The Mandibles

by Lionel Shriver

  “Willing, I’m tired of your giving me a hard time about that,” Florence said. “Whatever would we have done with twenty bags of flour anyway?”

  “You could have traded them. You’d have had real currency. Better than your salary. You’d have had power.”

  “Flour power,” Lowell said, but neither had watched enough documentaries about the 1960s to get the joke. “What you mean is, these shortages are artificial? There’d be plenty of food if people would go back to buying one jar of mayo—”

  Their backs were to the cart. After wheeling to survey it, Willing was running after a guy in his fifties who was striding down the aisle with a canister of Quaker Oats. The boy stood in the man’s way and demanded, “Give that back.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about, kid,” the guy said.

  “You stole that from our cart. It was the last one.”

  “It’s only stealing if I walk outta here without paying for it. Until then it’s called shopping. Now, push off.”

  As the man brushed past her son, Florence said, “So, we cross another Rubicon. Shaming used to work.”

  Lowell should probably have intervened, but he wasn’t getting into a fistfight over oatmeal.

  In the long lines for checkout, customers rubbernecked each other’s loot, sometimes sending kids back to search for products they’d missed. Though their own cart contained little that Lowell found appetizing, the other two exchanged congratulations over their prizes. (Ground mutton—ugh. Chicken gizzards? Please. And beets were so yesterday.) Suffering his sister-in-law’s glare, he felt comfortable slipping in two Blossom Hill chardonnays only after offering to pay the bill—rashly, for to his consternation the $1,100 he was packing turned out to be not enough.

  Loading groceries on the belt, Florence fished out a canister of Quaker Oats. “Willing! You accused that man, and it’s here after all!”

  “He took it, all right. I found him with his wife in the cereal aisle. While they were on their toes cleaning out the Cocoa Puffs, I swiped it back.”

  Florence shook her head. “Honey, you don’t even like oatmeal. You’ve got to learn to let this stuff go.”

  “Uh-uh,” Willing said. “You have to learn to not let stuff go.”

  “I refuse to allow this situation to turn me into a petty, greedy, mindless animal.”

  “Petty, greedy, mindless animals,” Willing said, “eat breakfast.”

  • CHAPTER 11 •

  BADDER BITTER GUTTER

  Florence and her aunt often shared their disgust: the situation in the States was not nearly as bad as the schadenfreude from abroad would suggest. Sensationalist reports on European websites portrayed American cities as Night of the Living Dead, with crazed, rampaging looters tearing down the streets with TVs but no electricity to plug them into, while the elderly roasted their cats in the flames of their burning furniture. Okay, there’d been some looting, especially of grocery and liquor stores. There were some shortages, although it wasn’t as if nine million starving New Yorkers were stuffing each other’s hacked bodies into upright freezers to serve later with fava beans and a nice Chianti, as the international media would have had you believe.

  As for the inflation over which German coverage obsessed, Lowell insisted that America’s bore no resemblance to the Teutonic experience after World War I, when restaurant patrons paid for their meals when they walked in, because the bill would be higher once they finished eating. Why, by the end the mark was printed on only one side, because the mint was running out of ink. But had greenbacks changed in the slightest? Didn’t dollars sport American presidents on one side and IN GOD WE TRUST on the other?

  These reassurances aside, they all faced a dilemma. Lowell’s unemployment would soon run out. Having been on contract, Esteban never got unemployment in the first place. Kurt should have qualified for welfare, and benefits of every description were jacked up frenetically month upon month; if the Fed was going to print the money madly anyway, what better use for the stuff than bribing the savages to stay home and put their feet up? Yet further hurdles had gone up to new claimants—most of whom were biddable, formerly solvent citizens unlikely to torch City Hall. Only applying because Florence begged him, Kurt simply didn’t think of himself as a lowlife ward of the state, and flubbed the interview as a consequence. (Alas, he had a place to live. Someone in the household was working.) Which left Nollie’s Social Security and Florence’s stressed salary as their sole remaining income.

