by Nina Post
“Men shouldn’t wear jeans!” Lyr yelled from up ahead. “Are you a rancher, son?”
“No,” Peter said, his voice cracking, “God, no.” He lowered his voice and said, “I’m the lone remaining assistant to a crazy man.”
Lyr stopped in a small clearing. He raised his chin and his arms as though daring the rain to drown him or the lightning to strike him. “I stand here before you retractable, heartless gods a broken man.” He dropped to his knees.
Peter tentatively approached. He couldn’t stop shivering and wished he had gloves. “Mr. Lyr, even the wild animals are watching us with pity. I’ve never seen a storm like this, or have we somehow walked all the way to the northern tip of Vancouver Island?”
Lyr dropped to his knees and dug at the earth with his hands, digging and grabbing tufts of grass and earth and squeezing them in his fists. He raised his hands to the sky. “But know this,” he yelled, knocking Peter back a step with the force of it. “I am a man more sinned against than sinning. I gave them a good life, everything they could have wanted. And it meant nothing in the end. One mutinous daughter who doesn’t give me a thought, and two daughters like blades, cutting me open at every turn.” Lyr opened his fists and let the dirt blow away.
Lyr slowly stood up, hand braced on a knee, then wavered, unsteady. “Are you cold?”
Peter blinked, surprised. “Am I — yes. Yes, I’m cold.”
“I’m cold, myself, and a small part of what’s left of my heart is sorry for you.”
“I appreciate that, Mr. Lyr,” Peter said.
Gregory Severn wrote down some notes while he waited in the backseat of the Lexus. He was desperate to fill his time to total distraction. After he lost Geneviève, Gregory spent most of his time pouring whisky into the abyss, at least when he wasn’t training Noah. When he finally pulled himself out enough to at least appear functional, he figured he’d better start enjoying some things, or else what was the point?
His work with Noah was what he was most proud of. No, he was most proud of Noah himself — more than the VZ Yesuþoh, more than his work — even though it broke his heart to think about how his son reneged on his duty and years of training.
Could you be both proud and regretful about the same thing? Apparently so. He had no real feelings anymore but grief and self-reproach, and no idea where to start to change that. But he had to start somewhere. The Severn family were guardians of the Zaanics lists, so he would start where he was comfortable: a list.
Tennis (table-tennis?)
Kayaking
Sailing
Origami
Collecting
Wood-working
No, challenge yourself! Gregory thought, glancing to the right to see if Jude were on his way out of the Lyr building yet. He managed to get his oldest son a job as trade show marketing manager, which was a bullshit job suitable for someone who was better at looking busy than at actually getting anything done. Time would tell if he could hold it down longer than a few months before he wanted to pursue something else he deemed more worthy of his half-assed efforts.
He went back to his list.
Ballet
Mountaineering
Medical school
(All three?)
He crossed out ballet. Preposterous. He was in decent shape, considering, but ballet? Entirely too challenging. And there was something to be said for dignity. Even if he took a class for housewives, he would be the only man …
He reconsidered and wrote ‘ballet’ again next to the one he’d put a line through.
The door opened and Jude slipped into the car in one fluid move. Gregory flipped to a blank page in his pad.
His oldest son gave him no comfort. Jude was too good-looking for his own good, he was mercurial, and he lacked Noah’s gentleness and humor. Jude also had the combustible encumbrance of restlessness and impatience, so unlike Noah, both peaceable and patient.
But Noah had discarded his legacy, and with it, their relationship, so Gregory had little choice.
As far as Gregory observed or knew, Jude hadn’t done a thing with his new, unsuitable stewardship of the language. He probably couldn’t find a place for it in his outsize ambitions.
Jude didn’t realize that some things were their own reward. Even though the discipline of memorizing and chanting the words in the lists could seem profitless, as Gregory remembered from his own training, a steward had to have faith that it was worth learning. But Jude didn’t care about the chain of ancestors who had learned to read and pronounce the Zaanics glyphs so they could pass it on to the next generation. And it didn’t even look like Jude, let alone Noah, would have anyone to teach the VZ Yesuþoh to, and this broke his heart. There was still time, though. Still time for Noah to start a family.
