New York - The Novel

doesn’t say I haven’t got ADD.”
    “What does she say?”
    “She says she doesn’t know.”
    “Your mother’s a lawyer.”
    “You think you’re so clever.”
    “I pay for your school fees. And I pay for your tutors. Last year you had a tutor for math, and another for science, and another to prepare you for your SATs. Shortly you will have a tutor to help you prepare for your college applications. Your mother will insist on that. You have so many damn tutors that I don’t know why I pay for you to go to school. But I am not paying for ADD. That is final. And let me tell you something else. Thereare kids all over America who don’t have all these fancy tutors, and who just sit down to do their SATs and applications, without any help at all.”
    “But they don’t get into the best schools.”
    “Actually, you’re wrong. I’m very glad that some of them do.”
    Gorham shook his head. You could say, of course, that he’d brought this upon himself. He’d raised the kids in pampered privilege precisely because he wanted the best for them, and now he’d got what he paid for. But it went beyond his kids, who were a little spoiled, but fundamentally sound. New York, it seemed to him, was just the pinnacle of a more general problem.
    Look at what happened if one of the kids got sick. Antibiotics, right away. It wasn’t just New York, or even America. He had friends in Europe who told him that the socialized doctors there did exactly the same thing. Give the child antibiotics and stay out of trouble. The only trouble was, did any of these children build up natural resistances? The new bugs that resisted antibiotics were going to come and get them one day.
    There was never a downside. Nothing must be allowed to go wrong. You could find the tough old American spirit on the sports field. But was that enough?
    “I can’t believe you won’t let me have ADD,” Emma said.
    Yet maybe deep down, he thought, she was pleased. Kids like it if you say no. He remembered his son once, when he was a little guy, saying something about another boy: “His parents don’t care about him at all, Dad. They let him do anything he likes.” There was wisdom in that.
    “Let’s walk back across the park,” he suggested.
    “Walk? Okay.”
    But a tiny detour first, he thought. Just up to Seventy-second Street. It was a grand street to walk across. As they came to Central Park West, he paused and pointed at the Dakota.
    “You know who lived there.”
    “Tell me.”
    “John Lennon. The Beatles.”
    “Right. I knew that. He got shot there. And his wife Yoko Ono made a beautiful garden in the park opposite.”
    “Did you ever go in there?”
    “I know you’re going to take me anyway.”
    “Too right I am.”
    They crossed Central Park West and entered the park. He led Emma to the entrance of Yoko Ono’s garden.
    “It’s called Strawberry Fields, after a famous Beatles song,” he said.
    “Okay.”
    “Now, look down at that plaque on the ground. What does it say?”
    “It says, ‘Imagine.’”
    “Right. That’s after a song too.” He hummed a bit of it.
    “You really shouldn’t sing, Dad.”
    “It’s about everybody in the world living in peace. Well, it’s about quite a lot of things that I guess were important to John Lennon. But the real point is kind of existential. You can change the world if you’re prepared to imagine something better. You have to imagine. Do you get it?”
    “If you say so.”
    “Well, I do.”
    They strolled round it.
    “There would have been deer here originally, of course.”
    “Like all over Westchester.”
    “Exactly. Manhattan was a big Indian hunting ground when the Dutch first came. Your ancestors, you know.”
    “Yes, Dad.” She rolled her eyes, but with a smile. “I know. I’m descended from the Dutch and the English, and I don’t know who else.”
    “Broadway, pretty much, was an Indian trail. And another trail went up somewhat east of Central Park.”
    “Great. Do I have to know all this?”
    “I think so.”
    “Anything else?”
    Gorham was silent. He was thinking.
    “It’s funny, this is called Strawberry Fields because of the song, but when it was in its native state, there could easily have been wild strawberries here. Have you ever eaten wild strawberries?”
    “I don’t think so.”
    “We must remedy that sometime. We ought to go camping and eat wild strawberries.”
    To his surprise, she seemed to like the idea.
    “We could do that. Go