Common Ground (131 page)

As always when the Bancroft was in danger, articulate and well-connected South Enders bombarded school officials with demands that the program be preserved. This time, they urged the School Committee to give them part of the Rice Building, barely a hundred feet across the playground. In 1971, determined Bancroft parents seeking space for a junior high component had “liberated” a Rice classroom and held it against all comers. Later, the Bancroft gained a second room at the Rice, moving its two kindergarten classes there. But sixteen Rice classrooms remained occupied by the English-Language Center, Boston’s school for newly arrived immigrants. Contending that such a school could be located anywhere in the city, Bancroft parents now argued that they needed still more of the Rice. Not surprisingly, the English-Language Center vigorously resisted their contention.

On October 29, 1975, the School Committee met to hear both sides. Dorothy Berman, the Bancroft’s teacher-in-charge, presented her school’s argument. “We are unique,” she said. “That’s why you should consider our problems.” Committeewoman Kathleen Sullivan conceded that the Bancroft was “crowded to the gills.” But Bernie Magooby of the English-Language Center invoked the seizure of the first classroom (“They came and they sat there. Then they took another room. This year they want two more rooms. A few years from now the whole school they will want”) and teacher Mary Duplain pleaded the rights of the immigrants (“Do you wish to prove to the students that democracy and quality of education is for all, or do you wish to prove that might is right?”). Well, thought Joan Diver, she couldn’t blame them for fighting
back—she’d do the same in their position. She felt bad about grabbing their space, but the Bancroft’s needs were even more compelling than theirs.

The School Committee eventually granted the Bancroft two more Rice classrooms, not then being used for English instruction. Lois Varney volunteered to occupy one of them. In mid-December, her class was installed in a jerry-built room carved from a third-floor auditorium judged unsafe for larger groups. A slab of plywood fifteen feet high had been erected down the center aisle, dividing the auditorium into two rectangular spaces, but the ceiling was thirty feet high and sounds from both classrooms mixed in a great hubbub. In the corridors, Lois’ pupils were sometimes harassed by older immigrant youths who resented their presence. It was a terrible atmosphere for learning.

Arthur Garrity’s order had created such overcrowding and confusion that it led to measures at odds with the school’s founding principles. Even Lois Varney found herself resorting to the very kind of discipline she abhorred in the traditional Boston classroom. In adapting itself to the new exigencies, the Bancroft had sacrificed much of the warmth and spontaneity which had once made it so distinctive.

Finally, by 1976 many Bancroft students were in academic difficulties, with reading scores a particular focus of concern. Joan and Colin were dismayed to learn that Brad’s scores had actually declined. As a second-grader he had tested as “Third Grade, 7–9 Months”; as a third-grader, he registered only “Third Grade, 2–4 Months.” For a child of Brad’s promise, that was plainly unacceptable. Joan and Colin wondered once again whether they were sacrificing their children’s future on the altar of their social principles.

Colin had already played with the notion of leaving the South End. All through that grim fall and winter he felt trapped in the city. In November, he and Joan took a half measure, making an offer on a vacation house in Gloucester. Many South Enders owned second homes on the North Shore, Cape Cod, or Martha’s Vineyard to which they retreated on weekends and summer vacations. Somehow just knowing that the clapboard cottage was waiting there by the sea made the daily abrasions of urban life more bearable. At the last moment, the Divers’ deal fell through, and Colin’s dissatisfaction with the South End grew as the winter wore on. It wasn’t only the crime; suddenly, he was less tolerant of all the minor annoyances he’d come to take for granted—the garbage piled in the alleys and backyards, the filth littering the gutters, the graffiti scrawled on the walls of the South End library, the drunks staggering up Tremont Street, the abandoned buildings on Columbus Avenue, the music blaring from a window in Methunion Manor, worst of all, the unresponsiveness of the city and its institutions. He could no longer tolerate this feeling of always fighting his surroundings. He felt that he was shoveling back the ocean with a teaspoon. He wanted out.

