Virtue

By John Moot

Virtue explores the vulnerability and randomness of human existence through the lives of Tom and Hannah Holder, each of whom are grappling with midlife crises. Tom's life unravels as he fends off attacks on his career, faces his estranged, cancer-stricken father and confronts a dark, hidden past. Hannah-sick of being a stay-at-home and

• Language: English
• Publisher: Roads End Books LLC
• Release date: Aug 4, 2020
• ISBN: 9781734580037

John Moot

John left his career in private law practice on the east coast in 2017 to join his sweetheart, Lara Skidmore, in Portland, Oregon, and pursue his dreams, including marrying her, writing fiction and helping people in need. Tragically, shortly after their marriage, Lara was stricken with cancer and died, but her undying love and inspiration drove him to write Virtue and dedicate it to her. He lives on Lake Oswego with his two dogs and works as a pro bono lawyer representing domestic violence victims.

Book preview

Virtue, by John Moot

VIRTUE

Roads End Books LLC, Lake Oswego, OR, 97035

© 2020 by John Moot

All rights reserved. Published by Roads End Books. No part of this publication may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except by reviewers, who may quote brief passages in reviews.

Book design by Vinnie Kinsella

ISBN: 978-1-7345800-2-0

eISBN: 978-1-7345800-3-7

LCCN: 2020901955

For Lara

Acknowledgements

Dana Isaacson, Judy Sternlight, and Frankie Danly provided invaluable editorial input. Lara Skidmore, the love of my life, provided her undying inspiration.

Contents

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Acknowledgements

I

Tom

Hannah

Tom

Hannah

Tom

Hannah

Tom

Hannah

Tom

Hannah

Tom

Hannah

II

Tom

Hannah

Tom

Hannah

Tom

Hannah

Tom

Hannah

Tom

Hannah

Tom

Hannah

Tom

Hannah

Tom

Hannah

Tom

Hannah

Part 1

The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.

—Socrates

I rebel; therefore I exist.

—Albert Camus

Tom

Why do bad things happen to good people?

Why can people be so awful to each other?

Is life random or is there a larger plan?

I don’t have good answers and, sadly, it’s not for lack of thought. I’m a philosophy professor and my job is to ponder life’s deepest questions.

Religion supplies answers for some. It soothes our existential anxiety by reassuring us that there is a higher power with a larger plan. That’s comforting, if it works for you.

I’m not big on faith. I’m big on questions. Just a bit short on answers.

I eventually gravitated to virtue ethics, which focuses on good intentions. At least we can control those, to some degree. Outcomes, well, they’re another matter.

That’s what this story is about. Good intentions, not so good outcomes. Like letting down my wife and two kids.

It all started with my damn book. (Tom Holder’s the name, by the way.) My manuscript, Virtue and Democracy in the Age of Trump, traced the maddening decline of virtue in public life from Bill Clinton, the sexual predator, to Donald Trump, the—well, you can fill in the blank. Lots of options there.

My agent liked the first draft, as did my publisher. The plan was to publish it in early 2018.

My wife, Hannah, liked it too, not so much for what it said, but for what it represented. To her, it was our ticket out of the backwoods of Western Maine, where my employer, Barnes College, was located. She’d been a stay-at-home mom for fifteen years and wanted to return to Boston, where she grew up, and get back into the workforce, maybe even go to law school.

Sounds simple, right? Lots of colleges in Boston, after all.

Not so simple. Philosophy wasn’t exactly a growth industry, and I wasn’t exactly a star. I liked teaching, not writing, and so I churned out just enough pedagogical crap to maintain tenure.

Hence, my brilliant idea to write a book.

And piss off people in high places.

Close the door behind you, Raymond Marsten, my department chair, told me. Bearded and genial, Raymond had brought me to Barnes after grad school and, as my trusted mentor, he received the pleasure of suffering the campus gadfly.

What’s up? It’s not like you to be evasive, I said. He’d emailed me a few weeks ago, before the end of summer, saying he wanted to talk. I told him I was in Cape Cod with family; he said it could wait, that it had to be in person.

Still growing it? he asked, ignoring my question.

My hair was now as long as it was in high school, nearly brushing my shoulders. It pissed my father off back then, which was one reason I liked it. I’d been growing it again since I started writing the book.

Makes me feel like a writer, deep in the work of his life. But let’s not talk about my hair. You don’t like my draft. That’s why you wanted to see me in person.

Amos.

Amos? I said, choking on the name of our loathsome college president, Amos Whitely.

