The Hole We're In

by Gabrielle Zevin

  Vinnie had already eaten, but he ordered a cup of coffee. “Hamilton, the thing is, I’ve kind of got a plane to catch ...”

  “I’m so sorry. We’re in a hurry,” he told the waitress. Then, he turned back to Vinnie, “So, tell me all about yourself?”

  Ah, the business of turning one’s life into a series of charming narratives! Vinnie knew it well. He began with the story of how movies had been forbidden in his house growing up, but it was the only thing he’d ever loved, so he managed to find ways to smuggle them. He continued with the story of how he’d secretly applied to Yale, and how when his father found out he’d been accepted, the eighteen-year-old Vinnie had been banned from the house. “You don’t have a home,” his father had said, and he’d held to that, too. For all four years of college, Roger hadn’t allowed him back for Christmases or summers. If his mother disagreed with the policy, she certainly had never said anything. And then, they’d all come to his graduation and had the nerve to act like everything was fine.

  “Oh yeah, and I was excommunicated from the church, too.”

  “Sounds exciting. Like Henry the Eighth or Martin Luther. What’d that mean for you exactly?”

  “Oh, that I wasn’t allowed to go to the church anymore. Not much of a punishment really. I think my father had hoped it would serve as a cautionary tale to my sisters. Or improve his standing among other Adventists. Like, how hard-core a Christian do you have to be to advocate for the excommunication of your own son, right? I really don’t know what his thinking was.”

  “What’s he like, your dad?”

  “Oh, you know. Your garden variety monster. No, he’s ... um, charming. If you met him, you’d probably like him. Most people do. For a while, at least.”

  Finally, Vinnie wrapped up with the story of how his mother had stolen his identity while he’d been in graduate school. How she had actually opened credit cards in his name and then not paid them.

  “Wow,” said Banish, “what’s your relationship like with her today?”

  “Nonexistent,” Vinnie conceded. “She needs to act like none of these things ever happened. It’s always been her way of coping, I guess. And I can’t do that.”

  At this point, Banish was nearly finished with his sandwich. “I hope you won’t mind a word of advice from a person a couple of years older than you, I think,” said Banish. “At some point, Vincent, we have to overcome the disaster of our parentage.”

  Yes, Vinnie agreed, this was true. (But really! How annoying of him to say! He was the one who had demanded the dog-and-pony show! It wasn’t like Vinnie sat around stewing over this ancient history on a daily basis. He just trotted it out by special request.)

  “So tell me about this film project of yours. I’m very intrigued. Our mutual friend tells me it’s about the treatment of women soldiers after the war.”

  Vinnie nodded and launched into another equally familiar narrative. “I don’t know if I mentioned before, but my mother stole from my sister Patricia, too. Only, where Patsy ended up going to war, I just ended up with bad credit.” Vinnie paused, and Banish laughed just as Vinnie knew he would.

  At 3:30 PM, Banish reached across the table to shake Vinnie’s hand. “I think we might be able to work something out,” he said.

  Outside the restaurant, it took Vinnie close to ten minutes to hail a cab. He checked his messages once he was en route to the airport. There were three increasingly annoyed ones from Mina and one from his sister Helen. Apparently, Alice was in the hospital and this meant that Helen wouldn’t be going home that weekend after all. “I’m sorry to stick you with our parents, but... I’ll call you later, OK? When I know more.”

  Vinnie dialed Helen. “Helen, how are you? How’s Alice?”

  “Oh God, Vinnie, it’s awful,” Helen said, her voice soft and un-Helenish. “We don’t know anything yet. She might have brain damage, she might be perfectly fine.”

  “What happened, though?”

  “She and Eli were climbing trees. And she got stuck somehow. We were getting the ladder. But the kid didn’t want to ruin her stupid Dora the Explorer pajamas, so she tried to come down by herself. The little idiot. She should have just gone in her pants.”

  “She was probably scared, Helen.”

