The Mandibles

by Lionel Shriver

  “How do you know we don’t have guns?” Florence said furiously.

  “You’re not the type,” he said.

  “Honey,” Tanya said. “You weren’t the type, either.”

  “I am now, baby.” The swagger was unconvincing.

  “You’ll never get away with this!” Goog said hotly. “My dad’ll report you, and you’re both gonna get put away until you’re a hundred and ten!”

  “Not keeping up with the news, are you, son?” Sam said wearily. “The cops have given up. Home invasions are all over town. Where do you think we got the idea?”

  “Home persuasion,” Luella said, leashed to the lower banister. “Prone occasion. Peroration! Prestidigitation!” She’d once wielded an impressive vocabulary.

  “But these are good people,” Kurt said over the Greek chorus. “Generous people. I’m technically a tenant, but Florence and Esteban haven’t asked for any rent in eighteen months. They’ve taken in a whole other family, an elderly relative … Florence works for a homeless shelter, for God’s sake—”

  “All right, and I was a climate change modeler for the New York Academy of Sciences,” Sam snapped. “This isn’t a Sunday school contest.”

  “We can see how badly you all need shelter.” Appearing to exert tremendous self-control, Florence had reverted to the methodic, nonreactive mode she must have refined at Adelphi. “Obviously, this is an emergency. So there’s no reason why we can’t make room for your family, too. We still have water, even hot water, and heating … You could all have showers. Long, relaxing showers. And you must be hungry. We don’t have much, but I’m sure I could find something for you and your children to eat. You can put down the gun. We can solve this problem together. Come to think of it, Esteban and I could give your family the whole master bedroom—”

  “You’d live peaceably alongside a guy who just tried to throw you out of your own home at gunpoint?” Sam said. “Please. You’d bide your time until you could coldcock me with a hammer.”

  “All the same, honey,” Tanya whispered. “The kids haven’t eaten all day—”

  “She can rustle up something in that kitchen, then we can, too. Between a whole house and one room? I don’t feel especially torn.”

  “Ever hear of the sit-in?” Dad snarled, huddled in his sooty blanket like an extra in The Ten Commandments. “When I was a kid, college students figured out just how hard it is to remove large numbers of heavy, thrashing, righteously pissed-off people who refuse to leave.”

  “Yeah, and some of those numb-nuts protesters got shot.” Sam was growing impatient. “Now, I’ll give you fifteen minutes to gather a few things. I don’t have to, but I’ll let you keep your coats. Take your toothbrushes.”

  “Kurt’s right about my niece’s generosity, but her aunt has a mean streak,” Nollie snarled like a crazy old lady who lured little boys with gingerbread, and Jake shrank in terror. “First thing I’ll advise Florence to do is cut off your utilities. So much for those showers.”

  “Go ahead,” Sam tossed back, though he looked rattled. “Everybody’s jury-rigging hookups to the grid anyway, and tapping into gas lines for free.”

  “There’s only four of you, hombre,” Esteban said, putting on an accent like the Mexican lowlife whom honks like Sam would fear. “Two are niños. How you expect to control thirteen hostages not in the mood for a midnight stroll?”

  “Good point. Very helpful—muy útil, sí?” His pronunciation was faultless. Beckoned, poor Bing edged wide-eyed to within reach, and to Avery’s horror Sam took a firm grip on her petrified boy’s arm. “Anyone tries anything, I shoot the kid. Think I won’t? Don’t try me.”

  Sam was talking himself into this role, but Avery couldn’t discount the possibility that he would do so with some success. Released to “gather a few things,” they all just stood there.

  “Move it,” Sam said. “Or I’ll take back the offer, and you’ll be shuffling Linden Boulevard in socks.”

  “Why did you pick on us?” Avery asked Tanya as the others slowly, as if in a trance, dispersed. “This house is home to fourteen people.”

  Tanya explained, “Because you’re the only ones who let us in.”

