by Nell Zink
“You were a baby the last time we saw you,” Lee said. “Don’t be one now.”
“Whoa,” Karen said.
“When you’re older, you’ll see there’s more to life than the future,” he added. “Byrdie has pent-up negative emotions. If he can’t let them out, they’ll spoil his dinner. Drink up your champagne and let us talk.”
“What about my pent-up joy and happiness?” Karen protested. “I mean it! You could all just be happy for me. If everybody would stop blaming each other and just think about me for a second, we’d all be fine!”
Lee laughed. “Sorry,” he said. “You’re just like a woman. It’s something your mother never mastered.”
“It’s not fair! I’m the one who got the biggest shock today. Everybody here knew what was going on but me.”
“Knowing just made it worse,” Byrdie said. At that Meg exploded in helpless sobbing.
“Stop torturing us!” Karen said. “You think it was any fun? You think she wanted to go on the lam? We didn’t even have heat or running water! We had possums coming in the house!” She looked at Lee accusingly, and her eyes narrowed to a squint.
“And whose fault was that,” he said. “Possums in the house.”
“Is this what family dinners are like?” Karen wailed to no one in particular.
“You’re asking me?” Byrdie said. “How am I supposed to know?”
“It’s awful! It’s perverted! Mom, help me!” she begged, but Meg was too busy crying. When she touched her mother’s arm, Meg pushed her away, covering her face.
Karen eyed the door, longing to escape. She wanted Temple. But she also wanted the truth, not in manageable portions but now, and not as information but as experience. The situation was unbearably formal and tense and she was alone, but the formality and the tension, and even her being alone: They all might be integral parts of the truth. There was no way to find out but pay attention and wait. She let Lee refill her glass.
He leaned back, folding his arms, and said, “Now listen, Peg, it’s true that most of the time I was ready to shoot you on sight. I wanted Mireille back more than anything in the world. Mickey, darling. I love you. I wanted you back so bad. I paid every spare dime I had to private eyes to look for you. They told me you were dead. Because it never crossed anybody’s mind that your mother would be so fucking afraid of me she’d go underground, refuse to cross state lines, live under an assumed name in a shack, never go to college or get a job, and let you turn into this undereducated, underfed—you know what I mean—physical and intellectual pygmy. Like I was the Manson family!”
Karen stared. She had never imagined a father like this. A large, strong creature with an emotional hold over them all and no gears except overdrive. It went way beyond Anne Sexton, deep into Sylvia Plath territory. Yet her mother’s alliance with this animal had been long and voluntary. She looked at Meg.
“You did say you’d have me committed,” Meg said, straightening up in her seat. “And you’re still an asshole.”
“She killed my car,” Lee explained to his children.
“I remember,” Byrdie said. “She drove it right into the lake. And then she stole her own car, and we got to borrow Grandma’s Lincoln.”
“But why on earth are you still in Virginia?” Lee asked. “You could have gone to the Frankfurt School of dramatic arts, like you were always saying.”
“The swamp fox,” Meg sniffled. “There’s no better place to go to ground than in a swamp. It was a foxhunting thing, in your honor.”
“It’s a Revolutionary War thing.”
“In New York I couldn’t have thrown a rock without hitting some friend of yours. You would have found me in three days.” Meg hung her head, thinking it might have been proper to commit her after all. What had been crazier—marrying Lee, or leaving him? “I don’t remember why I did any of it,” she added. “But I must have been very unhappy.”
“Well, you did marry a founding member of NAMBLA,” Byrdie said.
“I beg to differ!” Lee said.
“Who seduces baby dykes for kicks,” Meg added.
Lee’s protests were drowned out by Karen’s sudden squealing. “Get out of here! You’re gay?” She threw herself on her mother and hugged her with vehemence. “Poor Mom! That explains so much! It explains everything!”
“Don’t feel sorry for me.” Meg laughed, sitting up straight and patting Karen’s hair. “It’s not a sickness.”
