In all, Avery was astonished that she wasn’t more distraught. For necessity is the mother of self-reinvention. She woke early without an alarm clock. An impetus infused her final days on Thirty-Sixth Street NW of a sort that a determination to locate thick-cut veal chops had never furnished. Long insulated from misfortune by a successful practice and high-earner spouse, she felt as if she’d thrown off a quilt in an overheated house. A mildness had suffocated most of her adult life, and suddenly the late November air smacked sharp against her skin. Things seemed to matter again. It seemed to matter how she spent her time and what she told her children. Why, it was tempting to wonder whether, while the likes of the Stackhouses were musing idly over whether to cover the footstool in taupe or mauve, folks on the margins were living real lives, and making real decisions, and conducting real relationships, full of friction and shouting and moment—whether all this time the poor people had been having all the fun.
As the family piled out of the Jeep Jaunt (to streamline, they’d had to sell Lowell’s sleek GMFord Catwalk), the atmosphere was jovial. Fierce hugs and joyous greetings recalled earlier visits when the kids were younger, and eager to spend time with their aunt and first cousin in New York City. Fresh from her sister’s embrace, Avery could put out of mind that they hadn’t arrived as guests but as indefinite parasites. Besides, ever since she married Lowell, Avery had been designated the sibling who had it easy, and the role reversal was liberating. Advantage in this country had conferred a distinct social disadvantage since she could remember.
They pulled their bags through the front entrance to the dark basement, from which some penniless tenant had been evicted; for reasons beyond her, the man hadn’t been thrown out, but had shifted to the living room upstairs. The air was dank. One double mattress lay on the floor, next to two single airbeds. The carpet—one of those blues that clashes with everything—was thin as felt. The bathroom didn’t have a tub. A compact kitchen unit sported a small sink and stove, its mini-fridge decaled with nasty white and yellow flowers. The comedown was precipitous—from a roomy, leather-walled DC kitchen whose Mojo was programmed to prepare chicken cacciatore. Avery’s initial elation fell away.
Which she was obliged at once to cover. “See?” she said cheerfully to the kids, who were surveying their new home with incredulity. “It’ll be like a camping trip.”
“I hate camping,” Goog said.
“Mom!” Bing cringed from a skittering. “This place has bugs!”
“And it smells,” Savannah said.
“We’ve had some trouble with moisture,” Florence said flatly.
“Oh, don’t mind Savannah,” Avery said. “She doesn’t understand that all basements get a little musty.”
“Ours didn’t,” Goog said. “And ours had a pool table.”
“Pity you didn’t bring it, then,” Florence said. “You could have slept on it.”
Avery detected a practiced coolness in her sister, a refusal to be provoked that was new. In times past, she was a self-righteous hothead. Florence had mentioned being continually “under siege” at her shelter, where this nonreactive mode must have come in handy.
“The basement was moisture-proofed two years ago,” Florence told Avery. “But when I tried to get the company to make good on the five-year guarantee, the website was down. Out of business.”
“I know,” Avery said. “I almost brought our robotic vacuum cleaner. But a crucial plastic tab is broken, the manufacturer’s gone under, and you can’t get parts.”
“Real American tragedy,” Willing said from the stairs to the ground floor. His inflection neutral, it was impossible to tell if he was being sardonic.
“What’s real American tragedy is our ending up in this shit hole,” Goog returned.
“Thanks,” Florence said, with a glance at her sister: Nice parenting job, puppet.
“Tragedy is ending up on the street,” Avery snapped. “And not having generous relatives who offer you refuge.”
“If this is a ‘refuge,’” Savannah said dryly, standing at a distance from the rest of the family like an indifferent onlooker, “does that make us refugees?”
“Yes,” Avery said, “in a way, we are refugees.”
“Nonsense, my dear,” Lowell said from the stairs of the outside entrance, where he was struggling with their largest case. “This is the United States, not Yemen. In short order, you’ll look back on overblown remarks of that nature and feel ridiculous.”
