Unraveling

by Owen Thomas

  I pull the plug on the fantasy with another drink of wine and acknowledge silently to myself that the, everything will work out fine mantra is now completely worn out and no longer doing its job. Aside from Mae, I have no one but the police and my lawyer to talk to about my fate and neither of them is particularly comforting.

  Ben’s shadow does another pirouette and bends and straightens and bends and straightens like a tree laughing its way through a violent storm.

  The financial implications of my situation choose this moment to reintroduce themselves with a vengeance. Next week Principal Robert B. Robertson III will pick up a pen with his meaty little fingers and change the character of my suspension from “investigative” to “disciplinary” – without pay – as his stupid plastic bulldog nods in agreement. Ain’t that right, Bully?! Ain’t that right, Bully?! Fuckin’ plastic bobblehead dog. Who makes those things? Are there bobblehead factories? Who keeps them on their desks? I have almost nothing in savings. The mortgage is due in, what, two weeks? I will soon be getting a bill from Glenda Laveau of Chaney, Baker, Smith & Lyons for an amount I certainly cannot afford and while I would like to think her services will no longer be necessary, who am I kidding? He’s still out there. He’s following me, for Chrissakes. He’s not quitting. He’s probably down the street right now, either him or one of his stupid cop partners. The only way out of this is whenever stupid Brittany Kline comes out of hiding. Even then, it’s a safe bet that Brittany hates me. What if she lies? To get back at me for rejecting her and taking her drugs; to cover up for whatever shit she’s into and to deflect a lot of tough questions about what she’s been doing and about pot and ecstasy and coke and nightclubs and horny teachers. And, goddamnit, she does have some things she can say. I was there and I did dance and they were drinking and there was a kiss and I did take her drugs. What an asshole! Nice one, Dave. Way to use your head. Shit, what if she actually turns up dead? Ever think of that? That oughta be worth a few billion dollars in legal defense. If I am actually charged with something I suppose I could get a public defender, but is this really the time to be bargain shopping?

  I close my eyes and take a breath and try to get a grip. I focus on Ben’s shadow, twisting and bending and laughing in that silent wind of his, until I can force a better perspective on my own thoughts. Everything will work out fine. Everything will work out fine. Everything will work out fine. It would help to have someone to talk to. Someone I could trust and who did not want to bill me or arrest me or fire me and who I had no interest in bedding. Someone to just talk with.

  In the reflection I can see the party in the room behind me. My father has made his appearance. He is making his way through the room, person to person, hand to hand, his course marked by a trail of hugs and laughter. They love him. People love him. He is the great communicator in the same way that Ronald Regan was the Great Communicator. The gift of Hollywood to politics; of knowing what to say and how to say it; how to hit that mark and deliver the line and to deliver it with conviction. Not just any line, but the line people want to hear. The line that makes them feel good about themselves; the line that pulls their chins up and straightens their spines and gives them some hope. And if the line is right and true and just, so much the better. And if the line is nothing but hollow sound wrapped in a wishful thought, they will love him for it anyway like they love a good movie that has no relation to reality but that makes them feel the way they want to feel. My father is not a politician and does not traffic in votes or campaign dollars, but he has the same gift of knowing what to say and how to say it. He can – when he is on, when he is working the room, when the charm is flowing – he can deliver the lines people need to hear. And they love him for it.

  It is an ability that comes and goes, and I have in later years come to question just how much control over it he actually has. But when he’s On, he’s On, and there’s nobody who can beat him. The walls could be coming down under heavy cannon fire and my father would take it in stride, shaking hands, telling stories, telling people that everything was as it should be – ahh, the walls, yes, well a little fresh air is good for you. Reminds me of the time out on the back nine in a lightning storm with the Governor and half of the bank board and Morgan Fairchild… And as the plaster rains down into the open glasses of Chablis and Cabernet they will love him, they will reach out for him – Hollis! Over here Hollis! – because when you feel like you have no control over your world, the line people want to hear is that you really do have control, or you really don’t need as much control as you think you do, or that control is a delusion that only leads to the trouble of delusions and that all you really need to know is that everything will be okay in the end.

  And none of this will sound or feel like a line because it will not be a line. For that moment, swallowing all other moments, the line is the truth and you believe it completely because he believes it so completely – believes it simply because he wants to believe it and because he knows that in the singular moment, before the cops and the lawyers and the principals have their next say, there is no difference between wanting and being, between truth and line, between saying it and making it so – and it is the magic of my father, and maybe of most fathers, to make the world comprehensible again.

  I realize now that this is exactly what I need.

  I mark his progress in the reflection. It takes him another fifteen minutes.

  “You hogging the Shiraz?” he asks.

  “Huh? Oh, no. It was just sitting here.” I hand him the bottle and he refills his glass. “Ben in his room?”

