The Unfolding, page 35
Meghan brightens. “Do you have a picture of her?”
“No. She passed away a long time ago, but she had a beautiful face just like you do and hair like yours and she made the best patacones.”
“Patacones?”
“Fried green plantains. So good, salty and hot. She cooked them in a giant pan and I had to stand back. She was always afraid of burning someone. When they came out, she’d put them on paper towels to cool then sprinkle them with salt.”
“I’ve never had plantains. Are they like eggplant?”
“More like a banana,” Irene says.
Meghan nods; she can’t imagine a fried green banana. “Where was your family originally from?”
“My mother was half from Spain and half from Colombia, and my father from right here in Alexandria; he was in the military,” Irene says.
“Oh right, sorry, you said that before. Do you still clean teeth?”
“No. I stopped when I had children.”
“How many children do you have?”
“Two,” Irene says. “Carolina, who is nine, and Isadore, a boy, who is seven. He is a handful. If anyone tries to tell you that boys and girls are the same, they’ve never had children or been to a playground.”
The Big Guy comes back to the table. “Would you like me to take a picture of the two of you?”
“Sure,” Meghan says. There is a moment of awkwardness about whose phone to use. “Use mine,” Meghan says quickly. She hands her father the phone and shows him what button to press. Meghan sits next to Irene in the booth. They sit side by side, not touching, as if they were strangers. Her father takes the photo and shows it to them.
“Maybe one more,” Irene says. In the next photo, she puts her arm around Meghan’s shoulders. It wasn’t obvious in the moment, but the camera catches all. In the second photo, Meghan’s shoulders are raised—like hackles.
“I better get back to the house,” Irene says, standing. “But I’m very glad to have met you. Thank you.”
They stand. Meghan doesn’t know if she should say anything about wanting to see Irene again sometime or about meeting the rest of her family. Is this it? Or will there be more? It feels like there’s no space for that.
“Will you stay in touch?” Meghan asks.
There is hesitation. Meghan begins to cry.
“I’ll try,” Irene says. “It’s not about you; it’s me. My husband doesn’t know I had a baby. Is it okay if I hug you?” Not waiting for an answer, she wraps her arms around Meghan.
“I love you,” Irene tells Meghan. “I have always loved you. And I know you know that. Here”—she taps Meghan’s chest—“in your heart. That’s where you keep me—in your heart.”
Then she is gone.
The Big Guy pays the bill and they leave. The black car pulls across the parking lot and picks them up at the curb.
“She’s a very nice lady, right? Normal person.” He pauses for a minute.
“Yep,” Meghan says. “She even put sugar in her coffee despite being a dental hygienist.”
“That’s funny,” he says. “I never thought about that.”
“Two packets.”
“Do you feel better now, having met her?” he asks.
The car silently glides down the ramp from one roadway onto another; there is the ka-thunk, ka-thunk of the tires over the seams in the pavement that reminds her of the sound of the truck tires rolling over the cattle guards at the ranch. She is thinking back to November, the bison at the fence, their enormous shiny eyeballs, which apparently don’t work well—they compensate with a strong sense of smell and good hearing. She thinks of Ranger and how well he senses things. How he knows what’s going on all around him. She remembers reading that horses see everything magnified fifty times. She feels like whatever just happened rests inside her—magnified fifty times.
“How could you do that to Mom?” Meghan asks.
The Big Guy doesn’t say anything for a minute. “Maybe when you’re older you’ll understand.”
“You cheated on your wife and you lied to everyone, to Mom, to me, and probably to that woman—Irene. I know you; you need to think of yourself as a good person; that’s important to you. I bet you told her that you were going to leave your wife.”
There is a pause.
“We’ve never had a relationship where you berate me,” he says. “I don’t want to start now. And worse, you sound shrill. Don’t forget that I’m the adult and you’re the child.”
“That’s just another way of keeping me down; either it’s because I’m a girl or because I’m a child. You wanted me to be strong, fierce, and go after the things that mattered—except when it’s about you.”
“Correct.” He pauses. “I’m not saying you’re wrong. I’m saying I can’t handle it. I have my own sentiments about all of this.”
“Now I have to worry about your feelings? I thought I was the child. Children don’t worry about their parents’ feelings. Now I’m supposed to take care of you because that’s what women do and because Mom’s not talking to you either?”
“Is there some way I can fix this?”
“No,” Meghan says. “It’s not something you can throw money at. That’s what you do; you buy things, you pay people to take care of things.”
“I am not a perfect person, I accept that. I know what my flaws are, but I do mean well; I want the best for you and your mother.”
“Which mother?”
“My wife, your mother. Can you accept that we waited until we thought you were old enough to understand?”
“That’s a lie,” Meghan says. “You wanted to wait forever. You only told me because Mom, Charlotte, your wife, forced you to. It would have been difficult for you to tell me years ago because you would have had to deal with your own problems. The person this protected most was you. You’re not the person you claim to be.”
“I can understand that it looks that way from where you sit,” he says.
