Waking the Dead

by Scott Spencer

  “Get a grip on yourself, Pop,” Danny said, in a perfectly adolescent way: taunting and embarrassed.

  Dad nodded at Danny, acknowledging, even a little grateful for having been brought up short. “I want to make a toast to the kids, then,” he said. “To Rudy and Malik. The most …” He took another deep bream and now extended his lower lip and shook his head—an old, affectionate gesture, meant somehow to symbolize the fragility of everything that was good and decent in the world. “The most terrific couple of grandsons anyone could ever hope for. And I want to make a toast to my kids, too. OK? To my firstborn, Caroline, who always could wrap me around her little finger—”

  “That’s news to me,” said Caroline, in a voice that wanted to be more humorous than it was.

  “And who has made us so proud with her accomplishments as a mother and in the world of art. And to our second, Fielding, on his way to the capital, helping to bring a new day to this country, new directions. Like an arrow that’s always known its mark or a hammer in the hands of a man who knows how to use it, Fielding has always known where his life was going and though we’re proud, none of us is surprised.”

  He nodded toward me and I grinned back at him, though a part of me felt raw, cheated. I had always been the easiest child, the one to see the world through their eyes, the one who could be counted on to cause the least trouble, and I had been waiting all my life for a moment I realized now would never come—the time it would be my turn to be seen as I truly was, when it would be my turn to make them gasp and worry and radically revise all of the clear, convenient ideas they held about me.

  “And to Danny,” he was saying. “Our youngest.”

  “And baddest,” said Danny, raising a finger.

  “True, true,” said Father with a smile.

  “And vainest and most preening,” said Caroline.

  “And most decadent,” I added.

  “OK, OK, Jesus,” said Danny.

  “Wait wait wait,” said Father, holding his hand up. He wanted to get through this. “His achievements are many. For a son of the working class to live like a prince …”

  “Christ,” said Danny. “Here it comes.”

  I glanced over toward Rudy and Malik. They were sitting with their hands folded on their laps, their lips pursed. Caroline stood behind them, a hand on the shoulder of each.

  “And to have his own business,” Father was saying. “With people who look to him for their livelihood. All my children are hard workers, who know the dignity of labor, and the pride of accomplishment and since …” He paused and brought the cup closer to his lips, signaling us all that soon we would drink. “Since none of you little snot-noses would be here on earth if it wasn’t for me, I think I got the goddamned right to feel pretty good myself.”

  “OK, OK,” said Caroline. “Mommy has to make a toast now.”

  “I think I’ll hold my tongue,” said Mom.

  “Sounds like fun,” Danny said.

  Mom looked at Danny and kissed the knuckle of her thumb. We never quite knew the origin or the meaning of that gesture. It seemed to have come from her old neighborhood, but whenever we asked her what it meant she said, “Whatever you want it to, kiddo.” She went to her chair and sat down, legs crossed, and took a deep drink from her cup of punch—eggnog, ginger ale, dark rum, Spanish brandy, Old Bushmill’s.

  And then, watching her drink, and looking around the room at my father, brother, and sister, each with a cup of punch, and listening to the steady, gloomy beating of my heart, as even and desperate as human time, pulling me in its tidal rhythms toward the end of my one life, I felt a sudden desire go through my resolve like a knife slashing through an oil painting: I would have a drink, too.

  “Oh, come on, Mommy,” Caroline was saying.

  “You’re dripping on the wall-to-wall carpet, Caroline,” Mom said, pointing to Caroline’s cup.

  I crept across the room and as unobtrusively as possible I served myself a half cup of punch. I counted to myself: one, two, three. And then I took a drink: my heart began to race like a blind bull let out of its dark stall.

  “Well, if you won’t, then I will,” said Caroline, draining her cup and then slapping it down on the sideboard. She gave Dad a seemingly playful little shove and took his spot in front of the hearth. The bark on the logs was popping and hissing; threads of dark gray smoke sparked with orange rose up toward the chimney.

  “To Mommy and Daddy, on their first Christmas in the new house,” she said, her voice a little blurry with shyness. “To Danny for getting away with it sans indictments, to Fielding for being like a goddamned train that always runs on time, and for poor little me for surviving another year. And most of all to Rudy and Malik—bon voyage!”

  “Bon voyage?” said Dad. “Where they going?”