“I don’t understand why we can’t rent somewhere decent,” Goog whined. “We’re not broke. You said you turned a profit on the house.”
“No income?” Avery said through gritted teeth. “No lease or mortgage. Which any economics whiz kid should know, even if I hadn’t already told you that ten times.”
Abandoning their luggage, Lowell was scouting out the basement, brow furrowed—testing the stability of a small table, disconnecting a lamp and dragging it across the room, then searching on his knees along the wall.
“Honey,” Avery said. “What are you doing?”
“Trying to find a socket. I have to set up a workspace. On the drive up, I got some ideas I have to get down.”
Avery had tried to tolerate her husband’s self-importance about “his work,” some vital economic analysis without which the world would fall apart. The world having already fallen apart, her tolerance had morphed to contempt. In retrospect, it seemed pretty rich for her whole family to have none too subtly dismissed her PhysHead practice as quackery, when Lowell’s whole field had been exposed as far dodgier hocus-pocus; at the worst, Avery’s cures merely overpromised, while Lowell’s gang of charlatans had wreaked nationwide havoc. Yet she’d humbly done all the packing and cleaning, all the soothing of the children’s anxieties and indignations; she’d leapt all the bureaucratic hoops for the sale of the house—while Lowell scowled over his fleX, pattering fervidly on his keypad, intermittently pressing the far-right Delete button for seconds at a time in melodramatic disgust. He reminded Avery uncomfortably of playing with her father’s vintage BusyBox at Grand Mimi’s when she was four—turning a crank that didn’t drive anything, twisting a phone dial that didn’t place a call, opening a drawer with nothing in it, and setting a clock that didn’t tell the time.
“Lowell, did you lock the car?” Florence asked. “It’s not only New York, but New York max. You can’t leave anything unattended.”
With a whiffley sigh, Lowell trudged back outside.
“I’m afraid we’ve run out of mattresses, not to mention floor space,” Florence said. “So I thought Goog could double up with Willing upstairs. The bed’s a single, but Willing’s on the slight side.”
“Oh, man!” Goog said. “It’s so passé to be gay. I’d rather sleep in the car.”
“Is that okay with you, Willing?” Avery knew territorial teenage boys well enough that she needn’t have asked.
“It doesn’t matter if it’s okay with me,” Willing said. Embarrassingly, he was right.
“Sorry these digs aren’t what you’re used to,” Florence told her sister quietly. “I warned you it would be a squeeze.”
“I’m the one who should apologize,” Avery said under her breath. “The kids have been such boomerpoops—”
“It’s been a shock for them,” Florence said. “I’ve seen it repeatedly. Everyone adapts effortlessly to coming up in the world, and improved circumstances always seem well deserved. But going in the opposite direction feels unnatural. What’s really poisonous is that it also feels unjust. There’s a whole other class of people who’ve always had it tough, and they take adversity for granted. They may not think they deserve hard luck, but they accept it, it’s what they’re used to; there’s no railing at the gods. But I’ve never met anybody whose life has taken a sudden turn for the worse who thought a reversal of fortune was just what they had coming to them. The outrage, the consternation, the fury, all of it impotent—well. Setbacks never bring out the best in people.”
Lowell return
ed shaking his head. “I can’t believe someone stole the corn chips.”
What’s that god-awful pounding?” Avery asked that evening as Florence stirred a couscous concoction at the stove.
“I finally asked her,” Willing said from the kitchen doorway. “It’s jumping jacks. Nollie does three thousand every day.”
“She claims it takes thirty-two minutes, but it feels like a lifetime. Sweetie?” Florence directed to Willing. “We don’t have enough plates. I think Nollie took one to the attic, though don’t interrupt her until she’s through exercising. I tried once. She took my head off.”
“But she’s seventy-three!” Avery exclaimed.
