The Mandibles

by Lionel Shriver

  “Great Grand Man says we should be grateful. Without foreign tourists, no one would be buying anything. We’d already be in another depression. Great Grand Man says for people from outside the country, everything here is practically free.”

  “Well, nothing’s free for us! I couldn’t believe how much plain old bleach had gone up today.” They’d sprung for the gallon size, since it would only cost more next time, and the bag with the bleach was cutting into her shoulder.

  “Prices aren’t going up,” Willing said authoritatively.

  Florence snorted. “Could have fooled me!”

  “They have fooled you.” Willing’s stride had developed a swagger. “It’s the mistake people always make. They think things are getting more expensive. Actually, everything costs the same. Prices aren’t going up; the currency is going down.”

  “Come on. I see why the exchange rate would affect imports. Not stuff we make and grow here.”

  It was now an established role reversal, Willing speaking to his mother patiently, as to a child. She thought she was indulging him; he thought he was indulging her. Somehow, it worked: “Leave aside that America doesn’t make anything. Tax take is way down. The deficit is big. The government can’t borrow money because no one believes they’ll pay it back. The Renunciation was a short-term cost-cutter: it eliminated payments on the debt. But the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation had to pay out immense amounts after the smaller bank failures. The big banks had to be bailed out. Lots of pension losses had to be covered by the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation. Unemployment insurance is going up. And that’s on top of Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, which are already more than half the budget.”

  “You want me to believe that at fourteen you know the difference between Medicare and Medicaid? Most people my age can’t keep those programs straight.”

  Willing explained contemptuously, “Care is for old people, aid is for poor people. It’s not rocket science. But you said you wanted to understand!” He never liked his line of reasoning interrupted. “They’re in a corner. They can’t borrow. They could raise taxes. But the rich already pay high taxes. And now their investments are gone. The rich aren’t rich. So the only people left to tax are people like you and Esteban. Who can’t buy cabbage. Blood from a stone, as Great Grand Man put it. What else is there to do? Photocopy the money.”

  She eyed him. “Such a mile-a-minute. And you used to be so shy.”

  “I was never shy. I was waiting to have something to say.” Willing stopped and turned to her on the sidewalk with a characteristic formality, though they were almost to East Fifty-Fifth Street. “Mom, listen. It may be lucky you work for the city. I researched this. The city gets some funding from the federal government. That means your employers have access to the fake money. That’s why you got such a big raise in March. And you’ll keep getting raises. That’s part of the problem. Lots of government payouts, like salaries, pensions, and benefits, are pegged to inflation. Meaning they have to keep printing more and more money to meet the budget, because they keep printing more and more money. It’s what Great Grand Man calls a feedback loop. The whole thing snowballs, gets a life of its own. Nobody quite catches up. So your paychecks might not get bigger fast enough. I checked the cabbage, at Green Acre. It’s thirty-eight dollars now.”

  “Nuts,” Florence said.

  “Another thing,” Willing said, as if going down a list. “As your salary rises, you’re going to get hit by higher tax rates. They won’t move the brackets.”

  “But that’s not fair! What a drag.”

  “Fiscal drag,” Willing corrected mirthlessly. “See, people getting what’s really happening the wrong way around, like you have—it’s how governments get away with it. The ‘everything’s getting so expensive!’ thing—it makes the problem seem to be coming from the outside. Like they can’t control it. Meanwhile, they think they’re controlling it. If they secretly do control it, that might be dishonest. But not so bad. I don’t think so. Twenty to thirty-eight dollars in seven months. I think we’re in a driverless car. But with no onboard computer. Because the really big mistakes were made a long time ago. You can’t unmake them. You just have to pay for them. That’s what Alvarado got wrong. You can’t get out from under a debt by making a speech. You have to pay, one way or another.” Willing’s tone had grown dolorous. “I think we’ve started to pay.”

  They resumed walking the rest of the way. “So when do you do all this talking with Great Grand Man?”

  “We don’t talk,” Willing said. “We fleXt. It’s clearer that way. For things that are complicated. Or that seem complicated when they aren’t.”

