The Easy Way Out

by Stephen McCauley

  Without looking at the menu, my mother announced that she intended to have a plain broiled breast of chicken, if the waiter ever reappeared to take our orders. My father agreed on the entrée but sat intently reading the history of the hotel chain, printed on the inside of the enormous menu.

  “I wish I wasn’t watching my cholesterol,” Ryan said. “This shrimp scampi sounds great.”

  “Oh, go ahead and have it,” my mother commanded. “What difference does it make? Don’t you agree, Jimmy?” She elbowed my father, and he looked up as if he’d been roused from sleep. “You’re only going this way once, thank God, so you might as well enjoy it. I’d have it, too, if I could digest it.”

  “Have it, Ryan,” my father mumbled.

  “I don’t think so. I’m supposed to watch out for shellfish. I’ll just have the chicken. What are you having, Patrick?”

  “I haven’t decided.”

  For no aesthetic or practical reasons I could discern, the chairs in the restaurant were bulky, high-backed things upholstered in slippery green plastic. Both my parents looked as if they were being swallowed up. As Ryan anxiously shifted his weight, the seat made embarrassing creaking sounds. My parents, who tend to be shy in public anyway, looked childlike and harmless with the high chair backs looming over their heads. When the waiter finally returned, they sat smiling dumbly as he rattled off the endless list of specials.

  “What was that last thing he said?” my father asked.

  “Ask him, don’t ask me,” my mother said in a stage whisper, touching the bottom of her hairdo and smiling at the waiter.

  “I think chicken marsala was the last thing I mentioned.”

  “Oh. Now, is that with that cheese you put on it?”

  “Well, you’re not going to have it no matter what it is, Jimmy, so what difference does it make if it’s with cheese or without?”

  “All right. I’m just trying to look interested, that’s all.”

  “Since I seem to be the only one ready,” my mother said, “I might as well begin. I’ll have a plain broiled breast of chicken. No potatoes. What’s the vegetable?”

  “Cauliflower.”

  “Oh, God. No vegetable, either.”

  “Very good. You can help yourself to the hors d’oeuvres and salad bars.”

  “That sounds lovely, but I don’t think I have the strength at this point.”

  “I’ll have what she’s having,” my father said, folding up the gigantic menu.

  “I guess I should have the same thing,” Ryan said, unconvincingly.

  “Don’t be a martyr,” my mother said. “He’ll have the shrimp scampi.”

  The waiter was in his early twenties, one of those pumped-up suburban men with wide shoulders and no waistline and a thin, pointless mustache. He reminded me of Tony at that age. He looked to Ryan and cocked his head.

  “I’ll just have the chicken breast like them.”

  “Give him the scampi,” my father said.

  “Oh, all right, I’ll have the scampi. What are you having, Pat?”

  I quietly ordered a plain broiled breast of chicken. The waiter was obviously having trouble hearing what I said, and I felt like Professor Fields.

  When Ryan was off perusing the hors d’oeuvres bar, I took out the file on Tony’s honeymoon and set it on the table in front of me. I folded my hands over it and looked at my parents.

  “What’s with the look?” my father asked.

  “Before we talk about the honeymoon,” I said, “I have a few blunt questions I’d like to ask you about the wedding.”

  “Oh, good. I love blunt questions,” my mother said. “All you have to do is pretend you’re offended, and you’re off the hook.”

  My father, on automatic pilot, picked up a plastic card from the center of the table and began reading about the exotic cocktails the restaurant served.

  “If at all possible,” I said, “I’d like you to be completely honest with me.”

  “Unfortunately, dear, I left the lie detector at home, so you’ll just have to trust me.”

  “I’d like to know what you think about this marriage. Honestly.”

  “What we think?” my mother asked.

  I nodded.

  “Well, I’ll tell you what I think,” my father said. “I think Loreen is the sweetest, kindest, prettiest girl I’ve met in a hell of a long time. And she’s got brains, too. If I was given the chance to handpick a daughter-in-law, I doubt I could do better than Loreen. She’s too good for that brother of yours, but that’s not her fault. Does that answer your question?”

