The Mandibles

by Lionel Shriver

  “Those concerns always run at a loss,” Florence said. “And he’s in for a shock. Small-scale farming is backbreaking work. Nuts—I haven’t talked to him in months.”

  “He’s taken a survivalist turn. He’s calling the property Citadel, as if it’s a fortress. The last few times we’ve talked he’s been pretty dark. All this End of Days stuff. It’s so weird: I walk around the District, the bars are packed, property prices are skyrocketing again, and everyone’s easing in the back of those driverless electric cars that cost two hundred grand. The Dow has the investment equivalent of high blood pressure. And meantime our little brother is holed up with these doomsaying downloads: Repent, the end is nigh! The center cannot hold, we’re all about to die! The text he devours is secular, but the emotional appeal is evangelical Iowa. No wonder he’s ended up on a farm.”

  “Well, a lot of people had that reaction to the Stone Age—”

  “You crack me up. Nobody says that anymore.”

  “Call me a pedant, but blurred into ‘the Stonage’ it loses any of its as-in-bombed-back-into meaning—”

  “You are a pedant. Just like Dad. Language is alive, and you can’t put it in the freezer. But never mind. I don’t think Jarred is having a delayed reaction to the-Stone-Age.” Avery spaced the expression elaborately, as she might condescend to a moron who had to have it spelled out that “AC” was air con-di-tion-ing. “This idea of his—and it’s hardly unique to Jarred, right? The conviction that we’re teetering on a precipice, about to pitch into freefall? It’s all projection. It has nothing to do with ‘the world’ or the terrible course this country has taken for which we’re all going to pay. It has everything to do with Jarred’s sense of personal precariousness. It’s a pessimism about his future. But worrying about the collapse of civilization instead of the collapse of his hopes to become a desalination expert because the qualifications were too much trouble, well—the global prophecy makes him feel more important.”

  “Ever share this theory with Jarred?” Florence said. “He might not care to have his political opinions dismissed as being only about his relationship to himself. The stuff he gets fired up about—species extinctions, desertification, deforestation, ocean acidification, the fact that not one major economy has kept to its carbon-reduction commitments—it’s not only in his mirror.”

  “But I see the same thing in my elderly clients all the time. They have different obsessions, of course: we’re about to run out of water, or run out of food, or run out of energy. The economy’s on the brink of disaster and their 401(k)s will turn into pumpkins. But in truth they’re afraid of dying. And because when you die, the world dies, too, at least for you, they assume the world will die for everybody. It’s a failure of imagination, in a way—an inability to conceive of the universe without you in it. That’s why old people get apocalyptic: they’re facing apocalypse, and that part, the private apocalypse, is real. So the closer their personal oblivion gets, the more certain geriatrics project impending doom on their surroundings. Also, there’s almost a spitefulness, sometimes. I swear, for some of these bilious Chicken Littles, imminent Armageddon isn’t a fear but a fantasy. Like they want the entire planet to implode into a giant black hole. Because if they can’t have their martinis on the porch anymore then nobody else should get to sip one, either. They want to take everything with them—down to the olives and the toothpicks. But actually, everything’s fine. Life, and civilization, and the United States, are all going to go on and on, and that’s really what they can’t stand.”

  Florence chuckled. “That was a set piece. You’ve said it before.”

  “Mm,” Avery allowed. “Maybe once or twice. But my point about Jarred stands. He’s busy deepening his well and stockpiling cans of beef stew because he’s experiencing a crisis of psychic survival. Once he gets through it, he’ll look around at his multiple first-aid kits and whole cases of extra-long safety matches and feel pretty silly.”

  “Uh-huh. But Jarred may not be the only one projecting. Your life’s going swell, so everywhere you look is sunny.”

  That swell was dismissive, and Avery didn’t appreciate having the tools of her own analysis turned against her. “Making a halfway decent living doesn’t turn you into a dimwit,” she objected. “And the comfortably off have problems, too.”

