The Unfolding, page 15
“Where is the baby?” she asks at three a.m.
He wakes—startled.
“Where is the baby?”
“You’re talking in your sleep.”
“Don’t gaslight me,” she says. “Where’s the baby?”
“Meghan is at school,” he says.
“Don’t treat me like a fool,” she says. “Where’s my baby?” She is insistent.
This is the hardest part. He wraps himself around her. He is pushing himself to do what doesn’t come naturally; moving closer when he would otherwise move away.
She is drunk, drugged, malnourished; her body is a loose sack of bones in his arms. She is either losing her mind or coming to know her mind. He is so agitated by her middle-of-the-night wake-up that he can’t go back to sleep. He goes outside to look at his cactus with a flashlight. Using thick oven mitts, he lifts it upright. Two limbs have been crushed and are oozing. He gets a large serrated knife from the kitchen and cleaves them off, thinking that might save the rest of the plant. He presses the soil firmly around the plant and goes back into the house. He throws the mitts, now embedded with cactus spines, into the trash. “Fuck it,” he says loudly at five a.m. “Just totally fuck it to hell.”
Eighteen hours later, when she wakes up, the window has closed.
He is in his office but comes in to check on her. She is breathing, calm, regular, steady. Should he rouse her for tea? He makes her a bouillon cube and leaves the steaming mug by the side of the bed. Covers her with a blanket, opens the shades, closes the shades.
He goes back to work. A few hours later, he finds her at the bottom of the pool.
Does she mean to be there? Did she faint? Is she okay? He must have seen or heard something—because he was suddenly pulled outside, as if called to find her at the bottom of the pool. When he dives in, he finds she has tied bags of pennies to her arms and legs, baggies of spare change from the jar in the kitchen.
He raises her to the surface and puts her on the concrete at the side of the pool.
Was she trying to kill herself? Is she out of her mind?
He turns her on her side and presses on her belly. Coins spill out of her hands.
“Don’t stop me,” she says. “I don’t want to talk to you.”
He’s not even sure she knows who he is. “What were you doing in the pool?”
“I was meditating.”
“We need to go to the hospital or something to make sure you’re okay and didn’t breathe in any water.”
“I’ve been holding my breath for years; I’m very good at it.”
He leaves her and goes into the bathroom. He pretends he’s urinating, but he’s sobbing over the toilet. He makes some calls. He calls his friend Tom, the orthopedic surgeon. “My wife is a very unhappy woman,” he says. “She’s spiraling.”
“Does she want help?” the surgeon asks.
The Big Guy chronicles the last few days. “She’s crying for help whether or not she has the words. All week she keeps trying to kill herself, between the pills, the drinking, the pool.”
“Do you think it was intentional?” the surgeon asks.
“Does it matter? If you wake up dead, you’re still dead whether you planned it or not.”
“If this is an emergency, you should hang up and dial 911.”
“I’m asking for your advice, not how to operate the telephone. I need to know where to take her and how to make the arrangements.”
“She’s stable for now?”
“Yes.”
“Don’t let her have any more alcohol and I’ll call you back as soon as I have news.”
She falls asleep by the pool on a lounge chair. He covers her head to toe with a blanket and pulls the umbrella over to shield her from the sun. She is stick thin, a social X-ray, not even anorexic because those women never ate—ever. Social X-rays grow up on crustless sandwiches, watercress, decaffeinated coffee, and hard liquor. Their insides are pickled. At least the men ate steak and lamb chops with mint jelly.
He’s always been a little proud of how much she was able to hold in for so long.
While he’s standing over her, she lets loose a long thin fart in her sleep, the leftovers of the cleanse.
He packs a bag for her, an old blue suitcase that’s been in the closet. He’s never been in her drawers—somehow that feels more intimate than having had sex with her.
Underwear, slacks, tops, everything is folded insanely neatly—so neatly, it moves him.
