Waking the Dead

by Scott Spencer

  “We can go out to eat, if you want. That’s what I usually do.”

  “So I see,” she said, looking me up and down.

  “I weigh eleven pounds more than I did in high school, Caroline.”

  “So who said you were an Adonis in high school?” She swatted the refrigerator door closed. “Don’t mind me,” she said. “I’m fanatic about being slim. It comes from living on First Avenue and seeing what happens to the women there when they get past thirty.”

  “First Avenue? How about where we grew up? It seemed like everyone weighed two hundred pounds.”

  “Not the real Irish ladies, though. They were like sticks. With flashing eyes.”

  “Like Mrs. O’Mara, Bobby’s mother.”

  “God, what a witch,” said Caroline. “I can’t imagine her giving birth. I think Bobby must have come out like a painful shit.”

  “And was content to remain one,” I said.

  Caroline’s face brightened; she seemed surprised at what I’d said, the way people show amazement when a priest makes a frisky little jest. “I thought you liked Bobby O’Mara,” she said.

  “Me? Bobby O’Mara?”

  “Yes. I thought you did. But then I thought you liked everybody. Didn’t you?”

  “No. Of course not. What kind of idiot likes everybody?”

  “Right. That’s what I used to ask myself.”

  I breathed in deeply, as if her teasing wit had an aroma. Caroline had always had what Mom called a black tongue. The passage of time spoils most of our favorite jokes. Where’s the fun in sinking your teeth into the egos of your enemies when their egos have been cut in half by the passing years? And what’s the percentage of telling jokes at your own expense, when it’s already been demonstrated that others see your faults far more clearly than you ever could. Caroline’s nasty sense of humor had kept her aloft through a misunderstood adolescence and had propelled her through art school in Boston and on to Europe: she seemed to ride herd over time and experience, high on a dark horse of her own venom. She was loyal and God knows she was kind, but she had a lunatic’s habit of telling the unpleasant truth and making it funny. I had pitied the boys whose sexual habits she would satirize for us, pitied them for the words they would ask her to whisper and the secret places they would beg her to touch. But they never knew. Caroline didn’t want to hurt them; she only wanted to make her own life more palatable, to season it with her sense of humor, just as Sarah used to carry a bottle of Tabasco sauce in her purse, to secretly spice the bland northern food.

  Caroline and I took my car and drove over to the Amazing Zucchini to have our lunch. The Amazing Zucchini was owned by an old law school friend named Victor Tomczak. Victor hadn’t been much of a student and tended to bring up the rear in most of the classes, but he was a terrific hustler and could find profit like a heat-seeking missile. He had a string of restaurants now and they all had joke names— Paul Onion, the Veal Thing, Pizza My Heart. This one had a sign of a zucchini (with an Italianate mustache) tied up in a chain, with heavy padlocks around it, à la Houdini. It was a businessmen’s spot by day and a junior exec singles’ pickup joint by night. I was hoping Victor would be there, and I was in luck. He was sitting at a back table with his Chinese cook, going through a Florsheim shoebox full of receipts. Victor was a big man. He called himself the gentle giant because he worried that his size frightened people—especially women. He had light curly hair, round, staring blue eyes, a cherub’s chaste smile.

  “Fielding!”Victor shouted.

  He got up so quickly, he lifted the lozenge-shaped table with him. The cook lunged to keep the stacks of receipts intact, but Victor paid no mind to the little tabletop drama. He clapped his hands together and then squeezed them hard, as if in Caroline and me he’d just seen the main course of a sumptuous human feast.

  “I’m finally going to get my hands on some of your money,” he said, striding toward us. He made it across the restaurant in five strides and then he did something that never failed to squeeze out an ooze of fright in me: he threw his arms around me and embraced me with what I suppose was thirty-five percent of his strength. I patted his back, like a vanquished wrestler hitting his hand against the canvas. He broke away from me and looked me up and down. “You’re going to have lunch?”

