May We Be Forgiven: A Novel

by Homes, A. M.

  “Was it anything to do with the quality of my work?” I’m compelled to ask.

  “No,” she says. “While I was surprised by the extent of some of your edits, when I looked them over in comparison to the longer versions I thought you did a fine job. It’s a family issue; we’re not sure that presenting my father as a fiction writer is consistent with the Nixon brand.” There is a long pause. “As you might imagine, the concept of our brand is not something I thought of before; it used to be all about red and blue, Democrat or Republican. So we’re going to give it some thought, and if we circle around, you’ll be the first to know. Thank you for your enthusiasm—I know how fond of my father you are.”

  I press further, thinking this may be my last chance to glean some insight. “As you know, I’ve been working on this book about your father. I’m curious, has your sense of him changed over time? Did you ever discover things that made you uncomfortable?”

  “My father was a complex figure who did what he believed was best for his family and his country. You and I will never know the depth of the challenges he faced. Thank you,” she says, “and good night.”

  I e-mail Ching Lan and ask her to meet me at the office tomorrow at nine.

  By 7 a.m., CNN is on the air with an old guy in Oregon holding up a notebook of Nixon’s, which he claims his grandfather won when the former President was a poker-playing lieutenant commander in the navy. The notebook is dated 1944, which coincides with Nixon’s service. The man reads an excerpt, which I immediately recognize as a fragment from “Good American People.”

  Leaving the house, I have the feeling someone is watching me. An unfamiliar car is parked nose-out in the driveway across the street; the driver gives me a creepy nod, and I swear I would hear a camera clicking if cameras still clicked.

  The elevator in the midtown building that houses the firm stops on every floor, dispensing its Starbucks-cupped, muffin-topped human cargo. I am aware of someone behind me. “Cut too close to the bone,” he says over my shoulder. I move to turn; the elevator goes dark and jerks to a stop. The other passengers gasp.

  “We’re under attack,” a woman screams.

  “Doubtful,” a man mutters.

  “There’s always a snag,” a familiar voice says calmly over my shoulder. “Always something a little bigger than you running the show.”

  “Tell me more,” I say.

  “What more can I say? I’m disappointed,” he says. “My fifteen minutes are fading fast.”

  The elevator car lurches upward, the lights blink, the door opens. Passengers surge forward, rushing to get off, fearing there is more to come.

  “Must have been a power surge,” an old man who has remained in the car says. “That kind of thing used to happen all the time in the early 1970s; we called it John Lindsay’s long arm.”

  Up ahead, scuttling towards the fire stairs, I spot a man in a blue windbreaker, tan khaki pants, and a baseball cap.

  Ching Lan cries when I tell her the project is over. “I try to be no one when I come here. I am blank for you to write your books on.”

  “Don’t worry,” I say, “I will write you an excellent letter of reference.”

  She sobs.

  “And I will hire you to copyedit my book.”

  “That’s not why I am crying,” she says. “My career will be fine: I have been offered full-time professional position on a volleyball team, but I told them I had to finish this first. I am crying because I see you love President Nixon very much—despite how he behaves. You work hard, you are so brave. Because of you I have been studying all about China. I learn so much more about my country than I ever knew. I learned about myself through you.”

  “Thank you,” I say.

  “What do you think happened?” Ching Lan asks.

  “Fear,” I say.

  “Maybe later,” Ching Lan says, “they will try again, and it won’t seem so scary.”

  “Have you ever done that, frightened yourself with something?” I ask.

  “No,” she says. “I am not so scary. But my father, he doesn’t like mice. A mice scares him very badly. He jumps on his pickle barrel like a little girl. My mother has to chase the mouse like a big cat. Can I ask you a question?”

  “Of course.”

  “What do you like so much about China?”

  “No one has ever asked me that before. This may sound odd, but I like how big it is—China has everything from Mount Everest to the South China Sea, and how many millions of people live there, how industrious they are, the depth of the history, how ancient, beautiful, mysterious, and other it is.”

  “Have you ever been there?” she asks.