  “Yeah. You know how your mother gets at these sorts of things.” It is the tone of male bonding over the silliness of women. “So I hear Mae isn’t feeling well.”

  “Stomach thing. She said she would try to be here.”

  “You two okay?”

  “Us? Yeah. Yeah. Fine.”

  Instinctively, I knit my brows, as though I am puzzled by the question; as though he had asked me if I like tapioca pudding or if I was aware that most of the earth was covered by water. But, of course, I do not sound puzzled. I sound defensive.

  “Mmm.”

  He gives me the look and the pursed lips and the slow nod that says he is a little amused by my lie, and that we will see how it all plays out in the end and to make no mistake that he will be there when it does. He couldn’t possibly know anything about my relationship – or non-relationship – with Mae other than what I have told him, which is that everything is great… fine… super… aces or other variations on that theme. But he does know. He always knows. Or at least seems to know.

  Intellectually, I understand the game. Intellectually, I understand that all he ever really knows is the possibility that there is something to know – that there is the ever-present possibility that, for instance, something is different in my relationship with Mae. A possibility that we have split. A possibility that we are planning to be married. A possibility that she is pregnant and that we are fighting over whether to keep the baby. And so on. If, by some future revelation, that turns out to be true, then his look and his pursed lips and his nod are all placeholders by which he can claim – to himself even if not to others – that he knew all along. And if, on the other hand, there is no revelation, no split, no marriage, no baby, then nothing ever comes of the look, and the pursed lips and the nod, and he knew all along that nothing was particularly different in my relationship with Mae and in fact, he has known all along that my relationship with Mae is one of those types of relationships in which nothing particularly different ever happens; at least, until something different does happen, in which case it is something he saw coming from the very beginning.

  Intellectually, I understand that my father knows everything because his knowledge of the world is incredibly amoebic and plasticine and non-linear; that it shapes and molds itself around evolving circumstance, seamlessly accommodating and incorporating new information, swapping out old information, spreading out in all directions with no discernable he
ad or tail, beginning or end, history or future, so that after all is said and done, it is a conveniently impossible task for him to distinguish between old and new understanding; between revelation and memory. Whatever he learns, he has always known.

  Intellectually, I get it.

  But emotionally, the fucker knows how to read minds.

  “How’s the school this year so far?”

  “Oh, okay. New crop of freshmen.”

  “You whipping them into shape?”

  “Trying.”

  “Well, keep at it. Given any more thought to teaching at the college level?”

  The question is nothing new. He is nonchalant and unassuming and non-judgmental and just curious and completely full of shit. Even when I know the question is coming, which is usually, it never loses its deflationary effect on my self-esteem, like letting the air out of a bicycle tire with a nail. I cross my arms to stop the leak.

  “There are too many petty agendas at work in college faculties, and unless you are incredibly diligent about kissing the asses of the right people…”

  As I tell him, again and with too much force, why I am not interested in a career in a post-secondary environment, I tell myself that my father is actually not disappointed in me; that he is actually so enamored with my potential that he cannot help but suggest to me, again and again, what he understands to be the next rung of the ladder I have chosen to climb for a living.

  “…said that the university was the last bastion of true liberalism is full of crap. I don’t want to spend my time…”

  But I am not so good at self-deception and I know, inescapably, that he is disappointed in me; that he wishes he could graduate me from his repertoire of apocrypha – reminds me of the time that my oldest son, David, reeled in two trout on one hook – to his repertoire of genuine credentials – and my oldest son, David, was just inducted into the Organization of American Historians and awarded the Bancroft Prize in American History for his book “The History of Existence” which has also, by the way, made the Pulitzer nominations.

  “…all you have to do is look at the new patterns in alumni fundraising…”

  Of course, even there I come up short, for I know he would like to be claiming that his oldest son, David, is a moving and shaking investment banker in Manhattan pulling in seven or eight or nine figures a year. There is a line about acorns and trees that he wants to use. That line and the, taught him everything he knows line.

  But we both know that my life is hardly a monument to things my father has taught me. He taught me how to golf. I hate golf. He taught me how to fish. I do not fish. He taught me the value of saving and investing and preached the gospel of compounded interest and yet, I am always broke. He sang the songs of the marketplace and of building great cities and of people with the vision and courage to pioneer new ventures. New ventures. Trailblazing. The future. But I teach history. History. I teach history in the same high school that once gave me a “D” in algebra and that now has suspended me on suspicion of crimes against children.

  He is not listening to the defense of my career choice. Neither am I, really. We have had this conversation before. As I extol the freshness and exhilaration of high school academe, he is scanning the window behind me and I am looking at the front door behind him. Mae is not coming. I know this now with a visceral certainty and I relax.

  He changes the subject to Bethany Koan. He is quite taken with her academic credentials and her personal ambition and her professional promise and other qualities I do not possess. I am waiting to hear about her golf game and her love for fishing.

