Very Hard Choices

by Spider Robinson

  I sighed, and set the tray down on the table. "What would be so bad about that? Two weeks, and you might go back into it again." I went back and slid the screen door closed again. "And find it improved by your absence."

  "What if you have one of your lung collapses out here? A bad one?"

  I shrugged. "If I do, I'm an hour or two from a good hospital. And since I live in a civilized country instead of America, my medical care is covered."

  He gave me The Look, said, "Dada," and shook his head. It was the way he said it that made my heart suddenly heavy in my chest.

  * * *

  Jesse first started calling me that in precocious early adolescence, a pun on his very first word intended to indicate that he found me surreal. Fair enough: many do. It had started out a friendly enough insult, became contemptuous briefly during the worst of late adolescence, then reverted to a mere family joke again for nearly a decade . . . but ever since his mother was diagnosed it had been an epithet, the kind intended to be fighting words. This was the first glimpse of the blade concealed in the scabbard. He had been scrupulously polite since his arrival—but now, after less than half an hour in my home, my son just had to confirm that he still hated me and everything I stood for, hated the place I stood itself.

  I told myself not to panic. He was all I had left of his mother; he could not be lost to me for good. She would not like it, so I must not permit it. Failure was not an option. A probability, maybe, but not an option.

  I took a seat across the round table from him, passed him the beer he'd asked for, and used the ritual of constructing myself an Irish coffee to get some thinking done.

  All right, then. If you must make the deal, and you can't make the deal, the problem has to be that you have failed to correctly see through the other party's eyes.

  So I tried as hard as I could to look through Jesse's eyes. First at our surroundings, which to me were so surpassingly, transcendently idyllic.

  I lived in a shithole, in Nowheresville.

  Oh, there was indoor plumbing. It was a real house, nowhere near as rustic and primitive as some of the hippie shacks in which I'd spent my own early adulthood, over on the far side of the continent—Jesse had heard about those, even if he didn't remember them, and had seen photos. This place had electricity, lights, hot water, central heat, cable TV, highspeed internet access . . . well, it had all those things as long as it had the first one, anyway. And the power seldom went out more than once a month or so, unless it did, or for more than a day or so, unless it was longer. Even then the place stayed warm and tight in winter for as long as the firewood held out: it was a real, professionally built and properly maintained house, not something thrown together by hippies out of scrap lumber like the shack in which he had been conceived and nursed.

  But to a New York public relations man, the distinction must be barely noticeable. It was a cheap little prefab cottage surrounded by completely unimproved wilderness in an out-of-the way corner of a relatively undeveloped island forty horrendously inconvenient minutes by ferry from the mainland and another hour's drive from anything worth doing or going to. The deck on which we sat was solid, honestly made and recently painted—but it was cheap, simple carpentry done with inexpensive materials. Even though I'd swept it thoroughly that morning, it was already lightly covered with crap that had blown down from the thirty-meter-tall trees all around, and I could already see at least a dozen new spiderwebs established at various right angles. Around deck and house were no garden, no flowers, no hedges or plantings, just raw nature, northern rainforest variety. Bugs, big and small. Other unknown small fauna. Paved road was a couple of hundred meters of deeply rutted driveway away, invisible through the trees. And all it led to was an island so small and undeveloped it had no bank branch, no taxi, no gas station, no hospital, no hotel, a single block with sidewalks and streetlights, one pub, and three restaurants. He did not yet know that one of the restaurants was excellent and another superb.

  And of course since it was in Canada the island must be a frozen wasteland in winter, just like Nova Scotia. I had told him about B.C. weather, repeatedly, but I could tell he didn't believe me. In any case, it was in Canada—where they let queers get married and the money was worth doodly and the government took most of it in taxes and the socialized medicine system didn't work and everyone smoked pot and civil war was imminent and nobody could play football for shit and Arab terrorists crossed over into America all the time.

  Only the first of those is actually true, but try telling an American. A straight one, anyway.

