by Kevin Shay
“Well, no, Howard, as a matter of fact I didn’t.” Wow, Mom’s getting angry. Which is not always easy to tell with her, but when she talks with her front teeth held together, moving only her lips, that means she’s pissed. A little bell goes off, a long-forgotten tingle of trepidation: Parents Fighting.
Dad crosses his arms defensively. “What are you talking about?”
“Shel.” Ted lays a calming hand on her arm.
“Do I have to remind you I always thought public school would be better for him?”
“Public—I can’t believe you’re bringing this up now, Shelly. Not that it’s out of character.”
“Mom! Dad! Will you knock it off? We’re supposed to be talking to Randall.”
“Yeah, you’re here to fight with me! Get with the program.”
“Nobody’s here to fight with you, son,” Ted says. My father scowls, not knowing that Ted calls every male younger than him “son.”
“All we want you to do is just be sure to think this through,” Nicole says.
“Hey, you’re a poet,” I say idiotically.
“What?”
I stand. “Everyone. Look. I appreciate your concern. But let me set your minds at ease. I’m not in a cult, I’m not smoking crack, and I’m not hearing voices. So are we through here?”
Guess we are. I head for the door. Nobody hinders me, verbally or physically. Before I walk out of the room, a parting shot: “You know, I feel terrible about what’s about to happen. I wish you could all understand how it breaks my heart that none of you will prepare for it. But I’ve done everything I can to give you a chance. Just please, don’t come crying to me next year when it dawns on you that it’s way too late. So, Nicole, why don’t you serve some canapés now, and I’ll get out of your hair.”
It’s mildly humiliating to have to fetch your shoes from the basement before you can make your dramatic exit. Not to mention storming away from your family in a car your sister just loaned you. But those are the least of this day’s indignities. I drive.
I pull into Nicole’s driveway gingerly. Not altogether drunk, but not sober enough that I ought to be behind the wheel. I’m wired from four hours of fuming, licking my wounds, wallowing in despair, in anyplace in town I could find with a liquor license. The digital dashboard clock says five-forty-five. Sun has gone down. Air is crisp. Perfect night to ruin a cocktail party.
I go inside, scratching my neck. In a hotel bar, my second stop, I took off my shirt in the bathroom and did my best to remove the little hairs with damp paper towels, but it didn’t help much.
Music plays in the living room, and several small tables are already draped with cloths and partly laid out with snacks, plates, napkins. A woman in a snappy blue suit bustles in, carrying a basket of flatware.
“Hi.”
“Oh, hi there! You must be Randall. I’m Janine.” She offers me a manicured hand, her platinum charm bracelet tinkling. About my sister’s age, but with an air of poised sophistication Nicole will never achieve unless she calms the hell down.
“Nice to meet you.”
“Just helping your sister out with the party. I said screw it, get caterers, but you know Nicole.”
“I certainly do.”
Nicole comes in, sees me, and clutches her head in relief. “Oh, thank God. We didn’t know where you were, or if you—” Janine tactfully glides back to the kitchen. “I thought you might not be coming back.”
“Well, here I am. I’d never leave without my puppets. Gang’s all here still?”
“No. I finally convinced them they didn’t have to stay. Everyone was worried, though.”
“Yeah, lot of worry on my behalf lately.”
“I have to call the hotel and let Mom and Dad know you’re back.”
“They’re in the same hotel?”
“No, Mom and Ted are at the Marriott, Dad’s at the Hyatt.”
“The Hyatt?” That’s perfect. My father was staying at the very hotel where I was nursing my grudge against him in the bar. Probably just missed each other in the lobby.
“What’s funny?”
“Nothing.”
She scrutinizes my face. “Have you been drinking?”
“Would it surprise you if I was? After that whole ambush you put together?”
“Randall, we didn’t know what else to do. Please try to understand.”
I turn up my palms, speak calmly. “You did what you had to do. It’s fine.”
“Can we talk later?”
“Sure. I’m gonna go take a shower and get dressed.”