  Instead, it turns out she is Japanese. Go figure. He wants my impressions and, notwithstanding her tolerance for Mike O’Donnell, I give her a decent review. Her father is a big shot banker in Japan. He is showing her around to help his friend. School in Columbia. Wants a Masters in business. Mother dead. Tragic boat fire. Blah, blah, blah. Now I am not listening to him. I want desperately to cut through the shit. I want to tell him that I am in trouble and scared and that I need him to be the Great Communicator; that there are things I need to hear and that I need him to deliver the line; the line that I don’t believe at first, but that he believes just enough in the moment to make it true; the line that I will take home with me tonight and tuck under my pillow. I need him to give me the look and purse the lips and nod the head and tell me that all of this mess is entirely predictable and to be expected and that everything will turn out alright because none of this is particularly surprising, and because he has always known something like this would come along, and because he will take care of things.

  And then I need the hug. I need him to put down the fucking wine and to cross the goddamned physical barrier between father and grown son that may as well be the fucking Grand Canyon and that does not seem to exist between mothers and daughters or mothers and sons or between women of any age or between men and women or even between my father and his closer male contemporaries. I need him to tell me everything will work out fine and I need him to seal the deal with arms around shoulders and to make it true.

  “Dad … I, uh…”

  Part of me cannot believe I am about to get this out. I look into the back yard at the pale pool of light framing Ben’s shadow laughing in the wind.

  “I need … I’m having…”

  I can’t find the words and realize that now – here, the party – is probably not appropriate. I am a chicken shit.

  “Maybe later we can talk,” I sputter, blushing.

  I get the knowing smile and then the pursed lips. The look that understands everything; the precursor to the line. I am ashamed and look away, scanning the back yard, hoping strangely that my stuttering had been enough to spark the dialogue I wanted.

  “You live in a nice place for a high school history teacher, David. Once we get the mortgage paid off it will be a good investment for you.”

  “Dad, no, that’s not…”

  “And I saw your car out on the street.”

  “Oh.” Oh, shit. He saw the car.

  “You know, vandalism like that doesn’t happen in university parking lots.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Did they catch them?”

  “No.”

  “Any idea why they did it?”

  It is my chance. It is an opening to the truth and all I need to do is step into the light. But I do not have what it takes. I see his face, not as it is here and now, but as it was over there, at the dining table, decades ago, in his creaking chair with his glass of wine – it’s probably the same damn glass – talking to me about responsibility and consequences for those who do not have the sense to exercise good judgment and about how Inga and Heinrich Van Susteren were not pressing charges for all of their stupid precious dead fish scattered across their ruined new floor, but how if I did not turn my brain on I would one day be sitting in a police station.

  “Uh, no. No idea. It’s what vandals do, I guess.”

  “Well, a new paint job will set you back. That and a mortgage payment… hmm…” He considers his fingers reflectively, a banker doing basic math, “let’s say about two thousand. Will that help?”

  I cannot answer him and turn away. He thinks I am hitting him up for a handout, which I am, but that was never the real point. And the handout, if that is the truth of things, was to be a special, emergency sort of handout for things like serious criminal defense legal fees, not ordinary monthly handouts like mortgage payments or even shit happens handouts like new paintjobs for inexplicably vandalized Civics.

  I am staring at Ben in the pool of light. Suddenly my father’s hand, carrying his misplaced, well-intentioned consolation, and all of his kindly suspended disappointment, is on my shoulder. I am the prodigal son who never really left in the first place.

  “Don’t worry about it, David. I’m happy to do it. If …”

  I am saved, again, by my mother who is trying to get everyone’s attention.

  “…oh, here we go, your mother’s banging a glass,” h
e says. “This will be interesting.”

  And it is interesting. Unless you’ve seen it a billion times before; my mother and father waging the same battle for control and respect that they have waged forever, even, as now, within the velvet interstices of the words they speak in polite society. They pull mightily at opposite ends of the same rope of woven flesh and hair and money and sex and children and time that emerges from each of them and that connects them like two knots that are the product of rope and years upon years of pulling.

  I do what I have trained myself to do when I hear the rope creaking and groaning; I check out. I look into the backyard and think of other things. Mae. Prison. The food. The cellmate. The showers.

  I am dimly aware of a tussle over whether the woman in a sport coat and a tattoo with an aggressive fondness for crab cakes – I have already forgotten her name – should tell the story about Mom’s speech at the Fingerhut rally. It is a story my father pretends not to hate, just as he pretends not to hate Eric Fingerhut. The conversation devolves into the barely polite social equivalent of the do not-do so and the stop pointing at me – Mom, David’s pointing at me, and the liar-liar-pants-on-fire games that Tilly and I played in the backseat of the sky-blue station wagon on the drive to Yosemite.

  “Oh, Hollis. You did. You did. Sitting right over there at that table. He did. He said he hated Eric Fingerhut. David heard it, didn’t you, David?”