  “Not really. I asked about the marriage, not Loreen.”

  “Oh, I forgot,” my mother said. “Loreen has nothing to do with the marriage. She’s just an innocent bystander. Of course, I know you’ve never liked her, Patrick.”

  “Not true. I’ve always liked her a great deal.”

  “If you did, I don’t think you’d be asking questions in that accusing tone of voice. Jimmy, would you put that card down and listen here? He makes his speech and then goes back to that cocktail list. He knows he can’t drink anyway, but he wastes everyone’s time with that nonsense.”

  “Meanwhile, she’s solving the world’s problems over there. I thought Patrick might like one of these drinks. I was trying to be considerate. And I don’t know why you decided to get that chicken, Rita. You know I’m sick of chicken.”

  I looked across the restaurant, trying to figure out where the conversation would head after their skirmish. Ryan, ever affable, was at the salad bar, laughing it up with one of the businessmen. My original plan had been to talk quietly with my mother and get her to acknowledge that Tony probably wasn’t in love with Loreen and that he’d been tricked into giving her the ring. I figured that was one small thing I could do for my younger brother. I didn’t believe for a minute he actually intended to go through with the wedding, and I saw myself as opening the exit door for him. I don’t know why, but I felt it was up to me to secure Tony’s freedom. No one else cared. Even Vivian wasn’t pressing hard enough. But I felt oddly outnumbered, overwhelmed just as Tony had probably felt when he tried to put off the engagement.

  “Let me put it this way,” I said, cutting through the flak. “Do you think Tony’s in love with Loreen?”

  “Does this have something to do with that long, secret phone conversation you two had?”

  Ryan sat down and began to eat from a plate heaped with scallops wrapped in bacon.

  “For Christ’s sake, Ryan,” I said, “is that what you call watching your cholesterol?”

  “It’s what I call watching my cholesterol skyrocket.” He chuckled to himself.

  “Leave your brother alone, Patrick,” my mother said. “I never heard of anyone dropping dead from a scallop. Where did you get your medical degree? What’s your theory on Loreen?”

  “I think Tony isn’t in love with her, that’s my theory.”

  “The only thing that brother of yours has ever cared about is a certain part of his body,” my father said, “and he wouldn’t know love if it came and bit that off, which is probably the best thing that could happen to him and the rest of us.”

  “That’s lovely talk in a restaurant,” my mother whispered, “not to mention in front of me. He always has to reduce everything to its lowest level.”

  “As if I didn’t try to control Tony all alone,” my father said, slumped over his glass of water. “As if I wasn’t the only one who did.”

  My mother waved his words off. “I’d like to know why you’re bringing this up now, Patrick.”

  “Because,” I said, “Tony told me on the phone the other night that he wanted to put off giving Loreen the ring, but he couldn’t because you’d already told her he was going to propose.”

  “Oh, that,” my mother said, obviously relieved. “That was so long ago, who even remembers.”

  “Listen, Patrick,” Ryan said calmly, “no one is in love when they get married. You get married, you settle down, you ease into
it. After a while, you don’t know whether you’re in love, out of love, here, there, where you are. You get up, you go to bed, you’re in love, you’re not in love, that’s the way it is.”

  “Those scallops have gone to your head, Ryan.”

  My father said, “He’s making perfect sense to me, Patrick, and I think he knows a little more about marriage than you do.”

  “Come on, Ryan. You were in love when you got married, weren’t you?”

  “Sure, but that’s different. Elaine was the first girl I’d really dated, so of course I was in love with her. I probably still am, for all I know. But Tony’s another story.”

  “You can say that again,” my father said.

  Our dinners were brought. I noticed my mother observing me, as she usually did in restaurants, to see if I was trying to make eye contact with the waiter. When he’d arranged the plates in front of everyone, he asked if there was anything else we needed.

