the school to see it her way, so she chose the vivid reds and greens for her giant penis painting.
Of course, that’s not what the Birkshire brothers saw at all. Bob, by virtue of his colorblindness, saw an almost perfect replica of the famous photograph, with just enough brushstrokes that he could tell it was painted. Max, on the other hand, saw a bright splash of red and green against a mottled grey background in some shape he couldn’t identify, a piece of modern art with a possible Christmas theme. And they might have cleared up their misconceptions quickly enough had the chair of the board, Mrs. Patrick, not spoken first.
She leaned toward her microphone and then shot warning glances at the men on either side of her, the same glare she’d used in her math classes to preempt students she knew were about to speak out of turn. “Alright, before we discuss this, I have to remind everyone that this conversation is on the record in open session. We have a number of bylaws that need to be adhered to as we discuss this matter. First of all, there are laws about student privacy to be considered, so we cannot say anything that might reveal the identity of the artist, so I’ll just warn you to be careful about that. Secondly, because of the picture’s content, we may have some conflicts of interest to keep in mind, so let’s not be too specific about who is in the painting. Thirdly, because of the painting’s content and our rules about obscenity, we need to be very careful not to mention exactly what is in the painting. I mean,” she chortled a bit, a dry raspy sound that reminded everyone schools used to allow smoking in the teachers’ lounges, “we all know what we’re looking at. But we’re not going to talk about that.” There was some chuckling from a few members of the assembled audience who had heard about the painting and had come for the show, but because the podium was in the middle of the room and the painting faced the school board, most of the people there that night couldn’t see the painting and didn’t get Mrs. Patrick’s joke. “Okay,” she continued, “I’m going to move that we should not allow the painting to be displayed at the school. Do I have a second?”
Neither man spoke. She looked back and forth. “Bob? Max? Either of you want to second my motion?”
Bob leaned back in his chair. “Look, I know it’s not the usual Robert’s Rules of Order, but I think we should debate this a bit before we move forward on this. And I don’t know quite how to debate it without talking about all the things we’re not allowed to talk about, so I’m just going to say it: I think the painting is great, and I think we should keep it on display.”
“Really?” Mrs. Patrick asked, sincerely surprised.
“Well, I don’t want to cross any lines here, but I feel a strong personal connection to this painting. Beyond that, I think it says something important to the kids about our town of Pleasanton and its history, and I don’t see why we should hide that.”
Mrs. Patrick managed to keep her mouth from hanging open. Had the town’s most prominent man of the cloth just made a reference to the size of his … loins, in front of God and everybody? She couldn’t help but swivel in slow motion to get support from Max.
Max shrugged. “Now, I see it differently. I think we should keep it up there, too, but not because of any historical reason and certainly not because of any personal connection. Frankly, I don’t see myself in this painting at all. I just think it’s important that the kids be allowed to express themselves in these new ways. They’re the future, and we don’t want our traditional views of things to be limiting what they can do. I’m just not comfortable with that kind of censorship in the name of tradition. So I say leave it up and let the kids do their thing.”
Now Mrs. Patrick’s mouth did hang open. Had the town’s leading businessman just shared something about his own feelings about his … anatomical inadequacies on the record in an open session of the school board meeting? Or was that a comment about his parentage. Max looked so much like Bob, and they both resembled their mother in such striking ways, that she’d never even considered the possibility he wasn’t a blood relative. But maybe they’d had some falling out she didn’t know about.
Bob took offense for a different reason. How could his brother deny the historical importance of this painting of their mother? “Look, Max, I know you aren’t quite as traditional as some of us, but you have to admit this has deep, deep meaning for our family. I find this painting really penetrating, like to my soul, Max. You understand that, right?”
“Hey,” Max said, a bit more sharply, “I don’t appreciate your condescending tone, Bob. Of course I can see why this might have some holiday significance to you, and it might even touch you on a spiritual level, but to me it’s about freedom and energy and … yeah, I’ll say it. It’s about love, Bob. Not in some pious church way, but in a secular, modern way. And it’s a public school, so that seems totally appropriate to me.”
Bob shook his head. “See? There you go. You go off to the city and get all these big ideas that secularism is the way to go and we can forget all about our history and traditions. And that’s what’s wrong with this country, Max. It’s people like you, losing touch with their roots.”
Max leaned over his mic. “Something is wrong with this country alright. We’ve got Mrs. Patrick here who wants to censor things that are outside her preconceived notions of what art should look like, and then you, the minister, wanting to make everything about your religious devotion to the past, and I’ve got news for you, Bob. That? That right there?” He pointed angrily at the painting. “That’s not about the past, okay? That’s about the future. That’s about progress.”
Bob threw his hands up. “That doesn’t even make any sense! You want to make everything about progress and the future, and normally I let you go about your businesses and don’t make a fuss, but this? This is one thing that’s cut and dried. This is about tradition. And if we can’t agree on that, I don’t know what comes next. Everything is subjective now? Post modern? Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, and why can’t we be happy with this big ol’ cigar in our mouths?”
All the laughter in the room had vanished. Mrs. Patrick had been swinging her head back and forth, but now she fixed it straight ahead, and only her eyes, opened as wide as they could go, ping-ponged as the men spoke.
“Yeah, I see what you’re doing there. I’m the cigar smoking capitalist, right? One minute I’m too liberal because I like things that are new and creative, so I’m a commie socialist, and the next minute I’m some capitalist pig because you chose to work for a church instead of starting your own businesses. Jesus Christ, Bob, there’s no winning with you!”