  “That’s the general idea,” I said. “This is my sister, Victor. Caroline McDonald. Caroline, this is Victor Tomczak. A good friend from U. of C. law and the owner of this and other fine metropolitan eateries.”

  “I guess that’s kind of a waste of education,” Victor said, taking Caroline’s hand and blushing.

  Caroline gave Victor what seemed to be a smile with a touch of the come-hither in it. When I was a boy, with a monk’s fringe of hair between my legs, Caroline’s flirtatiousness could ignite volcanoes of lust within me. She had had a kind of frankness about her body, like a creature raised in the wild, and it gave her a towering advantage over anyone remotely her age. A dozen times, no, a thousand, Danny and I had ransacked her room, archaeologists that we were, searching for pieces of the sexual puzzle. We never found a thing—not a condom, nor a sky-blue diaphragm case. One thing: a copy of Erich Fromm’s The Art of Loving, but that simpering secular sermon had no more smarts about the gritty, grunting deed than had Danny or I.

  Somehow, Caroline had perfected a magic act of revelation and concealment: we heard in every corner of our lives the echo of Caroline’s sensuality, but we never could find the source. In the end, Danny was to know her more deeply than I: he’d been with her when, abandoned by Eric, she gave birth to Malik. She had gripped his fingers; he had looked down into her huge suffering eyes turning white as the brown rolled back, lifted her hips as the nurse pulled out the blood-soaked sheet and tucked in a fresh one. Their siblingship had naturally deepened after that long July afternoon, with a red smoldering sun perched on the grainy ledge of her window in St. Vincent’s Hospital. Danny presented a cleaned and swaddled Malik to Caroline, who had just raised herself up on her elbows, with her huge, milky breasts shiny with a sweat and the hair plastered to her forehead, while I was in Chicago, laying the tracks that were supposed to take me through life. And because I was on my own when their love deepened, my relationship with both of them seemed from that point on a little callow. If it had been Danny in this restaurant, he would not have scowled inwardly when Caroline held on to Victor’s hand an extra moment. Danny had lost a certain acuity of vision, traded it in for something softer and more encompassing, he would not have bothered to notice the extra moment of hand holding, or the way she disguised her own need to be touched like someone who wants to sneak out of a room will cough to cover the door’s tattletale squeak.

  Victor brought us to a table near the back and collected a few of the empty Perrier bottles turned into vases for miniature carnations and placed them before us.

  “This’ll make it festive,” he said, and men stepped back and rubbed his big hands together.

  “Aren’t you going to join us?” Caroline asked.

  “Oh no, no,” Victor said, as if he’d been offered riches beyond his worthiness. “I’ve got to get back to my receipts.”

  “Well, maybe later,” Caroline persisted.

  “Yes!” Victor said. “Later! I’ll bring over strawberry shortcake when you’re finished with lunch.”

  “Nice guy,” Caroline said, when he was gone. “Like someone from home.”

  “Yeah? Where’s that?” A waitress appeared with a plastic basket filled with pumpernickel raisin rolls.

  “Home is a shifting place,” said Caroline, watching me grab for a roll. “It’s wherever we long to return to. Right now, for me, it’s …” She closed her eyes, pressed a thumb and forefinger on her wrinkled, mauve eyelids. “DeKalb Avenue.”

  Caroline’s story had always followed a simple line: the oldest daughter, meant to share a mother’s duties, misunderstood, mistreated, denied the dignity of high expectations. Dad had a keen instinct for fair play when it came to his class, but fell
short when it came to his daughter; it galled him that the people who built the towers and paved the roads weren’t considered the kings of the earth, but as simple a thought as a woman’s owning outright her one and only life seemed to him ridiculous, bohemian, fatal. I had always assumed that for Caroline even the heights of hedonism were covered in the scrub and crabgrass of vengefulness. It seemed she never had a love affair, never brushed on a stroke of mocha mascara, never wriggled into a pair of flaming pink pantyhose without half a mind on our parents.

