by R.P. Burnham
Two Serious Conversations
When Phoebe Waite asked Marilyn what she was good at stealing, the trouble that Lowell has been anticipating all day announced its arrival. He saw Bill’s face flush and felt Fiona, sitting beside him, tense up. So did he. Ever since Fiona told him about Marilyn and Bill he knew he would have to have a talk with his brother, but a whole month had gone by without an opportunity. It came when Bill stood and nervously began pacing. He caught Bill’s eye and went over to join him. “We have to talk,” he said in a whisper. Behind him Eddie was jokingly saying something about Marilyn being a sight for sore male eyes, but already they had started walking up the access road.
No words were yet spoken. Lowell was trying to find a way to begin. When they reached the shore road and turned left, he gave up trying to work out in his mind the right thing to say and simply made a statement. “Fiona and I have been very upset about all this. We worry about you.”
It was not a good beginning, though luckily Bill’s eyes were downcast so that he couldn’t see Lowell wince. Partly it was because of the condescending tone he couldn’t help taking as the elder brother and partly because he knew he was being disingenuous. His brother was the only person in the world who shared the life that made him who he was. He loved Bill for all they had gone through together. Because of their fatherless life he was like a son to him. When they were boys he always wanted to protect him from the things that hurt him as a kid—the contempt of neighbors, the narrow expectations everyone had for them, the chaos and insecurities of being poor. He could in good conscience say that he was worrying about Bill for his own sake. And yet he knew he worried about Bill and Marilyn most deeply because he felt their illicit affair threatened him and Fiona. The vision of rooted normalcy that his younger brother had given him had turned into an illusion. Lowell hadn’t fallen so far from certainty that he feared his and Fiona’s love was an illusion, but he did feel uneasy about the direction his brother’s infidelity had made him take. He had brooded on the problem a great deal in the last month and had found safety in the conclusion that he and Fiona did not need a model. They were special, unique, different. This conclusion in turn made him feel vaguely apprehensive in a different way: it made him feel isolated and forced to live interiorly. But was that healthy? He wasn’t sure.
So his condescending tone hid a whole world of shadowy doubts that he didn’t know how to face. If he were honest with Bill, he would tell him of these doubts and then maybe they could help each other. Turning the question into concern for Bill, in the meantime, seemed the only way to proceed.
Bill walked on, still avoiding eye contact. He didn’t seem to notice the condescension and definitely didn’t see Lowell wince. He acted like a guilty man, and when he finally spoke, saying, “I’ve made a mess of things, that’s for sure. I’m sorry,” he sounded like one too.
“I thought you and Becky had a good, solid marriage. Just a couple months ago, right before I met Fiona, you said I’d know when I found the love of my life. You sounded as if you knew what you were talking about. Wasn’t it Becky you were thinking of?”
Bill nodded. “It was.”
They were walking slowly on the side of the road, neither of them particularly aware of their surroundings, and were surprised when a dog belonging to three teenage girls came up and greeted them excitedly. He was a yellow Lab, not fully grown yet and still displaying his puppyhood. He yipped and jumped up at them, his tail wagging. “Hello, boy,” Lowell said, kneeling down.
“He won’t bite. He’s friendly,” one of the girls said. They were all dressed in shorts and bathing-suit tops. Two were barefoot. The one who spoke wore sandals and had large breasts like Marilyn. Lowell could see Bill looking at her and knew what he was thinking.
“I can see he’s friendly,” Lowell said. “He’s still a puppy.”
They walked on, hearing the girls giggle about something.
“Then what happened?” Lowell asked.
“About Becky?”
“Yeah.”
Bill pursed his lips and a frown passed over his face. For a minute all they could hear was the sound of their sneakered feet crunching into the pressed gravel of the road. Once they heard the dog bark and a high, shrill female voice calling. Then speaking very quietly, Bill began. “There are things you don’t know. Becky and I have not been all that close lately. She ignores me. All her attention, all the time, is devoted to Johnny and Trevor. She makes me feel like an outsider.”
