by Homes, A. M.
In the lobby, after lunch, while waiting for Wanda, I peel open the chocolate bar and take a bite. I am amazed that the deli lady remembered me. It’s so strange that she knew who I was. She knew me and Claire and all about my brother. She felt sorry for me and gave me a chocolate bar. No one just gives anyone anything anymore. I take another bite, no longer worried what my suit looks like or that Claire is “out there” somewhere in her tight work skirt, her heels a little too high to be respectable. In the lobby I watch people come and go, thinking of Nixon, a man of his own time, wondering what he would make of the new technology for spying, for gathering information. I’m wondering if he’d still write longhand, wondering if he’d be surfing porn sites on his iPad while kicking back in that beloved brown velvet chaise longue in his secret Executive Office Building retreat, wondering what he’d think of all the women in power these days. After all, he was the one who said he didn’t think women should be in any government job—he thought of them as erratic and emotional.
The afternoon is spent reading multiple drafts of a chillingly grim novella, Of Brotherly Love, set in a small California town, in which a failed lemon-farmer and his wife conspire to murder their three sons, convinced that the Lord has bigger plans for them in the next world. After the youngest son dies, the middle boy catches on and tries to tell his older brother, who treats him as though he’s gone insane—violated the very word of God. When the middle boy comes home at the end of that day and his parents tell him that the oldest boy has gone to the Lord, the boy becomes terrified. Fearing for his life, he collapses and tells his parents that there must be a reason that the Lord, having taken two of his brothers thus far, has spared him. The Lord must have a plan for him. The parents, grief-stricken, nod and urge him to go up to bed. He says his prayers, then feigns sleep. He rises after midnight and slays first his father and then his mother, all the while fearing the hand of God. He murders his parents, then sets the house and barn afire and rides off in the family car, hoping to get across the border before the authorities find him.
The story is filled with paranoia, questions of faith, and the fear that the parents didn’t take good enough care of the children, that God himself was not pleased. The expectation is that the surviving brother should do something more, something heroic—he is obligated to make up for their loss.
I read these incomplete fragments as Nixon’s attempt to process the early death of his two brothers, Arthur and Harold, and his own crisis of faith. Despite the unnerving morning, the afternoon brings a new comfort level. I ask for the key to the men’s room and am given a programmed card, like a hotel-room key, and told that it will expire in ten minutes. The bathrooms are deluxe; the urinal is filled with ice—which snaps, crackles, pops as my stream hits it. They say it keeps bathrooms cleaner if men have something to aim for. The card gives me the excuse to walk the halls, wondering how the Nixon documents found their way here. What is the “firm’s” relationship with the Nixon family? Someone knows someone who knows someone; it’s all about who you know, who you went to school with, who you grew up with in the backyard. After a couple of laps around the firm, I go back into the conference room. Moments later I sneeze, and a young man appears with a box of Kleenex.
“Thank you,” I say, reminded that I am being watched.
At four-thirty Wanda appears. “Thirty minutes until closing,” she says. And at four-fifty, “Ten minutes.” At four-fifty-five, I put my pencil down. Wanda appears, and I show her the few pages of pencil notes I’ve scratched out on their legal pads.
“Do you think you’ll be returning?” she asks.
“I hope so, it’s a very exciting discovery, I barely made a dent.”
“I’ll let Mrs. Eisenhower know you were pleased.”
“Thank you. And thank you for your help as well. Have a good evening.”
She smiles.
I drive home loving Nixon all the more, marveling at his range, his subtlety, his facility with describing human behavior. I stop to pick up Chinese food, go home, set myself up at the dining-room table, and tell Tessie everything. I’m talking to the dog, spooning hot-and-sour soup into my mouth, and simultaneously writing as fast and furiously as I can. I’m transcribing everything I can remember, marveling at the nuance of Nixon’s thinking, the depth of character, the humor, so dark, so wry, revealing a much greater self-awareness than most would imagine Nixon capable of. I’m thinking about how these stories will redefine Nixon, alter the shape of scholarship—my book in particular. I write nonstop for an hour and a half, then remember the confidentiality agreement and tell myself that whatever I write now is just for me, a first draft, initial impressions. As I go deeper, I find myself wanting to describe the characters, the text in detail. I feel silenced, screwed, used, baited, and start plotting a way around it. If the family denies that the materials exist, if they’ve not been catalogued, it’s going to be hard to prove, hard to get anywhere. I am hoping the Nixons are reasonable people. I am hoping that they are willing to let him be known as he was, in his glory and his complexity. I am wondering what the next step is; do I have Julie’s phone number? I go back through caller ID. Be patient, I tell myself, let events take their natural course. The phone rings. “Good evening, is this Mr. Silver?”
“Perhaps. Who may I ask is calling?”
“Geoffrey Ordy Jr., from Wurlitzer, Pulitzer and Ordy.”
“Which Mr. Silver are you calling for?”
“How do you mean?”
“George or Harold?”
“Given where things stand, I’m assuming George is unavailable at the moment,” the guy says, annoyed.
“Correct.”
“I’m sorry to phone so late.”
“Not a problem. I was out all day,” I say.
