A Changed Man

by Francine Prose

  Sometimes Raymond sees ARM that way, as an agent of payback, a crusade against the powers that could make a guy like Vincent’s father kill himself, that would murder Randy Weaver’s wife and those babies at Waco, that would throw hardworking white citizens out of their jobs and fill them with mud people just so rich Jews can prosper and thrive.

  It’s as if Vincent is reaching out through the media and punching Raymond in the nose. Is Raymond supposed to roll over and let his cousin abuse his family’s hospitality? Vincent must have felt guilty to have made himself so easy to find. He might as well have phoned Raymond and given him his address. Brotherhood Watch must have a Web site. It’s probably listed in the phone book.

  But is that the way to go? Raymond doesn’t want to tip Vincent off. As if Raymond knew what he’d be tipping him off about. Is Raymond planning to kill him? Somehow he thinks not. Something is called for, that’s for sure. He wishes he knew what it was.

  Has Lucy read the magazine? Did she see the article while she was standing in line at the supermarket? Is that why she bought it? If the answer to any of these questions is yes, it’s doubly important for Raymond to act. If Lucy knows, everyone knows. Everyone is watching.

  HERE’S HOW ON TOP OF IT VINCENT IS: he wakes up a half hour early so the Vicodin can kick in before breakfast. Everything has happened so fast in the week since the benefit dinner, everything is spinning so far out of control that it has begun to seem smart to self-medicate lightly just to get up in the morning. His drug stash is diminishing at an alarming rate. All this time, he’s been so good, saving for the future. But now he needs that spongy buffer between himself and the swirling confusion around him.

  Dealing with Bonnie has become a serious tactical challenge. Ever since that…misunderstanding in the kitchen, that night when Bonnie hit on him, if that’s what she was doing, ever since that kiss, it’s as if there’s a conversation going on under their normal conversation, as if they’re talking about a love affair they aren’t even having. It’s almost as if they’re breaking up, except they were never together.

  Bonnie even looks different. When she talks to him, her face takes on a peculiar expression, as if she wants to ask him something, or as if she’s stifling a burp. What secret code is she communicating in? What does she want to happen? By the time they get back from the city, Bonnie’s kids are in the basement watching TV, so the chances of Vincent and Bonnie working their way back to that kiss are slim, unless they stop at the Motel 6 on the way home. Which seems highly unlikely. They’re careful not to brush elbows as they sit in the car.

  Vincent thinks about this at night. It makes it hard to sleep. Which also has been taking its toll on his Xanax supply. He thinks about fucking Bonnie, even though he knows that it’s probably the fastest route back to homelessness.

  He’s got enough problems at work. Every day he’s shooting the breeze with some grizzled newsroom vet or boy-genius reporter. Or he’s struggling to stay focused as he repeats himself on the phone with some NPR station in East Kalamazoo.

  On the day after the benefit, when Vincent was still spacey from passing out, he and Bonnie and Meyer and Roberta had a meeting. Roberta explained that Vincent was now, officially, Mr. Changed Man. A man who’d nearly died transforming himself into a moral hero. Personal growth is what everyone wants. This was talk-show material. People need inspiration, hope.

  Roberta stared at Vincent as she’d explained how big this could be. Vincent felt like a character in an action comic who drinks some radioactive goop and grows ten times normal size. The magic drug was a walnut. Not a peanut. The newspapers got it wrong. Another media lie.

  As Roberta yakked on, Bonnie kept shooting him worried looks, until at last she’d said, “Are you sure you want to do this?” Vincent knew she was on his side, yet he found her concern annoying. As if he needed Bonnie to tell him what Roberta was doing: packaging him, commodifying him. A Changed Man was his brand name.

  Vincent’s options are limited. Let’s say he says, Sorry, he’d rather keep a low profile. Next day, he walks into Bonnie’s house, and it’s like Goldilocks: Who is this Iranian family sleeping in my bed? So Vincent has to play ball, or else his new best friends at Brotherhood Watch will find a reason to cut him loose. If he screws this up, they’ll find something about him that they don’t like, or that isn’t useful. And what then? Vincent was never serious about going to work as Goofy at Disney World. He isn’t ready to blow this scene. To say bye-bye to Bonnie and Maslow.

