“So, what’s the scoop?” Michael asks. “What’s the latest Oval Office gossip?”
“Please respect your mother’s wishes,” Richard says. He’s hardly touched his soup.
Michael drains his glass. “This is ridiculous. A boy is dead. The house is sold. And you’re afraid politics will wreck the week?”
Michael’s face is sweaty, lips twisted in an unrelenting sneer. His bandage comes loose, flashing the family with the puffy, ointment-smeared stitches, before Michael fumbles with the cotton and, wincing, thumbs the bandage into place.
“You want to talk politics?” Diane says. “Fine. Richard, Lisa, it’s your son’s fault we’re in this mess.”
Michael laughs. He pushes his soup bowl away from him. His chair scoots back, as if to make room for his rage.
“Say it,” Michael says.
Diane looks stricken. This isn’t her. In the two summers and two Christmases Jake’s spent with her, he’s never heard her utter an unkind word. Never heard her raise her voice. Never seen her contradict a thing her husband says, and Michael says some pretty stupid shit.
“Say it!”
Diane’s head drops. “Michael voted for…” But she can’t make herself finish the sentence.
“Oh, Son,” Lisa says.
“Oh, Christ,” Thad says.
“I’m sorry,” Diane says, but the destination of her sorry is unclear. The apology bounces off the ceiling, the light fixtures, Jake’s painting on the wall. It sails around the room until it falls, dissolving, at their feet.
“Why the fuck?” Thad says. “You’re not that dumb.”
“Don’t call me dumb,” Michael says.
“Don’t call your brother dumb,” Richard says.
“Son,” Lisa says. “What were you thinking?”
“Thinking,” Michael says. “That’s the problem.” He waves a hand, indicting all of them. “All this thinking, all the time. And where did all that thinking get us? Did it get the country out of debt? Out of Afghanistan? Out of Iraq? Did all that thinking save Detroit? Or save our jobs from going overseas? Did that thinking find new work for coal miners? Or raise salaries for teachers nationwide? Did that thinking bail out homeowners trying to keep their homes?”
The bandage slips and, once more, Michael pushes it into place.
“Did everyone get to keep their health care?”
Michael looks at Thad. Thad looks into his soup.
“ ‘If you like your health plan, you can keep it.’ Did that turn out to be true?”
“No,” Thad says, “except—”
“No, it did not turn out to be true,” Michael says.
“It’s more complicated than that,” Lisa says. “The law set standards. For co-pays. For deductibles. Prescription benefits. People who lost their plans, those plans weren’t health care. They were rip-offs, shams. Those aren’t the plans he meant.”
“But that’s not what Obama said.” Michael’s eyes are huge. His teeth gleam.
“President Obama,” Lisa says.
Michael smiles. “President Obama. I’ve never once heard you say President Trump.”
“I’ll call him president the day he acts like one,” Lisa says.
Michael lifts the spoon from his soup bowl and licks it clean. He taps the spoon on the table once, twice, half a dozen times.
“Let’s talk drones,” he says.
“Enough,” Richard says.
“Your president,” Michael says. “Your Nobel Peace Prize–winning president. Do you know how many people he killed?”
“Besides bin Laden?” Thad says.
“Almost four thousand,” Michael says. “Four thousand, over three hundred of whom were civilians. Wedding guests. Doctors. Mothers walking children home from school. And that’s just the drones.”
Lisa shakes her head. “I’m sure that’s not—”
“It’s true,” Diane says. “I didn’t want to believe it either, so I looked it up. I’m afraid it’s true.”
Michael leans back, and his chair’s front legs leave the floor. He rights himself. He drops the spoon. “See, Mom, while you were busy saving all those birds, your favorite president ordered machines to kill people, then sat in a war room and watched those machines murder people on TV. Let me ask you this. Which is more valuable, a person or a bird?”
“Jesus, Michael,” Thad says, “leave Mom alone.”
“Why?” Michael says. “Who’d you vote for?”