  On the other hand, Lowell and Avery had that lump sum from the sale of their house; their extent obscure, Nollie had those “resources.” But these monies would purchase ever less as time went by. Florence resented it more than she could say—now more than ever, they needed to conserve funds for emergencies—but the most sensible policy at the moment was to spend everything they had as fast as possible.

  Seizing on Willing’s idea that tangible goods would become the new currency, Avery took this strategy too eagerly to heart. For Florence, shopping was a chore; for Avery, it was an entertainment. So Florence learned the hard way that you never gave her sister carte blanche to buy out the store.

  Returning from the Home Depot on Nineteenth Street, Avery burst through the front door, arms full, eyes dilated, her complexion mottled with hypertensive purple splotches.

  “What’s this?” Florence asked, nodding at the bulging canvas shopping bags.

  “I really scored!” Avery pressed past with her burdens and dumped the booty on the living room floor. Several bottles of Gorilla Glue—“New anti-clog cap! Dries 2X Faster!”—clattered from one sack. “And wait—there’s more. Goog’s watching the car.”

  When Avery finished unloading, Florence picked diffidently through the swag. She found multiple bags of spline, though why they’d need to rescreen the windows several times over was anyone’s guess, and Avery hadn’t bought any screening to go with it. There was weather-stripping, two-sided tape, some twenty canisters of Comet cleanser.

  “Avery, what will we do with all these L-braces? And where will we store this junk?”

  “Junk?” her sister repeated, incensed. “These are real goods. Made of metal, and other materials of lasting value. They make things, and fix things, and stick things together. They’re not made of paper, and they’re not an abstraction—which is more than you can say for dollars. I was incredibly lucky, and wily, and fast, and beat hundreds of other customers to the punch when Home Depot unloaded a warehouse backlog that was all pre-Renunciation, because China won’t exchange real goods for our money anymore. This was a lot of trouble to snarf, and you should be thanking me. When a goon busts down the neighbors’ front door, they’ll offer a whole case of long-life milk for replacement hinges, and we’ll be the only ones on the block who have the hardware.” The speech, Florence inferred, was prepared.

  Forcing her sister to sacrifice her family’s limited space in the basement to accommodate the preposterous plunder should have discouraged more acquisitions along these lines—for the purchases were driven by the same just-in-case, you-never-know-what-might-come-in-useful reasoning that had buried wackos under suffocating piles of old newspapers and magazines, before the demise of print journalism deprived hoarders of their traditional nesting material. But a separate trip to Home Depot purely to confirm how much more her haul would have cost two weeks later inspired Avery to further extravagance. An expedition to Walgreens netted numerous kits for the treatment of toenail fungus, manifold boxes of denture-cleaning tablets when everyone in the household had real teeth, and herbal remedies for depression that actually would have come in handy, considering how this inundation of absurd consumer goods was affecting Florence, if only the pills worked. They now had nail polish remover but no nail polish, and out-of-date antibiotic ointment that wouldn’t have fazed the rage of resistant superbugs when it was fresh. Thanks to a remarkably “fruitful” rampage through Staples, during which, according to Goog, his mother nearly got into a slugfest over the last package of mixed r
ubber bands, they were now supplied with tens of thousands of Post-it notes, hundreds of felt-tip pens, several boxes of extra-long manila envelopes, and replacement cartridges for a 3-D printer they did not own.

  In fairness, Avery was not alone. The entire country, newscasters reported, was on such a feverish buying spree that for a few weeks the American economy registered an uptick in GDP. Yet even the most dentally conscientious reached a limit on how much easy-glide spearmint floss they would squirrel away, and the uptick was brief.

  Living in such close quarters with relatives, Florence had promised Esteban not to take after her mother, who tended to suppress grievances and stew in silence, like a can in the pantry that’s fizzing with botulism and begins to bulge. Yet it wasn’t any abstract policy of resolving conflict in the open air that brought the spending issue to a head, but a delivery truck from Astor Wines & Spirits. Returning from work, Florence recognized its logo at ten paces, and something snapped.