  Meanwhile, with every interview Vincent gives, every time his face appears in the paper, he puts his ass further out on the line. It’s just a matter of time till Raymond not only knows where Vincent is but can no longer resist the understandable urge to come see him. Vincent’s luck can’t hold. After all this publicity about the hero who has turned his back on ARM’s demented racist ways, every leader and grunt in the movement probably wants him dead. But they’ll give Raymond the privilege. It’s part of their Teutonic feudal-code-of-honor bullshit.

  For the first time in a while, Vincent has been reading The Way of the Warrior, not so much for what it says but to get in touch with his former self—the edgy, paranoid, nowhere man who walked into Brotherhood Watch and imagined that the receptionist was someone to contend with. The Warrior makes a plan. So what plan would the Warrior make now? This is not as simple as ditching Raymond’s truck, finding the foundation office, offering his services, seeing what happens next. Vincent has seen what happens next. But what’s next after this?

  The only control Vincent has is to make his own daily schedule, parallel to the agenda that everyone else is making for him, that Roberta has all mapped out by the time he gets to work. At two—are you listening, Vincent?—there’s a telephone interview with Cleveland public radio about how it feels to change from a bigoted pig into a selfless human rights crusader.

  His private schedule involves the wake-up Vicodin, two beers at lunch, then the evening Xanax, and as much time alone—quality face time with himself—as he can manage without making Bonnie suspect that something’s wrong. Space, psychic and physical space, is the number-one essential.

  Sometimes in the early evenings he walks around Clairmont, past the neatly coiffed front yards, the pretty white houses, the pretty white children playing on the swing sets made from organic redwood guaranteed uncontaminated by pesticides or preservatives. It’s a whole other planet, a planet he used to despise. But he doesn’t have the time or energy for that kind of hatred now. Plus it’s harder to hate these yuppie moms and dads now that Vincent’s more famous than they are. Why should Vincent envy their gas barbecues and hammocks? He’s soothed by the sight of the families, the kids, their kittens and puppies.

  Perhaps it’s because he knows this can’t last. He’s balancing on a knife blade, dodging bullet after bullet. And now one has his name on it.

  Ever since the dinner Roberta kept saying that he was going to be on TV, which would mean—which would ensure—that he was dead meat. There was no way that the ARM guys wouldn’t see whatever program he appears on. Vincent was secretly relieved when Barbara Walters’s people never called back and Oprah didn’t bite.

  Then one day he came into the office, and Roberta was practically frothing at the mouth. She body-blocked them in the hall. “Bonnie! Vincent! Have you heard?”

  “Heard what?” Vincent knows that Bonnie dislikes Roberta, though she would never admit it. He assumes it’s some chick thing. Maybe it’s competition. Bonnie can get competitive. It’s one of the many things that Bonnie doesn’t—doesn’t want to—know about herself.

  “It’s all set up,” Roberta said. “And confirmed. Vincent and Meyer are going to appear on Chandler! I pitched it to them again, and I think it helped that the other show they did with that neo-Nazi and the Wiesenthal Foundation got fabulous ratings. Apparently everyone saw it. And they understand that this is even better. I mean, as we know, Vincent nearly died. Vincent, aren’t you thrilled?”

  “Great,” was al
l Vincent could mumble. Chandler was Raymond’s favorite show. So now Raymond will get to watch America’s most overpaid Negro ask Vincent how he could have hated innocent men and women of color. Men and women like me. He’ll ask Vincent why he changed, how he turned his life around.

  “Vincent?” said Bonnie. “Are you all right?”

  “Maybe he’s nervous,” said Roberta. “I wouldn’t blame him. This is a really big break.”

  So it’s just a matter of waiting for the other shoe to drop and, until that happens, tinkering with his dosage so he doesn’t flinch when he hears the second Doc Marten hitting the floor. With his skull underneath it. The bedtime Xanax is no longer enough. Changed circumstances require that he chase the pill with a shot of vodka.