She frowns skeptically. “For the party? Really, Rand, don’t feel obliged to come. You could just hang out downstairs, or Rob wanted you to call him—”
“Oh, no, of course I’m coming. I’m looking forward to it.”
Her eyes narrow. “You wouldn’t be—you’re not gonna try to get some CNN reporter to do a Y2K story or something, are you?”
“Nic, I will not so much as mention the year 2000 computer problem this entire evening. Word of honor.” I grab her by the ears and give her a kiss on the forehead.
If she’d voiced that suspicion yesterday, she would have had me dead to rights. When I first realized my visit would coincide with a soirée filled with high-powered news media people, of course I saw it as an opportunity to spread the word. But that was before what happened in the living room today. This is no longer about Y2K. This is about payback.
By the time I emerge from the shower, dehaired at last, I hear new voices downstairs. Unfashionably early guests. I manage to sneak down to the basement in my towel without encountering anyone. Look, Nicole has dried and folded the load of laundry I put in this morning. By way of penance, or just compulsion? Either way, my clothes smell pleasantly fabric-softened. I don’t think I’ve ever once in my life remembered to put in a dryer sheet.
I untag and unpin my new clothes and put them on, uselessly rubbing the shirt to try to smooth the creases that blare Just Bought This. But as far as I can tell from the mirror above the sink in the half-bathroom, I look infinitely better than the haggard character who stumbled out of the Greyhound station yesterday.
“Randall?” my sister calls from the top of the stairs. “Are you decent?”
“As I’ll ever be.”
“Morgan’s sitter is here. I was gonna have them play downstairs during the party. Will you let them know when you’re done down there so they can go down?”
“Just have to put my shoes on.”
Morgan’s finishing up his dinner in the kitchen. The babysitter, a ponytailed high school girl in a college sweatshirt, watches him, biting her thumbnail, bored already.
“Hi, I’m Randall. The uncle.”
“Hey,” she says. “Jessica.”
“What’s up, Morgan? You like my new threads?”
“You got your hair cut.”
“Sure did. Hey, I’m out of the playroom if you guys want to go.”
Jessica takes Morgan’s empty plate and cup. “I’ll grab his stuff from upstairs.”
She goes. Nicole and Boyd are in the den with their guests. Laughter, clinking ice. I’m alone with my nephew. Nobody between here and the front door. A wild impulse comes over me.
“Hey, Morg, you feel like taking a trip?”
He stares at me. “Where?”
To salvation. Away from the cities, the nation’s vulnerable heart, and into its resilient extremities. Where mosquitoes might get you but date bugs won’t. To east Texas. To Floyd County, Virginia. To anywhere your blind fools of parents can’t keep you in harm’s way.
“Just around. But we have to go right now. You want to? Come on.”
I walk to the door, wait a second, and turn to see if he’s following me. He looks nervous, but there he is. I open the door. The coast is clear. The kid trusts me. He would take my hand and dash with me to the car. We would slip away. Drive to the train station, ditch the car, hop on a train before the authorities started looking for us. Morgan would be scared at f
irst, but I’d get him some cool toys, and kids can get used to anything if they—
“Uncle Randall? Where are we going?”
His anxious little voice yanks me out of my fantasy. I close the door.
Janine comes in from the den. “Everything all right out here?”
“Oh, yeah, no, I just thought I heard a knock. False alarm.”
Morgan gazes at me with pure perplexity. Oh Jesus. Was I really just on the verge of kidnapping my nephew?
“So, Janine! Any idea where they’ve set up the bar?”
The sitter takes Morgan downstairs. I find myself a highball. The party gets rolling. A few more friends of my sister’s arrive. I’ve apparently met some before, and pretend fond memories. But this is mostly Boyd’s world, his colleagues from CNN and their spouses, on a one-evening hiatus from the grueling exhilaration of the news cycle. A pager on every belt. If someone blew up an embassy somewhere or another of Bubba’s dalliances chose tonight to shimmy out of the woodwork, this room would clear out within ninety seconds.