“I don’t like this turn of events at the company.” Gregory drummed his pencil on the legal pad. “When I spoke against Gaelen and Romane’s treatment of Aaron Lyr, and stated my opinion to the board, your mistress found out, and told me in no uncertain terms to refrain from helping Aaron in any way. Someone on the board is her eyes and ears. ‘It’s a private matter, Gregory, a family matter,’ Gregory quoted, then shook his head. “As though our families haven’t had the burden of sharing the language, for God’s sake. Those daughters of his …” He shook his head.
“I agree, it’s savage,” Jude said, his lips curving up in a smirk. “She is savage. You should see the marks on my back.”
“No, thank you.”
“I’m not married, in case you haven’t noticed.”
“Oh, I’ve noticed.”
“So she’s not my mistress,” Jude corrected.
“I was being polite.”
“And can you really fault them? Didn’t Aaron give his control of the company freely, to the most deserving contenders?”
“Yes, though I doubt the latter part is apt,” Gregory said in a dry tone. “They’re manipulating him.”
“What do you mean?”
Gregory questioned the wisdom of having this conversation with Jude, but he felt obligated to include him in his life more than he had. “Gaelen Lyr knows that my board seat isn’t up for years, but she’ll do anything to get me off their board. I’m the last loyalist remaining. And she’s already — ” how to put this so Jude would understand? “She’s taking too much from Aaron, too soon. There’s a suitable and delicate way to transition power, and Gaelen is doing it in the most callous way possible.”
He met Jude’s distant blue eyes. “Speaking of VZ, were you aware that Gaelen is trying to get all three books for herself?”
Jude’s head recoiled an inch.
Gregory was pleased that this piece of information got Jude’s attention.
“How is that possible?”
Gregory shook his head. “No one in the two families should access the books unless things look dire.”
“God knows your generation has made it dire enough,” Jude muttered, then raised his voice. “Maybe she’s blackmailing Nightjar.”
Gregory chuckled. “Nightjar?”
Jude shrugged. “How else would she get the books?”
“No. Benjamin would sooner attend a monster truck rally and eat corn dogs,” Gregory said. “Maybe he has something up his sleeve we don’t know about. Insurance. A counter-move. You don’t blackmail Nightjar. He’s a canny son of a bitch.”
Jude leaned back and closed his eyes. “I wouldn’t put anything past Gaelen,” he said with some pride. “And I wouldn’t underestimate Romane, either. She’s crazier than she looks.”
Dispirited, Gregory looked out the window. A group of men and women wearing conference lanyards passed, and two joggers sprinted by. “I’ve been on the board a long time, though the two families haven’t been close. We have to side with Aaron, keep a close eye on the daughters, and keep to a careful strategy.”
“The daughters,” Jude said. “You mean all three?”
Gregory scoffed. “No one’s heard from Cate since the Lyr ceremony. She disappear
ed.”
“She’s out there, somewhere.” Jude paused. “What about the books?”
Gregory didn’t answer right away. “We can’t let Gaelen get the other books. Whatever she plans to do with them isn’t what the creators intended. There is a protocol, and she’s flouting it. We have to make some concessions for the times, but one person can’t decide on their own, and regardless, Gaelen is doing this for her own agenda. Watch her — and if you get the opportunity to get the book, and the poem, you take it. Then give it to Benjamin.”
Jude cast a sly look at him. “Are you sure you don’t want Noah for this, instead? You chose him to learn Zaanics, so why wouldn’t you want him involved?”
Gregory inhaled sharply. Jude was toying with him, and it pissed him off. “Don’t start.”
But his son pressed. “I mean, you taught him how to read the language. You chose him to learn it over me. And you loved his mother more. So why not involve him?”
That was something he would have to put up with from Jude, like a cat swiping its claws. His son was bitter about so many things. “I loved your mother. She was a wonderful woman.”
