Deep questions, shallow waters

Sometimes a stranger will sum up your entire life and not even know it. I took the older boy to see "Faust" Tuesday night at the Lyric Opera. I hadn't planned beforehand where we should go for dinner, figuring someplace would present itself, and indeed, collecting him at Union Station, my eyes fell on a restaurant across the river. "Rivers," the sign read. I've walked past it for nine years but never stopped inside.

"Let's try that," I said.

"Rivers," the boy said, ruminatively, as we crossed the Madison Street bridge. "Shouldn't it be possessive: 'River's'?"

"Maybe it doesn't refer to the Chicago River," I suggested -- a stretch, since it's on the river. "Maybe it's named for the Tigris and Euphrates."

We were seated, we ordered our soup. I tried not to say anything. I really did. But the subject hung in the air. Better to get it over with.

"The name of the restaurant...," I ventured to the waitress.

"Rivers," she said.

"What does it refer to?"

"The Chicago River," she said, helpfully pointing out the window. "It's right there."

"Shouldn't it be possessive then?" I asked. "'River's.' With an apostrophe."

She gave me a long look.

"I think you're overthinking it a little," she said.

Story of my life, I thought, but did not say. What I did say, mustering bravado, was: "I get paid to do that."

The waitress shrugged and went about her business.

"Faust" closes Saturday, or rather, I should say that Gounod's "Faust" closes, this version being the most famous of dozens of takes on Goethe's classic tale, which inspired composers from Beethoven to Randy Newman.

Most people, I imagine, have only a vague idea of the story that inspired so many. To be brief: Faust, an aged scholar, sells his soul to Mephistopheles, aka the devil, to regain his lost youth and the love of the beautiful Marguerite.

That's about where common knowledge peters out. But there's more. The selling-his-soul part only gets you through the first act. Four acts to go. Faust, with a major wingman assist from Lucifer, overcomes the resistance of the devout Marguerite. They share a night of passion, then Faust takes off with the Prince of Darkness to enjoy what the Lyric's demur supertitles call "revels," though the actual French word "sabbat" is closer to "Satanic orgies."

Marguerite has a much grimmer fate. Abandoned, carrying Faust's child, she is cruelly mocked by the townspeople, and, seeking salvation in the church, she finds Satan in the pulpit, reminding her that she is damned to hell.

Now tell me -- is that fair?

Marguerite has one weak moment and suffers for the rest of the play -- her beloved brother is killed defending her honor and dies cursing her. She trades her beautiful garden for a loom in a sweat shop.

Meanwhile, Faust, guilty of the same sin, parties on, touched with occasional guilty thoughts of his betrayed love. He doesn't even have to go to hell in the end, apparently.

I couldn't help but think of this double standard the next day, when a Cook County Circuit judge blocked -- for now -- the ill-advised Illinois law that would require parents of girls under the age of 18 to be notified if their daughters seek an abortion.

The prospective fathers get a pass. No law requiring their parents be told that they knocked up somebody and now their potential grandchild has a date at the abortionist.

How fair is that?

Not that I want the law extended. It's bad enough as it is, another ploy by the endlessly creative anti-choice crowd, desperate to get around the basic fact that abortion has been legal for 36 years and most Americans are content to keep it that way. Following their own moral system isn't satisfying enough for them; we all have to.

"But wouldn't you want to know that your daughter is having an abortion?" they ask. Why sure. But that isn't the question at issue here. The question is: "Wouldn't you want the government to force all young women contemplating an abortion to notify their parents?" and the answer is an easy, "Heck no."

The government intrudes too much on family life already, and the law's attempts to consider woefully frequent situations like abuse by allowing teens to swear out statements against their parents will only create a lot of false indictments from girls desperate to get the procedure.

Underline "desperate." At the end of "Faust," Marguerite murders her baby -- an all-too-common path taken by women who can't have abortions. We are supposed to be comforted because she is forgiven and ascends to heaven. It would be a lot more comforting if she weren't hounded to her death in the first place, suffering for the same crime that rolls off Faust's well-dressed back.

Is it any different outside the theater? We condemn Islam for oppressing women, then chain our own government to a medieval theology.

And the thing is, we don't even see it. We are so in the thrall of religionists telling us how to behave that we don't even recognize it as such. We permit them to raise a new generation of Marguerites, sowing fresh tragedies by taking antique doctrine passionately believed by a few and wedding it to a law that must be obeyed by all. It could be an opera -- it's tragic enough.