I hear snippets of conversation that at first seem cryptic, but soon I catch on. They’re talking about the story. The roller coaster. In which they’re so thoroughly entwined that they can talk about it in pronouns without needing to establish the referents. Clinton and his young friend are Him and Her (the first lady, she might be sad to hear, is still plain old Hillary). Starr and his people are They. The hearings are There. The whole scandal-and-impeachment bundle is This or All This or It.
“I was in Belgium last week. You should hear the Europeans just laughing about It.”
“Dana, what CD did He give Her again? Sinéad O’Connor?”
“No, Annie Lennox.”
“When do you think They’re gonna get Her in There?”
I introduce myself, am introduced, mingle. Two or three people look familiar from the airwaves. A handsome M.D. who comes on when a health-related story crops up, giving facile insights into the implications for you and your family. His companion goes to freshen something, and I sidle over to him.
“Medical editor, right?”
“That’s my caption, don’t wear it out.”
“Randall Knight. I’m Boyd’s brother-in-law.”
“Right, right! Ken Naylor. Good to meet you.”
Once it’s clear I haven’t come over for curbside advice on a lump or lesion, he relaxes. He’s from Atlanta, not part of the Washington bureau, but happened to be here for the week and tagged along to the party.
“So how’s All This treating you, Dr. Naylor?”
“Oh, you know. They keep having me do these moronic DNA 101 bits.” He drains the last of his drink.
“Because of the, ah…”
“Blue dress, you got it. Between you and me, I won’t be sorry when It’s over and done with. You need another?”
At the drinks table Boyd pulls me aside and, a suggestive note in his voice, introduces me to Joanna, a young assistant producer. Nicole probably put him up to it. Hey, if Randall had a girl he’d forget about this doomsday garbage. The woman Boyd has thrust me toward is pretty but painstakingly made up and color-coordinated, her hair unwillingly ironed. The kind of dress-to-impress look that always has the opposite effect on me. I tell her I’m a children’s entertainer.
“Oh, that’s so cool. I really wanted to be a teacher. I sort of still do, but I haven’t had time to look into it. This job totally and completely takes up my free time.”
It emerges that Joanna loves and hates a lot of things. Loves kids but hates how her family expects her to have them soon. Loves D.C. but hates the traffic. Loves her colleagues but hates how telejournalism is “totally and completely shallow.” Most of all she seems to love the phrase “totally and completely,” which she uses at least nine times in five minutes. But she conserves energy by squeezing it into about four syllables, something like “toally’m’cpleey.”
“Well, Joanna, I guess I should go see if my sister needs any help. Earn my keep.” Instead I flee to the bathroom, then assess the party. Latecomers have stopped trickling in, and judging from the volume level most of the crowd has at least a couple of drinks in them. So do I. I pat the breast of my spiffy new sport coat, feeling the folded papers stuffed in the inside pocket.
Where to start? Nicole and Boyd are in a corner of the living room, talking and smiling in a small cluster with two other couples. The den is on the other side of the house, so I make my way there, getting as far away from them as possible. Let’s see, who’s the highest-ranking person in this room? There’s a guy I met earlier, absently fingering the books on a shelf, half listening to a conversation nearby. An ex-jock type in his forties, button-down collar, V-neck sweater. Bruce, if memory serves, an assignment editor. Is that a high-level position? Have to assume from his age and the word “editor” that he’s at least mildly important.
“Having a good time, Bruce?”
“Oh, sure! Food’s terrific. She puts on a nice spread, your sister. Randy, was it?”
“That’s me. Hey, listen, I’ve got a hot story CNN really ought to jump on.”
“Oh? I’m all ears.”
“All ears, that’s good.” I pull a pamphlet from my coat pocket and hand it to him. Then I make my voice urgent, my eyes intense. “That’s good. Because Bruce, you have to—you must—you have an obligation to tell your viewers to get ready for the changes the millennium will bring.”