Gregory hadn’t loved her, not really. He loved Geneviève. But Jude had enough festering resentments. There was no need to throw more wood on that fire.
“Answer me.”
“Don’t be a child. I’m not talking about this.”
“Who’s being a child now?” Jude taunted, his hand on the door handle.
“We’ll talk soon.”
Jude left the car.
His son was wrong about him. He wasn’t the petulant one. He was the old, sad, lost one, who wondered how in the world he had lost Noah.
Lyr took advantage of his assistant’s distracted attention (which was focused on the chafing from his wet jeans), and wandered off.
He walked through a stream of rain and shut his eyes against the flash of the lightning, which he hoped would start a wildfire and reduce the whole state to ashes to match his mood and the taste in his mouth. His mind was a hornet’s nest that could think of nothing but his daughters’ ingratitude and his own wretched position.
Marit had left him, too, drowning off that damn sailboat she wanted, and leaving him alone with three daughters. He needed her, more than he knew at the time, more than he could admit to himself, more than he ever realized until she wasn’t there anymore. He had kept some of her clothes and, in his more emotional moments, when something reminded him of her, he breathed them in, or unbottle her Rodin perfume and pass it under his nose.
When his daughters became teenagers, he was absolutely flummoxed. He was the Chief Executive Officer of a multi-billion dollar concern in a cutthroat industry, but he had no idea how to manage three teenage daughters. His strategy was to wait for the wave to pass over him. And although he had never been one to second-guess himself or his choices, he found himself wondering if he should have done things differently.
But it was too late now.
“Pour on!” he yelled, walking along the side of a street. “You let your father give you all he had based on your lies.”
He clasped his hands to his head. “Stop it, stop it, stop it. Stop thinking! Oh, to be a wolf. I hope I come back as a wolf.”
He saw a house and stumbled toward the front door, pounded against it, not knowing or caring what time it was, or even knowing why he wanted anyone to come to the door. An affronted man in his forties answered, bleary-eyed, tying a bathrobe, hand behind the door. Lyr felt disappointed, as though it wasn’t what he expected, but he couldn’t have said who he wanted to answer the door.
“Who the hell are you, and why are you pounding on my door in the middle of the night? I have a shotgun and I’ll use it.”
“My daughters!” Lyr said, then laughed, deep belly laughs that verged into hysteria.
The man’s eyes widened and he closed and locked the door. Lyr kept laughing as he walked through the heavy rain back to the street. It was for the best he wasn’t recognized.
He continued trudging down the street, shivering from cold or outrage, he wasn’t sure. “Just think,” he said to himself, “about the poor bastards exposed to this weather, out in this storm like me. How do your makeshift Hoovervilles defend you from a night like this one?”
“Hello!” a voice said.
Lyr turned and watched the very tall man approach him.
“Ah, a fellow wretch!” Lyr shouted over the wind.
“Do you know who I am?” The tall man put a hand to his forehead to shield his eyes from the rain.
A third figure, much smaller, ran up, panting. “Oh my God! There you are!” Lyr blinked through the rain and recognized his assistant, who took deep breaths between each sentence, hands on his knees.
“I looked everywhere … for you. I thought … I lost you.” Peter straightened and tried to catch his breath.
Lyr ignored his assistant and faced the tall man with consternation. “Why would I know who you are? You’re just another pathetic idiot like me, half-hoping the lightning will strike him down and put him out of his misery. What’s your name?”
Noah opened his mouth to speak but Lyr gave him a dismissive toss of the hand.
“Eh, what does it matter.” Lyr kept walking. “Go back to your warm bed, whoever you are. Be glad you’re young, not that you know enough to realize the benefit of it. Just know,” he pointed a finger, “that you can build an empire and provide generously for a family and still end your life alone, unloved, reduced to nothing but an animal. Do you hear me, son?”
