Kids These Days

by Drew Perry

  “What are you doing?” she said.

  “I hate these.”

  She said, “I don’t understand.”

  “I’m getting rid of a few things.”

  “Now?”

  He dropped the bowl in. He was tilting. I couldn’t blame him.

  “You’ll wake Maggie,” Carolyn said. “And are you not going to ask if that was Olivia on the phone?”

  “I already know it was.”

  “You don’t want to know what she said?”

  He handed her the bowls he had left. “Let me take a crack at it,” he said. “She said she wasn’t coming home. She said she was safe at Nic’s. She said she’s old enough to make her own decisions. Something along those lines?”

  “She said she was scared,” Carolyn said.

  “Of what?” he said.

  “Of the world. She said she was scared of the world.”

  “I get that,” I said, and everybody looked at me. It was not my turn to talk, and I had talked. “I do,” I said. “That makes sense to me.”

  “How do you mean?” Alice said.

  “How much answer do you want?” I said. “Poisonous snakes. Lupus. Monthly fees.”

  “You’re not helping,” Alice said.

  “Is that all she said?” Mid asked Carolyn.

  “No,” Carolyn said, sitting down at the table. “She said all your stuff, too.” She looked flattened out, like a paper doll. “She’s not coming home, she’s old, she’s safe, she decides.”

  “Does she want us to go get her?”

  “You’re not even listening to me,” she said.

  “Well, this is fucking great,” said Mid. “When did it happen that we don’t make the rules any more?”

  “Stop shouting,” Carolyn said.

  “I don’t get to be a little surprised that she’s telling us where she’s going to live or when she’s going to call?”

  Carolyn said, “And where do you think she got it in her head that something like that would be OK? How about we just start right there?”

  “Guys,” Alice said.

  Carolyn said, “Leecy, has Walter been in jail?”

  “Not yet.”

  “So there we are.” She turned back to Mid. “How about you just tell us the truth this one time. You knew they were selling pot in the shop.”

  “We’ve been through this,” he said.

  “Wrong,” she said. “We get near it, but you never really tell anybody anything. So come on. You’re among friends. Don’t tell us that when the police showed up, you thought it was some kind of goodwill gesture. I mean, even Olivia knew, for chrissakes.”

  He looked genuinely surprised. “What?”

  Carolyn knew. Which meant Alice had to know. “She has friends who bought from there,” Carolyn said. “She told me a couple of weeks ago, after you moved out.”

  He pushed a few breaths into his fist. “I wish you’d told me that,” he said.

  “Why?”

  “Does she buy from there? Is she still buying from there?”

  “She said she didn’t, but why?”

  “They set up cameras last week,” he said. “In the back. And microphones. If she buys there, she’ll be on the tape.”

  Carolyn said, “What are you talking about?”

  “They already set it up?” I said. I hadn’t thought about Delton, either.

  “You didn’t say it was definitely happening,” Alice said to me.

  Carolyn looked at her. “What are you talking about?”

  “I knew,” Mid said. “OK? I totally knew. Of course I fucking knew. I just tried to hang on to being able to say I didn’t really know.”

  Carolyn was still looking at Alice. “You knew?”

  “Walter told me about the police,” she said. “That’s all.”

  “What the fuck is going on here?” Carolyn said. She grabbed Mid’s arm. “What have you done to us?” She pointed at Alice. “What have you done to them?”

  “Nothing,” he said. “This is all going to blow over. I’ve got it under control.”

  “Blow over? Are you shitting me? Now there are these cops—”

  “Agents,” he said. “Revenue agents.”

  Alice said, “I didn’t know they were agents.”

  “Some fucking agents everybody already knows about are going to set up some—some sting operation at Island?”

  Mid said, “More or less.”

  “After you and the rest of the world already got arrested? For doing nothing?”

  “Almost nothing,” he said.

  “And they think the kids are stupid enough to keep dealing back there after they already got caught once?”

  “I think they do.”