  “What is this?” Florence exploded on the sidewalk, while the poor deliveryman was still getting a signature in the basement stairwell.

  “Stocking up on necessities,” Avery said tersely, as the man scuttled to his van.

  “Toothpaste is a necessity,” Florence spat. “Not a tart, surprisingly supple Cabernet-Shiraz!”

  “We mostly drink white, actually,” Avery said coolly, pushing a last carton inside. “But assuming that’s any of your business, which I doubt, could we not discuss this on the street?”

  “You think I haven’t known for months what’s in those boxes beside the paint cans?” Florence called down the steps. “You could hide them better; pulling that old shower curtain over the top insults my intelligence. Think I don’t know why you and Lowell disappear after dinner—the only time you show any interest in spending time downstairs? You don’t even share it! You scurry off and get shit-faced in secret!”

  “Obviously not in secret. If you want a glass so badly, you can always knock.”

  “I’m not the one who wants a glass so badly. On the contrary, I think it’s important right now to stay sharp. Meanwhile, the mortgage has skyrocketed. The utilities are crucifying us. And you fritter away our meager reserves on a private wine bar!”

  In Brooklyn, families shouting in the halo of a streetlamp enjoyed a long tradition, and the neighbors wouldn’t blink. But they would listen. Diversion was scarce.

  Closing the basement door behind her, Avery emerged from the stairwell. “Lowell and I contribute to joint expenses. But I wasn’t aware that our money had become everybody’s money—”

  “Avery—are you an alcoholic?”

  “Oh, please!”

  “Are you an alcoholic? Because that’s the only explanation—”

  “Our witless presidente having renounced the national debt doesn’t mean we’re on war rations. For me, a glass of wine at the end of the day—”

  “Avery, I haven’t seen you drink ‘a’ glass of wine since you were fourteen.”

  “Strip away all the joys of life, and it’s not worth living!”

  “Strip away the booze and life’s not worth living. That is how alcoholics think. If I’m wrong, prove it, and send the wine back.”

  “This is out of order.” Lowell lumbered up from the basement entrance as well. “Your sister and I are over twenty-one. You may not approve of how we spend our funds, but just because we’re guests in your home—”

  “I realize you have a lot invested professionally in the notion that this is a temporary ‘downturn,’” Florence said. “But we don’t know how long this spiral is going to last or how deep it’s going to go, and between us we have four children to feed!”

  “It’s your son,” Avery said, “who keeps harping on how we have to convert dollars into hard assets that could be used for barter—”

  “Oh, don’t be disingenuous!” Florence’s voice had hit its less attractive upper register. “Yes, of course I’ve heard how over in the park alcohol and high-nic e-bacco are used instead of money, but you’re drinking your currency.”

  “Listen, this whole communal arrangement only works,” Lowell said, “if we maintain some boundaries—”

  “Oh? How am I to maintain any ‘boundaries’ when the primary asset I’m pooling with Nollie, Kurt, and your whole family is my house?”

  “That’s what this is really about?” Avery shouted. “You have to have total control over everything we do in your house? You’re now the big momma bear, and we have to ask permission to drink, or use curse words, or eat nonorganic chicken?”

  “Any chicken. That’s what this is about! ANY CHICKEN!”

  Drawn by the commotion, Esteban slipped out the main front door. “Hey, even in my old neighborhood in North Bellport, this sort of shouting match was considered low-rent. What’s the probelma, amigos?” If the dash of Spanish was meant to inject a note of jocularity, it didn’t work.

  “You and I only allow ourselves to have sex every two weeks,” Florence said, “so we can make a tube of spermicide for my diaphragm last for months. You wouldn’t even take ibuprofen for that muscle strain last week, because the bottle’s almost finished. Meanwhile these guys are self-medicating their hearts out! Though their investment in the ‘necessity’ of two bottomless glasses of chardonnay is, I’m informed, ‘none of my business.’”