He gapes at me, then looks at the pamphlet, one sheet of paper, double-sided, folded in thirds. This afternoon, between drinking venues two and three, I stopped off at a copy shop and availed myself of some computer time. Popped in on my usual Y2K haunts but didn’t linger. Instead I followed links to all the tangential kookery I normally ignore, the fringes where the borderline schizophrenics dwell. Government conspiracy, crop circles, the Rapture, comets. It was a relief, almost an indulgent pleasure, to jump for once off the cold hard ground of here-and-now technological crisis into the pseudoscientific waters of sky-watching, parapsychology, mysticism. Whenever I came across a particularly out-there paragraph or illustration, I copied and pasted it into Word. Then I laid out my gleanings in brochure format. Not a bad half-hour’s work, if I do say so myself. Result: a harlequin amalgam of Christian end-times theology, Aquarian spirituality, and interpretations of scattershot prophecies from the likes of Nostradamus and Edgar Cayce. All pointing toward one inevitable conclusion: big, big shakeups when 2000 hits. And—my promise to Nicole was on the level—not a single mention of any computer problems.
They want a nut? I’ll give them a nut.
Bruce squints at the disjointed words on the page. In one column I set the font size big at the top and progressively smaller, until illegibly tiny at the bottom, in homage to a series of handwritten leaflets a deinstitutionalized dude used to hand out in Harvard Square. I see Bruce try to settle on an appropriate response. “How did you, ah—”
“Oh, I didn’t believe it either, at first. But then you keep reading some of these ancient texts, and you have to start to wonder, why do all these prophecies and calendars and time-lines and geologists—all from totally and completely different cultures and traditions—why do they all dovetail around this one particular date?”
I’m one hundred percent off the cuff now, not knowing from breath to breath what my next words will be but delivering each nonsensical statement with total conviction. Not hard, if you’re used to performing. “I mean, when seismic observatories and the Old Testament are telling you identical things, you have to start to suspect that something’s up. That just maybe, hard as it is to believe, you happen to be alive at a very special moment. A time of sweeping change, you know? And frankly, it thrills me. Finally you and I and everyone here will be reconciled with our ancestors, who—if you’ll turn to page three there—are not of this planet.”
Hey, this is fun! Was this how L. Ron Hubbard felt his whole life?
Now the group Bruce was talking to has caught wind of something more interesting going on over here.
One by one they tune in to my speech. I hand them each a copy and babble for another minute. Can’t linger too long, though. Have to cover as much ground as possible before I’m noticed. I excuse myself and slip out of the den.
A quick check shows Nicole and Boyd still in the living room, schmoozing their way back toward the hall. I try the dining room. It’s outside the main flow of party traffic, no refreshments laid out, but a handful of guests have retreated here. Including a woman I think I’ve seen on CNN—courtroom reporter, maybe? I corral her and her husband, skipping the preliminaries this time.
“Hi there! I’m Boyd’s brother-in-law. Do you folks have a few minutes to take a look at something?”
After regaling them with gibberish even more florid than I used on Bruce, I make tracks into the crowded living room. No sign of my sister or Boyd. That means they’re somewhere I’ve already been, and things will soon get interesting. I make my way to the back wall, as far from the doors as I can get, hiding behind the throng of guests. And look, here’s the medical editor, standing by the fireplace.
“Is there a doctor in the house?” I clap him on the shoulder as if we go back years.
“Oh, ah, hi there—”
“Dr. Naylor, we meet again! And a good thing, too. What I’m about to tell you may change your life.”
I give him the leaflet and spiel. My increasing haste to make the rounds enhances my portrayal of a young man come dangerously unglued.
“Are you feeling OK, son?”
“Never better, doc!” I slither to the other end of the mantel, momentarily distracted by my own image in a family photo, two-year-old Morgan riding my shoulders. Hurry, hurry. Here’s another likely target, a young Asian guy sitting on the sofa. I lean down toward him, yank another pamphlet from my pocket. “Sorry to disturb you, sir, but I think you ought to read this. If nothing else, check out the graph on page five. The frequency of reported spiritual visions and alien visitations is increasing along an exponential curve. It should reach infinity on exactly December thirty-first of next year!” I’m very loud by now. Everyone on this side of the room has turned to watch me, the closer ones backing away a few inches. I look toward the hall door and see a hellbent Nicole coming through it.