  “Doesn’t that come with a bib?” my mother asked nervously, pointing to Ryan’s plate.

  “A bib? No, that’s only for the lobster, not the shrimp.”

  “Well, this looks thoroughly unappetizing,” my father said once we were alone.

  My mother took a pair of half-glasses out of her handbag and examined her chicken as if she expected it to fly off the plate. “Overdone,” she declared, looking around first to make sure no one could hear.

  “Anyway,” I said, “I really don’t understand how you could have told Loreen about the ring. I’ve given this a lot of thought, and it seems cruel. I don’t include you in this, Ryan.”

  “Listen, Pat, let’s just try to enjoy the food here.”

  “Typical of you, Patrick, to think you know so much more than the rest of us, you and that brother of yours,” my mother said. She still had on her glasses and was slicing into the chicken, apparently trying to find an edible mouthful. “It just goes to show you don’t know everything, because we never did tell Loreen Tony was going to give her a ring.”

  “Excuse me?”

  Ryan looked up at me and shrugged.

  My mother took off her glasses, slipped them into her handbag, and snapped it shut with an efficient click. “We never told Loreen a thing. It would have been cruel to spoil Tony’s surprise like that. When he came home and tried to back out of the engagement, we just made that story up, that’s all.”

  When Tony and I were kids, we often engaged in heated wrestling matches, while Ryan stood by and tried to pry us apart. Once, Tony ended up sitting on my chest, with a pillow over my face, and just before Ryan managed to pull him off, I passed out. It left me with a phobia of being trapped in closets and elevators and relationships. That panicky feeling of imminent asphyxiation clutched at me as I looked around the table at my parents’ faces, ghoulishly lit from above by the fake Tiffany lamp.

  My father had his knife in one hand and his fork in the other, and he put them down noisily against the sides of his plate. “Don’t make a big deal of this, Patrick. It was my idea, and I don’t think it was cruel, and I’d do it again tomorrow if it came up again tomorrow. If you want to talk about cruel, I’ll tell you about cruel. That brother of yours led on that poor Loreen for years. Then, at the last minute, he decides to back out of his duty and not propose. I suppose you think that’s fair? Tony decides to dump her so he can go prowling around Chicago like he was back in junior high? No way. That’s not my style.”

  “Your style? What does it have to do with you?”

  “Anyway, dear, someone had to do something if Tony was going to move out to Chicago and ignore her after dating her all that time. How’s that chicken?”

  “Lousy,” I said.

  “Mine, too. This place is a disaster. This spotlight is giving me a headache.”

  “I feel like an exhibit at a wax museum,” my father said. “We should have let Ryan cook.”

  “Don’t look at me. The scampi’s great. The rest of you should have had it.”

  A plate shattered against the floor on the other side of the room, and a hush fell over the restaurant. We all looked in the same direction. One of the pasty businessmen had dropped his salad and was standing with a look of utter horror and contrition on his face. The front of his pants was covered with salad dressing. Ryan tried unsuccessfully to stifle a laugh. “The poor bastard. I just had a nice talk with him, too. His consulting business is going broke.”

  My father said, “He sure didn’t waste any money on that toupee. The things you see when you don’t have a gun.”

  For a moment, I forgot about Tony. I forgot why I was at the restaurant in the first place, and why I’d been so angry. For a moment, I forgot to be angry at all. The four of us nearly collapsed with laughter at the unfortunate businessman’s unfortunate clumsiness, and I felt welcomed back into my family. In that passing moment of hilarity and familial acceptance, Tony’s situation was no concern of mine.

  Then the moment passed.

  “And I’ll tell you something else, Patrick,” my mother said. “That brother of yours is going to be very happy. Loreen adores him, and he loves her—as much as he’s capable of loving anyone other than himself.”

  “Of course they’ll be happy,” my father said. “Not that Tony deserves to be happy.”

  “Now, now. Everyone deserves to be happy, Jimmy.”

