Unreliable

by Lee Irby

  “Who’s that?” my mother quickly rejoins, looking very glad to have my help.

  “Leigh Rose Wardell. Do you remember her? We used to date some in high school.”

  “Wardell? Is she related to Luther Wardell?” Mead asks with a trace of self-satisfaction. The name does carry a lot of weight in Richmond, certain parts of which cling to a Colonial notion of aristocracy.

  “That’s her father.”

  “He’s one of the richest men in Richmond. And politically connected.”

  “You never told me you dated her!” my mother croons in a joyous falsetto. We’re having a pleasant time now! Edwin the Champion is describing his brilliant social life to an adoring crowd. “I would’ve remembered that.”

  “It was no big deal, just a couple of months of casual high school dating. We broke up before we went off to separate colleges.”

  “You should’ve married her,” Graves chimes in, that devilish little brother of mine, always poking fun.

  “Well, she’s not married now, so maybe I have a fighting chance.”

  “So she’s single,” my mother muses gleefully. “Are you going to see her again while you’re in town?”

  “I might.”

  “That’s wonderful news!”

  “You should definitely marry her!” Much polite giggling ensues, but the sugar is causing Graves to rock in his chair like he’s being electrocuted in Oklahoma. These George men, they seem to share a similar mating strategy—go for the wealthy widow. My mother is enabling it, of course, but she’s also delighted that finally we’re settling in for a normal repast. As my father was fond of telling me, nothing good ever lasts.

  “Can I be excused?” asks a glum Gibson, her casserole still largely untouched.

  “But you haven’t eaten anything,” my mother objects.

  “I don’t feel so good.”

  Mead regards his daughter with a fatherly look of concern, because her face does appear drained of color and her movements are listless. She’s using again. Fresh from rehab, with a penchant for disappearing, and sleeping with a drug dealer, Gibson has shown nothing to indicate that she’s working at her recovery. She offered to get me high, from weed she bought with money she borrowed from me.

  “Go get some rest,” Mead counsels her. “We need you at full strength tonight at the rehearsal. Aunt Paula is coming down and I know you’ll want to see her.”

  “Aunt Paula!” Graves erupts, staring at me with the intensity of a new convert. “She is the funniest person in the world! One time she drove out to San Francisco just so she could go swimming in the Pacific Ocean and then she drove right back home. Didn’t she, Dad?”

  “There’s more to the story than that,” Mead demurs. Wordlessly Gibson stands up and carries her full bowl over to the counter, and with her shoulders stooped and slow gait it seems as if she might not have the strength to make it. Poor kid! It’s not enough that she’s an addict, but now her dreams of stardom have faded too. The guy who was going to get her booked at a great venue, the lover who’d launch her career, turned out to be a liar. Don’t give up, Gibson! My loves have come to ruin, too. “Women have great power,” Kafka tells us, and we’d better believe him. If not him, then who? Me? No, you can’t put your faith in me.

  Run, Gibson, run! Look at your future if you stay on your current path. You’ll go back to rehab, sober up, be sent to a halfway house where they’ll make you get a job and adhere to a strict curfew, and your best-case scenario is spending nine to five at a Bed Bath & Beyond, the tedium of which is relieved by attending NA meetings in a church community room. If you’re lucky, you might start dating a guy in recovery who’s as messed up as you are. So go back to your band and make music, write songs, burn every stick of wood in your soul—there’s nothing for you here, nothing at all.

  “Do you think she’s really sick?” my mother asks after Gibson sulks away.

  “I don’t know what’s wrong with her,” Mead groans. “Is she doped up again? Is that it?”

  Mead and my mother are both gawking at me as if I have some special insight into the torments of young adulthood, not knowing that my own torments with young adults have pushed me to the brink of sanity. “What do you think, Eddie? How did she seem today?”

  But I don’t get a chance to respond, as Mead chimes in with another hypothesis. “I’m worried that she took an RPG and sold it so she could buy drugs,” he asserts, before checking his phone with an impatient flip. “I hate to accuse her, but she’s always complaining about not having any money. If she’s using again, anything’s possible.”

