by Richard Ford
In these, as in the forests of the Old World, destruction was perpetually going on. The ruins of vegetation were heaped upon one another; but there was no laboring hand to remove them, and their decay was not rapid enough to make room for the continual work of reproduction. Climbing plants, grasses, and other herbs forced their way through the mass of dying trees; they crept along their bending trunks, found nourishment in their dusty cavities and a passage beneath the lifeless bark. Thus decay gave its assistance to life.
How beautiful that was! How wonderful to imagine what America had been like in 1831, before the strip malls and the highways, before the suburbs and the exurbs, back when the lake shores were “embosomed in forests coeval with the world.” What had the country been like in its infancy? Most important, where had things gone wrong and how could we find our way back? How did decay give its assistance to life?
A lot of what Tocqueville described sounded nothing like the America Kendall knew. Other judgments seemed to part a curtain, revealing American qualities too intrinsic for him to have noticed before. The growing unease Kendall felt at being an American, his sense that his formative years, during the Cold War, had led him to unthinkingly accept various national pieties, that he’d been propagandized as efficiently as a kid growing up in Moscow at the time, made him want, now, to get a mental grip on this experiment called America.
Yet the more he read about the America of 1831, the more Kendall became aware of how little he knew about the America of today, 2005, what its citizens believed, and how they operated.
Piasecki was a perfect example. At the Coq d’Or the other night, he had said, “If you and I weren’t so honest we could make a lot of money.”
“What do you mean?”
Piasecki was Dimon’s accountant. He came on Fridays, to pay bills and handle Dimon’s books. He was pale, perspirey, with limp blond hair combed straight back from his oblong forehead.
“He doesn’t check anything, O.K.?” Piasecki said. “He doesn’t even know how much money he has.”
“How much does he have?”
“That’s confidential information,” Piasecki said. “First thing they teach you at accounting school. Zip your lips.”
Kendall didn’t press. He was leery of getting Piasecki going on the subject of accounting. When Arthur Andersen had imploded, in 2002, Piasecki, along with eighty-five thousand other employees, had lost his job. The blow had left him slightly unhinged. His weight fluctuated, he chewed diet pills and Nicorette. He drank a lot.
Now in the shadowy, red-leather bar, crowded with happy-hour patrons, Piasecki ordered a Scotch. So Kendall did, too.
“Would you like the executive pour?” the waiter asked.
Kendall would never be an executive. But he could have the executive pour. “Yes,” he said.
For a moment they were silent, staring at the television screen, tuned to a late-season baseball game. Two newfangled Western Division teams were playing. Kendall didn’t recognize the uniforms. Even baseball had been adulterated.
“I don’t know,” Piasecki said. “It’s just that, once you’ve been screwed like I’ve been, you start to see things different. I grew up thinking that most people played by the rules. But after everything went down with Andersen the way it did—I mean, to scapegoat an entire company for what a few bad apples did on behalf of Ken Lay and Enron . . .” He didn’t finish the thought. His eyes grew bright with fresh anguish.
The tumblers, the mini-barrels of Scotch, arrived at their table. They finished the first round and ordered another. Piasecki helped himself to the complimentary hors d’oeuvres.
“Nine people out of ten, in our position, they’d at least think about it,” he said. “I mean, this fucking guy! How’d he make his money in the first place? On twats. That was his angle. Jimmy pioneered the beaver shot. He knew tits and ass were over. Didn’t even bother with them. And now he’s some kind of saint? Some kind of political activist? You don’t buy that horseshit, do you?”
“Actually,” Kendall said, “I do.”
“Because of those books you publish? I see the numbers on those, O.K.? You lose money every year. Nobody reads that stuff.”
“We sold five thousand copies of ‘The Federalist Papers,’” Kendall said in defense.
“Mostly in Wyoming,” Piasecki countered.
“Jimmy puts his money to good use. What about all the contributions he makes to the A.C.L.U.?” Kendall felt inclined to add, “The publishing house is only one facet of what he does.”