  All this in the time it took to pour hot water out of my mug, dip the wet rim in the sugar bowl, turn it rightside up again, pour Tanzanian coffee into it, and add the Jameson's.

  So much for the surroundings.

  Next, I turned my son's merciless eye on me.

  Old fart, just for a start. I had been calling myself a middle-aged fart for years now, but who was I kidding? I was eight years past the middle of my life even if I was going to get a century like my grandfather had, which I doubted.

  Stir the sugar in; smell the coffee and whiskey getting acquainted. See your reflection recoalesce in the surface.

  Worse than an old fart: a loser. Long scraggly hippie hair I had washed but probably forgotten to brush. Beard and mustache I could tell I had forgotten to trim. Dressed in drip dry mail order plaid shirt and unpressed jeans, generic socks, and superbly comfortable but undeniably ratty slippers, all of these finely coated with the hairs of my one and a half cats. My watch was the cheapest Timex sold. I wore old-fashioned eyeglasses with clip-on shades against the summer sunlight, instead of the self-polarizing contact lenses he had. The stud in his left earlobe was worth more than everything I was wearing, and his shoes cost more than my monthly mortgage payment. I could not have loitered in his neighborhood for more than a few minutes before being asked to state my business. Not even on a dark night: one of my pockets held marijuana so transcendently pungent that even I was aware of it, and to him I must have reeked.

  And what has he got to compare to all this? I asked myself as I added an extra dollop of whipped cream to my Irish coffee. A luxury apartment with parking, maid service and a view of Central Park, a job that brings in a hundred thousand U.S. a year, the respect of the powerful and privileged, a never-ending supply of beautiful intelligent women, the cultural, commercial and culinary attractions of New York . . . hell, who wouldn't dump all that in a hot minute to move here?

  Well, it's good to drink your Irish coffee in big gulps, before it has time to cool off.

  "Do you remember when we moved from Halifax to Toronto?" I asked him.

  "Sure. I was nearly seven."

  "What did you think of the place? Can you still remember?"

  He shrugged. "I hated it, and I see where you're going. I came to like it, yes. Eventually I found compensations for its immediately obvious drawbacks. I guess if I had to live here long enough, I'd find the compensations here, too. Thank God I don't."

  "New York has no drawbacks."

  He shook his head. "None I've ever noticed."

  The caffeine and ethanol were playing tug of war with my brain, stimulant versus depressant. Isometric intoxication. "Stepping over the bodies on the sidewalk doesn't bother you?"

  "There aren't any on my block."

  "And you don't mind what it costs to live on that block."

  He smiled. "I can afford it."

  Only because you work for Mordor, I thought, but I couldn't say it, because if I did we were done now. I finished my Irish coffee instead.

  Okay. Time to . . . what was the military euphemism? . . . to retire to a previously prepared position. It sounds so much nicer than "retreat."

  "You certainly can. I respect that. I hope you know how proud of you I am, Jess. How's your work these days?"

  "Intense but incredibly well paid."

  I forced a smile. "I was thinking more along the lines of information I didn't have already."

  "What
would that be, exactly? You're a journalist."

  I sighed. "I've told you before, I'm not. I'm a columnist."

  "That's just a journalist who's allowed to make it up."

  Exasperating young man. Exasperatingly smart: he was essentially correct. "I know who you work for. I know in general what you do there. I'm not asking for classified information, I'm not soliciting a leak or planning an exposé."

  "Just making small talk."

  "I'm trying to express an interest in your life. I'll ask about your sex life if you prefer. But you're always telling me you're all about the work. So fine: tell me whatever you can about that. Broad outlines. What's a typical day like?"

  He didn't answer right away. And when he did, his voice was less antagonistic. "Actually, Pop, it probably isn't all that much different from a typical day of yours, in essence. I go to an office very near my home . . . I read a lot of news . . . I surf the net . . . I talk to people by phone, e-mail or webcam . . . I stare into space for a long time . . . and after a while, I start to type. You do it for the Globe and Mail, I do it for Burston-Marseller, that's all."