  “No,” I say. “Have you?”

  She shakes her head no. “My parents tell me they never want to go back, that what is there is from long ago, and that life is very hard. They are sorry for their relatives who stayed, and they carry the sadness with them, but they like it better here.”

  What I don’t tell Ching Lan is that I am also secretly terrified of China: I imagine a dark side that doesn’t value human life as deeply as I do. I worry that if I went there something would happen to me, I would get sick, I would rupture my appendix, I would end up doubled over in a Chinese hospital unable to care for myself. I imagine dying of either the gangrenous appendix or perhaps an infection following surgery performed under less-than-sterile conditions. I don’t tell Ching Lan that I have nightmares that involve Chinese people wearing bloody lab coats, telling me in broken English that my turn is next. I also don’t tell Ching Lan the one big idea that I’ve not yet articulated. I don’t tell Ching Lan that I can’t help but sometimes wonder if the current world economic crisis could be directly linked to Nixon’s opening relations with China.

  When we are done, Ching Lan and I say goodbye to Wanda and Marcel and turn in our badges; goodbye to the office, to the firm, to the men’s room, to the elevator.

  We go to the deli for lunch; I am not hungry, but her mother insists. “On the house,” she says.

  I have brought the trinkets from South Africa, which are now like going-away presents. I give Ching and her mother scarves I bought in the airport, and for her father a money clip. Her mother gives me a Hershey bar for the road. “Don’t be strange,” she calls after me as I’m leaving. “Come back soon.”

  It’s 2 p.m. I’ve been home all of ten minutes and have changed my clothes and gone out to water the plants when Sofia pulls up.

  “Unscheduled stop,” she says as she’s coming up the driveway. I’m sure she’s been circling the block, waiting for me to come home.

  “I keep thinking about you and the Big BM.” She puts her hands on her hips with a staged sigh.

  “It was better than I expected. I’m really indebted—thank you,” I say.

  “My pleasure,” she says. “I learned so much about you and Nate and South Africa! How was the cake? I forgot to ask.”

  “Perfect.”

  “I’m glad,” she says. “I wasn’t sure it would work—different water, altitude, and ovens! I don’t know if Sakhile told you, but I sent four extra boxes of cake mix so they could experiment ahead of time.”

  “You really did think of everything. And all the Jewish traditional elements—I had no idea that was going to happen.”

  She smiles proudly. “The bars and the bats, that’s what I do,” she says. “The jerseys looked great, didn’t they?”

  “Fantastic,” I say, “and the whole thing with ‘The Lion Sleeps Tonight’—amazing.”

  Sofia blushes and then reaches out and puts her hand on top of mine, which is at that moment squeezed into a fist holding the spray nozzle. I lose my grip, the nozzle slips out of my hand, and water shoots in a wild circle, abruptly stopping when the hose hits the ground.

  “You know,” she says, not noticing what happened with the hose, “ours is a much deeper relationship than the usual client-planner.”

  I say nothing.

  “I’m really interested in you,” she says.
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br />   “I can’t.”

  “Are you not interested?” she says.

  “I’m involved,” I say, literally taking a step back.

  “I thought she ran away.”

  I say nothing.

  “Are you counting an affair with a married woman as involved?” she asks.

  “It works.”

  She contemplates for a moment. “What about a three-way?”

  I shake my head no.

  “Not even tempted?”

  “Can’t.”

  We are in the backyard doing a strange dance: she takes one step towards, I take two steps back; she goes right, I go left.

  “I don’t believe you,” she says. And, impulsively, she is on me, knocking me back into a lounge chair.

  I see Madeline glance out the kitchen window into the backyard. “Cy,” she screams, ear-piercingly loud. “Man down.”

  Like the college linebacker he once was, Cy is out the door and down the steps, charging towards Sofia, like a wrecking ball swinging in from the left. He hits hard, knocking her sideways.

  A moment passes; Sofia stands up, dusts herself off, and looks at Cy. “Thank you,” she says, “I must have tripped over a root.” Turning to me she says, “Be in touch,” and then she’s gone.