Colin wasn’t the only South Ender with such feelings. Ever since Dick Bluestein had been mugged the previous September, he’d felt uneasy on the South End’s streets, and in February he and his wife, Kate, moved across the
railroad tracks into the Back Bay. Other friends of the Divers were contemplating a move as well—Gordon and Jane Doerfer had looked at houses in Ipswich and Newburyport, Steve and Judy Wolfberg were making the rounds in Brookline, Julian and Barbara Cherubini were looking in Newton—but none of them talked about it very much. The rebirth of the South End had been a joint enterprise, an experiment which depended on mutual reinforcement and communal solidarity. Nothing would sap the community’s morale more quickly than word that people were beginning to move out. So until a decision was actually made, nobody said a thing.

And the Divers were far from reaching a decision. For whatever her husband and her neighbors were thinking, Joan Diver stubbornly held such misgivings at bay. Despite everything, she couldn’t imagine living anywhere but the South End. Where else could she hold a responsible job yet be within fifteen minutes of home and school in case her children needed her? Where else could she walk to the symphony, a ball game, a dozen good restaurants? Most important, where could she find the kind of friends she’d made there in the past six years? Yes, there was a lot of dirt, a lot of noise, a lot of crime, but there was a real community as well. If you had troubles, your neighbors were always there to help; if you sounded your Freon horn, there’d be fifty people on the sidewalk within moments. People griped together, organized together, played together. In the summertime, they sat around on their front stoops drinking lemonade and swapping gossip. In the fall, they all pitched in to mount their traditional street fair. Every winter, fifty South Enders trooped off to New Hampshire for a weekend of skiing and skating. How could they give up all of that?

For months Joan held firm, but eventually the daily assaults, muggings, and purse snatchings on West Newton Street wore her down. During an anguished evening in late February, Colin persuaded her to “examine the alternatives” outside the city. They told themselves they weren’t setting out to buy a house, they just wanted to see what was available, to find out what they could afford.

Like most self-conscious South Enders, the Divers had long painted the suburbs with broad strokes of opprobrium. Now they had to make some distinctions, narrowing their search to Brookline and Newton, the most accessible of the outlying districts, the most liberal and heterogeneous. Each had good schools and relatively low crime rates; each was densely populated with people much like themselves—lawyers, doctors, academicians, and artists; each had a cultural and intellectual life of its own.

The Divers called realtors and pored over newspaper ads, examining any house that sounded promising. But their standards were high. They weren’t going to settle for some ticky-tacky Cape Codder or brick colonial in a modern subdivision; accustomed to their handsome old town house, they were determined to find another Victorian, certainly nothing built after 1900. But weeks of looking produced nothing suitable, and in mid-March they temporarily abandoned the search.

Then a realtor called to tell them about a house on Church Street in Newton Corner and they drove out to see it. At first glance, it was just what they wanted: a sprawling Greek Revival built around 1850, it had a lot of charm plus many architectural details crying out for restoration. But as they tramped through fourteen rooms on three floors, the Divers thought: It’s simply too big; a family of four would rattle around in a place like that, and it needs too much work. It just isn’t practical.

That night Joan woke around midnight. For nearly an hour, as she watched the headlights stippling her bedroom ceiling, she thought about what they’d seen that afternoon. If the house was so close to what they wanted, why had they backed away at the last moment? At breakfast the next morning, she said to Colin, “You know that house we saw yesterday? If it’s unacceptable to you, it’s not because there’s something wrong with it, it’s because you don’t want to move. Maybe we ought to come to terms with that right now. We could start by going back to take another look.”

Now it was Colin who hung back. He didn’t have time, he said; he’d set that afternoon aside to work on their taxes and listen to the opera. So Joan arranged to see the house again by herself. Before going, she prepared a detailed list of all their questions. The house—and the neighborhood—met every one of their qualifications. When she got home at dusk, she urged Colin to make a bid. “Okay,” he sighed. “Let’s do it.”

That evening, the Divers were scheduled to attend a benefit for “Summerthing,” the city’s annual summer festival. Dining with three other couples, they sorted through the neighborhood gossip, some of it hair-raising, much of it absurd—that bittersweet gallows humor which gave life in the South End part of its special flavor. But Colin and Joan were in no mood for laughter. Behind their forced smiles they were hiding a nasty little secret: very soon they might no longer be South Enders. After dinner, the four couples drove to the Commonwealth Armory, where Buddy Rich and his band, Gerry Mulligan, and Melba Moore were entertaining some 2,000 Bostonians. A large South End contingent was there, dancing, drinking, having a fine time, but the Divers couldn’t get in the mood. Pleading fatigue, they left early.