Listening to this, Lowell remembered all the times women he had known—including Laurie Heinsohn, though of course not Fiona—seemed distant and cold and made him feel again the way he felt as a boy, insecure and inferior. Did Bill also revisit his chaotic boyhood when Becky seemed far, far away? If so, he could understand Bill’s feelings, though perhaps not forgive them. He had no Johnny or Trevor in his life, after all. They were different. He felt a pang of compassion for his brother nevertheless. He put his hand on Bill’s shoulder.
“I think you have to do something, Bill. Everyone on the team knows about this now. The guys will know about it too, judging from what Phoebe was saying when we left. How long do you think it will be before Becky knows? Have you tried talking with her?”
“A little—not much,” he admitted. “You have to realize I didn’t plan this. It just happened. It’s as if I was moving in a dream. Before I knew it…”
“You know what? I’ve thought about it a lot too. Especially about the boys. I’ve thought about fidelity too. It’s what kept me from a final commitment to Laurie. I think once you give your word it’s forever. Vows mean something even if you don’t believe in God. Johnny and Trevor, they deserve a father.”
“I don’t disagree with you, but I was young when I fell in love with Becky. I wasn’t fully myself. She wasn’t herself. We’ve grown apart and she started to be a stranger to me.”
“When? When did this happen?”
“When?” he repeated impatiently. “I already told you. When the kids took all her time.”
“But wasn’t that why you married her? To be the mother of your kids?”
Bill didn’t answer.
“Tell me something, Bill. Do you love Becky now at all?”
He stopped suddenly. He had a stricken look on his face and tears sprang to his eyes. “That’s just it. I do love her. But I’m like trapped. I did betray her, and I know I’m a shit. But it’s happened. I can’t take it back.”
“You could if you ask for forgiveness.”
“If it was only that easy.”
“Isn’t it?”
“No,” he said bitterly. “It isn’t.”
“So what are you going to do?”
“Right now I’m not sure, but I will do something. I can’t stand this much longer, so I will do something.”
With nothing more to be said, they turned back towards the cottage. Near the access road leading to the cottage they met the teenage girls again. This time Bill leaned down and patted the dog. “What’s his name?” he asked, and the one with the large breasts told him it was Ginger. She looked at Bill in a way that made Lowell realize what they were giggling about earlier. They thought he was cute. Fiona and her teammates regarded Marilyn as a predatory female. He had a hard time picturing Bill as an innocent moth getting his wings scorched, but the way these girls regarded his brother gave him a different perspective. Bill said he wandered into the affair as if in a dream. But then he shook off the notion. People were responsible for their actions. The world happened to them, but they had to take a step towards it before the circuit was completed and the deed done.
“Promise me you’ll think about Becky and the boys,” he said as they left the girls and turned into the access road.
“I will. I do—think of them, that is—all the time,” Bill said with the helpless fatalism of the moth. It didn’t sound too promising.
They arrived back at the cottage to find the group in disarray. Marilyn had left angrily. Tara was chewing out Phoebe
and calling her a drunken idiot. Fiona was looking as if she wanted to crawl into a hole and hide. Bill was upset that Marilyn had left without speaking to him and angry with the women for driving her away. The guys, standing around looking embarrassed and bemused, were giving Bill funny looks. So were the women, though their hostile glances were easier to read. The team had broken up, and the attitudes of the women towards Bill were changing. Before they all saw him as the innocent victim; now he was regarded as a contributing cause of the team’s breakup by one side and as an ally of the odious Marilyn by the other. When everyone left soon after their return, Fiona was close to tears as she described the things Phoebe said and Marilyn’s and Tara’s separate responses.
