Alice's story, part 2

"He was in ROTC. His dream was to go to West Point. Well, I think --" she corrected herself. "The thing with Joel was that it was his father's dream for him to go to West Point."

"He wasn't sure whether he wanted it himself?"

"No, he wanted whatever Daddy said he wanted."

As Alice and I continue talking, it becomes increasingly clear that to understand Joel's relationship with Alice you have to understand Joel's relationship with his parents. Not that it was abnormal, exactly. He wasn't rebellious or anything. In fact, Alice found him almost suspiciously compliant. A giggling Alice describes Joel's father as "a planet;" she means that he was a heavy guy, but she could just as easily have meant that Joel was a satellite in his orbit. Or to use a different metaphor, Joel was a vessel for his dad's ambitions. "His dad could say, get a haircut; and he'd go do it the next day," Alice explains. West Point was Joel's dream because it was his father's dream.

Nor were his parents the only ones whose goals Joel adopted as his own. As the relationship wore on, Alice says, Joel was deferential to a fault to her as well. "Hey Joel, what do you want to drink with dinner?" "I don't know, hon, whatever you want." "Really, I've got milk, water, or orange juice, which one do you want?" "Surprise me, I trust you." Alice snorts. "It drove me mad!" She doesn't look mad, though; she looks a little wistful. She goes on to explain that she took solace in Joel's care and attentiveness. It may have been true that "he didn't have his own personal drive," but sometimes that was what Alice needed.

Later Alice would make a confession. I'd asked her what her faults were after she complained that Joel overlooked them to a degree she found noxious. "I think my biggest fault with him was, subconsciously or not, sometimes very much taking advantage of him," she answered haltingly. "In the sense that, like... with Joel, really, all I would have to say is, 'I really love that necklace' -- once -- and I'd have it within a month. And I'm not a gold digger! Or else I would stay with him. But sure there were times when I'd say 'I really love that,' or 'I want to go there...'"

I'm Alice's friend, so I can't claim to be impartial, but as I listen it's hard to hold her occasional use of Joel this way against her. After all, it sounds like he wanted what she wanted -- and as Alice says, "I'm sixteen, what do you want from me?" -- but it's hard not to hear in this story a teenage boy who's building an identity out of completing others' identities. Perhaps surprisingly, this made for a lot of fights between Joel and Alice, and not just over what to drink. Often these fights centered around his parents. "His mom or dad comes in, and he's just like oh, don't upset them! And I'm like, no, sometimes that's okay! Sometimes you do things because you are an individual with your own thoughts opinions and plans, and they don't exactly correspond to your parents', and that's okay! Not for Joel."

I can't help wondering out loud whether Joel had any motivations of his own. Alice says he cared about succeeding. That answer puts me back on my heels for a minute. Joel, she's saying, was happy to let others set his destination for him; his pleasure was in doing his honest best to get there. We say sometimes that life is about the journey, but is it really okay, I wonder, to follow others' stars on the way? Alice later revealed that Joel got into West Point and is now in Iraq. I'm certain he's a model soldier and a credit to his country. But whose path has led him there?

More tomorrow! After all, we haven't gotten to Alice's pride and shame yet, and to get there we'll need to study Joel's parents a little more.