by Ruth Ozeki
Lloyd sat upright and waved a trembling finger at the set. “Who’s that?” His agitation was extreme. I jumped up and started looking for his nitroglycerin tablets.
“I recognize him,” Lloyd said. “I saw him yesterday.”
A caption scrolled across the screen, below Elliot’s face: ELLIOT RHODES—CYNACO CORPORATION.
“No way!” Phoenix said. He turned and stared at me.
“What?” Ocean cried, tugging at her brother’s shirt. “I don’t get it. What does it mean?”
But Lloyd got it. He twisted in his chair and stared at me. His eyes were bloodshot. His hands gripped the padded arms. Behind him, on the television, the reporter had moved on to an interview with a spokesman from the interfaith group, who was demanding that the children of Power County be protected from pornographers.
I stood there holding out Lloyd’s bottle of pills. Offering.
“Daddy?”
The word sounded like a question, and his answer was clear. As the high color drained from his face, he clutched his chest. Then he slumped forward, senseless, and toppled from his chair.
sixth
I love everybody! I love everything!
—Luther Burbank, sermon at San Francisco’s First Congregational Church
visitations
Cass studied Elliot as he talked. He sat at their kitchen table, leaning forward, and he moved his hands a lot, something she remembered from when he was her teacher and would get excited about something he was saying.
“Frankly, Will,” Elliot was saying, tapping the table, “I don’t understand your reluctance. The Potato Promotions Council is on board with this. Damage was clearly done. We just want to see you recoup your losses, and in return we’re asking you to help farmers everywhere by taking a stand to ensure that others in your position aren’t victimized by this type of criminal mischief in the future.”
Will wasn’t saying much. “If they told you they’d reimburse you,” Elliot said, “they were lying. These kids don’t have two cents to their name. We’re going to provide you with counsel and cover any court costs that the suit might incur. Of course we’d rather none of this had happened. We’d rather just ignore it, but that’s not possible now. It’s too . . . conspicuous. Too much press. Really, they brought it on themselves.”
He turned his palms upward. His hands were clean, and his nails were buffed. Will’s hands in comparison were big and hard, and now he was rubbing his face with them, up and down, like he was splashing on cold water. “What do you say, Cass?”
She thought for a while. Elliot was drumming on the table again. There was an underlying impatience in his manner that he was trying to hide, but she recognized it. She’d watched him pace back and forth in the dank room at the top of the stairs, waiting for poor Yummy to get her insides scraped out. It seemed to take forever, and he didn’t say a word for the longest time, just walked back and forth, stopping occasionally at the window to stare down over the train yard, and maybe he felt the accusation in her eyes, because finally he turned and spoke to her. “I’m really bummed about this, too, you know. I wish none of this had ever happened, but it did. I’m just trying to help out, is all.”
It was the same tone she was hearing now, bullying, ingratiating, and a little defensive, only he’d gotten better at smoothing it out.
“What’s your role in all this?” she asked. “Are you a lawyer?”
Elliot smiled, but it was more for Will’s benefit than for hers. “I work for a public relations firm that represents Cynaco,” he said. His voice was careful and good humored, like he was trying to show Will what a nice, patient guy he was to indulge the wife’s questions. “Normally I wouldn’t be involved on this level, but since this case involves old friends . . .”
“We’re not your friends,” she said.
His smile wavered. “Well, I couldn’t say. But Yummy is. She’s been keeping an eye on that gang for me.”
“She has?”
“In a manner of speaking. I was worried about her. You saw the way they moved in on the family, exploiting her father’s illness.”
“No,” Cass said. “They weren’t exploiting. They were helping.”
“They got him all riled up, and he had a heart attack. That wasn’t much help.”
“He had the heart attack when he saw you on the news. The children said he keeled right over.”
His face reddened. “I don’t think—”
Will broke in then. “Cass, that’s hearsay. And besides, it’s not the point.”
“Yes,” said Elliot.