“I’ll cut to the chase. There’s a hearing tomorrow at eleven a.m. in White Plains in regard to your brother’s car accident—we forgot to tell you. They’re bringing George down for it, first public appearance. The press will be all over it.”
“Tomorrow?”
“Like I said, someone who should have known better forgot to tell you.”
“I have a lunch tomorrow, a lunch of great importance with someone I can’t afford to disappoint.”
“I’m just relaying the information.”
“It sounds both important and something that in the greater scheme of things could be skipped—it’s a first appearance, no doubt there will be others.”
“Correct.”
“Eleven a.m. in White Plains.”
“That’s the news.”
“George will be there.”
“Confirmed at the County Court House.”
“I’ll work around it. Next time a little advance warning would be appreciated.”
“Noted, and good night.”
That night I dream of Richard Nixon lying on the floor in a charcoal-gray suit and white shirt, his head on a tufted sofa pillow, his torso writhing from side to side as though he’s trying to work out a kink. Pat is there, walking back and forth across the room, repeatedly stepping over him in a tight red dress. In the dream Nixon is trying to peek under her dress. “Stockings, no panties?” he asks, surprised. “Is that comfortable?”
“Yes,” she says.
The phone is ringing.
“Listen, you son of a bitch…” a disembodied voice is yelling at me.
I’m terrified, thinking it’s him—Richard Nixon calling me.
“You have one hell of a nerve,” he says, continuing to shout as I come to consciousness. I realize it’s not Nixon, it’s Jane’s father. “I think about you and your lousy brother and I’m disgusted.”
She seduced me, I think to myself, but say nothing.
“I want you should never forget what you’ve done.”
“I think about it constantly,” I say, knowing that’s of little comfort.
“We hear things are coming to a head, the ball’s rolling, there’s a hearing, and the proverbial ax is going to fall, and, well, we’re
worried about the children,” he says.
“The children are at school.”
“It’s enough already. We think they shouldn’t be a part of this.”
“They’re doing very well.”
“We think you should take them somewhere.”
“I saw Nate a couple of weekends ago, at Field Day—he’s quite the athlete.”
“They don’t need to be exposed to the brouhaha that’s going to surround this whole thing.”
“And Ashley called a couple of days ago. We had a wonderful phone call—really bonding, it was like we went through something together.”
“Shmuck,” he says. “Are you hearing anything I’m saying? We think it would be good if the children were out of the country.”
“Where?”
“You could take them to Israel.”
“They don’t speak Hebrew. They barely know they’re Jewish.”
There is silence. “Look, you giant creep,” Jane’s father says. “I was kidding when I said Israel.”
“It was a joke? What Jew makes a joke about Israel?”
“Who sleeps with his brother’s wife while his brother is in the nuthouse? I meant you should take them somewhere, get their minds off all this crap, I don’t care where.”
“I don’t know what to say.”
“Listen, asshole, I will pay you to take the children someplace.”
“They’re at school,” I say. “But, more to the point, if you want to take them someplace, why don’t you plan a little vacation and let me know the dates.”
“At the moment it’s all I can do to care for my wife and myself,” he says. I hear him cry out, a single deep, bellowing sob, and then he hangs up.
I walk the dog; the morning sky is a rich benevolent blue, filled with promise and opportunity. It’s overwhelmingly optimistic—in other words, it makes me nervous, sets the bar too high.
I dress for court and lunch in one of George’s charcoal-gray suits, a white shirt, and a blue tie. Blue seems more about justice than red, which signals aggression. An impending sense of doom is gnawing at me from the inside. I dress as best I can, putting deodorant not just in my armpits but in a thick line down the center of my chest, a ring around my lower back, as far up each side as I can reach. I’m a sweater—under duress I drip raindrops of stress; I can soak a shirt in two minutes.
In White Plains, I circle the Court House; there are “No Parking Anytime” signs posted everywhere. I end up parking at the Galleria shopping mall and walking through the mall.
Like all modern courthouses, this one is a characterless fortress, testament to paper pushing, bureaucracy, and the incipient insanity of our system. Going postal is no longer reserved for those who pledge that “Neither rain nor snow nor gloom of night would deter its couriers from their appointed rounds.” It’s become a kind of rite of passage: disgruntled employee returns and shoots boss, disgruntled wife kills kids, disgruntled husband wrecks car, kills strangers, and then kills wife. Hard not to be surprised, when the bulk of public conversation goes like this: “Paper or plastic?” The loss of the human touch scares me.
I approach expecting a media circus, TV trucks, satellite dishes—this is America, everything is a circus. The fact that it is not a “scene,” no red carpet, just business as usual, is all the more unnerving. Is it still “real” if it’s not documented and delivered back to us in the media? Does anything have meaning if it’s not covered? And what does it say about me that I feel these events are not legitimate without a camera crew? Inside the building, an anonymous recording plays: “Welcome, please empty your pockets into the bins provided and pass through our screening process.”
Reflexively, the man ahead of me takes off his shoes.
The guard says nothing and simply ushers him through the metal detector, ignoring that he’s clutching his well-worn lugs close to his chest. Looking at the heels, I see he walks on the outsides of his feet—is that pronation or supination?