  Before dinner, after he’s had his drink, and maybe another pill, depending on his nerves, he sits in the chair at the end of the garden and stares into the hedges. There’s not much to look at, but it gives him a sense of peace. He stays there while Bonnie cooks, until she calls him and he goes into the house. By then he’s usually feeling mellow enough to deal with her and the boys, though, he hopes, not so mellow that they’ll wonder what he’s on. Danny’s usually pretty mellow himself. He handed in his Hitler paper, he proudly announced to Vincent. So now he can just stay loaded. Mealtimes tend to be peaceful. Bonnie keeps her distance. Max still seems slightly down in the mouth ever since that night at Doctor Dad’s. Though whenever Bonnie asks Vincent if Max seems depressed, Vincent says no, he doesn’t. He says, Probably Max is tired from all the growing he’s doing.

  On one such placid evening, Vincent is sitting at the bottom of the garden, feeling himself slip pleasantly into that cottony state in which he knows it’s pointless to worry. He might as well enjoy this perfectly lovely, comfortable moment. A pink glow hovers over the river. Dinner’s on its way. There’s nothing to do but sit here with a drink in his hand and watch some tiny aphids nibble a leaf that’s probably deadly poison. Built-in population control, biologically engineered to produce a steady die-out in the aphid population.

  Vincent can feel the footsteps coming up behind him, muffled by the thick grass. Lately he’s become attuned to the faintest whispers and stirrings. Just in case it’s somebody with mayhem on his mind. He wheels around. It’s Bonnie.

  Vincent wishes she didn’t look so apologetic. “The boys and I are going out for pizza. Do you want to come?”

  “No, that’s okay.” Vincent watches her face fall. Bonnie needs to lighten up. This is not about rejection. He’d rather not spoil his high.

  “Can you bring me back a couple of slices?” It’s the right thing to ask. Bonnie’s softened by this evidence that he still needs her to take care of him.

  “Any preference?” she says.

  “No,” he says. “Whatever.”

  “Okay,” says Bonnie. “See you soon.”

  “Thanks,” Vincent calls after her. Beautiful! After this, he’ll be left alone, even after they return. No one’s going to force him to come inside and eat pizza. But it takes a while to grope his way back toward that unrattled state he was in before Bonnie disturbed him. Gradually, it steals over him. He finds a bug to focus on.

  Inside the house, the phone rings.

  Why doesn’t the machine pick up? Has Bonnie turned it off? Suppose it’s Bonnie stuck on the road between here and the pizza place. Her van’s been making weird noises, but Vincent hasn’t had the heart to point that out. He was afraid she’d take it as a personal criticism. He should have mentioned it. Because now, if she’s stuck, it will be his fault, and he’ll have to deal with that. He might as well start now. But what if it’s the dad on the phone? Vincent will say he got the wrong number, and then when the doc calls back, he won’t pick up. It’s probably some telemarketer. Easy enough to tell them to fuck off. As long as it’s not Bonnie.

  He hauls himself up and trots toward the house. The phone stops ringing. Thank God. He goes back to his chair, but seconds later the phone begins again, and this time he’s back there fast enough to get it on the third ring.

  “Hello?” says Vincent.

  Silence. Someone’s there. It is not a wrong number. The caller hasn’t hung up. Someone’s waiting for him to say hello again. “Hello?” He can feel the menace thrumming at the other end of the line.

  It’s Raymond. Vincent knows it. He doesn’t want to say Raymond’s name. Doesn’t want to, doesn’t have to. Even so, it’s as if they’re having a meaningful discussion. The silence is Raymond telling him that he knows where he is. He knows what Vincent did, and why, though maybe not exactly why. He knows things that Vincent has never seen fit to mention to the people he lives and works with. This is the real conversation, a talk that Vincent has never stopped having. It’s amazing how much you can say without having to say one word.

  IT’S ALMOST FIVE, and Bonnie can’t summon the energy for yet another conversation with Roberta. So she ignores the phone light—it can’t be the kids, they use her cell—as she surfs the net for information on anaphylactic shock. She searches “fainting” for some reference to the aftereffects of losing consciousness, symptoms that linger and worsen. She skims a few dozen sites, none of which mention anything remotely relevant. What are Vincent’s symptoms? A spacey remove, an indefinable…not-there-ness. That could be anything, including a reaction to the pressures of his new visibility. Meetings with Roberta, interviews, reporters. What resources does Vincent have left for a casual chat with Bonnie?