  “With Eric. He’s going on tour in Africa—Nairobi, Monrovia, Tunis. And he’s taking the kids.” If Caroline was presenting this with false equanimity, she was doing a creditable job of it. Her smile was large, firm, her shoulders relaxed. The lids of her large eyes were a sleepless pink—but that wasn’t unusual: she had always turned in her bed as if on a spit over the fires of hell.

  “That’s great, kids,” I said.

  “Monrovia?” said Danny, shaking his head.

  “Liberia,” said Caroline.

  “I know,” he said. “But who’d go there?”

  “Speak not if you know not,” said Caroline.

  “How long is this trip?” asked Dad.

  “What about school?” added Mom.

  “We got permission,” said Rudy. “Our teachers want us to go.”

  “Yeah, that way they won’t have to put up with you,” said Danny.

  The boys didn’t seem to have a terrific sense of humor about themselves—but then, neither had we. It’s difficult to bear in mind the incandescent sincerity of childhood, the rapturous religion of self.

  “You’ll probably end up learning more in two weeks than you will a whole year in a classroom,” said Dad, adjusting to the shift with fabulous dexterity.

  “It’s two months,” said Caroline. “The Academy will give them full academic credit for the trip.”

  The Academy was the Malcolm X Academy, on 137th Street and Riverside Drive, a Muslim school where, Caroline feared, Rudy and Malik were being taught to be unable one day to look at their own mother with love, but to see only her whiteness and the cruelty it represented.

  “So it’s Merry Christmas and bon voyage,” she said. “And a time for all the rest of you to promise to look after me because—” She stopped, and gave a portion of herself over to the suddenly amassed emotions. “Because I’m going to be lonely. No. Not lonely. But missing them. So everyone has to make a fuss over me and make sure I’m OK. OK?”

  “We might have done that anyhow,” Mom admonished. “You didn’t have to put it in words.”

  “Your neighborhood’s coming back to life, Car,” Danny said. “After-hours clubs, weird places. It’s a scene now.”

  “My neighborhood’s a slum,” Caroline said. “And I’m too old for that shit.”

  I happened to look at Dad. He was sitting in his chair, looking down at his feet. He feared one day Caroline would lose the boys, that Eric, the pressures of history, and the steady, persuasive indoctrination of the Muslims would finally make the relationships impossible and she would be a mother in only some half-assed, formal sense and he would cease to be a grandfather at all.

  “I’ll look after you, Caroline,” I said. “If you look after me.”

  “You going to arrange it so I get a national endowment grant?” she asked.

  “Why don’t you come back to Chicago with me and help me get set up? I can make you a part of my staff. Pay you.”

  “Oh no you don’t,” shouted Dad, truly alarmed. “Are you crazy?”

  “What are you talking about?” I said.

  “Eddie’s right,” Mom said. “That’s nepotism and many a promising politician’s taken a fall over just that
sort of thing”

  “It’s very common to have relatives on staff,” I said. “Jack had Bobby and Bobby had Ted.” I glanced over at Caroline. She’d drawn herself up and stared at our parents, as if they were betraying her.

  “I don’t care how common it is,” said Dad. “It’s not right.”

  “I don’t think I could do it no matter what,” said Caroline. “All my stuff’s here and I’m working three jobs, you know.”

  “Expendable,” said Danny. He was crouched by the cast-iron ring in which a dozen or so fireplace logs were stashed.

  “I work in a friend’s bakery, I still teach that class at the adult education extension, and I’m back at that exercise joint, leading an aerobics class.”

  “Come to Chicago with me,” I said. “Just for a couple of weeks. There’re no classes now and take a vacation from the other two jobs. Stay with me and Juliet.”

  “What’ll I do?”

  “You can help me run the campaign. Think with me,” I said, going to her side, putting my arm around her. “We can make policy decisions.”

  “This isn’t one of your little games, Fielding,” said Dad, desperate with an anger he didn’t know how to pursue.

  “If it looks like it’ll be a problem,” I said, “then I won’t put her on salary. I’ll pay her some other way.”

  “No, no,” said Mom. “That’d be worse. Don’t be sneaky.”

  “I won’t be sneaky, Mom. It’s going to be fine.”

  “You think that’s something you might like?” Mom asked Caroline.

  “Two weeks?” said Caroline. “It might do me good to get away for a while. What do you think, kids? You think your mom ought to help Uncle Fielding get elected?”