  • CHAPTER 14 •

  A COMPLEX SYSTEM ENTERS DISEQUILIBRIUM

  Willing hadn’t the hubris to claim that he’d seen this coming. But something like it, yes. Which was why an assembled knapsack was already tucked under his bed. Its checklist: ID, bottled water, trail mix, first-aid kit, graphene blanket, pocketknife, matches and lighter, gloves, glasscutter, large heavy-duty tarp, cheaper plastic sheeting, duplicate house keys, and toiletries. His mind freed from these essentials, he pulled on two extra sweaters and checked his pocket for the balled-up fleX; its satellite contract was in arrears, but it would work as a flashlight. Ignoring Goog’s incredulous disgust—“What, our in-house clairvoyant is already packed?”—he marched calmly back downstairs to make a formal request.

  From gripping Bing’s arm, Sam’s muscles must have stiffened. Slumped against the doorjamb, even Bing had tired of looking terrified. The gun was heavy. Only when Sam spotted Willing advancing did its barrel lift.

  Willing stopped mid-flight. “I would like, if it’s all right, to take my bicycle.”

  “Tricycle, popsicle,” Luella mumbled, still leashed to the banister. “Icicle, capital. Typical, topical. Tropical, mythical, mystical, mandible …”

  “Can’t you shut her up?” Sam pleaded.

  “Greater men than I have tried,” Willing said.

  “Master bin the ties that bind,” Luella echoed.

  “The bike?” Willing pressed gently. “You have the SUV.” It was important to remain unemotional. The man would feel bad, and he wouldn’t like feeling bad, which would make him angry. So all negotiation had to be conducted free of judgment. As if it were the most reasonable thing in the world, to ask a stranger from a few streets over if you could take your own bicycle.

  “No,” the redhead said, arms bunched at his mother’s side. “I want his bike.”

  Willing settled the boy with a steady gaze that said patiently: a whole bike for a little hamburger and cherry drink is not a fair trade.

  “But you never ride one,” his mother said.

  “Daddy has a gun,” Jake said. “We can take whatever we feel like. It doesn’t matter if we use it. We could smash the bike up if we want. And maybe I will,” he directed to Willing. “I’ll take your bike and smash it.”

  Willing could see the boy’s injunction backfire: look, already, what we are doing to our son.

  “Yeah, sure, take the bike,” Sam said.

  “Blah, purr, make a tyke,” Luella said.

  “Thank you,” Willing said. Permission to be dismissed, sir. He almost saluted.

  Upstairs, he found his mother and Esteban in their bedroom, surrounded by a disarray of clothes. “He’s not that big a guy,” Esteban murmured. “I could take him, ningún problema.”

  “Doubtless, but someone might get hurt,” his mother said softly. “I can forgive you for not being a hero. I might not forgive you for getting one of the children shot.”

  “That pussy’s not going to shoot anybody,” Esteban said.

  She turned to Willing. “Are we supposed to be plotting? Coming up with an ingenious ploy to get these people out of our house? That’s what we’d do in a movie.”

  “We could set this house on fire, too,” Willing said matter-of-factly. “They would have to leave. But so would we. The fire could get out of control. Then neither family would have a place to live. It would be spiteful. Like what those intruders did to the garden.”

  “So, then—what?”

  “If we’re seriously letting that cabrón house-jack us out of our own home,” Esteban said, “can’t we hang at Adelphi? Has to be some advantage to your drear job.”

  “The shelter’s already at 200 percent capacity,” his mother said. “Other staff have tried to sneak in family. They were fired.”

  “This is my faul
t,” Willing said.

  “Lost me there, muchacho,” Esteban said.

  “We should have left earlier,” Willing said. “I miscalculated. This city. It’s a complex system, which has entered disequilibrium. It’s unstable. That is why there’s no reason to ‘plot.’ We have to leave anyway. The people downstairs won’t end well. Even if you don’t follow through on Nollie’s threat to close the accounts, they won’t be able to pay the utility bills. The water, gas, and electricity will be cut off. And he’s a computer modeler. He won’t have a clue how to access a gas line illegally, not without blowing up the whole block. Besides—think how easily they can take this house from us. It will be just as easy for someone else to take it away from them.”

  “You think we should leave, but go where?” his mother asked. She was frantic. She would have to calm down. “Grand Man’s practically a hundred! Luella’s a handful at the best of times, and my parents aren’t spring chickens, either!”

  “For now, to the encampment,” Willing said. “In Prospect Park. It’s dangerous, but not as dangerous as being isolated. We can barter there. The encampments are self-enclosed economies.”