  At least Max seems to have recovered from his traumatic evening at Joel’s and returned to his cheerful self. Which leaves Bonnie free to worry about Vincent’s mental health.

  Some mornings Vincent falls asleep in the car on the way to the office, and in the evenings, when he retreats to his chair at the bottom of the yard, Bonnie has to yell to get him to come to dinner. Or else she goes down and finds him with his head tipped back and his eyes closed.

  Bonnie knows he’s been drinking some, but not enough to explain his behavior. Could he be on drugs? He’s too quick, too conscious. He’s so cogent and functional when he does wake up, so fully present with everyone—everyone except Bonnie. If he were high, she would know it, though of course she’s heard stories about kids who had heavy habits and their parents never suspected.

  Maybe the distance she feels between them is the aftermath of the humiliation of taking off her glasses. Maybe Vincent’s embarrassed by some guy thing that makes him see the incident as a challenge to his manhood. A challenge he failed. Or maybe she’s flattering herself to think that whatever’s wrong with Vincent has any connection to her.

  In any case, what matters now are not the dynamics between them but what he’s doing for Brotherhood Watch. He’s getting mail, fan letters, invitations to charity dinners and society parties. His interview requests outnumber Meyer’s, though Meyer is often called on for a photo op or a sound bite on the subject of Vincent’s transformation. Meyer always says how proud he is and how much hope it gives him to see how Vincent has changed.

  Bonnie’s dance card has filled up, too. Donors she’s pursued since she came to Brotherhood Watch have been phoning and making lunch dates. Tomorrow, she’s having lunch with Laura Ticknor, who has been hinting that she has all sorts of fresh contacts, new donors, and willing volunteers to bring into the fold. For the first time it seems possible that, this year, the foundation will actually meet its budget and break even.

  Bonnie can’t take credit, but she’s proud of her part in changing Vincent from a calculating opportunist trying only to survive into a guy who would nearly die for Brotherhood Watch. So what if Vincent wouldn’t get out of bed this morning and yelled to Bonnie through his closed bedroom door? He’d said he wasn’t feeling well. Could he take the day off? He’d sounded exactly like her kids, faking illness to get out of school. But in fact he’s been working so hard, he deserves a break. After phoning Roberta to make sure he had no interviews today, Bonnie said he could stay home and rest. Just this once. It felt wickedly pleasurable to l
ie to Roberta and say she thought that Vincent might have a touch of the flu.

  Obviously concerned, Roberta urged Bonnie to make sure that Vincent took care of himself. Everything around the office has revolved around Meyer and Vincent’s upcoming appearance on Chandler. Roberta wants to be sure that the dog and pony are ready to do their act.

  Bonnie turns from the computer, resigned to answering the blinking phone. What does Roberta want now?

  “Hello?”

  No reply. She hears traffic noise.

  “Hello?”

  Someone’s there. Something’s happening here. Bonnie doesn’t like it. She goes for the worst scenario first: One of her kids is trying to reach her, and he can’t get through, or worse, he’s been kidnapped and has escaped and is trying to call. Vincent’s ARM friends are resurfacing. She can’t let herself think that now. In fact she hangs up and does such an excellent job of repression that when the phone rings ten minutes later, it never occurs to her that the same person might call again.

  “Hello?”

  Another silence. More traffic noise.

  Bonnie hears a siren. It takes a disconcertingly long time to figure out the sound’s coming simultaneously from over the phone and outside the window. Could the caller be nearby? She’s seen this scene in a million films; it’s always just before the car bomb goes off.

  “Who is this?” Bonnie says. “Who’s calling?”

  The only thing that slows her free-fall descent into paranoia is the possibility that the call might be for someone else. Why would anyone phone Bonnie and let the line go dead? But when she checks with the front desk, Anita says the caller, a man, asked specifically for her. Both times he’d mumbled his name, and Anita put him through because she thought it sounded like the name of one of their donors.