  “What would you do?” asked Rudy.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Lick envelopes. Whatever.”

  “Will you be back when we come back?” asked Malik.

  “If I go. I have to think about it. But I’d be back home way before you guys.”

  “Oh good,” I said, squeezing her to me. “You’re going to come with me. I know you are. God, I feel better for this.”

  “Terrific,” said Danny, in a low voice, rising up from his crouch with a log of white birch in his arms. “Leave me here to wallow in my own messes.” I couldn’t see his face to know if he was smiling. He tossed the log into the fire and when it hit the andirons it sent up a burst of sparks.

  Danny found his cup and raised it before us. “All right. It’s my toast. To the end of the seventies and good goddamned riddance. We’ll wipe the slate clean. It’ll be like going into Chapter Eleven. All old debts canceled! Tomorrow is ours!” He brought his heels together with a Prussian click and brought his cup to his lips.

  We all drank with him and as I took another swallow of the punch I had a vision of four years’ sobriety plucked out of me like a splinter. I had never been, at least in my own mind, a falling-down drunk. I had never actually called myself an alcoholic. I was very tender and discreet when it came to describing my own problems and I never went further than calling myself a Problem Drinker—and I had even worked the affliction into a few passable jokes. Of course I worry about my drinking, I said to Sarah. I worry if there’s enough bourbon, enough ice. But I’d also known that it had a power beyond my power to control it and that one day it would lay me low. And so I quit before it became a true emergency and I quit cold, with very little prelude and no backsliding. I took another small sip and felt my blood turn, like a crowd of faces at the crack of the bat.

  “I have no idea what I’m drinking to,” Caroline was saying. “What does that toast mean, Danny?”

  “I’m sure if we knew we wouldn’t be able to enjoy our drinks,” said Mom.

  “Wait a second,” I said, raising my cup, “let me make a toast.” If any of them suspected there was something darker than club soda in my cup, they gave no indication. Their eyes were mild, attentive. It was time to hear from Kid Reasonable.

  “To the dead,” I said. “The dead.” I was home and when you were home you didn’t have to think about what you said before saying it. Still, I was flying blind on this one. I raised my eyes toward the ceiling. “To Bobby Kennedy. And … and Jack. And Malcolm X and Martin Luther King.” The ceiling was freshly painted and I could see the little bumps in the yellow latex, like chicken skin. “And Otis Redding, Sam Cooke. James Agee and Humphrey Bogart, and Edward R. Murrow—”

  “Fielding,” I heard my father say.

  “And to Sarah Williams,” I said, my voice as blurred and diffuse as a light in the fog. “May she rest in peace.”

  THE LIGHTS AROUND the bridges were barely visible through the thick, slow, cottony snowfall. Christmas night in Danny’s Jag and Danny at the wheel—the most sober of the Pierces: his capacity was tragic. I sat next to him, feeling the alternating flashes of sweet drunkenness and total terror. Three drinks and I was blotto, but cutting through the wet sawdust of my mini-stupor was the fear that I had just set myself off on a round of drinking that would somehow end with me in a rented room, drying my underwear on the radiator … I leaned back in and distracted myself by imagining an auto wreck. All of those cars we were passing, and the cars that passed us: everyone on the road had been drinking all day and half the night and I was trying to gauge the level of drunkenness, and Christmas night despair and plain old everyday Thantos in all the drivers that accompanied us in our slow, slippery trek into the city. Caroline was in the backseat, sitting between Rudy and Malik, who were both asleep, collapsed against her. Danny was reaching across me, opening the glove compartment, clawing through the jumble of cassettes.

  “Steely Dan?” he asked.

  “Ich,” said Caroline. “Too cold.” She was speaking in a monotone, striking a note that experience had taught her would not awaken the children.

  “Mom and Dad look so fucking good, it’s unbelievable,” I said.

  “Pop’s getting a gut, though,” said Danny. “Didn’t you see?”

  “I think it looks good on him.”

  “You would. How about Lou Reed?”

  “Lou Reed’s all right,” said Caroline. “Just make sure you don’t play the one with the racist lyrics. Mom looks tired, doesn’t she? She waits on him hand and foot.”

  “Lou Reed thinks it’s so fucking hip to be a junkie,” I said.