The biggest thing about meeting her birth mother is how anticlimactic it was. Irene is nice, normal, and has made a life for herself that doesn’t involve Meghan or the Big Guy. That’s good—she’s free.
“If I was being honest, I feel ill in an indescribable way—demented. Who am I? Who do I belong to? My entire identity is a false narrative. I’m fake. That makes me unreal.”
“I don’t see it that way,” the Big Guy says. “The way I see it, now there are no secrets.”
“It’s as though an atomic bomb went off inside me.” Meghan looks at her father. “Your bomb, the one you wished you’d invented. Well, it turns out you did—it’s me.”
Friday, January 2, 2009
The Hay-Adams Hotel
Washington, DC
2:45 a.m.
The maker of the bomb.
What does it mean to accept responsibility? Is it something he can do? It is difficult to look in the mirror and see oneself not as one wishes one was—but as one is.
How does one live with what they see? The fallout of one’s life, one’s decisions, habits, and assumptions, the things that have been taken for granted, power, money, privilege, and—dare he say it?—the color of his skin. That’s what’s got him and the Forever Men so upset. They woke up and discovered they were not on top anymore. It’s a rude awakening after hundreds of years and they’re taking it hard. It’s not just that Obama won, it’s as though the founding fathers were assassinated. The truths they held self-evident have become a moving target. If he was to say that they were gaslit by history, he wouldn’t be taking responsibility, he would be sidestepping his role in history.
The Big Guy can’t sleep.
What if you thought you were a good guy? What if you needed to believe that with all your heart, and yet you woke up, and for the first time you knew that you are an asshole?
There is a lingering sense of disbelief.
You know you’re an asshole and yet you want to find a way around it.
You know it’s true, and still there is some ember deep within that won’t allow you to admit it. That ember is linked to how you see yourself as a man.
I am a man, you tell yourself. I am a flawed man but I am not an asshole.
I am compelled to reject the idea that I am an asshole because if I concede, if I surrender to this knowledge—there is a problem; I still have to live with myself.
And I cannot live with myself as an asshole.
I have no respect for assholes and therefore would have no respect for myself.
I cannot live like that.
It is the middle of the night and he is talking to himself.
He’s traveling through time, the time of his life.
How can this wrong be made right?
The Big Guy is up late, thinking about Charlotte. He loves her deeply; that is now clearer to him than to her.
He makes a list of what he knows about Terrie, the cat, Charlotte’s lover. He writes down what Charlotte told him about her family, about her addiction, about her motorcycle. He’s trying to think of Terrie’s last name—he remembers it sounding familiar, a newspaper name like Hearst or Getty but one tier down.
He thinks about Charlotte getting him to buy the car for her lover and he loves her for it. The only way for him not to lose Charlotte is to embrace Charlotte (and Terrie) and whatever comes next. It strikes him as ironic that he can find a way to take back control of the country but not his marriage.
He is grateful that Charlotte cracked and got help, and that they all survived. The truth came out; there has to be some good in that.
There has to be a way back and a way out—both at the same time.
He is thinking of Charlotte at the ranch, Charlotte and her horses. They ended up with the ranch not just for tax reasons but because Charlotte was sick of the sycophants in Washington and she felt claustrophobic in New York and the same but different in Connecticut, where she said it was like being inside a glass bottle and everyone knew everything about them. She didn’t want to go to luncheons with other ladies; she didn’t want to sit on boards or give money to libraries, hospitals, or breast cancer research. She wanted to be free and left alone. That was the one thing she wanted, the one thing she had never had.
And Meghan—his creation. She is the bomb. She is the thing that blew it all up.
Friday, January 2, 2009
The Hay-Adams Hotel
Washington, DC
6:20 a.m.
The Big Guy wakes her up early.
“Sleeping,” Meghan says, her eyes still closed.
“Time to get up.”
“Too early.”
He jiggles her shoulder. “Up we get, Magpie,” he says, using a nickname from long ago.
“Are you okay?” she asks, eyes cracking open.
“Fine. Just getting an early start.”
He hands her a cup of hot cocoa. “Room service comes in twenty minutes if you order it at six a.m., but at three p.m., it takes hours.” He pauses. “Put your clothes on, wear something warm.”
“Where are we going?”
“It’s a surprise. And no, I didn’t buy you a car.”
It’s still dark when they climb into the back of the car waiting downstairs. They drive past the White House, make a right on Fifteenth Street and another onto Independence Avenue. The streets are empty. When they get to the intersection of Independence Avenue and Home Front Drive, the car slows down. It pulls up behind a parked truck and trailer with the hazard lights blinking.
“Put on your flashers,” the Big Guy instructs the driver. “The last thing I want to do is take it up the ass at seven in the morning.” The driver pushes the red triangle on the dashboard and the hazards go on.
“You know what’s in the trailer?” the Big Guy asks.
Meghan has no idea what’s happening.