  As Florence rarely lost her temper, Esteban seemed uncertain how to kid-gloves her down to earth. “Mmm,” he said, waggling his hand. “Whether that’s our business is a gray area.”

  “It’s our business the moment they exhaust their savings,” Florence said. “At which point, it will retroactively become our business how they wasted that money before they threw themselves on our mercy!”

  “Maybe everyone needs a safety valve,” Esteban submitted; he’d been missing his Dos Equis himself. “One small indulgence.”

  “Small? We’re not talking an airline miniature here, but cases and cases!”

  “Two cases,” Avery said scornfully.

  “Indulgence?” Florence fumed. “Think I wouldn’t like to go out to eat with my boyfriend once in a while, or catch a movie like a normal person? Wouldn’t I rather have been able to buy my son a proper fifteenth-birthday present in January, instead of scrawling on a lousy card? Why do you people imagine I’m totally fine going without chocolate, and bacon, and real coffee? Why wouldn’t I miss having wine from time to time? I used to love doing a couple of lines of coke, too, in case you think I’m a party-pooping priss, and I don’t buy that either! Any more than I save up my salary to go on vacation in Italy. My name is Florence, and I’ll never get there, will I, I’ll never go! Because every dime I make goes toward making sure nine other people aren’t starving to death! Don’t you think I’d also like a little whimsy, a little lightness, a little spontaneity in my life? Because I’m sick of everyone acting like I’m tight and stingy and mean and stinting because I choose to be like this, because I’m a killjoy, because I have no sense of fun, and I work in a homeless shelter because I’m grim by nature! I hate my job, you hear me? I would love to quit, and I can’t, because I’m apparently some—earth-mother chump!”

  “We should obviously move out,” Avery said. “All this pent-up resentment. I knew you were keeping things in, but—”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Florence said, stamping her foot. “Where do you plan to go, with a husband whose head’s in the clouds and three kids?”

  “We’ll think of something,” Avery muttered.

  “If you could think of anything, you wouldn’t be here.” Florence’s arms were folded and she was glaring, while Avery’s head was bowed and she’d started to cry. Screaming out in the open having been cathartic, Florence couldn’t sustain the fury; since childhood, she’d always been a sucker for her sister’s tears. Sighing, she crossed the three segments of sidewalk between them, opened her arms, and took Avery to her chest. At length all four effected a rapprochement in the basement over a chenin blanc from upper New York State, one glass of which put Floren
ce off her face after not having had a drink in months. This wasn’t their first fight, and wouldn’t be their last. But they could all reach giddy heights of rage and vituperation, after which the principals simply stood there and were obliged in due course to shuffle off to their assigned mattresses. It was one more luxury the Mandible family could no longer afford: a permanent falling-out.

  It especially rankled Florence that foreign websites made such a big deal over the dryouts. If anything, the city was sending out more water trucks than ever, and post-Renunciation dryouts were no more frequent than before.

  Yet they were more distasteful. With ten residents and two bathrooms, the oil drums didn’t hold enough rainwater to purge the toilet bowls in a timely fashion for more than a couple of days. Thereafter, since modesty proved as dispensable as fresh parsley, they all peed out back; more substantial business required a trowel. But it was winter, when the air smacked your bare ass like the slap of a hand, and the ground was hard. Avery had confided that she and Savannah both opted for self-storage for as long as mind-over-matter remained feasible.

  When the pipes were flowing—which, in defiance of the snide foreign coverage, was most of the time—Willing had adopted an inflammatory habit of standing sentry outside the Stackhouses’ bathroom downstairs when the kids took showers. The family wasn’t accustomed to water conservation, and considered showers of indefinite duration a Human Right. Since their arrival, the water bill had tripled. So preparing dinner, Florence would typically hear a variation of the following exchange from below:

  “Get away from the door, you pervert!” Goog would shout.

  “That’s four minutes,” Willing would announce in a monotone.

  “You’re keeping an ear to the crack, hoping you can hear me jerk off.”