  “It is hip,” said Danny, putting in the Lou Reed tape. “But Lou Reed hates scag.”

  “He used to sing that heroin song,” I said. “The one where he says it’s his wife, it’s his life.”

  “That was a long time ago, Fielding. Look, if you’re going to be a great congressman, you’d better get a little more current with pop song lyrics. Even Jimmy Carter can quote Bob Dylan. You gotta jump on it, stay on it, be on it.”

  We drove Caroline to her apartment on First Avenue and 10th Street. Christmas seemed to have petered out ten or twenty blocks to the north of her. By the time we were pulling in front of her building, with its fire escape covered with the new white snow and a blank look of secrecy and desolation in its windows, the Christmas lights were a thing of the past. Next to her tenement, surrounded by cyclone fencing, was a vacant lot littered with the upturned bricks of the building that had once stood there. It looked like a desecrated cemetery viewed from above. I noticed three human forms receding deeper into the darkness of that empty place. The headlights from the Jaguar hollowed out two tunnels in the black snowy air.

  I walked Caroline and the boys up to their apartment on the second floor. The halls looked soft, as if you could pull chunks out with your fingers. The light came down from buzzing fluorescent circles. We had to lug all the presents up, so progress was slow. It was nearly eleven at night and the boys were stumbling tired.

  “Did you really mean all that about me coming to Chicago to help you for a while?” Caroline asked, as she opened her door. Three locks.

  “Of course I did. And as far as I’m concerned you’ve already promised, so you can’t back out.”

&nbs
p; “Check check double-check American eagle?” she asked.

  “Exactly.” It was the ceremonial phrase by which we’d sealed bargains when we lived in that distant country—childhood.

  “Call me tomorrow, then,” she said. “When you guys wake up. We’ll do something.”

  “OK.” I kissed her on the cheek. She kissed me back and opened the door. The door opened directly into the kitchen. A table lamp was on, with a flowered shawl draped over the shade. A radio was playing. Signs of life to ward off the desperate. I put my arm tentatively around Malik and then around Rudy, trying to embrace them in a way that seemed somehow casual, athletic, using that code masculine shame has created for affection. And to my great surprise they suddenly clung to me, holding me tightly with their strong little hands. They clung to me, and as I held them close I looked up at Caroline with tears in my eyes.

  Danny was resting behind the wheel when I got back to the car. I stepped into the fragrant warmth. He had the radio on; the news was just ending and it was time for the weather. Even on radio, the weathermen were high with a sense of calamity.

  “All this shit about snow alerts and winter emergencies,” I said. “It’s really a way of preparing us for a nuclear—”

  “I want you to come someplace with me,” Danny cut in. “Are you too tired?”

  I said no. If I’d said I was too tired, Danny would unquestionably have offered a drug to perk me up.

  “Don’t you even want to know where we’re going?” he asked me. We turned north on First Avenue. All the stores were dark except for one fruit stand. A fat man in an apron was clearing the snow off a display of oranges with a broom; a city bus was stopped near the fruit seller and the bus driver was swaying from foot to foot and slapping his arms to keep warm, waiting for his oranges.

  “All right,” I said. “Where are we going?”

  “To an Oriental massage parlor, where else?” He accelerated through a yellow traffic light; before us, dimly perceived through the thick snowy night, an infinity of yellow lights stretched out. Danny started to laugh. He’d had, since childhood, a strained, rather sneaky laugh, the laugh of a kid in trouble, and luxury and success had done little to improve it: it was still the laugh of a boy being dragged down the hall by his arm. “Do you remember that line in Notorious when Claude Rains comes into his Nazi mom’s room and says, ‘Mother, I think I’ve married an American agent’? Well, now I can say, Brother, I think I’m in love with a Korean whore.”And with this out of the way, he began to laugh wildly. It was as if he’d conned me, drawn me into a situation far beyond what I’d bargained for, what I could control. It was one of those laughs that sound saved up and thus overripe. Showing his worst side was Danny’s dark, simple version of personal honesty: he liked to leave the little packets his cocaine came in crumpled on the desk; he never hid a rejection or a setback; he recounted his shady business deals, his balletic avoidance of creditors, his tax shelter schemes with greedy lawyers representing greedy doctors, as if all of these comprised something admirable, something amusing—a dashing character, a malfeasance that shared an unexpected border with virtue.