“No,” Cass said. “It’s totally the point. He doesn’t care about Yummy or Lloyd. He never did. You weren’t here before, Will. You don’t know what happened.”
“Cassie, the question is what to do now.”
Cass turned back to Elliot. “Why do you need us? You’ve got the police and witnesses. All those church people on the bus.”
“The damages occurred on your property. The DA wouldn’t mind making an example of these kids, but he’s not eager to move forward unless you’re on board.”
“Well, then I don’t think we should press charges, Will. Our damages were so small, whether they pay us back or not, and I don’t want to have anything more to do with this business than we can help.”
She looked at Elliot critically. “I remember your history class, you know. You were an okay teacher.”
“Thanks.”
“It’s a shame you turned out like this.”
“Like what?”
“Lying to your friends. Doing whatever it is you do for that company.”
“Cynaco’s not a monster,” he said, giving Will another long-suffering smile. “Neither am I. There are millions of starving people out there. We’re just trying to feed the world.”
Will nodded. “Those plants were our private property,” he said. “It was wrong to destroy them.”
Lilith telephoned the next day from the jail where the Seeds were being held. She sounded terse and upset.
“We heard you’re pressing charges. I wouldn’t have called you, except nobody’s answering at the Fullers’.”
She went on to explain. Charmey was having cramps. She was nauseated, and her lower back hurt. She’d had some bloody discharge over the night. Lilith was afraid she might be going into labor prematurely.
“I told her we had to tell someone,” Lilith said. “She wanted you.”
“Hold on,” Cass said. “I’ll be right there.”
It took the rest of the day, but by the late afternoon Charmey had been transferred to the hospital and the doctor had given her a steroid and something to relax her and make her sleep. Cass stood by her bedside talking on the phone.
“Well, make it your jurisdiction,” she said into the receiver. “Do what you have to do, Billy, because when the doctor releases her, I’m taking her home with me.”
She hung up the phone and looked at Charmey. The girl’s face was pale, her wild mop of black hair flattened against the pillow. Cass pulled the curtain shut around her, then left the room and took the elevator to Intensive Care.
She found Lloyd in one of the cubicles that faced onto the nurses’ station. He lay there, eyes closed, arms straight at his sides. A web of tubing fed into his limbs, and a heart monitor beeped weakly above his head. On the oscilloscope screen a thin green line peaked and dipped, scrolling out the reading of his life.
Cass stood at the foot of the bed. Behind her she could hear the hospital sounds—footsteps, phones ringing, voices—but in front of her everything was still, except for the thin green beeping of the EKG. She heard Poo’s voice cry out, “Caaa, caaa!” and she turned to see Yummy hurrying past the nurses’ station with the baby clamped to her hip. He had spotted Cass and was squirming, reaching for her. Cass held out her arms.
“Thanks,” Yummy said, handing him over. “He’s sick of me carrying him, but I can’t let him loose around here.” She turned toward her father, and her shoulders slumped.
“How’s he doing?” Cass asked.
“He’s stable now, but his heart was fibrillating again last night. He’s delusional. The doctor said his brain isn’t getting enough oxygen. He keeps moaning on about seeds, how he’s got to save them, but I don’t know whether he’s talking about his and Momoko’s seeds or Melvin and the others. He knows they’re in jail.” Her voice was flat and monotonous. “The doctor’s moving him to the cardiology unit. I guess they’ll just monitor him and see what happens.”
They stood side by side at the entrance to the cubicle and watched Lloyd breathe. His body looked so frail beneath the sheet. His gown had fallen open, and they could see the electrodes that were taped to his papery skin. Even those looked painful.
“The doctor says his heart has been severely compromised,” she said. “It makes it sound like it’s someone’s fault, doesn’t it? Maybe mine. . . .”
“No,” said Cass. “It’s not your fault.”
“A compromised heart,” she said. “Kind of poetic, isn’t it?”
