by Anna Bruno
Lucas was right, of course. The stories were the mechanism for the subjects to break through their respective resistance levels, but beyond the mechanics of breaking out, there were all those devilish details of character and grit. Pamela Randolph Walsh and Gerard Dupris and my father all possessed both in abundance.
When we finished talking about the sections devoted to Pamela and Gerard, Lucas got up and went to the bathroom. On his way back to the table he stopped at the bar and asked Amelia for a cigarette. They didn’t sell cigarettes at the bar but that worked out just fine for Amelia because Lucas tipped her an extra dollar or two for every one cigarette he bummed, which was a pretty good return on investment.
Lucas caught me rolling my eyes at him as he headed for the door. He walked over, and before he grabbed his coat, he rubbed his shadow of a beard all over my face and said, “Enjoy it before it smells like cigarettes.”
“Gross,” I said. “Get outa here.” But I couldn’t act mad, because he was helping me with the book, and also because we were both now acutely aware that Lord, give me chastity but not just yet applied more than ever because just yet was approximately six months away for Lucas, though it had already imposed itself upon me.
By the time Lucas came in from the cold, I had read his notation in the section on my father. Green, all caps: AMBITION. My father’s through line. When Lucas looked at his own penmanship, he said plainly, “You have it too. So will he,” and he put his hand on my belly, and it was the first time we gave Lionel a gendered pronoun, and it was also the moment I started imagining what he would be like, what kind of man he would be. I felt like a mother, protective of the precious life inside me, all that for which I lived.
The best racket my dad ever ran was teaching me that I was worthy of success, financial and otherwise, that I deserved it. I never doubted that I belonged in beautiful places, hallowed institutions with manicured quads and ivory towers, palatial offices in skyscrapers that kissed the heavens, in summer homes with private beaches, and multi-acre ranches under big blue skies. That feeling never goes away. I could fail a hundred times and it would remain within me.
It’s not entirely a class thing. I can say that. Though class has something to do with it. Lucas’s mom ran the same racket. As far as I can tell, it’s a dinner-table thing. At least, that’s where our parents ran the racket—at the dinner table. That’s where they told us the world was our oyster, over and over again, from the time we could listen. And we believed it.
So I remember thinking, Yes, Lucas is right; our child will be ambitious. We would make sure of it over pastas and roasted chickens and burgers cooked on the grill.
We stayed for a couple more hours, long enough for Lucas to switch from whiskey to beer, long enough for me to fall in love with him again, as I did every time we hung out at the bar together.
Later, I rewrote the section on my father. I didn’t forgive him, as Lucas hoped I would, but I gave him the credit he deserved, and overall, the book was stronger for it. By the end of the new draft, I realized my initial hypothesis was wrong. The story doesn’t matter more than the person. The story and the person are one and the same.
9PM
THERE’S A LULL AT the bar. Only a patient warrior stays at the same place from early evening to bar close.
I look around for Cal, secretly waiting for him to discover his missing wallet. He will have to take Summer home within the hour. This suits him just fine. He likes to be home early, where he can smoke a joint and kick back in his recliner, or roam around his property in the predawn light: an insomniac’s constitutional.
He shows Short Pete something on his phone. I lean over, hoping to see a picture of a naked lady, but it’s a home video of a big honkin’ gun.
“Check this out, guy. I bought a tactical twenty-two. Laser on the front, twenty-five-round mag, adjustable stock,” Cal says.
“Beauty,” Short Pete says.
“I got a scope for it too. This baby is lethal up to four hundred yards. In a situation, if we need to bug out fast, this is the one I’m taking,” Cal says.
There’s something about the way Cal says in a situation that appeals to me. I imagine he has planned for the gamut of possible, however unlikely, situations, ranging from social unrest to alien invasion.