Yes, unfortunately, he’s gotten wind of your more pointed criticisms of Trump and is concerned that his current capital campaign will take a hit from Republican donors.

Oh heavens. Wouldn’t want to upset them. I’ll send them a draft and make sure they’re happy.

That’s why I didn’t want to tell you by email or phone. I knew this would get a rise out of you.

A little baffled too. Criticizing Trump is not exactly novel and I take swipes at the Clintons and other Dems too. I wasn’t a partisan. I cared more about character than policy. Both parties had one thing in common—a malleable affection for ethics.

You do, to your credit, Raymond said, but he’s mostly concerned about Republican donors for a particular reason we can discuss.

"Or just looking for an excuse to get back at me for criticizing his obsession with our college rankings. I could add his ethics to my book."

Raymond heaved a sigh and folded his hands. Your animosity towards Amos is as palpable as it is unhelpful. I’ll concede that he’s running this place like a corporation, not an institution of higher learning, but the way you respond doesn’t help anyone, particularly you. That blog of yours has gotten under his skin for years.

My blog, Philo Pastry, offered an enriching nugget of philosophy every Monday morning and got a lot of traffic, including Whitely, who was often featured as roadkill. A frequent topic was his absurd quest to boost our US News and World Report rankings from 210th all the way into the Top 100 in ten years. The goal, dubbed his 100-in-10 Campaign, was as unachievable as it was unworthy of achievement.

So I took aim at it. One post he reviled (entitled, Faux Diversity) criticized our marketing strategy of targeting inner city high school kids who had little chance of affording Barnes, much less—given our skewed criteria—getting accepted. The goal wasn’t to admit more diverse students; the goal was to increase our selectivity score by marketing to kids who’d apply but never get in. In fact, we were getting less diverse under his reign because rich white kids tend to have higher SAT scores and better graduation rates (two pivotal ranking criteria).

Another post he hated (entitled, Geraniums for Rankings) lamented that our landscaping budget had doubled in recent years, while needs-based financial aid had remained flat, a sad fact that could be explained only by our mission of becoming a country club for rich kids. It even sported a picture of him peering approvingly out his window at a landscaping crew working his favorite flower beds, a scene I’d stumbled onto walking to class and quickly snapped with my phone.

There’s a simple term for it—free speech, I said.

That’s true. Intelligent speech, that’s another matter. But we’ve had this discussion before.

How did Whitely get wind of my draft anyway?

Raymond looked down at his lap, sheepishly.

We have a mole, I said, a lightbulb flashing. Suck Up Stan.

You shouldn’t call him that.

He was right, but I liked my Trumpian nickname for Stanford Augustus Walker IV, an associate philosophy professor who was a butt kisser of the first order. Hired the year before Whitely came on board, Stan was nearing a tenure decision and knew that Whitely didn’t like the philosophy department (nor a few others he considered expendable) and was planning to reduce our tenured ranks over time. Stan thus attached his lips to Whitely’s ass whenever possible.

I can’t believe he gave it to Whitely.

Not sure he did. I don’t think Amos has actually read it.

"Stan told him it would tank his fundraising campaign? I’m going to—"

Hold on, Raymond said, his palm thrust forward. Don’t do anything rash. Let’s think about how to respond first. Unfortunately, it’s not just Whitely. Somehow word got back to Florence that you’re lancing Trump with a sharp-edged pen.

"How did she find out?" Florence Cartwright was the heiress to a fortune amassed in Maine’s once-flourishing timber and paper mill industry. Her obscenely large $20 million pledge was the cornerstone of the current capital campaign to fund the new rec center—which, big surprise, would bear her name. (The country club set would, of course, love a swanky new rec center.)

I don’t know all the facts. All I know is that Stanford accompanied Amos to New York City last week for an alumni event, and Florence was there. One thing lead to another, and now she believes Barnes will be supporting a book slamming Trump, whom she ardently supports.

I pictured Stan kissing Whitely’s ass all the way to New York—carrying his bags, hailing cabs, and reminding him which colleges Barnes had passed in last year’s rankings, which weren’t many. After four obnoxious years of Whitely’s reign, we’d inched into 196th place.

This is so wrong, Raymond.

Take a breath.

"Okay. What do you want me to do? This isn’t your responsibility; it’s mine."

He looked upwards, as if for heavenly guidance. You don’t need to make major changes. Your draft is quite good. But maybe tone it down a bit in a couple places and throw Whitely a bone. He would like that, make him feel like he had an impact.

Whitely to the rescue. It’s all about him, all the time. He’s insufferable.