  Florence was still unsettled by her son’s earlier assertion that “the rich aren’t rich”—especially if she could safely assume that he’d appropriated this generalization, like so much of his dissertation, from Douglas Mandible. Ideally, she was perturbed because a reversal of fortune might force her elderly relative in his final years to curtail his pleasures. But she couldn’t kid herself: that wasn’t it. “Never forget where information comes from, puppet. I wouldn’t accept everything your great-grandfather says as gospel. He’s liberal on social issues, but wealth always pulls people to the right—because they can’t help wanting to keep it. Everyone has an agenda.”

  “That’s why I triangulate,” Willing said obscurely.

  “I’ve been distracted, and haven’t contacted him in a while. Is Great Grand Man okay?”

  “I think he may be sad. But that’s not what we fleXt about. I know he’s immense old, but he doesn’t seem old in fleXts. And he has time on his hands. Since Luella has the mind of a doorstop.”

  “Don’t be unkind. It’s not her fault.”

  “I could call her a doorstop to her face. She wouldn’t care. I don’t see why we don’t shoot people like that. It would be better.”

  “Willing, don’t talk like that.”

  He sighed. “It’s people like Luella who help to explain what’s happened. She’s an expensive doorstop.”

  “Wait till you’re old and addled. You’ll want us to shoot you, too?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh, that’s what everyone says. They don’t mean it, or they don’t have any idea what it’s really like to be old. ‘Just shoot me!’ It’s a casual, cheap assertion that only healthy people with no imagination make.”

  “Great Grand Man says he’d rather be dead than end up like Luella. And he’s older than she is.”

  “So if I get like that, you’re going to shoot me?”

  He said somberly, “If you want me to. I don’t think it would be easy.”

  “I’m relieved to hear you say that.”

  Before dinner that evening, Florence and Esteban folded laundry in their bedroom—where they still kept the hamper that Esteban carried from Manhattan the first day of the Stone Age. Not everyone could find a laundry hamper romantic.

  “Have you noticed how Willing’s become more talkative?” Florence mentioned. “He’s been so pulled into himself, for years. Now he’s got this almost prophetic thing going. He exhorts. Holds forth. It’s charming and creepy at the same time.”

  “You admiring, or complaining?” Esteban victoriously matched a stray sock with an orphan from an earlier load.

  “Both, I think.”

  “Not a bad household resource, our own oracle.”

  “The soothsayer routine won’t go down well with his classmates.”

  “Have faith,” Esteban said. “Bet he keeps the I-bring-you-tidings-of-whatever to himself at school. He’s not a social bobo.”

  “I’m not so sure. During these sermons of his—he seems oddly driven.”

  “If he’s ‘driven’ to do anything, it’s to protect you.”

  “From what?”

  “Maybe he can sense something coming. We Lats have a feel for mystery, for the unseen. And you’re so no-nonsense, so hard-nosed, so what-you-see-is-what-you-get.”

  “You admiring, or complaining?�
�

  “Both, I think.” He swept her onto the bed, and messed up her piles. To avoid confirming his rigid characterization, she didn’t object.

  “Mom, when you have a minute?” came from the doorway. Fair enough, they’d not closed the door, nor had they gone far. But Willing was disconcertingly unembarrassed by sex. Maybe his mother’s no-nonsense, hard-nosed education on the matter had made it seem ordinary.

  When she’d straightened herself up and given Esteban a kiss that promised more later, Florence allowed herself to be drawn into her son’s bedroom. He kept it tidy, aside from a flutter of papers on his desk and spread over the bed, all covered in equations, columns of figures, and what looked to the casual eye like astrological charts. If they read at all, Willing’s generation read on fleX. How frustrating for the modern parent, to no longer be able to infer anything about a teenager’s interior life from a telling shelf of books or revelatory stacks of niche-interest magazines.

  Her son shut the door and announced gravely, “I would like to give Milo away.”

  “What on earth?” Florence exclaimed. “You love Milo.”

  “That’s why I want to give him away.” Willing’s air was military.