  The bad food had given me a stomachache and the laughing had made me dizzy, and I could feel myself floating off, the way I sometimes float off when the dentist injects too much Novocain. I opened the folder for the honeymoon plans and explained the health-spa trip. My mother made notes on a napkin about changing around the flights and the hotel arrangements and adding a side trip to San Jose so the happiest couple in America could visit some elderly cousin of hers. I sat and listened to it all complacently, lacking the energy even to be outraged. When my father began to object, I backed up my mother’s ideas. The waiter cleared off the plates and asked if anyone wanted dessert. Ryan said he wanted a piece of baked Alaska but he wasn’t going to have it. One piece, my mother assured him, wasn’t going to kill him. Ryan resisted. My father ordered the baked Alaska for himself but told the waiter to put the plate in front of Ryan. My father gave some signal to my mother, and she took a pack of cigarettes out of her purse and coyly handed one over. “I hope you realize,” she said, “that this is it for the rest of the week.” The dessert came, and Ryan spooned it down, talking about the World Series and his plans to take his daughter to Disney World the following fall. The hair on the front of his head kept slipping down and falling into his eyes. My father put on my mother’s half-glasses and started to total up the bill. “Lousy and expensive,” he said. “My favorite combination.”

  “I wish Arthur had come,” my mother said, applying lipstick. “Why didn’t you invite him, Patrick?”

  “I didn’t want to, that’s why.”

  “Well, don’t take that tone. You don’t know how lucky you are to have someone like Arthur.”

  “Oh? How lucky is that?” I could feel myself choking again: my father in my mother’s glasses, my mother with my father’s cigarettes, Ryan up to his neck in baked Alaska.

  “Look around you, Patrick. I’d say you’re pretty lucky. Now he’s even buying this house.”

  “We’re buying it together.”

  “You know what I mean. And to be perfectly frank, dear, it isn’t only the house. There are other reasons I’d stay close, if I were you.”

  “What’s-their-name’s son,” my father said, as if he’d picked up a coded message from her.

  “They’ve been our neighbors for the past thirty years, and he doesn’t even know their names. Callahan. Bill and Frances Callahan. Their son is in the hospital again. Pneumonia,” Rita said significantly.

  “AIDS?” I asked.

  My mother looked around to make sure no one had heard me and then closed her eyes and shrugged.

  “The poor bastard,” Ryan said.

  “The point I’m trying to make,” my mother said, �
�is that it’s a scary world out there. Wouldn’t you agree?”

  “I would.”

  “And in a scary world, you’d better hang on to what you’ve got,” my father said. When they weren’t fighting, they had an eerie way of finishing each other’s sentences.

  Their voices had softened, and I was touched at this hesitant attempt to express genuine concern. Clearly, they’d discussed the plight of their neighbors’ son and its possible relevance to my life. They’d never mentioned AIDS to me or asked any direct questions. Since they never discussed anything of importance directly, it wasn’t surprising. From time to time, one or the other would pointedly ask if I’d seen Nightline or read “that article” in the Boston Globe Sunday magazine, usually an indication that the topic had been AIDS. If I had been more responsible and mature, I suppose I would have brought the topic up with them myself and made some reassuring comments about the fact that I take vitamins, exercise, and practice safe sex. But I’m not better at honest discourse than either of them.

  My mother took a little mirror out of her purse and pulled the conversation in another direction. “Not everyone manages to stay with someone for as long as you two have remained friends.” She inclined her head meaningfully in Ryan’s direction.

  Ryan’s face seemed to have dropped, and I wondered if he’d caught the significance of my mother’s comment. I gazed across the horrid dining room and felt the kind of hopelessness I sometimes feel when the temperature soars over ninety and there’s no hint of relief in the weather report. My mother asked me something about the Yellow Fever house, while my father complained that the coffee was giving him indigestion.

  “There’s one last thing I’d like to say,” I blurted out, ignoring them both.