Raymond leaned forward, his eyes narrowing. "You’re wrong there. He is sufferable; you just choose not to endure him. Do you really want to be a rebellious misfit your entire career?"

At least it’s authentic.

Our own Camus.

Maybe I can change, I said without conviction. Conformity wasn’t my strong suit. It was boring too.

Look, we don’t have to resolve this today. I just don’t want it to get out of hand, to give him an excuse to go after you. He already has a list of grievances.

I swallowed hard. Go after me? What are you talking about?

I wouldn’t put it past Whitely to commence a disciplinary inquiry if he gets too ticked off. You know he wants to reduce the ranks of departments he considers of limited value. That’s why he’s offering us old guys buyouts. I might even—

No, I don’t want to hear it, I said, putting my hands to my ears.

I’ve been doing this for over 40 years, but I’m not the issue. You are, Tom. Just sit tight for now. Don’t contact him. You’ll just make matters worse.

Hannah

This is a story about reclaiming your life.

Not that anyone one stole mine. I just lost who I’d wanted to be. I became a cloistered, frustrated mom despite having little patience for those women. Do something with your life if you don’t like it, I’d think to myself, when I saw a miserable one.

And then I became that person.

It crept up on me somehow. I went to work right after college at a bank in Boston, in a management training program, and kept at it for five years while Tom was getting his doctorate. I was the breadwinner as he sunk deeper into debt. (His estranged father wouldn’t help with tuition.) We even bought a small condo.

Not bad. I wanted to be a professional—unlike my mother, who stayed at home and drove me crazy, hovering like a helicopter in an age before such a thing existed—but the job was just moving money around. Big deal.

So, when Tom got offered a tenure-track gig in Maine, I was on board with the move. I could take a break, focus on the children, raise them in a small, nurturing community, and he could launch his career.

I didn’t think far enough ahead though. I knew it would be a challenge later on to get back into the workforce, particularly in rural Maine, but the bricks and mortar model of employment was disappearing. It was the new millennium and people worked in their pajamas!

Not everyone though, it turns out. Moms with no current, marketable skills could just stay unemployed in their pajamas.

I began to rot inside. I resented Tom for his success, his network of colleagues, and the self-esteem that came with it. And I repeated history, becoming the helicopter mom I loathed as a kid. My mind was atrophying, and my soul was thinning.

Then Trump got elected. It shouldn’t have taken that to snap me out of my funk, but it did. Women started marching, getting involved, and getting elected. I couldn’t stay on the sidelines anymore, continue to let my mind and talent go to waste. Political activism wasn’t my thing—I’d been a lifelong Northeastern Republican until Trump, when I switched to Independent—but I wanted to do something that meant something.

Don’t laugh but I decided I wanted to take the LSAT. The law has power, and power can help people. Like using my motherly passion to help women keep custody of their kids and fight off abusers. I wasn’t out to save the world, but maybe my work could benefit the lives of a few people.

I nervously approached Tom in early 2017 about going back to school and moving back to Boston. I didn’t want him to think I was unhappy, even though I was, and I worried he’d resist, knowing that my idea would uproot our lives. He was supportive in words, but his distant, reticent eyes told a different story. He was confused, didn’t know what was happening. Probably thought he was losing the person he knew. Little did he know she was already gone.

But then he had an idea of his own—write a book—and we figured out how to meld the two. The book might give him a better chance to find a position back in Boston, and I could start planning the next phase of my life.

That’s where this story starts. I was cramming for the LSAT, which was in mid-September 2017, and was as excited as I was scared. I had no clue whether I had an aptitude for the law, whatever that meant. I didn’t want to make a fool of myself.

And then my plan slowly went off the rails.

I was in the kitchen, texting a girlfriend when I heard the front door swing open on its squeaky hinges. Everything creaked in our old farmhouse: doors, stairs, cabinets. We were a WD40 ad.

The door slammed and then I heard stomping up the stairs. And then another door slammed.

I followed the teenage squall.

The bedroom door of my daughter, Madison, who was 14, was shut.

Can I come in?

No response.

I turned the knob.

No objection registered.

She was on her stomach on the throw rug. It had a bunny on it. She’d had it since she was a baby.

I closed the door behind me. What happened?

It was her first day of high school. Something must have happened.

"Nothing, everything."

What does that mean?

I don’t want to talk about it.

I’m your mother.

"That’s why I don’t want to talk about it."

I need to know why you’re upset.

I’m not upset. I’m pissed.

She scrolled on her phone. I grabbed for it.

She yanked it away. "What are you doing?"

Talk to me.

She rolled onto her back, tossed