Short Pete is three-quarters of the way through the twenty-dollar bill he put on the bar when he came in. Every time Amelia serves him a gin and tonic, she takes away a few dollars and change. He’s on just two legs of his low-back stool. His right knee pushes against the edge of the bar. He uses it for balance so he can tilt backward and rock forward. This is the least suave way a man can possibly position himself while sipping a gin and tonic. I try to imagine James Bond teetering on the back two legs of his bar stool. I can’t; it’s impossible. There’s something innocent about the way he moves. He does it to occupy himself. He’s not self-conscious about the way he looks, and he isn’t worried about falling. He encounters the chair like a kid: part game, part instrument of sitting.
“Ever fallen off?” I ask.
“A bar stool?”
“No, Pete, the wagon.” I smile.
“Honey, none of us have ever been on the wagon,” Cal says.
“Jimmy was in AA for a while,” Short Pete says. Jimmy is hovering behind us, taking a break from the pool table. Cal, Short Pete, and I are all bellied up to the bar.
I swivel around to include Jimmy in the conversation. Motion makes me feel the alcohol. I’m sober enough, but everything around me—the faces, the signs on the wall, the glow of the jukebox—everything appears a little bit grainy, like I’m watching the night unfold on an old TV.
“I’ve never fallen off a bar stool, no,” Short Pete says. “Amelia would kick my ass right out of here.”
“House rule,” Amelia says. “Don’t fall off your stool.”
“I thought the house rule was don’t fall asleep at the bar?” I say.
“I seen many a sleeping beauty get thrown outa this place,” Cal says.
“That’s Murphy’s rule.” Martin Yagla looks at me. “Lucas Murphy’s rule, not the famous Murphy’s rule.”
“That’s Murphy’s Law, ya dumbass,” Cal says.
“Murphy’s Law dictates that Pete will fall off his stool,” I say.
Yag grabs Short Pete from behind and gives him a tug. Short Pete gropes for the bar but it’s too late. His eyes pop open wide. Yag holds him there, suspended halfway to the floor. Then he pushes the chair with Pete still on it into its upright position: four legs on the ground.
“The golden rule,” Yag says. “I didn’t let you fall.”
“Rule of the jungle,” Short Pete says. “Do that again and I’ll kick your ass.” Everyone looks at one another and laughs.
“Whooeee, why all the rules?” Cal says. He grabs his belt and gives his pants a little tug.
“Let’s put on some Ja Rule,” Yag says. He walks over to the jukebox.
“The half-your-age-plus-seven rule,” Short Pete says.
“Yag doesn’t know that rule,” I say.
There is a jukebox etiquette at The Final Final. When someone plays a song that offends the sensibilities of the regulars, they verbally shame the person. They usually leave girls alone—they are a protected species in this bar, rare as they are. For this reason, all kinds of pop songs go unchecked—Taylor Swift and Katy Perry and Adele have all driven me to order another whiskey many times over. But all guys are fair game, college kids, old codgers, even the regulars themselves. As far as I can tell, there are three songs you absolutely cannot play: “Sweet Child o’ Mine” by Guns N’ Roses, “Come On Eileen” by Dexys Midnight Runners, and “Margaritaville” by Jimmy Buffett. “Beast of Burden” by the Rolling Stones is okay, but only under certain circumstances (late enough so everyone is sufficiently drunk). You also cannot play anything by Neil Diamond. Billy Joel is acceptable, though. I once witnessed the entire bar sing along to “Captain Jack.” If you play “Have You Ever Seen the Rain” by Creede
nce Clearwater Revival, and it happens to be raining outside, you’re a fucking hero.
The jukebox is yet another test. The guys use it as a measure by which to judge people, based on whether the entire bar is subjected to something unforgivable. Once, a guy played Mariah Carey and received so much verbal abuse he left his full drink on the bar.
“So many goddamn rules,” says Cal, repeating himself.
“Live free or die.” I make a rock ’n’ roll sign with my hand.
We decide to write up a list of bar rules, but in the end, we can agree on only one:
THE FINAL FINAL HOUSE RULES: #1 KARMA
* * *
ONE WEEK BEFORE MY due date, a rash spread across my belly: a peony firework, cherry red and dazzling. It didn’t hurt or itch. It seemed more like an announcement than anything. Or maybe a pronouncement. I am here. The doctors ran tests and found nothing. The baby was fine. They told me he could arrive at any moment.