That night Cass started to clear out the spare room. It had been her room as a child, and when she and Will moved into her parents’ bedroom, she had started getting it ready for a baby. She had painted the walls yellow, a cheerful color that would do for a girl or a boy, and made new curtains for the windows and even refinished the dresser. But over the years the empty room got tired of waiting. The walls dulled, and slowly things began to accumulate: canning jars, a broken toaster oven, a box of clothes for the Salvation Army, Will’s college textbooks, back issues of Spudman, empty computer boxes with their molded foam inserts. At one point they had talked of converting the room into the office, but Cass couldn’t bear it, so they built the addition instead. Somewhere along the line they’d stopped calling it the baby’s room and started calling it the spare room instead.
Now she hauled all the old junk out to the car and brought it to the dump. Once the area was cleared, she saw that the walls were stained, so she went out and chose some new paint, a pale violet this time, and when the walls were done, she bought curtains and a bedspread and a rug to cover the cracked linoleum. She even bought a crib. It was sturdy and plain but would convert to a junior-size bed as the baby grew. She knew she was being stupid. The bed would never fit into the Winnebago.
Will didn’t say a word. He didn’t offer to help either.
“She’s coming to stay with us,” she had told him, standing in the doorway to the office. He just nodded. He’d been opening the mail, slitting the envelopes with his penknife.
“I stopped in on Lloyd,” she said. “They’re moving him out of Intensive Care, but he’s not looking good.”
“It’s a shame,” he said, glancing over a glossy fertilizer pamphlet before chucking it into the trash. “Those people really took advantage—”
“No. Lloyd knew what he was doing. Yummy says he’s worried sick over them.”
He swiveled his chair around toward the computer. She felt her face redden as she addressed his back. “Don’t go pretending you care about him, Will. If you did, you’d drop the charges and get them out of jail.”
She stopped by the hospital every day to check up on Charmey, afraid that the sheriff would steal her away, but the girl was there and feeling better.
“Oooh,” she said when Cass came in at lunchtime. “Look at it! They call this food! Ce n’est pas possible! I cannot feed my baby this crap!”
The lunch tray contained a bowl of tomato soup, a package of saltines, and a processed-turkey sandwich on white bread. Charmey pushed it away. She was refusing the sleeping pills and the steroids, too, but her pregnancy had stabilized, and the doctor said he would release her by the end of the week.
“And Frankie must be released quickly, too,” Charmey said. “Don’t you think? There are so many things we must do to prepare for the baby.”
Up in Cardiology, Lloyd was refusing food as well, but his condition was not improving. Yummy was cooking his favorite dishes at home, trying to tempt him, but he wouldn’t eat.
“Ugh,” he said, screwing up his face after a spoonful of her applesauce. “It’s awful!”
Her split-pea soup was too thick and salty. Her oatmeal tasted like paste. Yummy left the room, and Cass found her in the courtyard smoking.
“He’s impossible!” Yummy said. Her hand shook as she held the cigarette, and her eyes were bloodshot. The glare of the sunlight reflected off the concrete walls, and when she exhaled and squinted, Cass saw fine wrinkles lining the skin. “He’s got water in his lungs. They drain it, but it keeps filling up again. They say only a small fraction of his heart is still alive, but I don’t understand that. What does that mean?”
Cass shook her head.
“I wish they’d be specific,” Yummy said, stubbing out the butt. “A quarter? An eighth? How much heart does a person need?”
chicken
“There’s no escape,” Y said, inhaling deeply through his nose. “The physical body is a prison.”
“They can’t do this!” Frankie said, bouncing off the bars. “I mean, terrorism? What the fuck!”
“They’re afraid we’ll jump bail. Split the state.” Y closed his eyes. “The only true freedom is in your mind.”
Terrorism, pornography, obscenity, interstate trafficking, sedition. “Fucking right I’ll jump if they charge us with all that.” Frankie struck his forehead against the cinder-block wall. He wheeled around. “Oh, shit, do they have firing squads in Idaho?”
