The Unfolding, page 14
“You talked me down with stories about Maw-Maw, Paw-Paw, Aunt Pepper, who liked to dance, and Uncle Joe, who fished for muskie in the New River, and how one time he caught a fifty-pound fish that had to be seventeen years old.”
“Pepper is still alive. She’s gonna be ninety-seven in June.”
“Fine thing.”
“All that dancing kept her in good shape; she can’t see and she can’t hear but she can still move . . .”
They laugh.
“I only told you the good stories, not the reason I spent so much time with Maw-Maw, Paw-Paw, and Pepper.”
“I had some idea.”
“The ever-present threat of violence,” Tony says. “When I was a boy, my father wouldn’t strike out in front of others, but it got to a point where he didn’t care who was around. By then no one wanted to be around him. Not my mother, not her family, and not me.”
“That’s a rough start.”
“I became deeply attuned to fluctuations in everything from the barometric pressure to vicissitudes of temperament in all things around me, be they plant, animal, or human. My sociability, my affable nature, was meant as liniment to counter the ornery or choleric disposition of my blood kin.”
“I’m really sorry,” the Big Guy says.
“I got out alive,” Tony says. “And I’m still here, which is more than can be said for some.”
A long pause. “You’re a good man, Toes, the best I’ve ever known.” Then another pause. “How do you think this is going?”
“It’s certainly interesting, but what is a fish without a river?” Tony says.
“Do you really believe what you said about everything speeding up on a crash course?”
“All I can say is that our situation is not sustainable. The pace and impact of what I call the global weave—technology and money—exceeds man’s ability. What is technically possible may not yet be humanly possible. I’m in it for the long game. My goalpost is not yet on the horizon.”
“Well, if we can get the boys to sign on and actually do something, we stand a chance. I don’t think we’re alone in our thinking.”
“Speaking of alone, where did Charlotte go?”
“Some kind of a diet place about forty-five minutes from here.”
“Maybe it’s a chance for her to dry out without announcing it?”
“Maybe.”
“She tries hard,” Tony says.
“We all try hard.”
“You know Obama isn’t a bad guy,” Tony says.
“Oh yeah, how well do you know him?”
“I got to know him when he was in the Senate. We’ve played golf a few times.”
“Where does an African learn to play golf?”
“Right there, that’s part of the problem,” Tony says. “There’s nothing funny or cute or good about it. You’re a racist. It won’t happen in your lifetime but it will in Meghan’s; the majority won’t be white.”
“Fuck all,” the Big Guy says.
“That’s the part that makes you really anxious, the idea that old white men will be obsolete.”
“You’re not wrong,” the Big Guy says.
“Think ahead,” Tony says. “ ‘Imagination is the highest kite one can fly.’ ”
“Nice. Who said that?”
“Lauren Bacall,” Tony says.
They are quiet for a while. The Big Guy starts to snore.
“Are you going back to sleep?” Tony asks.
The Big Guy grunts.
“I don’t think it would look good if the other men saw you leaving my room in the morning.”
“Are you kicking me out of bed?”
“I am,” Tony says.
The Big Guy gets up. “My wife is a drunk, my kid is running off into the woods, and the people elected an African as president, but it sounds like you think that’s all par for the course, pun intended. Sleep well, old friend,” he says, and leaves the room.
Sunday, November 9, 2008
Palm Springs, California
1:00 p.m.
“We’ll see each other again soon,” the Big Guy says, sending them off wearing temporary tattoos, carrying rolled-up maps of the fifty states hand-colored in red and blue, a couple of good cigars from his secret stash, and in the case of Bo, an empty olive jar.
“Sooner than you might think,” Bo says, and the Big Guy has no idea what he’s talking about.
Each of the men has been given an assignment to come up with a list of other men they can tap, men with the necessary skills to take the enterprise from thought to deed. The tapping process will be much like that of the societies many of them joined in college—interviews, vetting, and an initiation process.
The Big Guy tries to get Tony to stay until Charlotte comes home—he offers to helicopter him to LA so he can take the red-eye east. But Tony needs to be in DC on Monday morning. He’s got a nine a.m. at the White House.
The housekeeper has washed and ironed everything, buffed and polished the surfaces so not a fingerprint remains. She is so thorough that she could work for a government scrub agency.
To make conversation, he asks what she thought about the election.
“If you are happy, then I am happy,” she says.
“Did you vote?”
She looks away.
He kicks himself. Dimwit. Of course she didn’t vote; she’s not legal. As if to repair the damage, he says, “Well, I don’t like the fella who won and I want you to know I’m going to do all I can to make sure America remains a country where there is opportunity for everyone.”
“Thank you,” she says.
“You deserve it,” he says.
“Pretty flowers. Did your friends bring them?”
“No. I ordered them for Charlotte, for when she comes back.”
The housekeeper nods but says nothing.
Charlotte is not fond of flowers.