A bad couple of weeks followed. Sunday night Lowell wanted to go to a restaurant, but Fiona talked him into eating at home. She was too upset to face strangers. On the following Tuesday she had a bad day at work. Three residents had had tantrums in her presence and refused to listen to her. She came home feeling so frustrated and upset that she seriously thought about quitting her job. Lowell talked to her for a long time, trying to make an analogy to some of the problems he had encountered in working on the house and how it was necessary to step away for a moment to get another perspective. “Expecting problems was better than being surprised by them,” he said. “I know you can’t compare wood and metal to human beings, but the attitude towards the work can be the same. Every time I feel like taking a sledgehammer to some bad carpentry, I find my frustration absurd when I approach the problem as something to be solved.” Tomorrow, he said, will be different. He was right about the work, but bad news continued. On Thursday night they went to a cookout at Tara and Meg’s. Tara had already told them on the phone that she had made several attempts to talk Marilyn into returning, all without success. Now they learned that it didn’t matter anyways. When Phoebe had sobered up, instead of seeing that she had behaved badly all she could remember was that Tara had chewed her out. After brooding over her imagined grievances for several days she quit the team together with Helen Sapienza and Adele Sartory. Tara had no choice but to withdraw from the tournaments. Then later after they had eaten and were sitting in the backyard drinking beer, Tara belatedly told them about her confrontation with Darren French. Lowell, sitting across from Fiona, saw her trying to hide the distress this news engendered. She was too polite to express any displeasure, but on the ride back to the lake she told Lowell her fears that Tara’s interference, instead of quieting the racist pair, was more likely to make them more determined. Lowell had a difficult time assuaging her fears since he shared them. “Remember they’re cowards or they wouldn’t be racists,” he said with as much conviction as he could muster.
Visiting their mothers in Waska the following Saturday, they saw Rett Murray at a self-serve gas station. He was walking out after paying for gas when he spotted Lowell at the pump and Fiona sitting in the car. He stared at them insolently as he walked to his car, then brought it around and passed them again, still staring. That incident colored a subsequent event on Tuesday night. They had gone to the ice-cream parlor in the next town after supper and were sitting on the bench in front of the parlor when what Fiona took to be a gang of motorcyclists drove through town. There were about five or six bikes, three of which had a female passenger in the back. Another biker without a woman riding with him wore a leather jacket on which was written If you can read this the bitch fell off. They all glanced at Fiona and Lowell as they rode past, though with their eyes hidden behind dark glasses their expressions could not be read. Probably they were tourists; probably the emblem that Fiona thought might be a swastika was merely some club decal; but the fact they wondered and doubted what they saw was another indication of their general unease in public.
So it was that all the places where they had felt comfortable—Tara and Meg’s, the softball field, their mothers’ houses, the ice-cream parlor—all became places fraught with either real or potential dangers. These bad experiences made the cottage even more central to their lives, and the cottage, which he had originally envisioned as a way to sink roots into the Maine earth, had become something beyond roots: it was a home for him and his love; it was a place to experience and share life; but it was also was in danger of becoming a prison. For two months as he worked here he was an utterly happy man, but what if this became the only place on earth in which they could be at home? And even if the serpent was not in their garden, he was in the world. The fear of being closed in and suffocating, which visited Lowell sometimes when his mind was not on guard, was like the serpent’s first tentative steps into their earthly paradise. He despised the thought, it terrified him, and yet he could see no easy way around its implications.
Except work. Concentrating on the work at hand and building for himself and Fiona pointed them towards the future. On Friday morning, this was the thought that drove the fear away. After gathering his hand tools for the wiring he was starting today, Lowell paused for a moment to assess his progress. The insulation had been done. The wallboard was all installed, mudded, sanded, and primed. This weekend he and Fiona planned to do the painting, after which he would install the molding for the baseboards, windows and doors. Once that was done and the wiring was finished, everything inside would be completed except for some of the plumbing fixtures, laying down the finished floor, and of course numerous details and the decorating. Yesterday he had done the steps and railings for the stairway that led to the loft. That would be stained at the same time the molding was done. Outside the deck still had to be constructed. He had already decided he was going to have to get Fred McClellen’s crew to help with that project. The shingles on the house were as yet unpainted, but it did no harm to let them weather a bit. Lots of people, especially those living on the coast, left them to weather so that after a few years they took on an attractive gray patina. Maybe he would go for that look, though Fiona favored a red cottage. The trim boards were primed but needed a couple of coats of white latex semigloss. All in all, not too bad for ten weeks of work, mostly by himself with Fiona’s help, and with only minimal help from professionals.