  There's a damned big difference, I thought, between a national newspaper and a planetary public relations empire. But it was the friendliest thing he'd said since his arrival. Never criticize an olive branch. "It must be nice to get paid twenty times as much for it."

  "Yes," he agreed, "but then you have to work twenty times as hard to keep it out of the hands of the tax man. Or else accept the blame for what they'll do with it. Hard, these days."

  He was definitely trying to meet me halfway. The first encouraging sign since he'd arrived. "Actually, here in C—excuse me a second." I held up a hand for silence, and listened hard, frowning.

  A car had just pulled into my driveway. And I recognized it by the sound—even though I had not heard it in a couple of years.

  What the hell was she doing here? Now?

  How come you can never seem to not-find a cop when you don't need one?

  Detective Constable Nika Mandiç was an officer of the Vancouver Police Department whom I had not seen since we'd concealed the body of a homicide victim on my property together two years earlier. It had been the right thing to do, but neither of us much cared to remember it. And as far as I knew, we had nothing else to talk about.

  Sure enough, her scabby old '89 Honda Accord came into view through the trees. I'd owned one exactly as horrible when I met her; you remember the sound.

  "Who's that?" Jesse asked.

  I got up, and gestured for him to keep his own seat. "Someone I used to work with. I haven't seen her in years. Wait here a second, will you, while I find out what she wants."

  As far as I know, Nika's alert when she sleeps, not that I'll ever find out. She saw me coming, saw instantly that I'd left a guest behind me on the sundeck, and coasted by without slowing, parking much farther down the rutted drive than she needed to. It let us meet well out of the guest's earshot, which suited me just fine. She was out of the car by the time I reached it.

  As always, she looked like a teenage boy's fantasy of a Lesbian, butch but incredibly beautiful. Like every Lesbian I've ever seen on television or in the movies, now I think about it, and few I've ever known I happened to know she was not gay, but I'd never seen her with anyone and had great difficulty imagining the hairy-knuckled, flashlight-dicked alpha male who'd have the confidence to take a crack at her. She looked, as always, fit enough to beat up a kangaroo. And agitated enough.

  "Who's that?" she greeted me.

  "Nice to see you again too, Nika. Those are the same words my son just used."

  She frowned, moved closer and lowered her voice. "What did you answer?"

  "I told him you were D.C. Nika Mandiç, a Vancouver police officer with whom I had once criminally conspired to trap, murder and bury a wealthy citizen we could not have convicted of anything, against whom we did not have enough evidence to get a search warrant for his home, purely because a hermit we know, who'd never met or seen him, assured us the guy was a once-in-a-generation monster, getting ready to rape and butcher an entire family as a work of art. I talk fast. Don't worry, though, your secret's safe: I didn't have time to tell him you used to drive the Jailer-Trailer . . . excuse me, the Community Services Mobile Unit."

  "If I applaud, will you give me a straight answer?"

  "Sure," I agreed. I never said a true one. "I told him I was getting you high. So he'd give us some room." I took the joint from my shirt pocket, lit it, and offered it to her.

  She smiled hugely for Jesse's benefit, said "God damn it, Russell," through her clenched teeth, took the doobie and pretended to toke. Then she crossed her eyes staring at it. "Jesus, what is this shit?"

  I took it back. "Kootenay Thunderfuck, they call it."

  She lost the imaginary toke she'd been holding, and glared at me.

  "That's what they call it. Now give me a straight answer: what are you doing here?"

  She leaned in to take the joint back, and locked eyes with me. "Tell me the truth. Have you said anything? To anybody? Have you hinted?"

  Those eyes were incredible. I wasn't sure if I could have lied to her. Happily I had no need to. "Of course not."

  She wouldn't let go of my eyes. "Have you made any attempt whatsoever to learn more about . . . him? Or to look for possible associates? Any attempt at all? Online, in the library?"