  “It’s the stupidest thing, though. I keep thinking back to the years when I worked as a speech therapist. I was so bad at that job. It sort of shames me to think of it. The way I... did that job with a sort of... I guess, you might say a shameful lack of empathy. Because if Alice comes out of this, she might need a speech therapist, and... All day I keep thinking of that patient I had who killed himself and... I can’t even remember his name now! He had a crush on me, Vinnie. Did I ever tell you that? And I start thinking about how this morning, everything, everyone was fine. And I was cranky and sleepy but happy, I guess. I just never realized my happiness was so... ugh, fragile? No, what’s the word?”

  “Gossamer?” Vinnie suggested.

  “No, not quite. But something like that, I guess. Vinnie”—she began to whisper—“I’ve been going over it in my head all day. When she said she had to go to the bathroom, I think I told her to hold it. Do you think I’m horrible?”

  “No.”

  “But if I’d just said to go pee!”

  “Hel, you’ve got to stop torturing yourself. Focus on Alice, OK? I’m just getting to the airport. I have to pay the driver. Can I call you back?”

  “Don’t bother,” said Helen, “I’m not supposed to talk here anyway. There’re these no-cell-phone signs everywhere. I’ve just been pretending I don’t see them.”

  The phone rang just as Vinnie’s cab pulled up to the American Airlines terminal. It was Mina.

  “We missed it,” she said. “And I already checked. There aren’t any more flights to Chattanooga until tomorrow.”

  “Shit,” Vinnie said. “I’m sorry.”

  “I hate you,” Mina said.

  “No you don’t,” Vinnie said.

  “A little bit,” she insisted. “I definitely hate you a little bit. You never wanted me to meet your parents, did you?”

  “Where are you?” Vinnie asked.

  “Inside. Right by ground transportation. Waiting for you.”

  “Hold on,” Vinnie said. “I can see you already. We’ll ride back home together.”

  Vinnie paid the cab driver and went into the airport to claim Mina.

  “When you call your mother to tell her we’re not coming, make sure she knows it’s your fault, not mine,” Mina said when she saw him.

  Vinnie took the bags from his girlfriend. “I won’t have to tell her. She’ll know.”

  Magnum in the Afternoon

  MAGNUM DRAGGED HIMSELF off the couch. He had considered not answering the door at all, but the visitor was persistent and had pressed the buzzer no fewer than fifteen times. It had begun to seem like more bother to ignore the person.

  He had stayed home from work that day. The flu. Or, if not the flu, the usual assortment of symptoms that one might call the flu.

  “Hello, Georgia,” he said. “I’d shake your hand but I don’t rightly know if I’m contagious.” He paused to cough, and when he looked up, he noticed that she was carrying two rather ugly orange and purple flowers wrapped in paper. “Those for me?”

  “No, um, I brought them for Patsy,” his mother-in-law said.

  “Yeah, I knew that. I was just joshing. She’s out picking up Britt from, like, tap or something.”

  “Britt takes dance?”

  “She’s real good, too.” He had begun to feel dizzy, so even though he knew his wife probably wouldn’t approve, he invited George to sit down in their living room.

  “What brings you to these parts?” Magnum asked. “We do have a phone, you know?”

  “Well, I tried to call, but no one picked up, so I thought, what the heck? It’s a nice Friday afternoon, I’ll just drive over and see my daughter.”

  Magnum thought this explanation did not sound at all likely. “All ri
ght,” he said. “I’ll tell Patsy you came.”

  “Maybe I’ll just wait until she gets back. Would that be all right?”

  Magnum lay back on the couch and crossed his arms. “She might be a while. If you’re in a rush, I mean.”

  “I got a little bit of time.”

  Magnum shrugged. He turned on the television and what came on was a cooking program. “This fine with you?” he asked.

  “Sure. It’s good.”

  “You know,” he said during one of the commercial breaks, “until I started working at Betsy Ross, I never even thought about food at all. Like, you know, I just ate what was in front of me. But now, I’m like, damn! I had no idea food was such a fascinating subject. If I’d known how I’d take to it, I really think I would have been a chef, Georgia.”