“You know boomers,” Florence said, head down to the cutting board. “They’re all crazy. Even Dad’s turned from mild-mannered reporter to homicidal maniac. Mom barricades herself in her Quiet Room as if the house has been taken over by Al-Qaeda. Luella keeps trying to redecorate. Last week she shredded off all the wallpaper in the upstairs bathroom. So Mom’s coming over tomorrow night as their ‘envoy.’ Otherwise all four have to come, and it’s too much of an ‘ordeal.’ I’d be touched if Mom didn’t want to put me out. I’m afraid she meant it would be too much trouble for her.”
“Any word about Grand Mimi?”
“She’s officially a missing person, but so are lots of people.”
The cutting board commanded an intensity of concentration at odds with her sister’s competence. Florence was an efficient cook who could chop tomatoes in her sleep. She made no eye contact. Avery felt awkward, and couldn’t help but suspect she was being made to feel awkward, if not deliberately, then from a wrath that her sister was at a loss to control. She felt unwelcome.
“Hey.” Avery touched her sister’s sleeve. “I’m sorry it’s worked out this way.”
“I am, too,” Florence said. “I mean, it’s worse for you. Losing everything and all.” She didn’t sound as if she meant it.
“It’s different from a visit.” Avery looked at the floor.
“No, it’s sure not like a visit!” The guffaw sounded like a sob. “What happened to the gray water in the sink?”
“In the plastic tub? I poured it out. It was disgusting.”
“Don’t do that.” The muscles in her sister’s jaw rippled. “It’s for the dishes.”
In which case, Avery had just rescued her family from cholera. “Listen—can I help with dinner?”
“Esteban!” Florence cried, ignoring the offer. “¿Mi querida? The table will barely fit eight! We need extra seating!”
“I don’t want to sit at a kiddie table!” Bing wailed from the living room.
The children were all watching TV, and there’d already been an altercation over Willing’s peculiar preference for the business report. Clearly, her kids were never going to spend much time in that dismal basement. Avery felt chagrined about her promises to keep out of Florence’s way. She couldn’t imagine preparing her family’s meals on that Tinkertoy unit with daisy decals. The thought of which prompted her to lie, “I hope you don’t think we expect you to cook for us all the time.”
“Let’s take things as they come, shall we?” Florence exuded that dense quality of keeping a great deal in, and for now Avery was glad for whatever was churning in that head to stay there.
Grateful for a task—was Florence refusing to delegate the smallest chore because it might make her sister feel useful and so less beholden?—Avery volunteered to help Esteban retrieve the coffee table from the living room, whose tatty thrift-shop mélange of fringed lampshades, baskets, crocheted pillows with little mirrors, and faded oriental throw rugs wasn’t to her tastes. It shouldn’t matter—all that mattered was her family’s safety—but she missed the soft, supple, simple interiors that had taken years to design just so. This room might at least have looked snug, but that freeloader’s pile of crap in the corner tipped it toward church-basement tag sale, and made others feel like intruders in the dwelling’s only communal space.
They placed the coffee table adjacent to the dining table and set it with three extra places, though it was far too low. Kurt and Willing volunteered for the crummy seats, and Savannah joined them at the end, the better to be maximally distant from everybody. Avery scuttled downstairs to announce that dinner was ready. Hunched in his improvised office, Lowell made a show of having to finish some vital passage, keeping everyone waiting ten minutes while the couscous dish got cold.
Assembled at last, the convocation might have exuded the jubilance of a family reunion, were it not for the indefinite nature of the Stackhouses’ presence here, awareness of which hung over the gathering like low barometric pressure—the dull, heavy weather with a glowering sky that could persist for days before coalescing into a cleansing but violent thunderstorm. The occasion was further adulterated by the oddball tenant—ex-tenant—who spoke little and whose gratitude was oppressive. Those teeth were enough to put Avery off her food. Why didn’t Florence get rid of this guy? Her sister was either softhearted or attached to the idea of herself as softhearted, a conceit for which they all had to pay. Absent the scrounger who wasn’t even a relative, and with Nollie pushed off more sensibly on Dad rather than on a niece—Avery found the old woman imperious, and imprudent with her opinions—they would all fit around this table, she and Lowell could find some peace and quiet in the attic, while the kids could have their own hang downstairs. The arrangement was so vividly doable that Avery grew annoyed. The extra social flotsam was what made her family’s arrival seem such an imposition.