When it’s time to go, he tells her that he’s taking her to a spa, like the ones in Switzerland with doctors. He tells her they will make her bouillon like on a cruise ship, that they will make turkey sandwiches, very thin, the way she likes.
He tells her that in life people go through seismic shifts and that this week in particular has been difficult. He tells her that he wants her to feel better soon. “The holidays are soon upon us, Thanksgiving and then Christmas.” He mistakenly asks if there’s anything special she’d like to do. A trip they might take?
She looks at him blankly. She has no plan to be here for that—no will to live.
He helps her get dressed and out to the car.
“Are we going home?” she asks.
“Soon.”
“I’m sorry.”
“About what?”
“The other night.” She pauses. “I know it meant a lot to you.”
He nods.
“And I’m sorry your man lost.”
He nods again.
“He won’t run again,” she says. “That was it.”
“I know.”
“You’re going to have to find a new hobby or you’ll be at sixes and sevens. You could go back to work; you’ve been depressed since you retired. You’re not really the retiring type.”
“I’ll be fine,” he says, touched that in the middle of all this she’s thinking about what he should do next. “It’s not over till the fat lady sings. I’ve always hated that saying; it’s so down on fat ladies singing. There are plenty of hummingbirds that like to sing.”
“Maybe you’ll get the boys together again soon.”
“I plan to,” he says.
She is still drunk when he brings her to the Betty Ford Center. When he made the arrangements over the phone, he said that he would come in with her and that together they would sit down and explain things.
He pulls up to the front door, takes her suitcase from the trunk, gives it to the man who is waiting outside, then hands Charlotte to him as well. “I’ll be right back,” he says. “Just going to park the car.”
She has no idea what’s happening.
He tells her that he is going to park the car but he drives away. It’s not intentional. At first, he drives in laps around Betty Ford, thinking he’ll go back, thinking he’ll go in, and as planned they will explain things together. But the circles are ever widening, and then he’s driving a long straight line, his foot flat on the gas, grateful for the open road.
* * *
• • •
in the weeks between Palm Springs and the inauguration, things happen. Bo sets up a meeting for the Big Guy in San Diego, code name Twinkle Toes.
The Big Guy is given instructions to drive to a Denny’s near San Diego. He takes a table, thinking the guy he’s supposed to meet will show up. While he’s waiting, he orders a club sandwich. The sandwich arrives with a note pressed under the toothpick: “When you finish your breakfast, leave your car keys on the table and go outside. A white Chevy Malibu will be waiting. Get in.” He skips the sandwich, pays the bill, and goes out. The car is waiting. “You could have gotten a box for the sandwich,” the man says.
“Didn’t know you wanted it,” the Big Guy says. They take off, drive this way and that, making a lot of turns and zigzags that seem less than a direct route. The car stops outside a popular fast-food joint. “Buy a vanilla shake and wait for a woman in red,” the man behind the wheel says.
“I guess this is where I bid you adieu,” the Big Guy says, getting out of the car. He buys the vanilla shake and comes back outside. A woman with red hair and a red dress driving a red convertible with the top down pulls into the parking lot. She beeps. He goes to the window of her car. “Vanilla?” she asks.
“That’s what the doctor ordered,” he says, handing her the shake.
“Okay, so now you’re gonna cross the street, go into the massage place in the strip mall, and ask for Barry.”
He can’t help but laugh. “Who’s paying for the shake?” She steps on the gas, burning rubber across the parking lot before pulling into moving traffic without so much as a pause.
It’s a bit much, but there’s a sense of intrigue and what he hopes is play to the whole thing, so he figures why not cross the street and see what comes next. And it’s not like he can easily walk away because he has no idea where he is or how to get back to his car. He pushes the walk button, waits for the light, and crosses. He’s sweating now and can’t help but wonder how many people are involved. Who is the woman in red? She was sexy and the milkshake looked good. His hand is cold and wet from the cup.
The massage place is dark and smells like boiled sauerkraut.
“Barry?” he asks the woman at the front desk. “Is there a Barry here?”