The next day, they bid $65,000 on the house. The realtor said they’d probably hear within twenty-four hours, but no reply came on Monday, or Tuesday, or Wednesday. The realtor assured them there was no problem; it was a very good bid, and the owners were just checking with their accountants. But there was still no answer on Thursday or Friday.

The Divers were growing impatient. Colin wanted to get their South End house on the market as soon as possible; Joan wanted to get the whole thing over with—she couldn’t stand the daily deception of her friends and neighbors. Finally, on Saturday morning, their bid was accepted. That afternoon, Joan went next door and told her closest friend, Linda Trum, “I wanted you to be the first to know,” she said. “I didn’t want you to hear it on the street.”

It was as if someone had ripped out a wall of Linda’s house. For six years the Divers and the Trums had lived side by side, sharing the pains and pleasures
of life on West Newton Street; Linda couldn’t imagine the South End without Joan. An hour later, Anne Dodson stopped by the Divers’ house, and on an impulse, Joan told her too. For a moment Anne was speechless. Then she said, “You know, whenever I think about leaving the South End, I can’t do it because of the people. People like you and Colin. All the efforts you put into the street patrol. I just couldn’t leave people like you.” Joan ached with guilt.

Later that afternoon, Colin called Doe Sprogis, a South End friend who happened to be a realtor. “I’ve got some bad news and some good news,” he said. “The bad news is we’re leaving the South End. The good news is we’re giving you an exclusive on the house.” Doe was just as ambivalent as the Divers. She was glad to have the listing, but Colin and Joan were South End stalwarts; it would be a less vigorous neighborhood without them.

Now that the deed was done, Colin wanted to make their old house as attractive as possible to prospective buyers. On the parquet floor in the back parlor was a Ping-Pong table which belonged to their friends the Moriartys from Rutland Square. That very afternoon Colin called Marshall Moriarty and together the two old friends carried the table back across the alley. As Joan watched from an upstairs window her eyes filled with tears.

Within hours, word of the Divers’ decision reverberated through the bowfront houses. No news could have been more disconcerting to homeowners along West Newton Street and Rutland Square. The Divers were the most active couple in the neighborhood, the most effective manipulators of the city’s bureaucracies. Their defection was widely regarded as evidence that something had gone terribly wrong in the South End, that this brave experiment in city living was foundering on the shoals of urban reality.

Across the street, Dr. Dan Shannon, a prominent pediatrician at Massachusetts General Hospital, asked himself: What do the Divers know that we don’t know? Colin and Joan traveled in political circles inaccessible to most of their neighbors. Maybe the Mayor was abandoning the South End; maybe a whole new slug of subsidized housing was destined for Tremont Street; maybe the Divers were getting out before housing values began to plummet. The Shannons had left suburban Dedham because they found life there unbearably “sterile.” For seven years they had labored to rehabilitate a gutted shell they dubbed “Daniel’s Dream.” They loved the South End and refused to face the prospect of moving back to the suburbs. On Monday morning, Dan Shannon met Joan at the Tremont Street bus stop. “When you get out to Newton, Joni,” he said, “you’re not going to need your Freon horn, because if you blow it, there won’t be anybody there to help you. They’re too busy taking care of their swimming pools.” Joan was devastated. It seemed a terrible thing for a close friend to say.

In weeks to come, other neighbors made cutting remarks. One said that the Divers’ move was “the equivalent of blockbusting,” implying that it could trigger a massive exodus from the neighborhood. Another old friend avoided the Divers for many weeks. Joan began wearing sunglasses, because whenever
she saw friends on the street, whether they were sympathetic or critical, her eyes would tear up.

Colin wouldn’t tolerate suggestions that they were “abandoning” their friends and neighbors. When Paul Garrity suggested as much, Colin snapped, “People who make remarks like that obviously aren’t comfortable with their own neighborhood. If you can’t see people moving in and out as a normal process, if you need other people as crutches to keep you here, then maybe you ought to get out too. Why don’t you examine your own motives instead of criticizing mine?”