“Hey! You may not care about our family anymore, but don’t you take the Lord’s name in vain in front of me or I swear to God I will come over this table and beat your ass!”
Mrs. Patrick snatched up the gavel, at first to protect it from the wobbling table, then to use it to protect herself, and then, remembering she could do so, to end the meeting. She hammered it down eight times, at least five more than were necessary, before she caught herself and calmly announced the brief recess that would turn out to be the end of the meeting since, five minutes later, they no longer had a quorum, both men having left.
And this whole fiasco might have blown over, if not for what happened the next week. One of the items that had been further down on the agenda was an urgent request from the custodial staff at Pleasanton Elementary for an emergency purchase of salt. They hadn’t accounted for the extra icy winter hitting so early (though Max’s head had already felt its effects violently), and they were running low. The district could easily have afforded the salt, but it required school board action to move money from the general fund to the maintenance fund. This could even have been done with a few phone calls the next day, but the brothers refused to speak with each other. So on Monday, when two children and a parent fell in the school parking lot and little Matty Parks broke his wrist in two places, the town went into an uproar. They called the paper wanting answers, and I had a story written about the board meeting which would have cleared up a lot of the confusion, but Mrs. Patrick, after refusing to comment to me on the record, had called my editor and reminded him that if they ever wanted to get a story about anything educational printed with district help in the pages of the Pleasanton Herald, he would make sure the story abided by the same strictures as the board members and not describe anything that might identify the student or include any references to the obscene nature of the painting. My editor went at my story with his red pen, and pretty soon it made almost no sense. But that wasn’t enough for Mrs. Patrick. My editor showed her the story before he ran it, and she was furious with the depiction of the board in chaos, so she hopped online and told everyone that they couldn’t trust the Pleasanton Herald or me personally, that we were liars and as biased as the least ethical examples of what passed for journalists in the mainstream media, and that if people wanted the real story, they should listen to the people who had been in attendance and not some young reporter who lived across the river and commuted into Pleasanton to make fun of them for being provincial yokels.
The angry citizens of Pleasanton took her advice and privately interviewed the few people who had been at the meeting, most of whom had never seen the painting under discussion. These people, depending on their biases, told elaborate stories of the valiant and moral Max defending himself and the town from the cowardly and evil Bob, or vise versa. Most people initially fell into camps based on which of the two brothers they’d already liked better, and in days the painting itself was forgotten, and the debate became about secularism vs. religiosity or censorship vs. first amendment rights or progress vs. tradition or, inexplicably, guns and abortion. This shift away from the painting was exacerbated by a habit of the citizens of Pleasanton; whenever they were confronted with an argument, it was considered socially acceptable to say, “Oh yeah? Well what about…” and then bring up some other, completely unrelated grievance. Consequently, rather than have a single debate about an issue, people tended to have wide ranging gripe fests that were mostly about tallying hypocrisy points. Then, when these debates became uncomfortable, people would try to find common ground by saying Max and Bob were politicians and therefore equally untrustworthy, and that both sides were equally at fault. By the next summer there were rumblings of recall efforts, and both brothers announced they were not running again, so, in addition to losing a lot of their standing in the community and what had previously been a tight sibling bond, they also lost their positions on the school board and were replaced by people who were far less competent except when it came to their key campaign promises to make damned sure the district was always well stocked on salt. People stopped coming to Bob’s church because they had heard he was some kind of villain. Others stopped going to Max’s bowling alley and movie theater. While the brothers weathered these financial hits, those people lost their faith communities and their bowling leagues and their date nights next to their neighbors. The whole town of Pleasanton was diminished.
To be honest, I’m not sure my story would have made a whole lot of difference after that initial weekend. Once Mrs. Patrick told everyone not to believe the Pleasanton Herald, they were doomed, and even learning the true story wouldn’t have mattered all that much. Part of the both-sides impulse that turned the town on Max and Bob also manifested in their reaction to every other story put out by the paper, and I’ve heard that went on even after I moved away. Somehow the people of Pleasanton felt that it was their civic responsibility to believe a version of events which fell at the perfect halfway point between whichever two stories they heard, as though the most correct understanding is the middle-est, even if it’s halfway between the true account and a lie.
I’m reminded of this sometimes when I hear people use some of the same buzzwords I jotted down as Bob and Max shouted at each other. It would be nice if we could talk about Bob’s value of history, as long as we could include Judith Molluer’s recognition that we have a lot in our past that is ugly and needs to be reckoned with. It would be nice if we could talk about Max’s desire for progress and freedom without being scared that we’ll step on Bob’s love of his religious tradition. There are parts of the painting we can’t see alone. But let’s not both-sides this. Max and Bob and the people of Pleasanton weren’t undone by the differing values of the brothers. The town was prohibited from having one shared, true story, and they chose to abide by that prohibition. I’m not some perfect, impartial arbiter of right and wrong. I’m just a woman doing her best to tell the story accurately. And if we don’t agree to hear each other’s stories and try to figure out the truth, we’re left alone, locking ourselves out of our churches and bowling alleys and movie theaters, refusing to talk to our brothers, and making kids like little Matty Parks suffer for it.
Now some people will try to make peace in Pleasanton by saying, “Let’s not blame anyone. Not Max. Not Bob. It’s all in the past anyway. No one is to blame.” But they’re wrong. Mrs. Patrick is to blame, and learning that is the key to understanding what is currently happening in Pleasanton.
When we aren’t allowed to talk about the painting in front of our own eyes, and when we refuse to believe the people who can see more than we do, it has consequences.