Today, however, was not going to be an easy one. He had most of the receptacles, switches and light fixtures to wire up, a job he was not very good at. Nate Wentworth, the electrician, had installed the electrical panel and run a few circuits to supply Lowell with power and light so that he could work, but most of the wiring as a matter of pride Lowell had reserved for himself. He’d run all the cables before wallboarding, drilling half-inch holes through the studding where needed to run the 14-2 and 12-2 NM cables and mounting the outlet boxes where the switches and receptacles would be. Last week Nate had returned to wire all these cables into circuit breakers. Lowell had decided at the last moment that pride was nice but working on live bus bars wasn’t necessarily a wise test of one’s pride.
He started with the switch for the kitchen lights. From years of watching electricians with his uncle’s company he knew what to do, but the contrast between him and Nate was wide and deep. Nate could peel off the plastic sheathing and strip the insulation from the wires with a few quick motions that took mere seconds. Lowell had bought a tool that slipped over the sheathing and was pressed so that a blade cut into the plastic, but trying to use it he found he could not get the feel for it and gave up. Laboriously he nipped the sheathing with wire cutters. Then, trying to use the same tool to strip the insulation from the wires, he pressed too hard and cut off the copper wire. He had left himself six inches to work with, but a couple more miscues like this and he’d be in danger of not having enough of a lead.
To spur himself on, he envisioned Fiona coming home and trying the switch. This was something he often did. Whatever he was working on he did with the thought that he would show it to her as soon as she came home. Sometimes he would even speak out loud to her, so seemingly palpably was she a presence in the room with him. “Fiona,” he would say, “should we have a door for the kitchen or make the entire downstairs one room?” Then he w
ould remember her remarking earlier that she liked the open space of the cottage and would know how she would express her desire. “Whatever you want to do, Lowell, will be fine, but I do like the open look.” She would smile broadly and give him a look he loved which said, “You’re my man and I’m proud of everything you do.”
This time, however, Fiona’s ghostly presence did not help. He tried a second time to strip the insulation, only to cut the wire again. He would have to have recourse to other, more mundane methods. He went over to a cardboard box filled with scrap pieces of the cable and practiced for a while stripping the sheathing and insulation until he got a feel for it, then returned to the switch. This time he managed to get the wires stripped properly. He bent them with his needle-nose pliers and affixed them to the terminals on the switch, then tightened them down with a screwdriver. The rest was easy. He pushed the wires into the back of the box and screwed the switch to the outlet box. He wouldn’t put the wall plate on until after they had painted, so the first one was done.
He was about to start the next box, a receptacle with the line coming in and a feeder cable to three other receptacles in the circuit when he stopped and listened to what he thought was someone calling his name. He stood listening attentively and this time he heard it distinctly. “Hey, Lowell. Are you home?”
He went out the door and looked up to where his truck was parked and then towards the lake. His uncle, Cliff Dalton, was sitting in his boat with the motor idling and looking up at him. “Hi, Lowell. Are you busy or do you have some time to show me the progress you’ve made?” He’d come by when the framing was being done, and with his wife, Nadine, had made a visit and met Fiona, but on that occasion they had chatted from the boat while Lowell and Fiona stood on the dock. He hadn’t seen any of the finish work on the cottage.
Smiling broadly, Lowell walked down to the dock. “I always have time for you, Cliff.”
He caught the rope his uncle tossed to him and pulled the boat to the dock. Once out of the boat, Cliff shook hands. He was short, with just a slight tendency towards being overweight, not from a middle-age paunch but rather from thick legs and a round face framed with gold-rimmed glasses through which bright blue eyes gleamed with a quick intelligence. His short hair and neatly trimmed beard were gray. He was something of a local celebrity in Waska, having written a well-regarded history of the town that was published five years ago.