  I text Cheryl and tell her she was right about Sofia. She writes back asking if Sofia suggested a three-way. “Yes, how did you know?”

  “She asked me first,” Cheryl types back. “I said it was up to you but that she had to ask.” There’s a pause. “You know me,” she writes. “I’m interested in all kinds of things.…”

  Cheryl invites Madeline, Cy, and me to come for dinner later in the week—before heading off for a month in Maine. “A yar-becue,” she types, “yard barbecue, just Ed and the boys.”

  Cy and Madeline are excited. “It’s been a long time since we were invited to a dinner party,” Madeline says, and then whispers loudly that after Cy’s fall from grace they were dropped socially by pretty much everyone they knew.

  “I didn’t fall from anywhere,” Cy mutters. “I stole some money. It’s more common than you realize.”

  Madeline and I make a Jell-O mold—with pineapple chunks suspended in green, mandarine oranges in yellow, and green grapes in red. I’ve never made Jell-O before—it’s magical.

  We arrive at Cheryl’s to find the yard thick with smoke and the dense perfume of hot meat.

  The three boys, Tad, Brad, and Lad, are helping their father, who is hovering near something that looks like a cross between a fire pit and an antiquarian outhouse.

  “We built our own smoker,” Ed says, welcoming us.

  “Is that backyard legal?” I ask.

  He nods. “Homeowners have rights,” he says.

  “I hope your neighbors aren’t vegetarian.”

  “I grew up smoking meat,” Ed says. “My father and I would hunt and would dress whatever we killed—fowl, venison, and so on.” Ed claps me on the back. “I miss having a hunting buddy,” he says. “My boys never got into it—maybe that’s something you and I could do?”

  “Maybe,” I say, sure that hunting with my sex-tress’s husband is a bad idea.

  We sit down to dinner. I’ve got Madeline and Cy one on each side of me; Tad, Brad, and Lad take the other side of the picnic table, their swelling frames threatening to tip the balance entirely. The boys pass bowls of potato salad, coleslaw, and corn bread while Ed opens the smoker, nearly asphyxiating us all.

  “You made all of this?”

  Ed and Cheryl both nod. “We like to do it ourselves.”

  Everything is delicious, beyond pleasant, nearly heavenly. “I don’t know how you do it,” I say to Ed, when Cheryl is away from the table clearing plates. “I’m a lucky man, Har,” he says, having coined a new nickname for me—Har. “Cheryl and me, we get each other—the good and the bad. Life is long, what’s the point of being judgmental? I don’t have any hard, fast rules—be happy, enjoy.”

  And I can’t figure out if Ed is a genius or a moron.

  Cheryl comes back with our Jell-O mold decanted onto a plate—shaking like a fat lady—and the boys bring out a tub of homemade peppermint ice cream.

  We dig in, and all is good until Cy asks for a third helping, and then, when he’s done, remembers that he’s horribly lactose-intolerant, and we make a mad dash for home.

  Despite the summer heat, the ninety-degree days, Madeline and Cy are always cold; they wear cardigans, inside and out. I extract the old window screens from the basement, put them in, and skip turning on the air conditioning. It is like a summer from the past: the heat builds during the day. Tessie lies on the tile floor in the front hall, panting; in the afternoon there are thunderstorms, and at night there’s the melancholy tap-tapping sounds of bugs on the screens.

  It’s near the end of July; everything is elongated, made languid and slow-motion by the heat. Madeline and Cy retreat into a world of long ago. There is something beautiful about their slowly evaporating ghostlike narration, which shows marks of revision, erasure, and locked doors—events long ago put away.

  I take them to concerts at the bandshell in the park and watch them dance across the lawn like it is thirty years ago.

  “What’s your secret to a long marriage?” I ask Madeline one morning.

  “We don’t burden each other with our feelings,” she says. “A woman friend of mine called it staying in the dance.”

  “The dance?”