  “Forget for a second that you didn’t tell me any of this, OK? How could you not tell her?”

  “What would I have said? ‘Do take care this week, dear, when you purchase marijuana from Daddy’s store?’ ”

  “Something like that would have been good, yes.” I kept trying to get Alice’s attention, but she was staring at her hands. Carolyn said, “But what would have been easier, you colossal asshole, is if Daddy wasn’t involved with any agents at all. If she didn’t need to be warned off from purchasing anything from Daddy’s store in the first place. Jesus shit, how did we get here?” She picked up the wine bottle. “And my God,” she said, walking past Alice. “You knew? Both of you knew? And neither of you could tell her, either? Or tell me?” She stopped in front of the sliding doors. “You know what I’ll bet? I’ll bet this is not your typical Wednesday-night-gather-the-family-round-the-dinner-table topic of conversation. I’ll bet the Walkers down the street aren’t having this conversation.” She opened the door. “But wait!” she said, spinning around. “Good news! There are no Walkers down the street! We’re the only goddamned people in here! Any conversation we have is the typical conversation for this street!” She poured wine into her glass, both hands shaking. “Mid, you’re a lucky man. Turns out the cops busting your own daughter because it didn’t occur to you to even have anything occur to you is just fine around here. It is the fucking norm.” She stared him down. “You are a complete sack of shit, you know that?”

  “Carolyn,” he said, but she was already outside, slamming the door behind her. She stood out on the patio, didn’t move. There were lightning bugs. She kept her back to us. Eventually Mid got up, went out there with her. They were so still we couldn’t tell if they were talking or not.

  Alice got herself a glass of water, leaned on the sink. The little muscles in her forearms stood out like vines. “You knew she was buying?” she said.

  “That night on the balcony, she told me her friends were. Or that they did, sometimes.”

  “You didn’t tell me.”

  “She asked me not to.”

  “What else haven’t you told me?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I’m so fucking lost I have no idea. Start at the beginning. Ask me anything.”

  She said, “That’s a copout. Don’t hide behind that.”

  “He never goes into details,” I said. “The cops turn up somewhere, he talks to them, they drive off again. It’s all very secret.”

  “But how does that strike you as being alright?”

  “I didn’t say it did,” I said. “I never said that.”

  “I thought you were watching him.”

  “I am watching him.”

  “We’re not supposed to keep things from each other.”

  “I’m aware.”

  “Carolyn’s never going to speak to me again.”

  “Yes, she will.”

  “Are they like FBI agents? Is that the deal?”

  “It’s like state FBI,” I said.

  “That sounds worse than regular police,” she said. She pulled a drawer open, pushed it back closed again. “Maybe you can’t work for him anymore.”

  “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do here. We need me to work. We need me to have something—”

 
“But this?” she said. “We can’t live our lives like this.”

  “We’re not,” I said. “I never see anything. We’re safe.”

  “That’s not safe,” she said. “That’s not anything close to safe. Safe is what we had before, what you had—”

  “And that’s gone,” I said. “Remember? So, not so safe, after all.”

  “Is this what it’s going to be like, though?”

  I said, “I have no idea. Maybe it is. Maybe for now.”

  “I just wish somebody could tell me,” she said.

  “You,” I said. “Line up the people to explain it to me, OK? Schedule somebody every half an hour. Tell them to bring visual aids.”

  “Don’t start in on me. I can only deal with one gaping pit of quicksand at a time.” She walked into the living room, vanished around a corner. “Oh, shit,” she said.

  “What?”

  “In here.” She sounded exhausted. “Sophie and Jane.”

  I followed her in. The twins were at the top of the stairs. “Hey,” they said.

  “Hey,” said Alice.

  “We heard everything,” Sophie said. “In case you were wondering.”

  Jane said, “We always do.”

  “That’s fine,” Alice said, looking at me. I blinked back at her, deaf and dumb. We needed semaphore flags. Lamps. One if by sea, that kind of thing. She looked up at the girls. “So,” she said. She smoothed her hands on her legs. The twins held their position. “Is there anything you want to talk about?”