  “Uh-huh,” Florence said again. “Name one.” She didn’t even wait for an answer. “As for Jarred, the trouble with his latest boondoggle is practical, not psychic. This ‘Citadel’ debacle sounds like a financial sinkhole. He’s already in hock up to his eyeballs on credit cards—even with Mom and Dad putting him up. All those dead-end projects have been expensive. Grand Man better have deep pockets.”

  “Grand Man’s pockets are flapping somewhere around his shoes.”

  Avery resolved to steer the conversation elsewhere. Whatever funds would trickle down from the Mandible estate was a prickly subject. Naturally Florence had never said so outright, but with the disparity in their incomes Avery wondered if when the time came she was expected to step aside and either sacrifice a substantial share to her siblings or decline her inheritance altogether. On the face of it, Avery didn’t need the money. In other words, because she’d made intelligent decisions and prospered as a consequence, she deserved to be punished? That was the lesson the quote-unquote progressive American tax system should have taught her long ago. Oh, and Florence-as-in-Nightingale surely deserved the money more, since in her most recent incarnation she was so good and kind and charitable.

  But they’d both been dealt hands from the same deck. Avery had decided to marry a somewhat older intellectual heavyweight who was now a tenured professor in Georgetown University’s Economics Department; to co-purchase a handsome DC townhouse that had already appreciated in value; to establish a lucrative private practice; and to raise three bright, gifted children whom they were able to send to top-flight private schools. Meanwhile, Florence had decided to cohabit with an undereducated Mexican tour guide; to buy a tiny, ramshackle, but larcenously overpriced house in a Brooklyn neighborhood notorious when they were growing up for murderous turf wars between crack dealers; to raise a single kid born of a one-night stand who got sent to a public school where all his classes were taught in Spanish and who by the by was turning out a little strange; and professionally to plump pillows for schizophrenics. Avery wished desperately that her smart, savvy, ferociously hard-working sister—who was the real survivor of the family, not Jarred—would find a calling that put her talents to better use, and at least Esteban seemed a stand-up guy. But Florence’s dismal situation—particularly awkward for the eldest—still wasn’t Avery’s fault. Surely circumstances Avery had gone to great efforts to arrange for herself shouldn’t oblige her to feel so guilty every time they talked.

  Yet the diversionary topic she raised next proved anything but neutral. “Hey, did you hear about the country-code kerfuffle?”

  “Yeah, all the staff at the shelter thought it was hilarious that anybody cares. Though I’m sure this could keep Fox News foaming at the mouth for the rest of the year.”

  “Well, the country code for the States has been one ever since there were country codes, right?” Avery said. “For some people, it’s symbolic.”

  “Symbolic of what? We’re number one? If it means anything at all, the very fact we’ve been one forever is reason to give the dopey code to someone else for a while.”

  “You sound pretty exercised, given this is an issue that you supposedly don’t care about. And it must mean something to the Chinese, or they wouldn’t have put up such a stink about swapping codes.”

  “Sometimes the best thing to do when one party flies into a snit,” Florence said, “is to give them what they want. Especially if it doesn’t cost you anything but banging a few digits into a computer. This is the kind of concession you can make for free and down the road trade for something that matters.”

  “Or it’s the kind of concession that sets a precedent for a whole bunch of other concessions do
wn the road, in which case it does matter. One patient today said she felt ‘humiliated.’”

  “Most Americans live in America,” Florence said. “They hardly ever enter their own country code. So unless she fleXts home from abroad all the time, your patient is never going to be actively ‘humiliated’ in the course of an ordinary day. It’s just like that hoo-ha about press two for English. Is it any harder to press two than one?”

  “Let’s not get into that again. You know I thought reversing that convention was outrageous.”

  “It was a generous gesture that once again cost nothing. For Lats, that two represented second-class. It was a small change that made immigrants and their descendants feel included.”

  “What it made them feel is triumphant—”

  “Watch it,” Florence said. “There are red lines.”