  George nodded. “That’s real... the thing is, Magnum, I was wondering if you could help me with something.”

  “Well,” he said, “if it’s something I have the ability to help you with.”

  “I want Patsy to come home this weekend. You could come, too, if you’re feeling better.” George explained how both of Patsy’s siblings were coming, and how that rarely happened, and how, now that everyone was so much older, such opportunities were fewer and further between. “I already tried asking her once, but she turned me down flat. Magnum, I really and truly believe if she just thought about it, she’d see what a good thing it would be for everyone to be together one more time.”

  “Well, you know how she feels about that house from when she lived there with Fran.”

  “But that’s silly! I changed everything! None of the furniture’s the same or the walls or even the floors. It’s not like it was back then.”

  Magnum coughed, then nodded, then coughed some more. “The thing is, Georgia, she don’t really get on with your husband either.”

  “He’s older. He’s softened,” George insisted.

  Magnum took a moment to consider this. “You know Patsy. She don’t let things go that easy, I reckon. The business with the college money and such still gets her all worked up, I guess.”

  George nodded. “In your opinion, what would it take to get Patsy to come to just one meal with her siblings on Saturday evening? Would Roger have to apologize? Would I? Because I’ve tried that, Magnum.”

  He thought about George’s question. What did Patsy want from her mother? At this point, nothing, Magnum thought. Certainly not apologies. The truth was, and Magnum knew this from various discussions they’d had, Patsy just didn’t want Britt raised around her parents. Toxic people, Patsy called them. Magnum wished very much that he hadn’t answered the door. He wondered what he could say to get this woman to go away. “Money,” Magnum said finally.

  “You need money?” George asked.

  “No. We got what we need,” Magnum said. “But you know Patsy! She thinks that Roger and you stole from her. I’m not saying you did, I’m not judging, but that’s what she thinks. And she cares, more than anything, about what’s fair and what’s not.” There’s no way this woman will ever give Patsy that money, Magnum thought as he was saying all of this.

  George set the birds-of-paradise on the floor and took her checkbook out from her purse. “How much do you think it would take?”

  Magnum looked at George, and George looked at Magnum.

  “Ten thousand was what she was owed, right?”

  Magnum nodded. George wrote the check, signed it, and set it on the coffee table next to the Vicks VapoRub. “Roger should have given her that money a long time ago,” George said. “It was supposed to be for Patsy’s education, if I remember right, but now that Patsy’s near thirty, I think even my husband couldn’t argue that it would be fine to reapportion it to Britt.”

  George stood up and raised her arm to shake Magnum’s hand. He felt as if he had just concluded a business deal in which he would come out badly upon presenting the terms to his bosses. He wiped his hand, which was mainly clammy from illness, on his sweat pants. “Well,” he said because he could think of nothing else to say.

  “Please feel free to come yourself,” George said. “And Britt, of course. Helen’s kids’ll be there. They’re only about half a year older than Britt, I think.”

  “I’ll walk you to the door,” Magnum said.

  George said she would show herself out. Upon hearing the door close, Magnum put the check in his pants pocket and went to the kitchen for some NyQuil. He drank a generous dose, then went back to sleep on the couch.

  He was nearly (though not quite) asleep when he heard Britt and Patsy return. “Daddy,” Britt yelled. “Daddy!”

  “Shhh,” Patsy said. “Daddy needs to rest. Don’t wake him up. Just give him a little kiss, OK?”

  Britt kissed him once on the nose. “What are these?” Britt held up the two birds-of-paradise that were lying on the floor wrapped in purple tissue paper.

  “Flowers. Daddy must have got them for us,” Patsy said. She imagined that he must have driven to the drugstore for cough drops or some such and then picked them up at the flower cart that was usually parked outside.

  “It looks more like a plant than a flower,” Britt observed.

  “No, they’re birds-of-paradise, which are a very rare, very pretty kind of flower,” Patsy said, though she secretly agreed with her daughter. They were so the kind of flowers Magnum would choose for her and not at all the kind of thing she liked. Looking at the garish flowers, she felt an enormous, awful wave of tenderness for the man, and she nearly lost her balance. She steadied herself, then took her daughter by the hand. “Come on, Britsy, let’s go get these in water before they die.”