  “You know what I can’t get over?” she asked me, leaning forward, picking a curl of thread off the lapel of my tweed jacket. “How each of us so exactly fulfilled Mom and Dad’s expectations for us. I mean, Christ, they should have worked in the circus and trained tigers to jump through flaming hoops. Do you realize what kind of willpower is involved here? It’s monstrous.”

  “You think they wanted Danny to be a seat-of-the-pants business-man? They probably know about the drugs, too.You think they wanted that?”

  “You’re getting the details right but the story wrong,” Caroline said. “Just like a lawyer. You know when you isolate details and ignore the overall picture, it’s pornography. They wanted Danny to be successful. They always thought he had a knack for business and they were quick to tell him so. Remember? Even when he was ten, he was selling Christmas cards, magazine subscriptions. Not only business—but it was really like being in the publishing business. Mom always praised Danny for his expensive tastes. Don’t you remember how Daddy used to drink his coffee and stick out his pinky when he held the cup? He’d say, This is how the ritzy folk do it, and it was supposed to be a joke, like we were supposed to laugh at how silly and weak and fancy the rich were, but the idea was there: we were all supposed to rise. They liked to think they chose to live a simple life and what better way to prove it than to have their three children turn out to be complete successes?”

  “We were supposed to be the paths not taken?” I said.

  “Now you’re catching on,” said Caroline. “Why don’t you stop munching those rolls and we’ll order lunch?” She tilted back in her chair and signaled for the waitress. We ordered Irish stew. Caroline ordered a Harp beer to go with hers; I went for the ginger ale. I glanced back at Victor. The cook was shouting at him, slapping down the receipts one after the other, the way players do in those incomprehensible Third World card games.

  “With me, the message was different,” Caroline was saying. “Partly because they didn’t give a shit what I actually did. I mean, it never occurred to Dad that women had complicated lives—except emotional complications. And Mom just figured I was as tough as she was and I’d work it out myself. But, hell, look at her life. Typing for that cretin Corvino, who stunk of amaretto and Camels, and who treated her like she was some idiot sister-in-law lucky to have a job. God, it used to make me so angry whenever I’d go over to the office and see how Corvino talked to Mom—”

  “I know what you mean,” I said.

  “You felt that way?”

  “Yes. A lot.”

  “Then how come you decided to be the computer-age Earl Corvino? You’d think you’d want to get as far from politics as possible.”

  “There’s no way to get away from politics. The most you can do is close your eyes and pretend it isn’t happening or it doesn’t matter. And then you let all the worst people do it for you.”

  Caroline shrugged. “If you use that kind of logic, then maybe so-called nice people ought to become cops and prison guards, too.”

  “Maybe they should. It’s not like what the world needs most is another sensitive English teacher. Anyhow, it’s not the same thing. If you’re a cop, all you can do is arrest someone or not arrest them. In politics, you’re dealing with a wider range of choices.”

  “OK. I don’t know why I’m on your case. I want you to win. I came here, didn’t I? I’m just teasing you. But you piss me off when you think this whole thing is something you made up. You don’t realize you’re just doing what Mom and Dad decided for you.”

  “That’s what families are like.”

  “If you’re lucky,” said Caroline. “I wasn’t given this kind of choice. The only message I got was don’t be a lower-middle-class housewife in an apartment house somewhere in Brooklyn. Beyond that, I had to make it up as I went along—and look what I did.”

  “You did great.”

  “I’m glad you think so. I’ve got three jobs and I’m a sneeze away from welfare.”

  “You went all over Europe. You’ve got Rudy and Malik.”

  “I notice you’re not including Eric in my list of accomplishments.”

  “I could. He’s a great musician. Jazz is the most significant American art form. And quack quack quack.”

  “Exactly. Quack quack quack. He’s taking the boys away from me, heartbeat by heartbeat.”

  “Don’t let him.”

  “I’m doing my best. But Eric’s persuasive and he has so much on his side. That school they go to.”

  “Take them out of that school, then.”

  “I can’t do that. They love it there. And they love their daddy. And they love being black. It’s a losing cause for me. And I’m too tired to fight.”