He knows people who have personal florists who come every week with flowers for every room, flowers that match the house. At parties, he’s overheard women talking about their “flower men.” But Charlotte resents the responsibility of flowers. She feels like it’s her failure when they wilt. He ordered them anyway, hoping she can learn to live with something alive.
“They are very nice,” the housekeeper says.
She is almost done. Vacuuming is what she does last. Mowing, he calls it. She is mowing the carpet in the living room; he can hear the occasional peanut or goldfish as it clatters up the pipe. He notices that when she mows the carpet it leaves tracks the same as one sees on a freshly cut lawn.
He remembers the story of Charlotte’s mother and her living-room rug. The children were not allowed in the living room, but if, god forbid, they made their way in, they had to back out on their hands and knees, smoothing the carpet as they went, erasing their footprints.
When the housekeeper leaves, he gives her an enormous bag of leftovers, sandwiches, chips and dips, cookies—things they will never eat.
“It shouldn’t go to waste,” he says. He pays her double for the extra effort, for coming on Sunday, for not telling him he is a dimwit. She has done such a good job cleaning that it is as though the weekend never happened. It has been erased. There is no evidence.
Sunday, November 9, 2008
Palm Springs, California
6:42 p.m.
A car pulls up and Charlotte gets out. All she has with her is a small tote bag. Who goes away for two days with only a half-full tote bag? He carries it in for her.
Something has changed; there is a lightness to her, like a weight has been lifted. He makes a joke about it. “You look lighter, like you’re floating.”
“Floating on air,” she says. “I’m bilious, filled with gas.”
He watches as the driver backs out of the driveway crookedly and takes out a cactus. He can’t bring himself to run after the guy and shout, Come back here, you crushed my cactus.
She is talking. He tries to stay focused but wonders if he goes out now, if he sets the cactus upright again and repacks the dirt, will it survive?
“I did whatever they told me to do, drank whatever it was, went on walks when I could and spent a lot of time sitting on the john. I expelled things that may have been prehistoric, dinosaurs from the depths of my colon. At one point I lay flat on the cold tile floor of the bathroom, counting the little squares to keep myself from passing out. I may even have hallucinated.”
“Are you sure you went on the right cleanse, not one of those ayahuasca experiences where you’re tripping through the desert?”
She pauses in the front hall. “Do you want the polite version or the truth?”
“Truth.”
“It’s torture, paid-for abuse. I don’t know why anyone does it—save self-loathing. It’s equal only to how much we are at war with ourselves.”
He holds up his finger. “Give me a moment,” he says, overcome by anxiety. He opens the front door and hurries to the end of the driveway. His Pachycereus marginatus is lying on its side. At first, he attempts a bare-handed rescue but finds it’s not possible.
“What are you doing?” she shouts out the door. “I just got home and already you’re out there, running away.”
“I’m not running away; the driver ran down my cactus.”
“Which one?”
“Pachycereus marginatus.”
“The giant dildos by the end of the driveway?”
“Yes.”
“Can it wait till morning?”
“I guess,” he says, returning to the house.
“Why are you smiling?” she asks.
“You’re fiery,” he says. “Biting. I like it when you don’t hold back.”
“You have no idea. They stuck a tube up my ass and flushed me out. And while they were doing that, I was breathing in some kind of enhanced air otherwise known as oxygen while two women from south of the border were doing a special massage on my stomach.” She lifts her top and shows him her belly, which looks lightly bruised, yellowy like a banana going bad. “Not only did I shit my brains out, I shit out things that had been in there for years, rocks, stones, pieces of coal, a little gold necklace my grandmother gave me; I swear I saw it there in the bowl shining up at me. Then I started vomiting. All the colors of the rainbow, like a horror movie. They brought in the doctor, who gave me a yellow bag of fluids; they put a little oximeter on my finger.”
“Was the vomiting supposed to be part of the cleanse?”
“Who knows. They say it’s different for everyone; it’s all about how much you’re holding in. For me, it was the history of the world in four parts. They actually wanted me to stay longer, another day or two for rest. ‘I’m fine,’ I said. ‘I’ve done all we can and the car is coming in an hour.’ ” She pauses, and then, almost as if speaking in an aside, says, “On the way home I had to ask the driver to get off the road. I opened the door and got out. I didn’t even have a chance to take my pants down. I lost it in my pants and took out some clean clothes and left the soiled ones by the side of the road. I gave the driver all my cash for his discretion. He couldn’t have been nicer.”
“Except that he mowed down my beloved plant.”
“I guess that may have been more truth than you were looking for.” She leans against the wall; it comes off as nonchalant, as though she were at a party smoking a cigarette and leaning her hip against the wall, a laid-back gesture, physical commentary, as if to say, Can you even handle the truth?
He thinks she’s lost her balance. She seems to sway, to move between a state of profound consciousness, an epiphany, to something akin to nodding out.
He leads her toward a chair.
“Shower first,” she says.