“Nadine’s busy baking some pies, but she’s given me strict orders to invite you and Fiona to dinner some night this week. We’re up here for a couple weeks’ vacation.”
“That would be nice. We’d love to.”
Cliff tapped him on the shoulder. “Good. We both found Fiona to be a sweet and lovely girl, and we’re anxious to get to know her better. What are you working on now?” he asked, changing the subject as they picked their way carefully up the rocky incline to the cottage.
“Wiring.”
They paused at the door.
“I hear my friend Nate Wentworth installed the circuit-breaker panel for you.”
“He did the panel and ran a couple circuits to give me power to work with. That was supposed to be it, but I decided it was wiser to have a pro do the circuit breakers, so he came back a second time. He’s been very accommodating too. Both times he came within a day or two after I called him.”
Cliff nodded in agreement as he listened. “I’m not surprised. He loves this lake. You’ve heard, haven’t you, that his wife died about ten years ago?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Actually his second wife. His first died in a fire. He’s had a tragic life. Anyways, he and his second wife spent their last weekend together at my place. That’s why he loves it here. Something special happened, though he won’t talk about it.” He was surveying the cottage as he spoke and added, “ Are you going to paint those shingles or stain them?”
“Probably stain them red. That’s what Fiona wants. So poor Nate’s had a tragic life, huh? He’s always polite and friendly but quiet. I had an idea something bothered him. But come on inside and let me show you the place. Much has been done since you saw Fred McClellen’s crew framing it in June.”
They went inside where Cliff was favorably impressed and asked a lot of questions. He had built his own post and beam home and took a keen interest in the minutiae of construction. After about twenty minutes Lowell poured them each a cup of coffee and they went outside to sit for a bit. Lowell asked about his cousins.
“They’re fine,” Cliff said, taking a sip of his black coffee and leaning back as if getting ready for a long stay. “Darlene’s married now and living in suburban Boston. She and her husband both teach at the same high school. Mike’s teaching too. He got his Ph.D. in ecology at Michigan and is teaching now at a Florida university.”
Lowell watched a chipmunk scamper by. When they had food Fiona always fed them, and they had grown quite tame. “That’s good to hear. I’ve kinda lost contact with them through the years, though I do remember Mike was at Michigan. He was going to visit me once in Chicago, but the conference he was going to was canceled or something. Remember the time you took us all to a Red Sox game and he ripped his pants on the edge of his seat going for a foul ball? I still chuckle every time I think of it. His face was crimson.”
Reliving the memory, Cliff grinned. “It was Darlene who suggested the solution—to tie his jacket around his waist.”
They watched the chipmunk sit on his haunches and regard them for a moment before suddenly and furiously begin scratching an itch on his side. He looked quite comic and both of them laughed. “I wonder if they have fleas too?” Cliff asked. “But how have you and Fiona been? Again I must say we found her a very appealing girl.”
“She is. And we’ve been fine, except…” He hesitated, debating with himself whether he should bring up the troubles that had visited them. He did not share his uncle’s interest in the colonial past and Anglo-Saxon culture, though he had read his book, but he knew Cliff was a humane and intelligent man whose instincts were progressive and decent. He was an ardent member of the Green Party and supported numerous left-wing causes despite being from a wealthy Massachusetts family. He certainly wasn’t going to mention Bill’s infidelity to his uncle, but talking about the racism they had encountered would be a relief.
“Except? Something is wrong then?”
Lowell leaned down to put his coffee cup on the ground, a motion that frightened the chipmunk. With a shrill squeal, it ran off into the underbrush. “Well, it’s just that we had a run-in with some local Nazis. A guy from Waska, Rett Murray, and some thug who was with him. Have you heard of Murray?”