  "Everything I've learned about Campbell since we last saw him, you told me. Well before that, I knew way more than I wanted to know about him or ever will. I've been trying real hard to forget I ever heard of him."

  Still not done. Any moment her pupils would begin to spiral. "Have you had any further communication at all with . . . with Smelly? Or tried to research him in any way?"

  "No, and no. Why?"

  She let my eyes go, looked down at once and pretended to examine the joint. "I think we may be in trouble. Really serious trouble. If we are, I put us there. I'm sorry."

  "How really serious?"

  "I think I put my favorite cousin in serious danger. Maybe worse. If I did, I'm probably next. And then you and Smelly. Take this damn thing back, I'm getting high just holding it."

  I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. So I put the joint in it.

  "Can I have a hit of that?" my son asked from a few meters behind me.

  Talk about mixed emotions!

  One of my greatest regrets, in a life by no means undersupplied with them, is that despite diligent effort I never succeeded in turning my own father on. He had not been unwilling in theory; he was not afraid of the drug and admitted to me more than once that he was quite intrigued by my descriptions of its effects.

  Unfortunately, the first time I ever discussed the matter with him was the day after he and my mother had driven several hundred miles at night in the middle of a snowstorm to bail me out on a felony charge of conspiracy to distribute the stuff, collect my belongings from the dorm I no longer lived in, and drive me back home to Long Island. Dad knew the charge was just barely a felony, a Class E, and furthermore a total utter crock, but you can see how it undermined my arguments for asking him to get high with me. As you know—

  —but maybe you don't. If you're under thirty, there's probably no way you can imagine just how paranoid 1968 was. Trust me, then: it seemed reasonable in those times to believe that for the next year or so, our home would be under constant surveillance, visual and electronic, by government forces—and that I would probably be tailed when I left it, for months to come. Even I was smart enough to understand that it would be suicidally stupid to bring so much as a roach into my parents' home before the trial.

  So although I am ashamed to confess I called my father a coward at the time, I knew perfectly well then and I admitted to him later that his answer to my request was eminently reasonable, under the circumstances, and better than most arrested college students could have expected. His answer was, "The day they legalize it, you and I will get blasted together."

  I called h
im a coward then because I was one. Because I needed someone to be angry at, and I was afraid to be angry at either the cops or those who had delivered me to them. Being arrested and arraigned and kicked out of school are all humiliating; having to leave behind the person who doesn't mind you calling her your old lady is heartbreaking; having prison over your head when you're a skinny weakling with long hair is terrifying; I badly wanted one of those I'd disappointed most to agree with me that pot was worth all that trouble, to understand that I had not put him and Mom through all this for frivolous reasons, to empathize. One joint, and he would grok in fullness. I did not so much ask it as demand it.

  But his point was inarguable. Bad enough to have maybe gotten his phone tapped; getting him (and Mom!) busted too was unthinkable. I yearned to turn him on—but wanting to turn people on was exactly what had gotten me busted in the first place. And anyway—here again I must ask you to believe this made perfect sense in 1968—anyway it could hardly be more than a few more years before grass was going to be legal, so what was the hurry?

  A year later a genie waved his hands and the felony charge went away, poof!, so thoroughly away that I can legally answer "No" to the question "Have you ever been arrested for a felony?" It ended up being like getting a Heidelberg scar—unpleasant for a while at first, but not really dangerous, and then you get bragging rights for life. But even after the shadow was past, I remained reluctant to bring risk to my parents, even though I was starting to lose faith in the imminent legalization of pot by then.

  Except for Apollo 11, 1968-9 was not a great period for hope.

  Dr. King is shot by the FBI. Hersh breaks the story of the My Lai Massacre. Nixon bombs Cambodia. Ho Chi Minh dies; so do Ike and Allen Dulles, and Yuri Gagarin. Ted Kennedy and Mary Jo Kopechne drive off a bridge together and only one makes it to shore. Judge Hoffman tries the Chicago Seven, has Bobby Seale gagged and manacled in his chair. The Weathermen start setting off bombs, sometimes intentionally.