  Florence’s living with a Real Live Mexican had given her airs. She was now an honorary member of a minority so enormous that it would soon lose claim to the label. A watershed to which Avery was greatly looking forward. In her practice, she urged all her patients to embrace a sensation of specialness—but that very strong sense of identity, of belonging, of proud laying claim to one’s own remarkable, particular heritage, was specifically denied the majority in this country, with a conspicuous host of achievements to be proud of. So maybe when white folks were a minority, too, they’d get their own university White Studies departments, which could unashamedly tout Herman Melville. Her children would get cut extra slack in college admissions regardless of their test scores. They could all suddenly assert that being called “white” was insulting, so that now you had to say “Western-European American,” the whole mouthful. While to each other they’d cry, “What’s up, cracker?” with a pally, insider collusion, any nonwhites who employed such a bigoted term would get raked over the coals on CNN. Becoming a minority would open the door to getting roundly, festively offended at every opportunity, and the protocol for automated phone calls would get switched back.

  Esteban exclaimed off-screen, “What did I tell you? Should have opened the flood gates while we had the chance!”

  Florence shouted over her shoulder, “Willing! Go to Green Acre and grab all the bottled water you can! Esteban will be right behind you—and bring the cart!”

  “Okay, okay,” the boy said behind her. “I know the drill. But you know I’ll be too late. Everybody with a car is faster.”

  “Then run.”

  “Not another one,” Avery said.

  Florence turned back to the screen with a sigh. “The worst thing about a dryout is never knowing how long it will last. The water could be back on in an hour, or it could be off for a week. At least we’ve installed some rain barrels out back. The water’s not potable, but it helps with the toilet. I’ve got some used bottles filled with tap, but it gets awfully stale. So I hope Willing and Esteban score. It’s always such a free-for-all in the water aisle. We’re lucky it’s on the late side. Some people won’t have noticed yet. Fuck, I hate to say it, but Esteban was right. I haven’t had a shower in eight days. Should have grabbed one when I got home.”

  “Is it any clearer what the problem is? Not bloggy speculation. Real information.”

  “Real information, what’s that?” Florence snorted. “Though even the bonkers-osphere doesn’t contest that out west the problem is drained aquifers and drought. Here, it’s more up for grabs. There may be supply problems upstate. Obviously, the Caliphate’s sabotage of Tunnel Three hasn’t helped. Lots of people claim it’s decrepit infrastructure, massive leaks. And you know what I think it is.”

  “Yes, I know what you think it is.” Being on camera, Avery suppressed an eye roll. It was fashionable to observe that in an age absent rigorous investigative reporting people believed whatever suited them. Their father made this clichéd point incessantly. Yet as far as Avery could tell, people had always conceived an opinion first and assembled supporting evidence at their leisure, as they might purchase an outfit and later acquire accessories to match. So naturally Florence blamed fracking. It suited her.

  The front door slammed. “Hey,” Lowell said.

  “Hey! I’m talking to Florence.”

  “Well, wrap it up, would you?”

  He was routinely self-important, but the irritability was odd. “When I’m good and ready!”

  “That’s okay,” said Florence. “I’ve got to haul rainwater to the toilet. Bye, puppet.”

  Alas, at forty-eight her husband’s quarter-inch stubble no longer looked hip but seedy, and his longish graying hair cut in once-trendy uneven lengths now made him appear disheveled. Avery should think of a way of telling him so, if not in so many words. For an economist, he’d always been flashy and downtown—a snappy, daring dresser with a loose-limbed swagger that attracted acolytes at Georgetown. That sleek dove-gray suit was cutting-edge—cuffless and collarless, with high-waisted slacks and a long tunic reaching just above the knee. His shoes this evening were bright pink. But it was risky to style your image around being young. Lowell looked like someone who thought he was young, and wasn’t.

  “Mojo, yo, turn on the TV!” Lowell commanded. The voice-activated household management system had recently developed a glitch, and was forever informing Avery they were out of milk. Before she disabled the function, the program had kept ordering milk from the supermarket until they were drowning in it. Now the system was getting flakier still: after Lowell’s instruction, she heard the dishwasher come on in the kitchen.

  “Notice how everything goes wrong at once?” Lowell despaired. “It’s what I was just explaining to that pea-brain Mark Vandermire. Same thing happens in economics. Little crap imploding all over the place at the same time makes it seem as if the failures are connected. But they aren’t necessarily. It’s just some sort of karmic … clumping.”