  “It flabbergasts me that you’d sacrifice the only thing you own that you adore.”

  “I don’t own Milo. I’ve taken responsibility for him. So I have to act in his interest. In the long run, entrusting Milo to someone else’s care is in my interest, too. I won’t kick myself for not doing what was necessary while I had the chance.”

  “Okay, sweetie, I know you’ve mixed a lot of hazy, ominous hocus-pocus with dire premonitions from Great Grand Man, who’s old enough that his mind may not be at its best. But this is a serious decision, and you’re going to have to explain better.”

  “I see multiple-choice scenarios,” he said methodically. “They’re all sappy. Willing takes Milo to Prospect Park. He releases the dog from the leash. Milo looks up expectantly. ‘Go on!’ Willing urges. Milo pants and looks trusting. Willing throws a stick. Milo races after it. Willing stalks from the park, looking stricken yet resolute. The dog catches up, with the stick. Willing kicks the dog. Milo looks hurt—mostly by betrayal. Tears stream down Willing’s face. Willing kicks the dog harder, and then starts to throw rocks. At last the dog gets the message. Milo drags toward the woods, head hung low. The pet shoots a final backward glance at his master, with a look of incomprehension, of undying love. Cut.

  “Or,” he continued, “Willing spikes a last meal for Milo with poison. It is a piece of steak. The only steak his mother has bought for years. Milo eats the meat ravenously. The boy looks mournfully on. He holds his pet for the next hour as it whimpers and goes into convulsions. At last, Milo goes slack in his arms. Poignant scene in backyard, Willing insisting on digging the hole himself.

  “Or,” he rounded up triumphantly, “short and sweet. With no warning on an ordinary summer evening on the front stoop, Willing raises a mallet over Milo’s head and bashes in the skull. His expression is strangely pitiless.” Willing looked up as if expecting applause for his performance. “I warned you,” he added. “Nauseating.”

  Florence wasn’t sure what about the recital was most disturbing, the detached third person, the violent imagery, or the Disney schlock.

  “What am I supposed to construe from that,” she said, “aside from the fact that I’ve been too gullible in having faith that you’re not using drugs?”

  “We won’t be able to feed him.”

  “Oh, honey,” she said softly. “Maybe you shouldn’t come shopping with me. You’ve taken our situation too much to heart. It may be challenging to make my salary stretch through the month, but we can still afford to feed Milo.”

  “I know we can. But by the time we can’t, no one else will be able to feed their pets either, and you won’t be able to give any dog away.”

  “Where do you get this stuff?” Florence puzzled.

  “I don’t only consult Great Grand Man, if that’s what you’re worried about. But I don’t mean give Milo to just anyone. Definitely not to the ASPCA, which sooner or later will be a death camp. Brendan. Across the street. He has two little kids. He likes Milo. Milo is a good dog for small children. He’s friendly, never rough, and he doesn’t bite.”

  “Why Brendan in particular?”

  “Brendan has money. Real money. You told me. He gave you a heads-up. Which means he had a heads-up.”

  Utterly bewildered, Florence did insist that Willing wait a week to think about it. He waited the week. He remained adamant. At length, she concluded that this was an opportunity to teach him a lesson. If he had to evoke storm clouds of omens and portents, then maybe Chicken Little should pay a price when the sky doesn’t fall after all. He’d be sorry, but they could always get another dog.

  For once signaling a normal, healthy emotional disposition, Willing didn’t want to give Milo away himself. To Florence’s surprise, Brendan was not only grateful for the gift of such an agreeable, affectionate pet, but he didn’t question why her son might decide to divest their household of a four-legged dependent. Shortly thereafter, too, Brendan and his family moved out, saying cursory good-byes to neighbors and explaining only that they were going “abroad.” Which was odd, since it was still illegal to take more than $100 out of the country. Until the restriction was lifted—a repeal of the controls was expected any day now—no one was going “abroad.” They took Milo with them. Rather than despondent and regretful, the better to learn his lesson, Willing seemed relieved. At least Milo, he announced, was safe.