He steers her toward the bathroom, turns on the shower, and sits outside, perched on the small stool of her vanity. He sees that she’s left her clothing in a pile on the floor. She never does that. She never leaves things on the floor. He tries not to look. He wishes the housekeeper was there to deal with it.
She emerges bright pink like a half-boiled lobster and slides on her robe.
“Tea?” he asks.
“Please.”
He makes her tea with honey even though she likes it black. She needs the sugar.
“How were the boys?” she asks.
“Good,” he says. “Better than good, on the cusp of life changing, or at least when we’re done, I hope that’s what it will be. I’m excited.”
“Who was here besides Tony?”
“Kissick and Bo McDonald and a kid I met in Phoenix, Mark Eisner; he’s not really a kid, but he’s younger than we are, a jack-of-all-trades. A historian who’s writing a book.”
“But you hate the media; I’m surprised you let him in the house.”
“He’s not that kind of journalist; in fact, I dubbed him the scribe. His father was one of Eisenhower’s men. Can I make you something—soup?”
As soon as he says soup, nausea sweeps across her face. “I wouldn’t be able to keep it down. Gut rest. I have to give my gut a rest. It’s been wrenched.”
He sits in the chair near the sliding glass doors and looks around the room. “Watercolor,” he says, landing on a painting she made years ago. “Remember when you did that?”
“Yes. I enjoyed it until the teacher told me that my colors were too washed-out and that the world was a much brighter place. She turned me off—too earnest.”
“Maybe the woman wasn’t smart enough to be your teacher.”
“I bruise easily,” she says.
At around nine p.m., she gets out of bed and makes herself a drink, then another. He gets a jar of peanut butter and a spoon. “You have to eat something,” he says, forcing it into her mouth.
“I can’t eat it plain,” she says, gagging.
He returns with oyster crackers.
“I love an oyster cracker. They remind me of Chanel purses. They’re quilted.”
He feeds her oyster crackers dipped in peanut butter.
“I am not okay,” she says.
“I know,” he says.
“I’ve not been okay for a very long time.”
“I know.”
“I am never going to be okay.”
“Well, I’m not so sure about that. The fact that we’re talking about it says something.”
“It says nothing. There is nothing I can say; there is nothing you can say that will ever make it okay. It is not okay.”
“I get it,” he says. “Sometimes things turn into a shit show, like the election, but there’s no going back. It is what it is; that’s where you have to begin—start where you are.”
“What it is,” she says, then pauses. “I cannot accept it.”
“I know.”
“I have tried and I cannot.”
Despite what he said to Tony, he quietly wonders if she really tried. He thinks she is unwilling and doesn’t see that her steely reserve, which she mistakes for strength, has left her crippled by grief.
“I really have tried,” she repeats, as though reading his mind.
He nods.
“And I cannot.” She pauses. “I will not.”
Touché, he thinks but says nothing. Touché.
She has come back from her cleanse resolute. Whatever happened between them, whatever moment of closeness, cannot continue. She can’t maintain this openness. It’s too much to bear.
It’s not personal, but they can’t suddenly have a better relationship. She doesn’t have the emotional will for it. Even the possibility of a relationship, the memory of it, the temporary feeling of closeness, the physical nature of what recently passed between them, was too much; and rather than cracking a door open, it seems to have cleaved her in half. Now she is broken and unable to bind the two halves together. Two halves, before and after, each pulling at her so she is actually breaking apart.
A crack has quickly become a fissure, a crevice, an ever-expanding rift that cannot be stopped, capped, sealed, or repaired.
Between the fallout from Tuesday’s election, the flash of unexpected intimacy combined with their conversations over the last few days, and the cleanse, something has tripped a wire in Charlotte, uncorked the genie, whatever you want to call it. Whatever it was or is, all that’s never been said, a quarter century of unexpressed everything, has risen to the surface and she can’t contain it any longer. She drinks more.
For years, he has told himself that every family has its secrets, things they wished they’d handled differently.
He sees this as an opportunity for yet another revolution.
We should not fear revolution. What we should fear is changing the story to make it sound more palatable, the use of fact to weave a choking kind of floss.
Is he thinking about his family or his new plan?
Why is it enough for some people and not for others? What compels a person to want more, to push things further? Is it ambition? Greed? Or desire?
This comes in the middle of our lives when we know what brought us to this moment. Where do we go from here, do we give in to it, do we throw our hands up? Do we cave or do we fight for what we want?
He is having this conversation half with himself and half aloud with her.
“I want nothing,” she says. “I want absolutely nothing.”
She can’t sleep. She can’t sleep because she is drunk. She can’t sleep because her metabolism is racing like an electric meter. She is wired. She is gutted, eviscerated. She doesn’t know if this is new or the way it has been for a very long time, but she feels it.
At 1:15 a.m. she gets up. He hears her knocking around in the medicine cabinet.
“You okay?”
“Peachy,” she says, swallowing two sleeping pills.
She is out. The breath of death, hot and sour, slips out of her lips in puffs like stale smoke rings.