  “Barter with what, for what?” his mother said. “Willing, honestly, sometimes you’re such a know-it-all! When the only thing you’re really proposing is that we all become homeless! I’ve seen enough of it. There’s no romance in it.”

  He shouldn’t take her insults personally. “We’ll stay there only as long as it takes to prepare.”

  “Oh, for Pete’s sake. To prepare. For what, the Rapture? So we can open our arms in a field to await the lord’s redemption, or the landing of an alien space ship?”

  They didn’t have time for this. “Take warm clothes,” Willing directed. “Wear multiple layers so you don’t have to carry them. Remember to bring something waterproof. Fill the plastic bottles in the old recycling container with tap water.” (The city hadn’t picked up recycling—a quaint practice—for a year and a half.) “Take ass napkins. Plenty, because we won’t be able to wash them. If you salvage any food from the kitchen, be discreet. Prefer backpacks to luggage. Luggage attracts attention, and it’s too easy to steal. If you have any cash, put some of it—enough to be credible—in your pocket, or an outside compartment of your pack. Put the rest in shoes, underwear, or rolled inside balled pairs of socks. That way, if they ask for our money before we go, we can give them the obvious money. And whatever you do, don’t get mad at Sam and Tanya. The more angrily we behave, the more they’ll feel justified in acting rash. We can’t seem unpredictable. Remember that we were going to have to leave anyway. They’re doing us a favor.”

  In the basement storage area, Willing replenished the inflation of the bicycle tires. He grabbed his toolkit, panniers, and some bungee cords, as Lowell railed in the background that “protection of private property is the primary responsibility of the state!” Willing couldn’t help but smile. Some people just couldn’t shift their paradigm.

  He was feeling better, after attending to his previous task. He hadn’t checked the rubble behind the furnace for a while, but they were safe. If he said so himself, it was a very good hiding place. Interesting, that his mother never asked about them. She was afraid she’d be arrested. He wondered if they even did that anymore—arrested people.

  As he locked the bike to a parking sign outside, Willing saw his grandfather hunch into the basement stairwell. Carter set something on the steps, and stooped over it with his blanket. Looking up, he put a finger to his lips.

  It wasn’t clear what Carter was up to, but the crazed expression he’d worn since the fire had grown wilder. Willing didn’t want to attract Sam’s attention, and this wasn’t the time for lecturing his grandfather about complex systems entering disequilibrium. He settled for a fervent head shake to discourage whatever half-baked scheme the old man had concocted, while mouthing NO, DON’T and crossing flattened hands back and forth—universal code for Forget about it! But Willing was merely an underestimated sixteen-year-old grandson, and Carter E. Mandible had been on the brink of killing someone for two solid years.

  Darting back to the stairwell, Willing pointed toward the interior: Get back inside. Carter pulled the blanket around his neck and glowered. He wasn’t coming.

  Uneasy, Willing joined the assembly in the living room. Sam looked worn out. He wanted them to leave in that ordinary pooped way that you want guests who’ve outstayed their welcome to go—so you can get a start on the kitchen, have a nightcap in peace, watch the news.

  “Money,” Sam said. They emptied their decoy pockets.

  “House keys,” Sam announced next, extending a basket from the coffee table like a church collection plate. “I don’t want visitors.”

  As the evictees lined up in the foyer, Sam did a half-hearted search of their bags, prodding the nose of his weapon into unzipped compartments with the cursory poking of a jaded museum guard. Unfortunately, he did confiscate the partial loaf of bread that Willing’s mother had stashed, despite Tanya’s standing sentinel over the kitchen. But he allowed Kurt to take his saxophone. Having lost all she owned, Jayne had no possessions, and hung back in her blanket by the stairs as the others slumped outside one by one. She must have been trying to stay warm for as long as possible. She’d had a long day.

  “What the hell is that?” Sam asked as Nollie reached the doorway. The carton looked much too heavy for a woman on the cusp of seventy-five.

  “Foul matter,” Nollie said.

  “Howl fatter,” Luella said behind her. “Prowl patter. Mewl fitter, cowl tatter, whole sitter. Peter Piper picked a bowl of beer batter …”

  “Someone get that hag out of this house,” Sam growled. Unwrapping his wife’s reins from her hitching post, GGM tugged Luella out the door.