“Lunch in back,” she says. “Lunch in back.” He has no idea what she means until she takes him by the arm and leads him down a narrow hall. Along one side of the place are cubicles divided by cheap shower curtains. He hears the sound of flesh being pounded and a few random sounds of people moaning unhappily. The whole thing makes him uncomfortable. It’s tawdry and the kind of place you see on the news when cops bust rings of whatever. As they get down the hall, the smell of food intensifies, a vinegary sweet-and-sour odor. There are three rice makers on the floor. Are they really rice makers? They look as much like rice makers as IEDs, homemade land mines that could detonate at any moment.
“Sorry about the club sandwich,” a bald burly man says, as he stands up from behind a small table. Despite the dark, the Big Guy notices that he’s got piercingly clear blue eyes.
“You must be Barry,” the Big Guy says, putting out his hand. Barry doesn’t shake it or show any acknowledgment of his name. “Thanks for making the time . . .”
“Sit,” the bald guy says, returning to his own seat.
The Big Guy sits. Even on a chair, Barry towers over him. Perhaps Barry’s name isn’t Barry—and he misheard everyone from the very start. Baldy. They’ve all been calling him Baldy except Bo, who called him the General. Now he’s wondering if Baldy is, in fact, a general or if this meeting they’re having is a “general” one, meaning they’re supposed to discuss things in general rather than drill down into specifics.
There’s a bowl of pea pods on the table. Baldy is eating the beans rapidly, sucking them from the shell, throwing the empty husks into the space between them. “Edamame,” he says. “Help yourself.”
“I don’t think I got your name,” the Big Guy says.
“That’s right,” the bald man says.
“I thought we were meeting at the restaurant?”
“Denny’s? I never heard it called a restaurant before.”
“We have a friend in common, Bo; he put me in touch with you . . .”
“I don’t know who you’re talking about. Someone asked if I’d sit down with a Mr. Money Bags and reassure him the country isn’t going to hell. They said you’d had a panic attack the night of the election and couldn’t carry on until someone who had a grip on things reassured you that the bases are covered. So I offered up my lunch hour.”
“I’m not sure that’s the most accurate description, but thank you.”
The bald guy holds up one of the beans. “One day they’re going to make hamburgers out of this stuff and they’ll be so realistic that they’ll ooze pink juice like blood. But they’ll be one hundred percent fake, made in a lab. Cow farts. That’s what’s taking us down. Bovine emissions. There are 1.5 billon cows on the planet ripping too many fucking cow farts into the world’s air supply. Each one puts out something like forty-six gallons of methane every day.” He shakes his head. “I gave up meat years ago but not for the reason you think. Remember when they had that mad cow outbreak in the UK? Let’s just say I was made aware of things that I’d never been privy to before. The meat market in this country is not what it once was; it’s dirty, dark and dirty. You ever heard of pink slime?”
Two women appear carrying large buckets of water. One of the women stops in front of him, puts the bucket down, and gestures that he should take his shoes off and put his feet in.
The Big Guy notices that Baldy is already barefoot and that his toes are exceptionally long—so long and well-defined that they look like fingers.
“I can do tricks,” the bald guy says; it’s not the first time someone has been awed by his feet. He moves his toes through a selection of top hits: crossing the toes, snapping the toes, picking up objects with the toes. “I can play ‘Für Elise’ on the piano, although I have to warm up first.”
“Nice,” the Big Guy says, at a loss for words.
“I like to think we all have a little something extra, surprises for special occasions,” Baldy says.
“Your feet are the health of your heart,” the woman says to the Big Guy, as she squats on the floor and rolls up the legs of his pants. He wasn’t expecting this. He’s got very thin legs, nearly hairless at this point.
“Say again?” the Big Guy asks.
“Your feet are your heart,” the woman says, picking up his feet one by one and putting them in the water, which is tinted blue and scalding hot.
Immediately the Big Guy’s face flushes red. “Sweet Jesus.”