  “You may have another paper there. Karmic Clumping is catchy.” She handed him the dusty television remote. “Fortunately we can override. Ellen’s Mojo down the street won’t switch to manual, and when it goes freaky they can’t even boil water.”

  Lowell plopped despondently onto the sofa. Rather than turn on the news, he tapped the means for doing so against his knee.

  “Want anything to eat?”

  “Glass of that wine you’re drinking. But I’m afraid if I ask Mojo for a BLT, it’ll turn on the sprinklers. Or set the house on fire.”

  When she handed him the glass, he asked, “So—you up on the latest?”

  “In that I don’t know what you’re referring to, probably not.”

  “The bond auction this afternoon.”

  “This is France again?”

  “No, US Treasury. Look, I don’t think it’s a big deal. But the bid-to-cover ratio was weirdly poor. Roachbar, in fact: 1.1. And the yield on a ten-year note went to 8.2 percent.”

  “That sounds high.”

  “High? It doubled. Still, all I see is an accidental confluence of arbitrary forces.”

  “Karmic clumping.”

  “Yeah. You’ve got France unable to completely roll over a tranche of maturing debt—but Germany and the ECB swept in right away, so it’s not as if they’re about to close the Eiffel Tower for lack of funds. Messed with some heads, that’s all. As for Barclay’s in the UK, the official word is that Ed Balls’s government can’t bail them out this time, but that’s a strategic pose. I bet they find enough ten-P pieces tucked into the crevices of Downing Street sofas to keep the bank from going to the wall. Then yesterday a couple of skittish hedge funds in Zurich and Brussels reduced their dollar positions to basically zero and moved into gold. Let them. They’ll be using shiny rocks for paperweights when gold drops right back down.”

  “It’s up?”

  “For now! You know gold. It’s always ping-ponging all over the place. Unless you’re really canny about playing the highs and lows, it’s a ludicrous investment.”

  “Why do I get the nagging impression that you’re not having this conversation with me? You keep arguing, one hand
clapping. I’m not arguing back.”

  “Sorry. I did get into an argument, with that boomerpoop Vandermire. Because, okay, the bond auction today, it’s—unfortunate. At the moment, foreign demand for US debt is low—but there are completely unrelated reasons for backing off US debt instruments in a variety of different countries that just happen to be coinciding. Here, the market is hopping; investors can find higher yields in the Dow than in dumpy Treasury securities. Interest rates aren’t likely to stay anywhere near 8.2 percent and this is probably a one-time spike. Jesus, in the 1980s, Treasury bond interest careened to over 15 percent. Bonds paid over 8 percent as recently as 1991—”

  “That’s not very recent.”

  “My point is, there’s no reason to get hysterical!”

  “Then don’t say that hysterically.”

  “It’s the panic over the interest-rate spike that’s the problem. Imbeciles like Vandermire—oh, and guess where he was headed when I ran into him in the department? MSNBC. He’d lined up back-to-back interviews on all the main stations—Fox, Asia Central, RT, LatAmerica …”

  “You jealous?”

  “Hell, no. Those shows are a pain in the butt. With hyper-res, they slather on the makeup an inch thick. They can’t wipe it off completely, and it stains our pillowcases. Besides, you never know whether under pressure you’ll misremember a statistic and never live it down.”

  “But you’re great at it.”

  His posture straightened on the sofa: compliment received. “The fear Vandermire will have peddled all night—it becomes self-fulfilling. Though he hardly sounds afraid. He’s having the time of his life. It’s like what you always say, right? This apocalyptic set—”

  “I don’t ‘always’ say anything. We had that one conversation—”

  “Don’t get your back up when I’m trying to agree with you. It’s just, these people forecasting the end of the world, they never seem upset by the prospect, do they? Invoking ruin, heartache, and devastation, they can barely disguise their delight. What do they think actual collapse is like, a kid’s birthday party where everyone dances in a circle singing, ‘Ashes! Ashes! We all fall down’? And they seem to assume that they themselves will be immune, sunning by the pool while cities burn on the horizon. They’re would-be voyeurs. They regard the fate of millions if not billions of real people as entertainment.”