  “Manuscripts, of my books,” Nollie explained. “They may or may not be worth something to anyone else, but they are worth something to me.”

  Sam opened the flaps, and sure enough, the box brimmed with rubber-banded printouts. “Jesus, it takes all kinds, doesn’t it?”

  Sam now hung on to Bing with the habitual clutch of a parent hauling his kid on errands, and Jake looked jealous. Carrying her second son’s coat and backpack, Avery wasn’t leaving without her youngest. Otherwise, they were down to Willing and Jayne when Sam surveyed the stragglers sharply. “Hey, where’s that surly codger who threatened to stage a sit-in?”

  Willing’s gaze was drawn to a motion behind their captor. To cover the telltale glance, he supposed hastily, “Carter—my grandfather must be in the bathroom.”

  Looming on the stoop in the open doorway, Carter raised both hands high behind Sam’s back. As his blanket flew backwards, he plunged a gleaming foot-long implement into the interloper’s shoulder. Sam bellowed. With a concurrent whoop, Jayne flapped her own blanket over Tanya and Ellie’s heads, trapping the younger woman’s arms, wrapped around the girl. The gun went off. Bing howled.

  Yanking the foreign object from his right shoulder, Sam reeled to train the handgun on his assailant. After hurling herself onto the floor, Tanya kicked Jayne off and thrashed from the blanket. She swept up Ellie and retreated behind her husband. Avery rushed to her son to examine his foot. The tussle was over in seconds.

  “What the fuck is this?” Sam brandished the two-pronged silver weapon, which came to two delicate points, now dark and wet. It was an elegant utensil, whose exquisite design he didn’t seem in the mood to admire.

  “Asparagus tongs,” Carter declared unapologetically, eyes wide and black. He nodded at the gun. “Go ahead. Make my day.”

  “Darling, begging for suicide-by-creep is not what that expression means!” Jayne cried, picking herself up. “It’s only funny if you’re Dirty Harry with a Magnum, not an old man with asparagus tongs!”

  “Out, all of you, now.” Sam jerked the gun.

  “You shot through the toe of my son’s shoe,” Avery chided. “His foot will freeze out there. At least let me get another pair from downstairs.”

 
“No more Mister Nice Guy. Go.” Sam’s shoulder was bleeding, and he didn’t seem like one of those mythical hard-asses oblivious to pain.

  Jayne, Avery, Bing, and Willing filed out to join the rest on the sidewalk, where they could hear the click of the lock on their own front door and the rattle of its chain being secured. The same sounds soon emitted from the entrance to the basement.

  “Dad, I know you meant well,” Avery said, arm around her whimpering youngest, whose left tennis shoe flapped open. “But that derring-do was dangerous. It’s a miracle the bullet missed Bing’s foot, and his toes look burned.”

  “Asparagus tongs?” Nollie said. “Carter, how about a fucking knife?”

  “All the knives in the silver service are blunt, and the wife was in the kitchen.” Carter picked his blanket off the ground and shook it out snappily. “At least I tried something.”

  Jayne adjusted her husband’s battle robes around his neck. Their exploit had accomplished nothing, yet maybe it was worth the risk: both grandparents stood proudly upright, looking years younger in the glow of the streetlamp. Whereas Esteban was muttering to Willing’s mother, “I’d have flattened that tonto with a shovel, but I was ordered not to.”

  “Never mind a knife, why not a hammer?” Nollie badgered her brother. “There’s a toolbox in the basement, and our friend Sam there gave you the idea on a plate!” (It was impossible to envision Carter Mandible crushing Sam’s skull with a hammer. Funny—Willing could readily picture Nollie doing it.)

  Carter shot back, “At least those silver pincers are a damned sight deadlier than a box of lousy first drafts.”

  “How are we going to carry that, Nollie?” Lowell charged. “It’s awkward, and incredibly heavy. You won’t be able to manage that blasted box to the end of the block.”

  “Watch me,” Nollie said darkly. It was never wise to question Enola Mandible’s athletic prowess.

  “I’ve put up with your egomania my whole life,” Carter told his sister. “But this is the limit. Right now, rescuing originals of your o-o-o-o-oeuvre would be imbecilic enough if you were Tolstoy. But you’re a hack. I read the Times review of The Stringer—‘prose miraculously both pallid and overwritten’—”