Noah sighed. His heart went out to the man, but Cate had loved him, and her father just threw it away. If Noah ever did have a daughter he would be a happy man if she loved him like Cate loved Lyr. But she was straightforward and chose that moment to stand up for herself. Lyr didn’t realize any of this — his level of self-awareness was as tiny as a pinprick. For God’s sake, he seemed to forget Cate even existed. And here Lyr was feeling sorry for himself, and despite his irritation, Noah felt sorry for him, too. “Tartiflette,” he said under his breath.
“Let us unsung fathers have the streets,” Lyr said. “I’m walking to the city.”
“I can’t let you do that,” Noah said. He was obligated to Cate to watch out for her father and make sure he didn’t do anything stupid. If anything happened to Lyr under his watch — Noah shook his head. He didn’t even want to think about it. If they could be friends again, there was no way he was going to jeopardize that.
Lyr paused and cocked his head. His white hair was soaked. “Why, no bed? Did you give everything to your ungrateful daughters, too? And did they turn your own generosity against you to strip you of your house, your identity, and your dignity?”
Noah scratched by his ear. “Uh, no …”
Lyr gave Noah a shrewd look. “Would you?”
“I don’t have children,” Noah said. To his father’s dismay.
“Oh, because you have no children you can’t empathize with a man who does?” Lyr laughed, a near-hysterical laugh that cracked at the end. “What am I saying? There’s no empathy in this world. You don’t have daughters?”
“No,” Noah said, getting testy. “I don’t have daughters.”
“Nothing could have brought you to such a low point but your unkind daughters,” Lyr said, and leaned on Noah’s shoulder, adopting a conspiratorial tone, his voice dropped to a hush: “The stress, my friend. I don’t know how much longer I can bear it.”
He walked toward the next house, which was unlit except for the front walkway. Noah prepared to pacify an angry neighbor. What should he say, that they probably know each other from the yacht club or whatever rich Marin County homeowners did with their time, and please excuse him, he took conflicting medications?
Lyr tore off his clothes on the neighbor’s front lawn, wrestling off his sweater. He popped the buttons on his shirt in his impatience to throw his clothing to the ground. Then he pushed the doorbell repeatedly. “My name is Aaron Lyr,” he yelled at the closed door.<
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“Oh, thank God no one’s home,” Peter muttered, peeking out between his fingers.
Lyr ran to the middle of the front lawn, raised his face to the moon that glowed behind a scrim of clouds, and howled, making Noah jump. Lyr ripped his belt from the loops then threw it like it was a rattlesnake. He stepped out of his pants, losing his balance multiple times. Then he threw his pants down on the vestibule by the front door.
“That’ll be a nice surprise for when the owners get home,” Noah said from his position at the end of the driveway.
“Yeah,” Peter said, then squinted at Noah. “Hey, do I know you?”
“I don’t think so.”
Lyr danced in a circle on the carefully manicured grass.
“Well, he listens to you,” Peter said. “Try to get him to come with us.”
“Where?” Noah asked.
“Benjamin Nightjar’s house. It’s not far from here.”
The storm started to rage again and Lyr only intensified his Dionysian revelry on the neighbor’s lawn, kicking up his knees like Pan. Noah grimaced and shivered. He talked through clenched teeth. “Floating islands, I’m cold. We need to rein him in.”
“Wait, look, his batteries are dying,” Peter said, enthused. “Maybe I can get home in time to watch — ”
“Let’s get him,” Noah said, cutting him off. “Now.” Lyr was losing the energy his vitriol had given him and Noah seized advantage. He jogged up to Lyr like a Secret Service agent coming to the aid of a wayward President and threw his coat around Lyr’s shoulders.
Peter came running up, too. “Mr. Lyr, we’re needed at your attorney’s house.”
To Noah, Peter whispered, “Benjamin hasn’t been his attorney for five years, but it just may work. We have to make it seem like it’s his idea to go. Then we’ll see that he gets some sleep there.”
Noah put his hand on Lyr’s shoulder. “We’re sorry for the inconvenience, but your attorney is having trouble with a contract and wants your input.”
“Oh, all right,” a peevish Lyr said. “Let’s bivouac at my attorney’s house, but only for a little while.”