  “No you’re not. You can’t let them drift away.”

  The waitress came with our meals. I started right in on mine but Caroline didn’t even glance down at hers: it was a form of exercise, a way of keeping the heel of her hand firmly planted on appetite’s forehead as it lurched for her and tried to engulf her in its frantic embrace. “Mmmm, they’ve got those little carrots in this,” I said.

  “Oh good,” said Caroline, in a manic imitation of enthusiasm, “those little carrots. Things are really starting to pop now.” She peered into her dish. “Yes. You’re absolutely right. I see one. A … little carrot.”

  “OK already,” I said. I felt her sarcasm’s sting, but it was not a bad sensation: it felt like something I could trust. “I think it’s demented not to show some enthusiasm for your food. And spoiled, too. Half of human history is about getting enough to eat.”

  “Yes. And the other half is about eating too much,” said Caroline. She reached across the table and patted the back of my hand: there there. “And aren’t you telling this to the wrong person? Isn’t this what you meant to say to Our Lady of the Cottage Cheese?”

  “That’s a lost cause. Besides, she has problems. She’s delicate.”

  “Naturally.”

  “Well, I’m not going to sit here defending my girl friend’s digestive tract.”

  Caroline took a drink of her beer. “You’re going to win this election, aren’t you?”

  “I ought to.”

  “Ought to? I don’t like the sound of that.Things that ought to happen rarely do.”

  “It’s a Democratic district. The Democratic Party is more or less supporting me. The guy I’m running against isn’t much.”

  “I heard he has style,” Caroline said.

  “Style? Where’d you pick that up?”

  “On the plane. The woman I was sitting next to lives in your district. An old beatnik. Abstract earrings, turquoise turtleneck, gray ponytail. She said this guy, the fellow from the coffeehouse—”

  “Bertelli.”

  “Yeah. She said he has a kind of charming European style.”

  “Well, what does that mean to you?”

  “To me? It means he wears socks under his sandals and pinches you on the can.”

  “Exactly. What else did she say?”

  “Are you ready to hear it?”

  “Of course. It’s my job.”

  “Well, she didn’t know I was your sister.”

  “That was very cagey of you, Caroline. What did she say?”

  “I don’t remember her exact words, but she sort of lumped you with the bunch who kicked Carmichael out of office. She thought it was kind of Nazi of everyone.”

  “Oh Christ. I can’t believe this.”

  “Well, she was a beatnik, Fie
lding. You’ve got to make allowances.”

  “It makes me sick. I thought I was going to be the most liberal member of the Congress and people see me as the Moral Majority candidate. Things are very fucked up in this country. No one listens.”

  “It’s the exercise craze,” said Caroline. “People enjoying jumping to conclusions.”

  I paused and watched Caroline take another drink of her Harp. When I want to drink, I get a foul, desperate taste at the back of my throat; I swallowed it back. “I’m glad you came here,” I said.

  “Well, I don’t want you to lose this election,” Caroline said. “If you don’t make it, that does it for the lot of us—but if you do, then maybe you’ll ignite something in Danny and me. We need a winner here, Fielding—”

  “You hate talk about winners and losers,” I said.

  “I’m trying to get into the spirit of the times.”

  “Wait until you meet the people in my campaign. It’ll make you wonder if totalitarianism might be a better idea.”

  “Believe me, I expect the worst. After watching Corvino doing a tarantella on Mom’s back for fifteen years.”

  “It’s more of the same. Fat-asses looking for a free ride.”

  “So how am I going to fit in?” asked Caroline.

  “You will, that’s all. You just will. You have to. I need someone I can trust.”

  “Are you in control?” she asked.

  “In all ways but one,” I answered.

  “Yes? Which one?”

  “I’m losing my mind,” I said.

  “In your case, it sounds like a good idea.”

  I put my fork down and folded my hands on my lap.

  “Something’s wrong,” I said.

  Caroline lowered her eyes. Disappointment? Embarrassment? Or was she just giving me room to come forward?