“At least twice a week,” Baldy says. “Reflexology. California is a great place for cheap body work. Hedonistic but healthy. But that’s not why you’re here. The foot rub is on me. I’m always trying to get new converts. You’re a flag buff, a lover of all things organized and military, even though you never served. Your grandpa fought in WW1 or your father in WW2 or something like that, but you, you missed your moment; the military wasn’t in vogue. You went to the right schools, you met the right men, you made the big bucks, now what? You need our help. Are we like school crossing guards? You can’t get across the road without us?”
“Not exactly,” the Big Guy says, but it doesn’t matter, the bald man keeps on talking.
“We had six presidents who served in the navy: John Kennedy, LBJ, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, and George H. W. Bush. Every one of them has some kind of crazy cockamamie story; Gerald Ford was basically a gym teacher; Jimmy Carter was about to be the captain of a submarine when his father died and he had to go home to Georgia—thank god. Can you imagine him out there during a battle? ‘Hey fellas, how about we surface and offer the enemy a prayer and some peanuts? I’m not a violent man. I may have had lust in my heart, but not war.’ In Playboy magazine no less, he needed to confess his adulterous hard-on.”
The Big Guy looks like he might barf. The woman rubbing his feet has hit a very tender spot.
“You have clot,” she says.
“No,” he says. “No clot.”
“You have gout,” she says.
“Yes,” he says, wondering how she knows. “I had gout once about five years ago.”
“You bad boy.”
“This isn’t what I normally do,” Baldy says. “I’m not a therapist, I’m more of a—”
“General?” the Big Guy asks.
Baldy makes a gun with his fingers and fires. “Gun for hire. Retired from official duties or at least that’s the story.” He laughs. “I’ve got my three stars tattooed on the back of my balls and an American flag between my ass cheeks in case anyone feels the need to check and see where my loyalty lies.” He shakes his head. “Fuck me and you’re actually fucking with the US of A.” He laughs, a rat-a-tat, rapid-fire chortle. Romantic. Poetic. “What can I say, I live for this shit. My father did and his father too. Me, I don’t have any kids, had my lines tied long ago, didn’t want to be firing any man-made missiles. I always was a bit of a wanderer, an unconventional player in a game that’s all about the rules. But this isn’t about me; this is about you. What part of the whole charade put your tail in a spin?”
“I’ll be blunt if I may . . .” The Big Guy looks Baldy square in the eye.
The bald man nods.
“We are concerned.” The Big Guy pauses. “In the event of decapitation, that we don’t go all Humpty Dumpty and . . .” He can’t bring himself to finish the sentence but looks at Baldy to confirm that the content is clear.
“We are prepared,” Baldy says. “Like an alien life form—we walk among you. There are those who say the system of checks and balances has been gravely injured. But they need to know that the backbone of America is protected. Continuity of government goes beyond the Constitution because, in the event of the kind of emergency we anticipate in the twenty-first century, the provisions of the Constitution take too much for granted, including the idea that there are survivors and a government to succeed the one currently in place. Not only are systems in place but there is institutional memory. We are lifers. That’s what the military is—a calling. Politicians call themselves public servants, but that’s a load of crap. Schoolteachers are public servants, firemen are public servants, but people who run for office are pulling on your pud. The system has been moving rapidly in that direction since the end of WW2 and the rise of bullshit. Speaking of WW2, that’s where this all started. Our plan has been in place since Eisenhower was in office. We have bunkers. We have copies of all kinds of historical records, from phone books to tax forms to Social Security checks. We have antivenom, cake mix, helium for your birthday balloons, and your favorite beer. COG plans run deep, with redundancy built in. We even have a cohort in the US Post Office, come rain or snow or nuclear fallout. The bases are covered. Plans have been made, keeping in mind everything from knowing that those who are alive will have lost their minds to locations where we will bury the dead. It’s been set down in great detail. I hope what I’m saying reassures you. Yankee Doodle Dandy will ride high upon his pony.”