“O.K., forget Jimmy for a minute,” Piasecki said. “I’m just saying, look at this country. Bush-Clinton-Bush-maybe Clinton. That’s not a democracy, O.K.? That’s a dynastic monarchy. What are people like us supposed to do? What would be so bad if we just skimmed a little cream off the top? Just a little skimming. I’m telling you I think about it sometimes. I fucking hate my life. Do I think about it? Yeah. I’m already convicted. They convicted all of us and took away our livelihood, whether we were honest or not. So I’m thinking, if I’m guilty already, then who gives a shit?”
When Kendall was drunk, when he was in odd surroundings like the Coq d’Or, when someone’s misery was on display in front of him, in moments like this, Kendall still felt like a poet. He could feel the words rumbling somewhere in the back of his mind, as though he still had the diligence to write them down. He took in the bruise-colored bags under Piasecki’s eyes, the addict-like clenching of his jaw muscles, his bad suit, his corn-silk hair, and the blue Tour de France sunglasses pushed up on his head.
“Let me ask you something,” Piasecki said. “How old are you?”
“Forty-five,” Kendall said.
“You want to be an editor at a small-time place like Great Experiment the rest of your life?”
“I don’t want to do anything for the rest of my life,” Kendall said, smiling.
“Jimmy doesn’t give you health care, does he?”
“No,” Kendall allowed.
“All the money he’s got and you and me are both freelance. And you think he’s some kind of social crusader.”
“My wife thinks that’s terrible, too.”
“Your wife is smart,” Piasecki said, nodding with approval. “Maybe I should be talking to her.”
The train out to Oak Park was stuffy, grim, almost penal in its deprivation. It rattled on the tracks, its lights flickering. During moments of illumination Kendall read his Tocqueville. “The ruin of these tribes began from the day when Europeans landed on their shores; it has proceeded ever since, and we are now witnessing its completion.” With a jolt, the train reached the bridge and began crossing the river. On the opposite shore, glass-and-steel structures of breathtaking design were cantilevered over the water, all aglow. “Those coasts, so admirably adapted for commerce and industry; those wide and deep rivers; that inexhaustible valley of the Mississippi; the whole continent, in short, seemed prepared to be the abode of a great nation yet unborn.”
His cell phone rang and he answered it. It was Piasecki, calling from the street on his way home.
“You know what we were just talking about?” Piasecki said. “Well, I’m drunk.”
“So am I,” Kendall said. “Don’t worry about it.”
“I’m drunk,” Piasecki repeated, “but I’m serious.”
Kendall had never expected to be as rich as his parents, but he’d never imagined that he would earn so little or that it would bother him so much. After five years working for Great Experiment, he and his wife, Stephanie, had saved just enough money to buy a big fixer-upper in Oak Park, without being able to fix it up.
Shabby living conditions wouldn’t have bothered Kendall in the old days. He’d liked the converted barns and under-heated garage apartments Stephanie and he had lived in before they were married, and he liked the just appreciably nicer apartments in questionable neighborhoods they lived in after they were married. His sense of their marriage as countercultural, an artistic alliance committed to the support of vinyl records
and Midwestern literary quarterlies, had persisted even after Max and Eleanor were born. Hadn’t the Brazilian hammock as diaper table been an inspired idea? And the poster of Beck gazing down over the crib, covering the hole in the wall?
Kendall had never wanted to live like his parents. That had been the whole idea, the lofty rationale behind the snow-globe collection and the flea-market eyewear. But as the children got older, Kendall began to compare their childhood unfavorably with his own, and to feel guilty.