  Why does no one ever suspect me of being a criminal? Is it my baby face and impeccable manners? Or is it the fact that I’m innocent? I might as well be invisible, because I leave no impression.

  “Her problem is that she hates everything,” Graves confides, tapping his fingers on the table with the impatience of a hungry diner waiting for a server to take his order. “She’s just really down on Richmond and wants out, and I can’t blame her. This place is pretty terrible.”

  “Richmond is a great place to live,” counters my mother rather defensively and not altogether convincingly.

  “If you’re a racist, yeah.”

  “Graves, now come on,” Mead gallantly intercedes. “That’s ridiculous. Richmond is no worse than most places. Better than most, actually.”

  I feel that my mother’s honor also needs defending, even though I largely concur with the kid’s crude analysis. Like most young thinkers, he’s prone to gross generalizations. Only adults can discern distinctions between bad and worse, because ultimately those are the choices we face as the years tumble by. “The suburbs of Richmond aren’t the same as downtown Richmond,” I sermonize with the bland self-assurance of a Rotary Club vice president. “The two are very different places, two different universes in fact. One is stuck in the past, and the other has always embraced the future.”

  Graves considers his options now that I’ve joined the opposition. He’s staked out an unpopular redoubt but I don’t sense retreat in him. He seems like the kind of person whose heels are perpetually dug in. “I never asked to live here and neither did Gibson. We were taken here against our will, like hostages. I liked it better in Fredericksburg.”

  Mead takes umbrage at this dig and lays down a marker. “Hey, no one’s got a gun to your head. You’re free to go at any time.” The unintended irony that this family traffics in! It’s precious, honestly. A gun to your head! Don’t skip ahead, though. That is the one demand I have of you. Let this story unspool.

  “No! Let’s not do this! Not in front of Eddie.” My mother reaches across and grabs my hand, a tender gesture I appreciate. “I’m not saying Richmond is perfect, but I never heard you complain too much until recently. I thought this city was growing on you.”

  “Yeah, like mold.”

  A fork pointing at his son, Mead offers a stern rebuke. “When I was your age, your mother was pregnant with you and I was working eighty-hour weeks to pay the bills.” He pauses to stab at the casserole. “No one asked me how I felt about where I was living or whether I was happy. I just had to get up and go work at RadioShack, which I hated. But I had a family to support.”

  Graves rocks back in his chair so violently that I fear he’s going to topple over, before lurching forward with his chin out-thrust and eyes ablaze. “I’m not as lazy as you think I am. Stuff is happening in my life. I’ve decided I want to make a difference in this world, and I will.”

  “That’s great, Graves,” my mother enthuses. “Eddie, you talk to young people all the time about what they want to major in, right?”

  “Sure, it’s a big part of my job.”

  “I’m not talking about my major,” counters Graves, wryly smiling at me in the cocksure manner of the young who need no advice but are subjected to some in spite of their indifference. “This is way bigger than a major, way bigger than college. I’m not going to be a passive observer, let’s put it that way.”

 
“Eddie, what do you think?”

  Here I lapse into my omniscient purveyor of wisdom, arms crossed. Just need a pipe and tweed jacket. “Passion is in short supply. If you feel some, embrace it. Follow your heart.”

  “Oh, I plan on it—trust me.”

  The doorbell rings. It startles me because it’s the same tinny chime that tethers me to my childhood. “He’s here already?” Mead asks, more to himself than any of us.

  “Who?”

  “The buyer. He’s supposed to come at three.”

  My mother sighs in disconsolation while Mead pushes back from the table and goes to answer the door. Seconds later he returns with a hulking man trailing behind, someone obviously suffering from the heat. His stricken face reminds me of Chagall’s “Self-Portrait with Seven Fingers,” mostly because of the scarlet tones that seem to be emanating from the man’s stone-edifice jaw. His eyes beam like lasers, and his white hair tightly curls into craggy spires. But upon closer inspection, the buyer also looks a lot like my urologist, Dr. Koretsky, himself of Slavic parentage and a man deeply committed to the resurrection of my erection, but whose pronunciation of the word “vascular” always cracks me up because it sounds like “Dracula.”