  • CHAPTER 7 •

  THE WARRIOR QUEEN ARRIVES IN CARROLL GARDENS

  Your mom and dad was meant to be checked out by eleven a.m., comprende?” The receptionist at the Wellcome Arms no longer wore her name badge. Her sleeves were jammed above the elbows. She was chewing gum. And she was rude.

  Carter had detected the same fraying of propriety in New York. Police shuffled their beats in open collars and dirty shoes. Doormen didn’t open the door for frail tenants or offer to carry groceries, and their livery looked slept in. Sometimes the changes were subtle—a maître d’ didn’t see you to your table, but jerked his head irritably to indicate you could sit anywhere—but the touch-and-feel transformation of daily life was substantial. The voiding of some rules seemed to have opened the floodgates to the voiding of them all.

  “Checked out?” he said. “This isn’t a hotel.”

  “Is a business, chico,” she said, smacking. “A for-profit business and not a charity, which I’m immense tired of explaining to you people, wanna know the truth.”

  “I can’t imagine there’s a long line of applicants for my father’s compound, is there?” Carter dropped the pen from a height. The formality of signing in now seemed daft. “You should be grateful for residents who’ve hung on as long as my father, thanks to whom you still have a job.”

  Surfaces revealed that a cutback in staffing had already begun. The baseboards were lined with black dust. Carter’s shoes didn’t squeak as he strode the marble hallway, where the reek of urine was piercing—despite half the doors along the corridor listing open, the units unoccupied. Out the back door leading to the premier-class compounds, the lawn was six inches high. The previous June a riot of pansies and marigolds, the borders were now plain dirt. He didn’t hear any horses. He wouldn’t be surprised if they’d been shot.

  The front door of Douglas and Luella’s compound also lolled agape. Alarmingly, framed book covers bound in bubble wrap were propped along the hall; none of these decorations would fit in the car. The crimson carpet was trod flat and specked with sod.

  Carter found his father once more in the library. The shelves were bare. Douglas stood staring aimlessly, surrounded by towers of cardboard cartons. His cream suit was rumpled, and he wasn’t wearing an ascot—an affectation that may once have grated, but whose absence was worse. He didn’t look natty and trim but feeble and underweight. His posture had collapsed. At last, Douglas Elliot Mandi
ble looked every day of ninety-eight.

  Carter asked with a sweep of his arm, “Pop, what’s all this?”

  “The library, of course.”

  “Well, clearly we’re in the library,” Carter said patiently.

  “I haven’t turned into Luella, son. The books, not the room.”

  “If you’re of such sound mind, then you also remember what I told you. A few clothes, your medications and toiletries, maybe a handful of keepsakes. Small keepsakes, not the sort that would fill a U-Haul.”

  “I assumed you’d be renting a vehicle appropriate for the task.”

  “I came up in the BeEtle—into which you, Luella, and a small amount of luggage will barely fit. We don’t need to incur any unnecessary expense right now, and our house is already crammed with crap. You can download everything in these cartons onto a chip the size of a ladybug. It’s the ideal time to join the modern world.”

  “But these are signed first editions! If it’s money we need, this library is worth a deep six figures!”

  “New York is awash in old print books, Pop.” Carter tried to say this kindly, but exasperation got the better of him. “Your generation’s left behind truckloads of hardbacks, and younger people don’t want them. So collectors have their pick. More to the point, what collectors? Do you know one real person who’d part with cash right now for stained wood pulp? If not, all these boxes stay behind.” The sternness was unabashedly parental. Yet having at last been granted the status of full adulthood was not as gratifying as Carter once had hoped.

  Tipping backwards toward his armchair by the bay window, Douglas fell more than sat. “Chucking a collection of this quality into a Dumpster is sheer barbarism.”

  Carter kneeled at the chair. “What’s important about these objects you can take with you. You read them, right? They’re in your head.”

  “All that’s left in my head is grief and muddle.”

  As his father grew weepy, Carter laid a hand on his shoulder, which felt too narrow and too sharp. “Jesus, have they been feeding you?”