Thomas Leverett - plays and writing
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Extended family
George was at a family wedding rehearsal dinner in the city, in a nice restaurant somewhere in River North, a fashionable district; his wife's younger sister was getting married, and his wife was quite involved with everything that was happening, at her sister's elbow, talking about what was to happen at the wedding in the morning. This left George to observe others' children; his own were bored stiff, but were at least behaving. Most of the relatives present were brothers and sisters of his wife, or cousins, though the family of the groom was represented in there somewhere. George was seated near a first cousin, a pompous psychologist who was telling another relative about the idea of karma, that a person brought karma from a previous life to this one, thus one deserved whatever one got, even a baby. The psychologist's own kids were terrorizing the waitress off in the corner, but he was involved in what he was saying, and wasn't paying attention. The lights were dim and the food was taking a long time to appear. George, out of boredom, got irritated. "You mean," he said, "that a kid with a fatal disease had it coming to him? What about a young girl who has been abused?" In this case he had someone in mind, a cousin on his side of the family, who had been through hell and was only four.
"A perfect example," said the psychologist. "I look at it from the perspective of healing= and, I have to say, who knows whether there is such a thing as reincarnation? I'd be irresponsible to bring it up without knowing. But here's the thing. She's going to think: God did it, and he didn't have any reason for it. Why did God do this to me? And she gets stuck on that. I don't have any answer for that. Either God is cruel, and does this randomly to some little kids, but not others- or, there's no God, and in that case, why her? She's stuck. So when I say, it was a previous life, at least then she can begin to forgive herself, begin to heal. So it works, and I say it because it works.
The food had come; the kids were all back at the table, eating, now; even George's wife had returned and was now sitting near him, helping his own kids with their food. George was trained as a scientist, and had very little tolerance for talk about reincarnation or the mystical. But knowing his little cousin, whose story he tried to push out of his mind even as he sat there, he could not imagine telling her that what had happened to her was caused by what she had done in her previous life. He set down his fork, as he had lost his appetite. Picking a fight would not be helpful, as the in-laws, his wife's parents, were less than a half-table away; his wife had even said, don't get all involved, just eat the dinner, relax and enjoy yourself. And she was right; there was no reason to get riled up.
Yet he couldn't help it. As they left the dinner, the subject of the young cousin and people like her came up again, as this was really the psychologist's field, and once again the psychologist maintained that using the idea of karma was the wisest way of dealing with the situation. George was hot under the collar; the guy seemed to know more about his cousin than even he did. The guy's van was in the next block, and the families parted ways; his wife had not seen her own cousin, the guy's wife, and vowed to visit with her soon, if not tomorrow, giving her a long hug. George almost spit on the guy's hand instead of shaking it, but was civil, pleasant, thanked the guy for his perspective. That's what family is, he thought; you're not always going to agree with them. He knew from his own family how helpless one could feel, watching others' lives unfold, being unable to do anything about it. Watching the guy's wife buckling the kids in, he got a sense, even then, of the tragic; the streetlights reflected on the image of the kids arguing and kicking each other in the back seat. George still had that image in his mind, about a week later, when his wife had told him that the psychologist had been killed in a car accident, a head-on with a drunk driver on Lake-Cook road in the middle of the night; there were no survivors; the guy had been alone in his car at the time, hiz wife and kids had been back in the house. Poor kids, George thought, with a kind of numbness. I'd never tell them it was something they'd done in their previous lives, he thought. But I don't know exactly what I would tell them- why do these things happen? He had no idea, nor could he figure out how it must sound to the kids themselves; he was only glad that, as an adult, he could force the issue out of his mind, and get on with his life.
11-06
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