  Introductions are hastily made, with Fyodor Ublyudok wiping away sweat with an elegant handkerchief, stitched with gold lace.

  “You look awfully hot!” my mother offers. “Would you like a cold drink?”

  “Yes, please.”

  “It’s cooler in the basement,” Mead assures him. Fyodor Ublyudok reveals nothing with his blank expression, an Old World stoicism wrought from millennia of despair, which only goads Mead to try harder at pleasing. “It’s like a fridge down there.”

  “Hardly!” Graves blurts, earning a glare from his father. But Fyodor Ublyudok isn’t paying attention, having taken a glass of water from my mother. He eagerly gulps it down and hands the empty highball back without thanking her.

  “You were thirsty!” she exclaims.

  “Shall we?” He nods to Mead. “My plane leaves at three.”

  “Sure, sure,” Mead stammers, ushering Fyodor Ublyudok out of the kitchen. “It’s all down here.”

  Not all, of course, because one piece is presumably missing. Will the unaccounted-for RPG be a deal breaker? Hard to say. What is for certain is that the mere presence of Fyodor Ublyudok in her house has caused my mother much consternation, as it’s an unwelcome intrusion that disturbs her dream of bliss. Graves and I help her clear the table and begin doing the dishes, but she seems very distracted and agitated.

  8

  Because I actually do feel pity, I’ve volunteered to help out with the laundry. My mother’s nerves seem frayed to the point where she might blow a fuse. It makes sense for me to step in and do this chore since I’m staying in the basement next to the washer and dryer, and I’ve always found the purgation of laundry to be spiritually healthy. Clean clothes, clean soul, clean man.

  Except…

  Lola hasn’t responded to my last text and her silence has become a thousand scalpels that are carving me into tiny pieces of agony. At this stage I just want clarity. No: I want to hear her voice, her laugh, and most of all her advice. She’d know exactly how I should deal with my stepfather and equally perplexing step-siblings. Though she’s young in age, her old soul is full of ancient wisdom, except when it comes to her sex life, which borders on youthful chaos. But the larger point is, Lola and I have shared much more than her vast collection of dick pics.

  For example, just a few weeks ago, we went for our first hike to Buttermilk Falls, one of the most breathtaking spots in the Finger Lakes region. It was just the two of us, no Dahlia, no Thor, the first day of summer, the most hopeful time of year, and we chatted about books and movies and bands. She didn’t show me pictures of her conquests, I didn’t complain about Bev, and we soaked up the sun along with other like-minded nature lovers. Lola stripped down to an itsy-bitsy bikini while I left my shirt on, and for an hour my life felt normal. The power of the waterfall diminished me, reduced me to a mere encasement of protoplasm, and its roar blotted out the running monologue in my head, the constant chastisement of my shortcomings.

  Other hikes to the falls followed, but none ever bestowed upon me the insight of being free in nature like that first one. To live without complications! Two people holding hands, spray from falling water glistening in the clean air, happiness…but now Lola has declared war and is invading from the North, giving me scant time to construct ramparts secure enough to stop her. Once again Richmond waits for an attack…

  Mead and Fyodor Ublyudok are conducting business in the makeshift armory, but the door is closed and I can hear nothing of this transaction. A modicum of privacy! I carry a hamper of Graves’s clothes back to the little laundry room where my mother still keeps the same ironing board folded up in its usual place next to the dryer, and although I never much used the thing, seeing it somehow reassures me. Not all has changed.

  Since the washing machine is a top loader, I just have to pick up the hamper and dump it, whites mixed with darks. The clothes tumble in, and so does a piece of paper. A clue? Pay attention here, because clues such as these are few and far between. Obviously in his haste to clean his (and my old) room, Graves scooped up more than just his dirty underpants. The paper in question is standard letter size, bright red, and boldly designed. In the center is a cartoon likeness of General Robert E. Lee sitting on a horse, but rendered as if he were African American, and grotesquely so, with thick lips and eating watermelon. The text above, written in twenty-four-point font, explains:

  The Bastard Sons are rising! The Dirty South will get clean once and for all. Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. Bring da funk, Richmond. I didn’t own no slaves!!!!