  “Are Mom and Dad still fighting?” Jane asked.

  Out on the pool deck, Mid had an arm around Carolyn. Her head was on his shoulder. “It doesn’t look like it,” Alice said. “Though I don’t know why not.”

  “OK,” they said, and got up, took off down the hall to somebody’s room. A door shut.

  “Is that all you needed?” Alice called, but there was no answer. Music came on, something with a lot of noise in it. I wondered if we should be hanging soundproofing in the baby’s room instead of tinfoil. Or if maybe it wouldn’t matter—maybe we wouldn’t even have music twelve years from now. Maybe the ocean would have long since come up and grabbed the buildings, taken us all, swept the sand back clean. Alice sat down on the bottom step. “We’re going to have to do something,” she said. “We have to think of something. I hate this.”

  I said, “You wouldn’t go get her?”

  “Olivia? I’d absolutely go get her. I’d go get her right now. That’s not what I meant at all.” She stared up into the stairwell, at a chandelier the size of a small car. “What I meant was, I don’t know what the hell we do next.”

  What the hell we did next was stand in the kitchen while Mid made calls until he tracked down the kid who owned the little beach house, Robbie, who knew Nic, knew where he lived. “How could it be easier to get there by water?” Mid said into the phone.

  “Get where?” Carolyn said.

  Mid said, “I do know somebody who has one.”

  “Has one what?” said Carolyn.

  Mid put his hand over the mouthpiece. “A boat,” he said. “Wait a minute.” They’d come to some kind of agreement outside, who knew why or how. Mid listened a minute. “I can do that,” he said. “That’ll be fine.” He checked his watch. “Half an hour, maybe a little longer. That good by you?” He waited. Then he said, “Thanks, man, OK? I appreciate it.” He hung up, put the phone on the table. He said, “Well, I guess we’re going to get her.”

  I said, “In a boat?”

  “He’s got a house on a spur creek off the Matanzas,” he said. “Nic does. Robbie says the road can be bad. Says it’s half again as easy if we go by water.”

  “You’re going to go get our daughter in a boat,” Carolyn said. “On the advice of a highschooler.”

  “Robbie’s in college,” Mid said. “They all are. I need to call Hurley.”

  “I hate boats,” she said.

  Mid said, “I know you do.”

  “I’ll go,” I said.

  Alice said, “You will?”

  “I should be there,” Carolyn said.

  “You can go if you want to,” Mid said.

  “We could all go,” Alice said.

  “Except somebody has to stay here,” said Carolyn. “With the kids. Jesus. I should be here, I should be there—” Carolyn had the telephone now, was pressing numbers, calling nobody. This I did not want. Not this part. Alice rubbed her shoulders. “I’m sorry,” Carolyn said.

  Alice told her she didn’t have to apologize for anything. Upstairs there was a massive thump. The dishes rattled in their cupboards.

  “We’re OK,” one of the twins yelled down.

  Mid went to the stairs. “No injuries,” he said, whisper-yelling. “Don’t wake Maggie up.”

  “OK,” they said, though even from that distance, you could tell they didn’t mean it.

  Mid came back in, took the phone from Carolyn. He said, “Whoever’s going, we should get ready.”

  I looked to Alice. Again the secret messages I could not quite decode. “Go ahead,” she said.

  I said, “You’re sure?”

  She nodded. “We hate boats.”

  I said, “You don’t—”

  “Go,” she said. “Call when you get there so you can tell us everything’s OK.”

  I kissed her. Mid reached for Carolyn, who put her head on the table, and he dropped his hand down on her neck like he was praying for her, almost.

  “Are they going to take the house?” she said, into her arm.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “They might.”

  “Just bring her back. I can’t even talk about the rest of it right now.”

  “I will,” he said.

  “Maybe you should call the Coast Guard.”

  He said, “I don’t think this is in their jurisdiction.”