My mother said that I had introduced myself in the exact same fashion, and that she had no way to confirm it, but she suspected my dad had done so too. “That baby is telling you he has the power,” she declared. “It’s in his blood.”
“Genetic peacocking,” I said. “Someone should give you a Nobel Prize.”
“I’m just telling you what I know,” she said.
“Why a rash? Why not a kick?” I asked.
“All babies kick. Kicks are boring. That baby wants everyone at attention. He wants the doctors scared; he wants Lucas scared; he wants you scared. He is your father’s grandson. Don’t forget that.”
Investors are the only people in the world who profit off pessimism. Dad did it in the early eighties when there were still buildings in New York no one wanted to buy, and he did it again in 2008 in the midst of the credit crisis. The key is waiting until everyone else is looking at a big, scary rash, and they freeze, and then bam! You make your move.
That was the day my water broke.
* * *
AFTER LIONEL WAS BORN, as many as three times a week, a homemade meal, plus enough to have some left over, appeared in the kitchen. A pot roast, a batch of lentil soup, a casserole. It varied. I accepted this charity because I was physically exhausted from breastfeeding and sleep deprivation and planning my upcoming book tour. Plus, I felt less guilty about Joan cooking than I did about Lucas cooking, either because I assumed she didn’t have anything better to do, or because of some unconscious sexist bias I’d rather not admit.
The details were always a little fuzzy on how the food appeared on the stove top. Once, I asked Lucas if his mom had a key. My tone was probably accusatory or maybe I rolled my eyes, because he insisted Joan did not. I made it very clear that I did not want my mother-in-law to have unbridled access to my house. Maybe Lucas met her at the house when she came by, or maybe she left it on the porch and he brought it in. Most likely, though, she had a key.
Lucas’s father married his mother when she was young and because she was hot. They were barely twenty. The old codger was a workaholic who built his drywall business from nothing. When he wasn’t on a job, he challenged himself with projects like building a boat. He was the restless type, so he either had to be drywalling or building boats, which meant he didn’t have much time for Lucas or his mother.
When Lucas was a young boy, his mother started seeing a therapist. Her primary takeaway was that her family’s domestic life was not her sole responsibility. She abruptly stopped cooking and cleaning. She also explicitly told eleven-year-old Lucas that his happiness was not her problem. Then she went to an ashram in India for the better part of a year.
These days, spending time at an Indian ashram is no big thing. The plane ticket is pricey but no one bats an eye. It’s like buying the six-dollar eggs because the yolks are orange. Back in the eighties, when Joan did it, it was like leaving the Shire to travel to the gates of Mordor. People would have been impressed if they weren’t so distracted by the magnitude of her maternal failure.
The casseroles might have been her way of making up for her own absence, but they felt more like an indictment of the choices I was about to make: day care, business travel, supplementing with formula.
* * *
EVERYBODY, NO MATTER WHO they are or where they come from—everyone over thirty—drinks for the same reasons. They have problems they cannot solve and subjects they’d rather forget. They drink because relationships are hard. They drink so self-loathing doesn’t get the better of them, even if that self-loathing comes from drinking too much. They drink because to be alive is to be in pain.
New York bankers, with their designer suits and Italian shoes, and townies, with their flannel shirts and workman’s boots, both consume two things in excess: whiskey and cocaine. Why? Because they haven’t figured out how to let the light in.
“What’s in the bag?” I ask. Cal is carrying a cheap, black nylon backpack. From the way he holds it, I can tell he’s not carrying anything heavy.
He starts unzipping the bag. “I have a croissant, headphones, and a bottle of water.”
“You have a croissant?” I ask.
Cal pulls a grease-soaked brown paper bag out of the backpack. He gives it a little squeeze. “Croissants are fucking delicious.”
“I bet you can’t even spell croissant,” Short Pete says.