  Roger at the End of the Day

  AN HOUR REMAINED before Roger had to leave to pick up the prodigal son and girlfriend from the airport. The time should have been devoted to working on the sermon he meant to write about Adam and Eve, the one that had been giving him so much trouble. Instead, he was researching hair replacement methods on the Internet.

  It was funny, Roger thought, how even a brief change of venue could be a revelation to a person. At the hotel in Chapel Hill, Roger had been shaving with the wall-mounted magnification mirror when he became aware of unwelcome and heretofore undetected changes to his hairline. He had gone entirely gray years ago, but the quality of the hair itself had been impervious to time, remaining thick and bountiful. According to the relatively superior lighting conditions of the Comfort Inn, however, this was no longer the case.

  It might seem a silly thing, but good hair was important to a preacher, and having considered the matter on a good portion of the flight from North Carolina, Roger felt completely convinced that he would be a less effective preacher if he was bald. After all, he was a public figure. He reasoned that he needed to be attractive so that his congregation would find his message (God’s message!) attractive.

  It certainly wasn’t vanity. He would never, for instance, have died his gray hair back to blond. That would have been ridiculous. Besides, gray hair gave a preacher a certain gravitas.

  According to preliminary research he’d done, most hair loss therapies were effective when a person still had hair to work with. This meant that it was best that Roger take action sooner rather than later. There were creams to be tried. And combs with laser beams! And hormones and vitamins! And plugs and transplants, though he didn’t know if he could take the time off required for that sort of procedure. Or, as a last resort, perhaps a discreet little hairpiece? George’s wig had looked pretty good when she’d had chemotherapy a couple years back. Roger could even get a toupee made from actual human hair! (He would try not to spend too long thinking about where that hair had come from...) Some of the methods were pretty costly, but he’d been making a decent amount of money from all the guest preaching engagements. He’d even been asked to think about publishing a book of his sermons—just for a privately owned Christian publisher, but still! If it caught fire, those things could really sell! Not that he was counting his money before he’d made it. He’d lear
ned a thing or two about that in his sixty years on this good Earth. The point was, if new hair made him a better vehicle for the Good Word, then it was, without question, a necessary expense.

  A knock at the door. Roger quickly shut his laptop cover. “Who is it?”

  “Oh, it’s just me, Pastor,” Megan replied. “If you’re not too busy, I wondered if I might have a quick word before I went home for the night.”

  “You know I always have time for you, Megan. Come in.”

  The pretty secretary sat on the couch in his office.

  “I feel bad. I know you’re meant to be off to the airport,” Megan said.

  “I have a little time left. What’s troubling you?” Roger asked.

  The secretary clasped her hands and set them on her denim-covered lap. “It’s sort of embarrassing,” she said.

  “You know you can tell me anything,” Roger assured her.

  “Well, it’s not the sort of thing we usually speak of, but I wanted your advice. I so admire you, Pastor Pomeroy.” She lowered her head and looked away from him. “I probably admire you more than anyone except Jesus. Even my own father.”

  “Thank you,” Roger said. “I have a great deal of respect for you, too.”

  “Well. You know how I’ve been engaged a sort of long time?”

  Roger nodded. It was well known that Megan had been engaged for five years, almost as long as she’d been working for him.

  “At first, Ben wanted to set the date, and I didn’t want to, because I wasn’t, um, sure, I guess. And then last year, I started to think, Well, I’m turning twenty-five soon, maybe we should set a date, right? So I brought it up with Ben, and that’s when we had the engagement party. But then, he started to hem and haw, and finally, I said, ‘What’s the problem?’ And he said that he didn’t understand why I didn’t want to get married for so long and all of a sudden I do. And then he said I’d waited so long that now he was the one who wasn’t sure about me. I guess I started to cry. I mean, in some ways, I didn’t care and maybe I even knew I had it coming, but I guess it still hurt me.”