  “Of courtship. When you are courting, you are your best self, but then, too often, we devolve and reveal our worst selves. Why would you want the person you live with to wake up seeing your worst self every day?”

  One day, when Cy is annoyed at one of the babies from South Africa, he fires him, tells him to “box it up and get out. There’s no future for you here, sitting around thinking it’s going to come right to you. It doesn’t work that way, buster. I don’t want to see you around here anymore,” he says.

  “That’s not your baby,” Madeline says, grabbing the plastic infant from him. “That one is mine.”

  “Mine,” Cy says, surprisingly possessive, grabbing the baby back.

  Just as I’m thinking I’ll have to intervene, they make up.

  “Fine,” Cy says, annoyed. He looks the baby square in the eye. “I’ll give you another chance, but don’t blow it.” From then on, Cy walks around carrying the baby under his arm—sideways, like a football. He takes it pretty much everywhere, calling it his brown brother and occasionally his wife.

  I give myself until the children come home to finish the book. I set up shop on an old card table in the attic—surrounding myself with box fans that create windy white noise. I weigh down my papers with rocks from the garden. I find the heat inspiring, like being in a boxing gym. Stripped to a pair of gym shorts, I type as rivulets of sweat trickle down my face, the meaty smell of myself ripening pushing me to work harder—ready or not, it needs to be over.

  Using a sharp blade to crack the old paint off, I pop open the small window up in the eaves. The glass is wavy; the view doused in rainbow-reflected light makes everything look better than it is. I move about cautiously, careful not to bump my head on the beams. There are things up there from long ago, a World War II uniform, old teddy bears, an ancient crib that I dust off and bring down to Madeline, who immediately takes it and sets up a nursery by her side of the bed for the babies.

  The phrase “while you were sleeping” takes on new meaning as I plow through the pages from the past fifteen years, noticing that everything I’ve written is couched in a protective tone, hemming and hawing, positing and pulling back. Time to rip out the stops—fuck it. Dick Nixon was the American man of that moment, swimming in the bitter supposition that for everyone else things came easily. He was the perfect storm of present, past, and future, of integrity and deceit, of moral superiority and arrogance, of the drug that was and is the American Dream, wanting more, wanting to have what someone else has, wanting to have it all.

  I conclude that
the 1970s court of public opinion was bourgeois and unforgiving in nature; once a politician’s fate had been decided and his number in the global historic pecking order had been assigned, there was precious little room for movement. I wonder if it would be different now: if Nixon owned up (deeply unlikely) and attributed his behavior, his failings, to a traumatic event—growing up in the Nixon household—would he have been exonerated? Is the rise or fall of popularity or historic significance a fixed game?

  As I close in on the ending, I find myself thinking about Claire. Imagining if Claire could see me now…Would she be impressed? When I stop to think really hard about it, nothing I’m doing would make any sense to her. My fantasy moves on to Ben Schwartz, my former department Chair—Ben, who thought I’d never finish the book—what would Ben think? I belch. The flavor is overwhelming—Londisizwe’s tea! This is the last of the pain, the foul smell coming out; these thoughts are the path of the old mind needing to be left behind.

  I call Tuttle. It’s the middle of the afternoon in early August; he answers his phone.

  “Why are you there?” I ask. “I thought shrinks took August off?”

  “I’m a contrarian,” he says. “I take July. In August I make my nut working overtime, covering for my colleagues who prefer Wellfleet.”

  We make a time to meet. His office is freezing cold. Across the edge of his desk where last time there was a collection of cups from Smoothie King, there’s a row of Dunkin’ Donuts coffee cups. “They opened a drive-thru,” he says.

  “I’m almost finished with the book,” I say. “But it’s like I’m waiting for something to happen, some kind of relief or sense of relief.”

  “Are you pleased with your work?”

  “I want someone to read it.”

  “Who is your fantasy, your muse?” he asks.

  “Richard Milhous Nixon,” I say.

  “And what would you want him to say?”

  “‘Thank you’?” I suggest, plaintively. “‘The world needs more men like you, Silver. You’re a good man.’”