The question was rhetorical, for Cliff’s face showed that he had. It lit up in recognition the moment he heard the name. “He’s the guy who was handing out leaflets denying the Holocaust in front of the synagogue in Portland.”
“He’s the one.”
“I take it he said something of a racist nature?”
Cliff was regarding him with such deep interest that for a moment he felt self-conscious. “Yeah, what was weird about it was that he directed all his remarks to me. He didn’t say a thing to Fiona. He hardly even looked at her. He said I was betraying my race, crap like that. This was at the gate at a Sea Dogs game with people all around so that Fiona was mortified. Bill knew him in high school, but I first met him when I bought a car for my mother from him. He was very hostile—very bizarre behavior for a salesman. It turns out it was because he thought I was Jewish.”
Cliff frowned in puzzlement. “Jewish? He thought you were Jewish? That’s strange.”
Lowell nodded and raised his eyebrows while he grimaced. “Bill thinks it was because of my first name and my nose, I guess. But when I saw him in Portland it was creepy. He’d done some research on me and knew then I wasn’t Jewish. He mentioned our English ancestors.”
“Portland seems to be where he prowls. Nadine was accosted by him once in Portland. He was handing out leaflets on Congress Street, and when
she said no thanks and glared at him, he averted his eyes as if he was ashamed of himself. That was before the incident at the synagogue. He’s famous, or infamous, you know, because of that. But is he the only one who has bothered you?”
“The only one directly, but we’ve also experienced subtler forms of racism. Fiona tells me that she’s been patronized at various times through her life, but I don’t think she has much experience with hostility and hate. She’s very shy, a very quiet and unassuming person. That anybody could hate her is beyond ridiculous.”
“I agree,” Cliff said with some warmth. “Hating her would be like hating a rose or a butterfly. But what about these subtler forms of racism you mentioned?”
“I mean signs of hostility and disapproval on faces that are impossible to miss. We’ve seen them from white and black people. Sometimes a store clerk or whatever will be brusque and distant and unhelpful. We’ve had to wait for service for a long time at a restaurant once. These are little things, and I don’t think they’d bother us too much if it wasn’t for Murray. And of course most people have been perfectly pleasant or benignly indifferent as they mind their own business. But I’ll tell you something I learned. When it comes to racism, democracy doesn’t count. Ninety-nine out of a hundred people can be fine, but it’s the one percent you remember. We feel uneasy in public, and that’s the result of Murray’s work. The creep! I’ve spent way too much time thinking and worrying about him.”
“You do consider the source, don’t you?”
Lowell waited for a loud powerboat to go by. When it was quiet again, he asked, “What do you mean?”
“I mean that Murray is a loser from everything I hear about him.” He waved his hand as if dismissing a fly. “The problem nationally isn’t so much dirtballs like him as—”
Lowell moved his chair so that he more directly faced his uncle. “Yeah, he’s a dirtball all right, but he’s still an evil bastard. I had a roommate at the University of Chicago who thought all evil was the result of selfishness, self-regard or egoism, whatever you want to call it. He was a philosophy major and a big fan of Kant. He thought all right-wingers were unspeakable hypocrites because they advocated capitalism and had no sympathy for oppressed people, and they called this view ‘moral.’ They defended the powerful exploiting the weak in the name of unbridled greed and selfishness and had the gall to call this morality in politics. I used to think he had a pretty good theory. This was the time of the aftermath of Reagan when reactionaries were a dime a dozen. There weren’t many progressives at the university, so my roomie and I were just about always on the same side of any issue and always a minority. But Rett Murray bothers me. He’s not, from what I hear at least, selfish or greedy. He’s a Nazi for ideological reasons. There’s no money in it for him, not really much glory either. But I know damn well that bastard is evil and is serving evil. Racism is evil.”