“Your horse,” he says. “Repairing the damage I’ve done. Earning your trust is going to take a long time, but for now I thought you could use a ride on your horse.”
“Is it legal?” she asks.
The thought hadn’t occurred to him. “I have no idea. Who is going to stop a woman on a horse?”
“Did you ask Godzich?”
“No,” he says. It never occurred to him.
“But you never do anything without asking Godzich.”
“I sincerely hope that’s not true.”
Meghan shrugs. “If I get arrested, you better get me out of jail.”
“You have my word.”
“It would be pretty funny—what did you do over Christmas? Oh, I found out I’m not who I thought I was. Then I got arrested for riding a horse through the streets of Washington, DC, like I owned the place.”
Mr. Kelly, the groom from Meghan’s school, backs Ranger out of the trailer.
“You have no idea how much I missed you,” Meghan says, kissing Ranger on the nose.
“I didn’t bring him here for you to make out. Hop on,” the Big Guy says.
“All the girls kiss the horses,” Mr. Kelly says, handing Meghan her riding gear and pulling a makeshift curtain over the back of the trailer so she can change.
Meghan returns kitted out. She adjusts Ranger’s cinch, pulling everything a little tighter, then throws the reins over Ranger’s head, puts her foot in the stirrup, and sits on the saddle.
With a kick of her heel, Ranger steps over the curb onto the grass. She is gentle with the horse, walking him, warming him up, careful to keep her own desire in check until he is ready.
“I put a tracker on the horse,” Mr. Kelly says. “Ever since the incident in the woods, I’m not taking any chances.”
“Give me a minute,” the Big Guy says, signaling to Mr. Kelly and his driver. He heads off on foot toward the Lincoln Memorial. The sun is just coming up.
As he walks, he is thinking about Lincoln, the first Republican president, creating the party out of fragments and chaos. As a young man, the Big Guy loved Lincoln, but his father thought Lincoln was a dope. He remembers it distinctly, “a dope.” When his father said that he felt like crying, he may actually have cried, but that’s not the part the Big Guy wants to remember.
The rising sun casts a warm orange glow on the white marble of Lincoln’s statue. There is something melancholy about visiting an old friend who has been lost. He looks up at the great man for more than a moment, then nods as if bidding him adieu and starts walking back to the car. He is thinking of what happened when Lincoln was shot. People took to the streets. What calmed them were Lincoln’s own words, “Malice toward none,” and the question, What would Lincoln do?
He looks down from the memorial and sees Meghan cantering, then breaking into a full gallop and heading off.
She rides astride.
She is charging down the National Mall, arm raised as if she were leading an army.
She is what has never come before.
She is the revolution.
The sun is on the water; the Washington Monument is before him in reality and in reflection. He walks toward it and spots Meghan doing laps, tight circles around the monument. He thinks of George Washington, Mount Vernon, and the good time he and Meghan had there on Wednesday.
He thinks of Washington’s relationship to the British; Washington served in the British Army during the French and Indian War and was annoyed that Virginians were paid less than officers with royal commissions. A disgruntled employee, he resigned, married Martha Dandridge Custis, and the rest is history.
In June 1775 Congress ordered General George Washington to take command of the Continental Army fighting the British in Boston. “Our glorious cause,” Washington called it.
He thinks of Washington riding his horse Blueskin. Meghan says that’s the one he was most often painted as riding even if it wasn’t true because the horse stood out in paintings.
He thinks of Washington in battle; his first battlefield victory wasn’t until September 1776, the battle at Harlem Heights. And Washington crossing the Delaware at night in a winter storm, catching the British by surprise. And the second battle at Trenton on January 2, 1777. Two hundred and thirty-two years ago on this very day. He thinks of the sign on the bridge in Trenton, the sign he passed many times taking the train from New York or Connecticut to Washington: “Trenton Makes—the World Takes.”
He thinks of Washington and his humility. At the end of his presidency, Washington told his colleagues, “If you wish to speak to me again, it will be under my own Fig and Vine.”
The Big Guy gets back in the car and has the driver head in the direction Meghan is riding—toward the Capitol. He calls Meghan on her phone, watching as she slows Ranger to a walk and answers the call.
“Where are you?” she asks.
“I’m right here,” he says, rolling down the car window and waving broadly. “Look behind you.”
“I see you,” she says, turning her head.
“I see you as well and it’s magnificent. When you get to the Capitol, make sure you go around back, that’s where the good stuff is.”
“Like what?”
“The Library of Congress and the Supreme Court. That’s where you want to end up, the Supreme Court; I’ll meet you there.”
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
L’Auberge Chez François
Great Falls, Virginia
11:30 a.m.
This is it, the beginning.
He had a jeweler in Palm Springs make enamel buttons, one-and-a-half-inch rounds, like heads of state or members of Congress wear so they can identify one another as being “in the club.” He has them in individual black-velvet boxes. He gave the jeweler the idea for a symbol combining the rune for abundance with the scales of justice, the Rod of Asclepius for medicine, and the good old-fashioned dollar sign.