  She picked her head up. “Don’t die,” she said. “Don’t get lost at sea.”

  “I won’t,” he said.

  “Don’t come back with a goddamn tattoo, either.”

  “This can’t be happening,” Alice said.

  “See?” Carolyn said. “That’s how I feel all the time. That’s how I’ve felt for years.” Then she told us to go, and Alice told us to be careful. Mid called Hurley, detailed the situation, asked about his boat. It was clear from our end that Hurley, without a lot of pushing, was agreeing to take us wherever we needed to go. Mid hung up. I kissed Alice one more time, wanting it to mean, Don’t worry, this kind of thing happens all the time, but I knew that was a lie, and she did, too.

  For the first time, the Camaro felt right—like a yellow Camaro was what was required for a trip like this. Or a purple one. The car wanted for a name, like Rhiannon or Jolene. We rode along with the windows down and the wet salt air blowing in all around us and we needed a shotgun, needed cans of beer, a temperamental CB, a half-blind dog. Instead, we stopped at a gas station for Gatorade. I sat in the car, head singing, watching Mid wait in line inside. The summer before you were born, I thought, Daddy went on a riverboat adventure to save your cousin from herself. She was not yet allowed to make mistakes, so we went to get her so we could keep on making them for her. Mid came back with six or eight bottles in a plastic sack. “Hope you like green,” he said.

  He drove us a few miles, neither of us talking. He drank one of the Gatorades all the way down and tossed the empty in the back. He turned the radio off. He said, “Look. I’d like to tell you something.”

  He was going to say he was the Lindbergh Baby. That he was mounting a Senate run. That he had another family in another state.

  He said, “This isn’t what I had in mind when we brought you guys down.”

  “It’s no problem,” I said.

  “Not just tonight. The whole thing. I had something else pictured. Something calmer. Fewer police, fewer wayward children, you know?”

  “Isn’t this how it goes with children?” I said.

  He said, “How do you mean?”

  The
lights went by on the hotels and condos, their oranges not quite enough to do the job, like whoever’d hung them hadn’t wanted things all the way lit up. I said, “Won’t it pretty much be like this for the next twenty years?”

  “I don’t know about twenty,” he said. “I know about fifteen.”

  “Has it been like this for fifteen?”

  “More or less,” he said. “Minus the cops.”

  “But the cops don’t count, right? That’s not her.”

  “Fuck me, Walter, if she’s on that tape—if you think they’ve got me by the balls now, just wait.”

  “I try not to think about what they’ve got you by,” I said.

  “This is not what you expect,” he said. “Let me just set that out there right now. When they pull the kid out, after they get her all polished up and get the little hat on her, you do not expect that fifteen years down the road you’ll find yourself caught up in some motherfucking crime spree just to get ready enough to send her off to college.” He was driving a little faster. “And I know I brought it on myself. You should hear Carolyn. I get it, alright? Mea culpa and all that.”

  I could feel a new desperation edging in, or another one. A certainty about disaster. “What are we talking about here?” I said.

  “All I’m trying to do is make it so we can have a fucking life. That’s all. It’s not like I’m selling pistols to rapists. I’m not poaching endangered lemurs. So maybe I forgot to dot some i’s. Or maybe I did it on purpose. Maybe I owe Uncle Sam some scratch. I’ll pay it, OK? I’ll pay the whole goddamned thing. I’ll pay everybody’s bill.”

  He pushed us under a yellow light. I found myself looking for police cars. “Should we stop?” I said. “Take a minute or something? Deep breaths?”

  “All I’m trying to say is you don’t see something like this headed your way.”

  “I believe you,” I said.

  He reached out his window to work the mirror around. “Probably you don’t need me yelling at you about my shit.”

  “You’re OK,” I told him, trying to calm him back down. Because that’s what I would have wanted if it was my kid we were questing after. Calm.

  He said, “You’ll make a champion father, by the way.”

  “Sure,” I said.

  “I’m serious. I can smell it all over you.”