“Oh, he’s evil all right. Have you ever heard the remark, ‘While not all conservatives are stupid, all stupid people are conservatives?’ Stupid people can’t imagine any other life than the one they can see before their eyes. This Murray is like that. He’s stupid. He can’t imagine a world where everyone lives together in peace. He can’t imagine how it feels to be a black man. I think your friend is right about conservatives, but I’d add that stupidity also causes evil. To some extent he’s being manipulated by larger forces he probably doesn’t even know exist. There’s so much politically correct thinking going on now that people are afraid to have an opinion half the time. One thing the politically correct do to make the situation worse is to see things in black and white. White culture is blamed for slavery, genocide of the Indians and so forth, and by a not-too-subtle equation white people of today are held responsible.”
“But aren’t white people responsible?” Lowell asked doubtfully. He was afraid the conversation was veering away from the topic. It wouldn’t be the first time it had happened when he was talking with Cliff.
“Yes, of course, but the way to heal wounds between groups is to see our commonality—that we all share human nature, both the good and bad that is in it. But see how it is today? Black people and Indians are seen as victims, and as victims are morally pure. White people are tainted with the guilt of their ancestors. They are evil. But a dispassionate review of history will show something else.”
“For instance?” Lowell asked politely—for he saw his doubts were accurate and was not particularly interested in the direction Cliff was taking the discussion.
“Well, take the Lakota people, the Sioux Indians. What Custer and the army did to them was cowardly and despicable and could very accurately be described as genocide. But just two generations before Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull the Lakota lived in Minnesota and Iowa. They invaded the Plains Indians who lived in the Dakotas and drove them out. The same sort of thing could be said about African slavery. African tribes caught and sold people from other tribes to the slave traders. The Arabs, who are white people but are regarded as Third-World people, were also involved with the slave trade. Why is this important to remember? Some or most people resist being called evil. In rejecting the label and the guilt, they fight back. Some of them are attracted to political entities like the Nazis or KKK. When ethnic divisiveness refuses to recognize that the problem of human evil is universal and that we all share the same human mind, divisiveness continues. It’s not solved, not overcome.”
“So you’re saying Rett Murray is one of these people who’s reacted against the negative view of white people?”
Cliff nodded. “He could be. Probably he is. In an either/or world some will choose the ‘or’.”
Lowell considered for a moment, folding his arms and looking out at the lake. A smile grew on his face. “Let me play the devil’s advocate for a minute. Isn’t there some sophistry here? My friend the philosophy major used to talk about how people disengage morally by blaming the victim. You know, instead of seeing street people as people who can’t cope because they’re mentally ill or from deprived backgrounds or drug addicts, they call them lazy. Isn’t saying people who try to right the wrongs of racism are causing racism the same kind of thinking?”
He was afraid Cliff might take offense at his question, but he seemed unconcerned. He shrugged philosophically and pursed his lips. “In some cases I would agree with you. But I’m trying to criticize the way some people go about righting wrongs by being obsessively politically correct. I just think we should remember we all share human nature and remember that all people, all groups, are capable of good and evil. That leads to unity and understanding. Making the victims pure distorts reality. Nazism is a distortion. If you emphasize a distorted view of humanity, you don’t rise above it. You don’t solve the problem, and you shouldn’t be surprised if distorted reactions occur. I’m criticizing an antihumanistic approach to the problem based on an ignorance of history and human life.”
Despite his calm beginning, Cliff was bothered by Lowell’s devil’s advocacy, for he got more and more heated as he went on and almost spat out the last sentence.
Lowell raised his hands in concession. “Okay, okay,” he said genially. “I do see your point. But for someone to be a Nazi he’s probably already an asshole. That’s what made me wonder.”
“Okay,” his uncle said in the same tone. “I hope you see that my and Nadine’s interest in English culture is different from Murray’s. I know you do.”
“I do,” Lowell said with conviction.