From the street, as he approached under the dark, dripping trees, his house looked impressive enough. The lawn was ample. Two stone urns flanked the front steps, leading up to a wide porch. Except for paint peeling under the eaves, the exterior looked fine. It was with the interior that the trouble began. In fact, the trouble began with the word itself: interior. Stephanie liked to use it. The design magazines she consulted were full of it. One was even called it: Interiors. But Kendall had his doubts as to whether their home achieved an authentic state of interiority. For instance, the outside was always breaking in. Rain leaked through the master-bathroom ceiling. The sewers flooded up through the basement drain.
Across the street, a Range Rover was double-parked, its tailpipe fuming. As he passed, Kendall gave the person at the wheel a dirty look. He expected a businessman or a stylish suburban wife. But sitting in the front seat was a frumpy, middle-aged woman, wearing a Wisconsin sweatshirt, talking on her cell phone.
Kendall’s hatred of S.U.V.s didn’t keep him from knowing the base price of a Range Rover: seventy-five thousand dollars. From the official Range Rover Web site, where a husband up late at night could build his own vehicle, Kendall also knew that choosing the “Luxury Package” (preferably cashmere upholstery with navy piping and burled-walnut dash) brought the price tag up to eighty-two thousand dollars. This was an unthinkable, a testicle-withering sum. And yet, pulling into the driveway next to Kendall’s was another Range Rover, this belonging to his neighbor Bill Ferret. Bill did something relating to software; he devised it, or marketed it. At a back-yard barbecue the previous summer, Kendall had listened with a serious face as Bill explained his profession. Kendall specialized in a serious face. This was the face he’d trained on his high-school and college teachers from his seat in the first row: the ever-alert, A-student face. Still, despite his apparent attentiveness, Kendall didn’t remember what Bill had told him about his job. There was a software company in Canada named Waxman, and Bill had shares in Waxman, or Waxman had shares in Bill’s company, Duplicate, and either Waxman or Duplicate was thinking of “going public,” which apparently was a good thing to do, except that Bill had just started a third software company, Triplicate, and so Waxman, or Duplicate, or maybe both, had forced him to sign a “non-compete,” which would last a year.
Munching his hamburger, Kendall had understood that this was how people spoke, out in the world—in the real world he himself lived in, though, paradoxically, had yet to enter. In this real world, there were things like custom software and ownership percentages and Machiavellian corporate struggles, all of which resulted in the ability to drive a heartbreakingly beautiful forest-green Range Rover up your own paved drive.
Maybe Kendall wasn’t so smart.
He went up his front walk and into the house, where he found Stephanie in the kitchen, next to the open, glowing stove.
“Don’t get mad,” she said. “It’s only been on a few minutes.”
Stephanie wore her hair in the same comp-lit pageboy she’d had the day they met, twenty-two years earlier, in an H.D. seminar. In college, Kendall had had a troubling habit of falling in love with lesbians. So imagine his relief, his utter joy, when he learned that Stephanie wasn’t a lesbian but only looked like one.
She’d dumped the day’s mail on the kitchen table and was flipping through an architecture magazine.
“How’s this for our kitchen?” Stephanie said.
Kendall bent to look. It didn’t cost anything to look. An old house, like theirs, had been expanded by ripping off the rear wall and replacing it with a Bauhaus extension.
Kendall asked, “Where are the kids?”
“Max is at Sam’s,” Stephanie said. “Eleanor says it’s too cold here. So she’s sleeping over at Olivia’s.”
“Sixty-five isn’t that cold,” Kendall said emphatically.
“If you’re here all day, it is.”
Instead of replying, Kendall opened the refrigerator and stared in. There were bottles and cartons, most nearly empty. There was something greenish black in a produce bag.
“Piasecki said something interesting to me today,” Kendall said.
“Piasecki who?”
“Piasecki the accountant. From work.” Kendall poked the greenish-black thing with his forefinger. “Piasecki said it’s unbelievable that Jimmy doesn’t give me any health insurance.”
“I’ve told you that,” Stephanie said.
“Piasecki agrees with you.”
Stephanie raised her eyes. “What are you looking for in there?”
“All we have are sauces,” Kendall said. “What are all these sauces for? They wouldn’t be to put on food, would they? Because we have no food.”