“Hillary,” Thad says. “Obviously.”
“Dad?” Michael says.
“Not that it’s anybody’s business,” Richard says, “but Hillary.”
“Mom?”
Lisa, however, refuses to play Michael’s game. She sits, quiet, dignified. Jake finds this commendable. Also anticlimactic. Had he spoken to his mother this way, she’d have slapped him across the face, assuming Jake’s father hadn’t already thrown his face across the room. But Lisa remains composed. And is this love, or something less?
“This is my fault,” Diane says. “I shouldn’t have said anything.”
“No,” Lisa says. “This is not your fault. But we’re finished discussing that monster.”
“That monster lowered your taxes,” Michael says.
“Spoken like a true deplorable,” Thad says.
“Deplorable?” Michael says. “I’m the deplorable? You don’t even have a job!”
“I don’t collect social services,” Thad says.
“You don’t have to,” Michael says. He looks at Jake, but stops short of what he wants to say. Jake knows what Michael thinks of him, and Jake doesn’t give a fuck. He has half a million in the bank and owns his loft. He gives more to The Trevor Project annually than Michael makes in any given year. When it comes to Michael, Jake has nothing to prove.
Thad, on the other hand, has let his brother get the best of him.
“I’m looking for work,” Thad says.
“You’ve been ‘looking’ for two years,” Michael says.
“Just because I’m not willing to dress up like a fucking referee—”
“Fuck you,” Michael says, and here, Thad’s gone too far. Michael’s fiercest ache, his greatest shame. The family calls him a businessman. They say he’s in sales. No one mentions the fact that, for years, Michael’s worked the floor at a dingy Foot Locker at one of America’s dying indoor malls. Honest work, though Michael insists it’s beneath him, insists without saying what he’d rather do.
Michael stands, a finger in Thad’s face. The bandage slips, and Michael rips it off.
“You have the nerve to call me a deplorable. You contribute nothing to society. And the second Jake leaves you, you won’t hesitate to let taxpayers pay for you. And you.” He turns to Lisa. “Two houses. Two ivory-tower pensions. And you talk about how a child had the nerve to drown and ruin your family’s special week. And you.” He turns to Diane. “You didn’t even vote for Hillary! You voted for Stein. You say Trump’s my fault. At least I didn’t throw away my vote! All this while we sit here in a double-wide trailer in a red state. Don’t you get it? We’re the deplorables! Hillary doesn’t care about you, or you, or you. You think Hillary Clinton ever spent the night in a trailer? You think she cares about the states she didn’t win? And, hell, whichever liberals aren’t judging Mom and Dad for being from the South are judging them for the people they’ve displaced. You think this lake was always called Lake Christopher? That’s a developer’s name. This lake had a Native American name, but that name had too many syllables, too hard for white people to say, so some company buys the land and, presto, it’s Lake Christopher. Pretty, pronounceable, marketable. From there, development is easy. Buy out the locals. Those you can’t buy out, condemn with eminent domain. Sell the land to the owners of Home Depot and RaceTrac and Coke. Stock the lake with largemouth bass. Then lie back and cash the checks as they come in. That’s Lake Christopher, a town built on the backs of the working class on land stolen from Native Americans, now owned by business mogu
ls. But it’s okay. You worked hard nine months a year. You’ve earned your peace and quiet, haven’t you?”
Michael takes a breath.
“I may be a deplorable, but so are you. All of you. Because guess what? This is America. Everybody’s somebody’s deplorable.”
Then they’re yelling at each other, Thad calling Michael an asshole, Diane demanding Thad not call her husband names, Lisa scolding Diane for voting third party with so much on the line, Richard asking Michael not to yell, and Michael asking why his father never takes his side. Everyone arguing, no one listening.
Except Jake. Jake takes it all in.
This family. These miserable, well-meaning people. They’ve never liked a thing Jake’s given them. The forsaken shower radio, the painting on the wall. But there’s another offering, something no one else can give.