“Of course I can spell croissant. I eat one almost every day. C-r-o-s—”
I give him a little poke in the gut. “Maybe you should lay off the croissants.” I change the subject. “I’m trying to decide what Addie and I should do in the event of the apocalypse. We’d probably make our way out to your place.”
Cal has a big piece of property outside of town. He calls it the ranch but it’s really just a one-story ranch-style house.
“Combine resources?” Cal nods vigorously. “Money’s no good in an apocalypse scenario.”
“How’s business these days, anyway?” I ask.
“I’m doing three times what I did two years ago. I just got this kitchen remodel. Eighty Gs.” Cal gestures like he’s throwing a lasso, catching some invisible beast called Money. Then he’s right back on the apocalypse scenario. “Everyone will need to pitch in—building, hunting, cooking. Lucas’ll do the shelter.” He looks at me when he says this. “Sorry, honey, we knew Lucas first. He’s in.”
“Postapocalyptic shelters don’t need drywall,” I say. Postapocalyptic shelters have level-one finishes.
“Lucas can do odd jobs too,” Cal says. “He doesn’t finish projects, but he sure can start them.” He winks at me, laughing.
* * *
WHENEVER CAL OR ANYONE else asked Lucas whether he’d finished a project, he’d always say the same thing: “Everything left to do is just cosmetic.” I’d heard that sentence so many times it became a running joke. Lucas would find me home writing in the middle of the day, wearing yoga pants and no makeup, my hair pulled up on top of my head sloppily, and I’d say, “Everything left to do is just cosmetic.” Or Lion would have boogers coming out of his nose and spaghetti sauce all over his face, and I’d say, “Everything left to do is just cosmetic.” Or Addie would get into the trash, tear through it, spread it everywhere, and we’d come home to a veritable garbage dump in our living room and say in unison, “Everything left to do is just cosmetic.” If you start saying this enough—I mean really take it on as a mantra—you start to realize it’s actually true. Food, shelter, clothing, sleep, education, healthcare—even these most basic needs are, to varying degrees, both essential and nonessential, maybe 80 percent necessary and 20 percent cosmetic for middle-class folks, and 20/80 for upper-class folks, or 10/90, more realistically.
The truth beyond economics is that people have different definitions of beauty, and when I was with Lucas, every hole and exposed joist and visible tuft of insulation was beautiful, like a freckle on a bare chest or a gap between two front teeth.
When Lucas took out the wall between the kitchen and the living room, he had to move an air duct. He completed the ductw
ork but left a hole in the floor (because it was just cosmetic). Through it, you could see right down to the basement. Lionel’s birth should have inspired us to seal it up. The looks on our friends’ faces—on Samantha’s face—the you’re-a-bad-mom looks, might have served as warnings. It wasn’t like Lionel could fall into the hole, though. It was about four inches by four inches, big enough, maybe, for an adult to twist an ankle, but it didn’t pose a real threat.
I can say also, in our defense, it wasn’t a laziness thing. I can say that. Other things were, like the way we maintained our lawn, or as Cal affectionately called it, our weed pit.
The hole was different. Addie was always dropping her ball down there. I’d go get it for her and she’d stay on the first floor, peering down at me through the hole. I felt a weird affection for the hole, the kind of affection a person might feel for something so ugly it’s cute.
Eventually, Addie taught Lion to put things down into it. After nosing her ball down one night, she stood over it with her ears perked up, and Lion clapped like she’d performed a profoundly difficult trick, one that she’d come up with on her own without any promise of treats. The treat, I suppose, was the joy of watching Lucas or me get up from the couch. After that, I started finding Lionel’s toys down in the basement. Sometimes these toy drops would be secrets between him and Addie. On other occasions, he’d hover over the hole, turning his face to the right so he could spy down into it with his left eye.
Lionel was not allowed into the basement. There were too many dangerous objects down there. When we installed the baby gate, I marveled at my child’s curiosity. Addie was afraid of the basement steps—she could see through them because they didn’t have risers. The basement was the one place she wouldn’t follow us. She was content to stay where she was. Lionel’s mind worked differently. The place we didn’t allow him to go was the place he immediately wanted to be.