  It reminds me of the kind of gonzo advertising a band might unleash, stapling such flyers to telephone poles and bulletin boards around the VCU campus. Gibson had mentioned the name of her group was Hazzie Mattie, but this obviously is the work of the Bastard Sons, which might be a funk band, but there’s an ominous, violent quality to this that doesn’t seem musical. After I get the washing machine going, using the max amount of detergent, I pull out the trusty smartphone to google the above-referenced organization, using the search term “bastard sons richmond.” Not that I’m expecting to find much. But an idle browse on the Internet beats the torment of waiting for Lola.

  The first results don’t seem promising. Henry VIII apparently had a bastard son named Henry FitzRoy, who was the Duke of Richmond, and so I refine the search to include “Virginia,” which coaxes the search engine to relinquish its secrets. The first hit refers to a punk band called Commercial Smell, who back in 1999 put out an eponymous CD with the song “Bastard Sons of Richmond” as the lead track. A link takes me to the Smell’s Facebook page, which has twelve followers and no posts. While this obscure group might have some connection to the flyer, I can’t determine it, though I’d love to hear some of the song for my own edification.

  Then while the phone is in my hands, it rings. The incoming call is from my area code, 607, but from a number I don’t recognize or have stored in my contacts.

  The police? Checking on the whereabouts of their prime suspect? Would answering it make me appear more guilty or less? Nature loves to hide, Heraclitus told us long ago, and so I decide not to answer but will call back if this person is legitimate or unthreatening or if I feel it’s in my best interests to do so. Because it very well could be my dean, ready to confront me with a new allegation, to join up with the others, the charges forming a kind of hunting party of depravity.

  But this caller does leave a message, and here it is in its entirety:

  Edwin, this is Carter LaSalle, I don’t think we’ve met, but I’m in the theater department at Notting and here’s the thing. My daughter Lola has taken several classes with you and she really likes and respects you, and I’m just wondering if she’s ever spoken to you of troubles she’s having—or if you know where she is because she hasn’t been see
n for a few days and she’s stopped replying to our texts. We haven’t called the police yet because we want to respect her space but we’re starting to get worried. Any help you can provide, I’d greatly appreciate it. Call me back when you get the chance.

  We have met, however. Professor LaSalle surely would have no memory of speaking briefly to me at a faculty workshop on—get this!—sexual harassment, but this training session was two years ago, before his daughter and I fell into the abyss together. As a classically trained Shakespearean, Carter LaSalle always makes a big impression, with his booming melodic voice, precise diction, and Charlie Chaplin features, that boundless, expressive energy that animates each of his disjointed mannerisms. Luckily Lola takes after her mother, in that they both share an ethereal Stevie Nicks quality, the pretty, bookish girl who didn’t get asked to the prom, the late bloomer who always will remember the sting of being unpopular even as her beauty increases in inverse proportion to years away from high school. Would you believe that Lola never once was kissed during her mostly unhappy years at Ithaca High School, where she starred on the Quiz Bowl team? This lovely, mercurial, sexually rapacious maenad came to college a virgin.

  I stare at my phone as if inside it Carter LaSalle is hiding so that he can catch me in the act. But I can’t fault him for being worried about Lola. Given that he’s my colleague, I must return his call, but before doing so I must formulate a plan so that my explanation will blur the line between true and false.

  I sink onto the sofa where I’d wasted many hours of my life. “I was sick—sick unto death with that long agony,” so Poe begins “The Pit and the Pendulum,” and I won’t claim that the walls are closing in because that is a hackneyed, overused phrase, but in this case the walls are closing in. Lola has now alerted her parents of her attachment to me, and once they confront her, she has only to divulge a few choice details and down will come the swinging blade to slice me in half.