“You guys,” Jake says. They’re the first words he’s spoken since the start of dinner when he complimented Lisa’s soup. No one hears him over the lather of their attacks, so he stands. He tries again. “I have something to say.”
And Jake gives the Starlings a gift that also has the convenience of being true.
“You guys,” he says, “I didn’t vote.”
Eyes turn. Temples throb. And Jake can’t help but smile. He has, if only for one night, become, for this family, the thing he’s always been for his own. He is the common enemy, the scourge upon whom all might heap their scorn. Tonight he is the voice that saves them from themselves.
22.
Water, moonlight, wind. A tumbler, sides condensing, drink so strong Michael imagines the moonshine eating through the glass, the dock, sees the poison hit the lake and, in seconds, the surface is bubbles and fish bellies.
He sits, shoes off, feet in the water. He’s seen snakes here, big ones, watched them move through the water, between reeds, black heads like periscopes.
Above, the stars are bright, the moon a crescent. Below, the lake is a bowl that holds the sky.
On the point, the flag flies half-staff. Michael wonders who died, then recognizes the tribute for what it is. A kindness to the locals, the bay, the boy. There is not enough kindness in this world. Michael should know. He’s more than contributed his share to this insufficiency. The world won’t miss him when he’s gone. Diane might. A child would. But giving yourself someone new to miss you—that’s not a reason to bring life into the world.
Frogs bleat and insects pulse. A clump of cattails clack atonal in the breeze. An owl calls, and Michael calls back, but he’s not his mother. His mother can make herself into any bird.
He wonders what it’s like, having a kid. He’s not afraid he’ll shake the baby, or whatever parents do that lands them in grisly reenactments on daytime TV. Neither is he worried, seeing the child for the first time, that he’ll feel nothing. He’ll love the child. He knows he will. That’s what scares him. He’ll love the child, and all that love will push his resentment down the road, what, ten, twenty years? Still, one day he’ll wonder who he might have been, given a few more years, given the time to figure out his dreams. When that day comes, he’ll look back on his life and blame the child. He will. And he doesn’t want to be that father.
Of course, this argument would be easier to make with himself if he had dreams. What does he want?
More moonshine, for starters. He knocks back his glass. Another owl calls, and he responds.
The dock creaks, and Michael knows who’s behind him before the first word leaves her mouth. His mother sits and, sitting, sits too close. She’s wearing shorts, her thighs a topography of age spots and spider veins.
“You make a lousy great horned owl,” she says.
“Was I answering you?”
“No. That was a tiger, all right. I was about to vocalize, but you beat me to it.”
Michael rattles the ice in his glass. He has yet to find the warm, pillowy center of tonight’s drunk. He’s too on guard, too tense, back stiff and forehead still ablaze.
“That was quite the show you put on at dinner,” his mother says.
He grips the glass. The glass will keep him safe. Even empty, it’s a wall between himself and whatever his mother will say next.
“How come we don’t talk anymore?”
He can’t do this, not tonight. He hasn’t had enough to drink.
“We talk,” he says. “We’re talking right now.”
“I mean talk-talk. There was a time you wanted to talk to me. Now it’s like we hardly know each other.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He knows exactly what she’s talking about.
If his mother died, if he had to speak at her memorial, Michael has no idea what he’d say. She loves birds. She loves her boys. He knows how much she loves him and how much he’s let her down. But he doesn’t know her.
“I don’t mind that you don’t call to ask about my day,” she says. “It’s not a son’s job to be invested in his parents’ lives. But it hurts thinking you don’t want me to know you.”
Which you, though, Michael wonders. It’s a rare day even he knows his own mind.
“I want to talk to you about something,” his mother says, “but I don’t want you getting mad at me.”
“Not a great way to start.”
“I mean it.”
“I mean it too. That’s maybe the worst way to start. I’m on the defensive, and I don’t even know what you’re going to say.”