“We live in a time of unreason. Remember the Internet poll during the millennium where Elvis got the most votes for man of the century? I really savor the irony of this most ‘modern’ medium, the Internet, being the medium for yahoos to express themselves. And I really do worry a lot about the self-righteous streak in human nature. When people can believe anything at all, nationalism and overweening ethnic pride are dangerous and evil. The Israelis treat the Palestinians like subhumans, Serbs hate Bosnian and Albanian Moslems, Irish Protestants and Catholics are at each others’ thro
ats. I try to love Anglo-Saxon culture because of what it’s given to the world—like Shakespeare and Newton, I mean. I don’t know what a guy like Murray thinks he’s doing. He demeans that culture. If it’s any good it doesn’t need violence and terror to make it prevail.”
“I’m with you on that point,” Lowell said. “I think racism is cowardly. I think Murray’s a coward. I hope he’s not dangerous.”
Checking his watch, Cliff rose. “I’d better get going. Nadine will be wondering where I am. But before I leave let me say one other thing. I was going to mention it earlier and then the conversation veered off. It’s about a way of looking at black people that’s different. It’s also about what America means now. The descendants of the English settlers and founders of this nation are every year becoming a smaller and smaller minority. Immigrants from the twentieth century alone are probably a third of the population. What connection do they have to the nation’s history? When they say they love America, they aren’t talking about a shared culture and history. They love America because it’s a place to make a good living. But are self-regard and selfishness a healthy basis for patriotism? What does that mentality know about a commitment to a community or to a shared past? If a better job is offered elsewhere, what would they do?”
“I don’t know,” Lowell said, not hiding his impatience very well. “I’m not sure what your point is.”
“Well, first that capitalistic values are hollow, but the point I want to make is about black people. Racists see them as Other with a capital O, but I see them as a group that shares the nation’s history with us. New England Calvinists were behind the abolitionist movement, so our connection goes way back. Not only that, black people have picked up a lot of Anglo-Saxon blood thanks to the evil of slave owners who forced sex upon black women, so just as we’re WASPs, black folks could be regarded as BASPs—black Anglo-Saxon Protestants. Their problems, then, are our problems. We share history with them.”
His uncle being very earnest, Lowell disagreed in as conciliatory a tone as possible. “I don’t think black people see it that way. Fiona doesn’t, I’m quite sure.”
“No, I’m sure she doesn’t, but it is a way to see solidarity and kinship. That was my point.” Again, he checked his watch. “If that man does harass you again, I’d call the cops.”
He was already making his way to the dock. Lowell followed and helped him get into the unsteady boat before bidding him good-bye. “Remember we look forward to having you over for dinner,” Cliff yelled as he gunned the engine for full power and waved in acknowledgment of Lowell’s mouthed response.
Standing on the dock and watching Cliff motor away across the lake, Lowell felt a bit guilty. His uncle’s abrupt departure may have been because he had lost track of time and had to hurry home; it might even have been because he had talked himself out; but more than likely it was because he read Lowell’s eyes as he theorized about history. It wasn’t a foible with him, not a propensity to bore his relatives and friends and beg their indulgence; it was the most serious thing in the world. And yet Lowell couldn’t help himself. He was uninterested in the discussion. It didn’t help him; it didn’t clarify what he had to do to be free of Rett Murray. The only practical suggestion Cliff made—to call the police if he was harassed again—was no help at all. What he wanted was not be harassed again. How free was he if a creep and cretin like Murray poisoned his existence with insecurity and fear? Still, his uncle meant well, and he certainly sympathized with him and Fiona. It wasn’t as if Lowell didn’t appreciate the visit; he forever and always appreciated his uncle for all that he had done for him when young. There are many forms of love. One of them bore his uncle’s image.
Cliff disappeared around the bend of the L-shaped lake. Momentarily the lake was free of boats and peaceful as it reflected big, puffy cumulous clouds on its surface. The higher reaches of the mountain that the glacier left behind when it scooped out the lake was purplish in the distance. The lower slopes were thickly green with the boughs of thousands of pine trees. Everything was beautiful, and yet it gave him no peace.
He took a deep breath, which turned into a sigh. With one last look at mountain and lake, he walked back to the cottage to continue the wiring while the biblical and Calvinist injunction echoed in his mind: work, for the night comes.