“Release the thought,” Y said, exhaling. “They’re just messing with your mind.”
But Frankie was sensitive to lockups. Closed-in places made him tense—closets, classrooms, wards, and cells. He had a problem with authority, and when he was confronted with it, a shitty little sneer rose up inside him like sap in a young tree in springtime. It curled his lip like a leaf and narrowed his eyes. A long line of foster fathers had failed to wipe it off his face. He knew he had a bad attitude, but he couldn’t control it.
“What are you laughing at?”
Frank redirected his gaze at the concrete floor. Just him and three guards in a long, empty hallway.
“What’s your name, boy?” said the guard who was doing the talking.
Frankie stared at the scuffed cinder-block wall. He tried to remember Charmey’s coaching. Think calm thoughts, she said. Think of funny things. When you laugh, they cannot make you angry. Breathe.
“Speak up,” the guard said. “I can’t hear you.” He rocked back on his heels, prodding the air with his lower jaw. The skin on his cheeks looked like a fat plucked broiler. When he elbowed his friends, his arms were like chicken wings flapping.
“Frank,” Frankie said.
“Frank what?” He had wattles that wriggled. The other two were chuck-ling behind him, and it sounded like the clucking of excited fowl, filling the empty concrete spaces. “What’s your last name, boy?”
“Perdue,” Frank said, and now the clucking was getting louder. The long corridor echoed like a ghostly battery.
“What’s that?” the guard squawked. “I didn’t hear you!”
“Frank Perdue! ” Frankie said, real loud and clear, but by now the three guards were crowing. They knew his name. They didn’t need to hear it. They hooked their thumbs in their armpits and flapped their wings. They were having a good time.
Frank sighed, massaging his wrists, which were cuffed behind him. In his mind he was already launching himself headfirst into the bulging gut of the nearest guard, and he could almost feel the release that the pain would bring as the guard’s fist made contact with his nose. He could see himself lying there in his own blood, gazing up at the bright, caged ceiling fixtures, debeaked and bathed in swimming lights.
Cock-a-doodle-doo.
His body tensed like a rocket yearning for takeoff, but he didn’t move. Didn’t head-butt the guard. Didn’t even talk back. Instead he took a deep breath and got very still inside and allowed the three men to crow and flap and shove him around.
“What’s wrong, boy? Are you chicken? ”
Then, when the big guard collared him, he allowed his body to go limp. His cheek came into contact with the edge of the man’s boot, but still he didn’t resist, didn’t even sneer. He just lay on the cold concrete, keeping his eyes closed and his mind focused inward on Charmey and the baby, and made the first of the compromises required of a father—that he be relatively intact, present, and alive.
traitor
“It’s all your fault!” Ocean yelled, throwing down her fork. She hadn’t touched her food, and it was getting cold.
“It’s true!” Phoenix said. “Nobody else wanted him here. If you hadn’t invited him, he wouldn’t have come, and Tutu Lloyd wouldn’t have had a heart attack, and the Seeds wouldn’t be in jail either!”
“That’s ridiculous.” I gave Poo another macaroni to chew on. Macaroni and cheese, and the cheese was congealing. “Geek said they wanted journalists and people from the press, so I—”
“Well, he wasn’t a journalist, was he?” Phoenix said, driving his fork into a clump of noodles. “He lied to you, and you believed him. So that makes you an idiot and a traitor—”
“I was trying to help.”
“—and a whore.” He knew he had gone too far, but he couldn’t stop. “The kids at school were right. All you care about is getting laid.”
I didn’t hit him hard. It felt like my body was obeying some hidden set of instructions and rose of its own accord, and my arm reached out and slapped him across the face. It wasn’t hard enough to do much more than redden his cheek, but it was harder than I’d ever hit anyone. Phoenix sat back in his chair. Stunned, he looked at me, then quickly turned away, the way you might turn if you caught sight of a stranger doing something disgusting.