My turn. I dig deep into my pocket and throw my handful into the basket; it misses, splatters, nickels and dimes hitting the floor like shattering glass and rolling this way and that.
“Sir, please step to the side.”
“Is there a problem?” I ask
“Is there?” the guard repeats.
“I worry that I was too enthusiastic,” I say. “I’m a little nervous. My brother is coming today.”
“How exciting,” he says, giving me both the wand and the pat-down. “Do you want your money back?” he asks when he’s done; another guard has been walking in circles collecting my nickels, dimes, and quarters.
“Keep it,” I say.
“I can’t,” he says. “Either you take it or it goes in the bucket.” He tips his head towards an unmanned Salvation Army cauldron, like the kind Santa minds in season.
“Bucket,” I say. And then, as I’m repacking my pockets, I ask. “Am I being treated specially?”
“We treat everyone specially.”
I’m taking all of this far too personally, as though I’m the one who’s on trial. I locate the courtroom, which I mistakenly call a classroom when asking for directions. It’s half empty, with activity of a low-key preparatory sort, papers changing hands, people milling about. It’s like watching stagehands getting ready for a scene. The system is a bastardized construction, vaguely English, surreal, and reeking of American culture, fast food, and an absence of style—the clerks and officers of the court are fat and poorly dressed. The room itself is ugly and not well maintained; you get the feeling no one is feeling any love for this place—it’s more like a bus station than a place you’d hold in high esteem.
So there I am, expecting media, press, people fighting to get in, and instead it’s a big nothing. A man with a beer belly takes notes on what we used to call a steno pad, and a woman wearing what Mother would call a shmatte is doing the same. When the case is finally called, George and his lawyer enter through a side door and take their places. I am in the third row, looking at George from the back. George turns and glances at me; he looks dull, puffy, medicated. Various formalities are run through, a kind of recap of where we are and how we got to this point. In the middle of it all, George makes a sound, like the grunt of a rhinoceros about to charge; it’s disconcerting, but no one says anything. The lawyers continue. I drift in and out, perking up when I hear someone from the DA’s office say, “Long story short—we’re dropping the charges with respect to the fatal traffic accident.” He reads from a prepared statement: “Independent investigation corroborates defense assertion of known manufacturer fault. Manufacturer is documented to have failed to notify consumers in a timely fashion. In the twelve months prior to this accident, manufacturer received numerous claims about failure, hesitation, and issues relating to the brakes, including inconsistency of brake application. Evidence obtained confirms that in fact the brakes on the defendant’s car were of the same type as those found to be faulty and that the defendant at the time of the accident stated to officers on the scene that he, quote, ‘tried to stop but the car kept going.’ Defendant has a clean driving record, and in the end it is our belief that the accident was the fault of the vehicle and not the operator. We feel our resources are best spent pursuing the manufacturer, and to that end papers have been filed.”
Am I hearing what I think I’m hearing—George is off the hook for the car accident?
“So, with regard to the accident, you’re dropping all charges against Mr. Silver?” the judge asks for clarification.
“Yes, sir, we are dropping all charges related to the car accident, noting insufficient evidence to proceed.”
The only people who seem surprised are George and me.
“This is ridiculous,” George says loudly. “I am a guilty man, more guilty than you can possibly imagine. I want to be punished.”
“I second the motion,” I call loudly from the audience.
“Order in the court,” the judge demands, banging his gavel. “What you want is irrelevant, M
r. Silver. This is a court of justice. Until further notice and or any change in condition or circumstance that would warrant a revisiting of the placement, Mr. Silver is to be returned to the custody of The Lodge.”
George turns to face me. “Thanks for backing me up,” he says, as one of the “staff”—bullies from The Lodge—leads him out of the room.
I find one of George’s lawyers by the water fountain. “I’m Ordy,” he says, shaking my hand, “we spoke last night.”
“It’s all so strange,” I say. “Did you see this coming?”
“If we did, we’d be psychics, not lawyers. There are reasons people hire us: we did good investigative work on this.”
“But he did it, it was his fault. I was there; I talked to him the night of the accident.”
“It doesn’t really matter what George said. The brakes were faulty and the manufacturer had knowledge.”
“I picked him up at the jail; he was not himself that night.”
“He is who he is—the fingerprints match.”
“He killed his wife.”
“About some things only time will tell,” he says, wiping his lips with the back of his hand.
“I have no doubt,” I say. “I saw it happen; he hit her on the head with a lamp.”
“Is that so?” The lawyer looks at me. “Maybe it was really you—maybe you hit his wife on the head and are blaming him?”
“I don’t think he ever denied doing it,” I say.
“For all we know, he’s trying to protect you; you are the younger brother, after all.”
“Actually, I’m older.”
The lawyer shrugs. “Whatever.”
“Is there going to be a trial for Jane’s murder—because I’d like to be here for that,” I say.
“Remains to be seen,” the lawyer says. “We’re still negotiating.”
I change my tactics. “Nate wants to do something for the boy, the surviving child.”
“Who’s Nate?”
“George’s son?”
“And what would he like to do?”
“He’s interested in adopting, or at least taking the kid out for a day.”