“Florence, this looks lovely.” Avery stirred her serving, dismayed by the paucity of chicken. She might have overlooked the protein deficiency, save for the alcohol deficiency. The two bottles of wine she and Lowell brought were a contribution, not three loaves and five fishes to feed the five thousand. The dribs in juice glasses that Florence poured all six adults were the size of a measure of mouthwash, almost worse than no wine at all. The second bottle had been primly removed to a high shelf.
“It’s too hot!” Bing cried. “It makes my mouth hurt!”
“The jalapeños are a treat,” Florence said. “We don’t buy much, only for flavor.”
“Relief to eat something with kick,” Esteban said. “This is malicious.”
“Mom!” Bing whimpered. “It’s like devils attacking my tongue with pitchforks!”
“We like spicy food,” Willing said squarely, holding Bing’s gaze and somehow managing to impart: Here begins the phase of your life in which you will not always, often, or perhaps ever get what you want, and this is a phase that could last indefinitely. Bing shrank from the look in horror.
Having arrived at the table with her private jar, Nollie was showering her plate with chili flakes. By her age, she might have outgrown the adolescent boast of some purportedly cast-iron constitution. The couscous had turned red, and looked roundly inedible. “This is a hell of a crowd to feed, Florence,” she said. “I may need to top up the cookie jar donation.”
“Me, too!” Avery said. “Don’t think you have to carry this mob by yourself.”
“When I was growing up on Long Island,” Esteban said, “only ten people in a two-bedroom house would have seemed palatial. Place across from us in North Bellport, maybe a thousand square feet? Put up sixty-five Lats. They slept in shifts. Our house never had less than fifteen.”
“So”—Nollie nodded at the company—“instead of our assimilating the illegal immigrants, the illegal immigrants have assimilated us.”
“Nollie, you’ve been away,” Florence mumbled in the abashed silence, “but no one says illegal now. It’s not careless.”
“I’m not illegal anyway,” Esteban said tendentiously. “I was born in Brookhaven Memorial in Patchogue, New York. I’m American as you are, mi tía—”
“Thanks to our generous Constitution,” Nollie said, eyes sparking—the woman loved to start fights—“you certainly are. Though for an American, you’re pretty prickly.”
Esteban appraised the old woman
with an unforgiving glare. “Florence, bless her, is the exception. Otherwise, your whole family got an attitude problem. Still think you’re special.”
“This whole country has an attitude problem,” Nollie returned equably. “It’s you Hispanics who bought into the idea of America being special, and it’s not my family’s fault that you’ve been suckered.”
“I wouldn’t write off the United States just yet!” Lowell said. “See the Dow is climbing back up, Goog? What’d I tell you!”
“It’s only going up in dollars,” Willing said from the coffee table.
“What else is it supposed to go up in?” Goog jeered.
“In a hyperinflationary economy—”
“Whoa, hold on there, Willing,” Lowell said. “Hyperinflation is a technical term. In my field, Philip Cagan’s definition is broadly accepted: at least 50 percent per month. We’re nowhere near that. In the 1920s, German inflation was 30,000 percent, and Serbian inflation was 300 million percent. In Hungary, after the Second World War? It was 1.3 times ten to the sixteenth—literally beyond your imagination. No comparison.”
“Sorry,” Avery mumbled to her sister. “I think Lowell misses teaching.”
“In a high inflation economy, then,” Willing corrected, and it was difficult to tell who was more patronizing to whom, “all assets seem to appreciate, including stock. But the gains are false. In bancors, the market continues to drop.”
The Mandibles Page 21