His mother’s eyes are no longer tender. Resolve has smacked the kindness from her face. “I’m just going to come out and say it.”
“I wish you would.”
“I think you two should keep the baby.”
The glass has gone warm in his hand, and he puts it down. He watches the surface of the lake. If he watches long enough, maybe his mother will rise and walk away.
“Honestly,” she says, “I can’t believe it’s up for discussion. I can’t believe it’s a question of if.”
“This has nothing to do with you.”
“I’m the grandmother. I’d like to think I play some part in the decision-making process.”
“You don’t.” He isn’t trying to be mean about it, then he is. “You don’t even enter into the equation.”
She looks away, and he feels shitty. But only briefly. Because this isn’t her business. This isn’t her marriage. He may be her son, but his life is still his own.
His mother’s knee grazes his. “You shouldn’t say things you don’t mean.”
“I mean it,” he says. “But I shouldn’t have put it that way. I’m sorry.”
Across the bay, the dogs let out a reverie of barks and howls. Then, just as they did last night, the lights come on, the dogs are brought inside, and the evening settles into chirps and croaks. A fin breaks the water a few yards past the dock. Carp or gar, Michael can’t make the fish out.
“If this is about June,” Michael says, and hears the intake of his mother’s breath.
He’s trespassed. He feels it. He’s sullied the memory of his sister, and all he’s done is speak her name.
His mother straightens. “That was a secret.”
“Diane sucks at secrets. But you knew that. She told you ours.”
“I suppose…” she says, but her thought goes unfinished. She was about to say that when it comes to family, there should be no secrets. Michael’s almost sure of this. But something stopped her. Perhaps another secret changed her mind.
“I get not wanting to scare us when we were younger,” he says. “But once we were older, grown-up, why not tell us then?”
But the look his mother gives him says he’ll never be grown-up enough for this.
“What age?” she says. “When would you have had me tell?”
“I don’t know. Once we were old enough to understand.”
His mother laughs, but the laugh is a flower bloomed and dead and withered all at once.
“Understand? Son, there is no understanding. When a child dies, there’s no bigger picture, no reconci
ling death with destiny or God. When a child dies, the only thing to understand is that there’s nothing to be understood. Nothing. I wanted to protect you boys from that.”
Michael wants to say that, as June’s brother, he deserved to know, but the fight they’ve just had over babies, over whose business is whose, makes that a tough argument to win.
“Your father wanted to tell you both,” his mother says. “Then Thad had his thing.”
He hates that she calls Thad’s suicide attempts his things, as though transforming the word transforms the truth.
“After that, we worried it might upset Thad too much, that he might… self-harm.”
“Then why not just tell me?”
His mother nods. “We considered it, but we weren’t sure that was fair.”
“Except, you told Diane. You must have wanted me to know.”
“Maybe you’re right. Maybe, deep down, I did.”
Her nose shines, the scar pink where they carved the cancer out, one nostril a little deflated, slowly closing in on itself.
“The timing’s bad, Mom. We just don’t have the means.”
“No one ever thinks they have the means. You just have to go for it.”
“Everyone who says that has money.”
But he isn’t sure she’s hearing him. She can’t fathom his salary or what Diane’s school district pays—how, incomes combined, he and Diane make less than his mother will take home in retirement each year. She’s forgotten what it’s like, starting out. Or else she always lived within her means, never splurged.
“What about what Diane wants?” his mother says.
“Diane doesn’t know what she wants,” he says. This isn’t true. Her mind’s made up. The baby will be born. But Michael’s not ready to give his mother the satisfaction of this answer, not yet.
Plus, what about what he wants?
So he picked out their house, their cars, the state in which they live? So the decisions that left them broke were mostly his? If sacrificing for the one you love is better than getting your own way, Michael’s merely given his wife numerous opportunities to feel good about herself. If this is true, isn’t an abortion the perfect way for Diane to prove her love to him?
Lake Life Page 15