Stephanie had gone back to flipping through her magazine. “If we didn’t have to pay for our own health insurance,” she said, “we might have some money for renovations.”
“Or we could waste heat,” Kendall said. “Eleanor would like that. What temperature do Olivia’s parents keep their house at?”
“Not sixty-five,” Stephanie said.
“I’ve got my head in the refrigerator and it’s not even that cold,” Kendall said.
Abruptly, he straightened up and slammed the refrigerator door. He sighed once, satisfyingly, and headed out of the room and up the front stairs.
He came down the hall into the master bedroom. And here he stopped again.
He wondered if Alexis de Tocqueville had ever envisaged a scene like this. An American bedroom quite like this.
It wasn’t the only master bedroom of its kind in Chicago. Across the country, the master bedrooms of more and more two-salaried, stressed-out couples were taking on the bear-den atmosphere of Kendall and Stephanie’s bedroom. In this suburban cave, this commuter-town hollow, two large, hirsute mammals had recently hibernated. Or were hibernating still. That twisted mass of bedsheet was where they slept. The saliva stains on the denuded pillows were evidence of a long winter spent drooling and dreaming. The socks and underpants scattered on the floor resembled the skins of rodents recently consumed.
In the far corner of the room was a hillock rising three feet in the air. This was the family wash. They’d used a hamper for a while and, for a while, the kids had dutifully tossed their dirty clothes in. But the hamper soon overflowed and the family had begun tossing their dirty clothes in its general direction. The hamper could still be there, for all Kendall knew, buried beneath the pyramid of laundry.
How had it happened in one generation? His parents’ bedroom had never looked like this. Kendall’s father had a dresser full of folded laundry, a closet full of tailored suits, and, every night, a neat, clean bed to climb into. Nowadays, if Kendall wanted to live as his own father had lived, he was going to have to hire a cleaning lady and a seamstress and a social secretary. He was going to have to hire a wife. Wouldn’t that be great? Stephanie could use one, too. Everybody needed a wife, and no one had one anymore.
But to hire a wife Kendall needed to make more money. The alternative was to live as he did, in middle-class squalor, in married bachelorhood.
Like most honest people, Kendall sometimes fantasized about committing a crime. In the following days, however, he found himself indulging in criminal fantasies to a criminal extent. How did one embezzle if one wanted to embezzle well? What kind of mistakes did the rank amateurs make? How could you get caught and what were the penalties?
Quite amazing, to an embezzler-fantasist, was how instructive the daily newspapers were. Not only the lurid Chicago
Sun-Times, with its stories of gambling-addicted accountants and Irish “minority” trucking companies. Much more instructive were the business pages of the Tribune or the Times. Here you found the pension-fund manager who’d siphoned off five million, or the Korean-American hedge-fund genius who vanished with a quarter billion of Palm Beach retiree money and who turned out to be a Mexican guy named Lopez. Turn the page to read about the Boeing executive sentenced to four months in jail for rigging contracts with the Air Force. The malfeasance of Bernie Ebbers and Dennis Kozlowski claimed the front page, but it was the short articles on A21 or C15 detailing the quieter frauds, the scam artists working in subtler pigments, in found objects, that showed Kendall the extent of the national deceit.
At the Coq d’Or the next Friday, Piasecki said, “You know the mistake most people make?”
“What?”
“They buy a beach house. Or a Porsche. They red-flag themselves. They can’t resist.”
“They lack discipline,” Kendall said.
“Right.”
“No moral fibre.”
“Exactly.”
Wasn’t scheming the way America worked? The real America that Kendall, with his nose stuck in “Rhyme’s Reason,” had failed to notice? How far apart were the doings of these minor corporate embezzlers from the accounting fraud at Enron? And what about all the business people who were clever enough not to get caught, who wriggled free from blame? The example set on high wasn’t one of probity and full disclosure. It was anything but.