“Nor does it explain a goddamn thing,” Lee remarked.
Meg glared at him. “So I’ve wasted half my life,” she told her daughter. “So what? I still have you, and my son back. I even have a way hap girlfriend. Before, I went around feeling angry, like I was the victim. Now I feel ecstatic, but so guilty I could kill myself.” She wiped her eyes and grinned, and Byrdie shook his head.
“Girlfriend? Where’d you meet her?” Karen asked eagerly.
“At the bait shop. I’ll introduce you. She’s spending next semester in Hampton on sabbatical, and then I’ll probably move with her to New York.”
“Dykes, always with the moving van,” Lee remarked.
“Dad, you are such a fucking bitch,” Byrdie said.
“Are you really a pederast?” Karen asked.
“I don’t go out loaded for bear. Your mother is a case in point. I’d say there’s a difference between her and pederasty.”
“Well, that’s something,” Karen said.
Meg tried her champagne and said, “Aw, shit. I forgot about this stuff.”
To everyone’s surprise, Karen stood up at her place at the table. “So I’m just wondering,” she said. “Is anybody here truly unhappy?”
“What are you doing?” Lee said.
“I mean, this isn’t easy, but none of us is sad to be here. Right?”
“Sorry to disappoint you, but me,” Byrdie said, raising his hand. “I think I have whiplash of the brain. I want to spend the next month in Florida playing golf with Grandpa and pretend I never saw you. But first I want to talk to you and Mom for a week without Dad around.”
“There’s no rush,” Meg said to Lee. “We can hang out with Byrdie first, and then you can get to know Karen.”
Karen said, “See, Mr. Fleming and Mom? Everything’s going to be fine.”
“Why are you trying to be cool with them?” Byrdie asked Karen. “They’re both insane.”
“It’s because I raised my insight to a higher power.”
Lee said to Meg in a low voice, “Where’d she get that? You want to come out as an alcoholic while you’re at it?”
Meg turned to Karen and said, “Higher power does sound awful twelve-step.”
“I mean the Sheltering Sky. It’s something Temple told me about. He’s my boyfriend.”
“It’s a novel by Paul Bowles,” Lee said.
“Really? He told me it’s that when life gets too hard, you can go up to the next level.”
“Like Pac-Man,” Byrdie said.
“No, Pac-Man is the exact opposite. In Pac-Man the higher levels are harder, so it’s like the Peter Principle in college, where if you pass a course they make you take a harder course until you flunk out. In the Sheltering Sky you go up to where things are easier. Temple says”—her voice, now grave but filled with faith and conviction, rang clearly through the room in a way that betrayed her exposure to dissenting rural churches—“that in the ancient world they believed the earth is a turtle resting on an elephant on another elephant, and then it’s elephants all the way down. So if you don’t understand things, it means you didn’t dig deep enough. That’s how science works. But society is a legal system. It goes in the other direction. If you don’t like what you’re getting, you appeal to a higher power. And the higher you go, the better off you are, like Thurgood Marshall. So that’s why I believe in my heart that it’s right that we’re back together, even if on the level of grunginess it’s a tale of sound and fury told by an idiot. When Mom said she was gay, and Dad said he married her because he got her mixe
d up with boys, and everybody’s white, that was way too complex. And there it is! You take it to the next phase.”
There was an awkward silence during which everyone drank, as though Karen had proposed a toast. “Your Temple is clearly an autodidact, but he’s not stupid,” Lee said at last.
“He’s a genius,” Meg said. “Within five minutes of finding out she’s your daughter, he asked me for her hand in marriage.”
At this announcement, Karen turned to Meg, squirming in such an ultra-excited and happy way that even Byrdie began to laugh. “Don’t laugh at me!” she cried.
“I have to admit, you know each other pretty well,” Meg said. “But you’re way too young, Karen. Did you know you’re sixteen? Your birth certificate is a fake.”
“I’m sixteen and I’m at UVA? I am so cool!”
“The age of consent is seventeen,” Lee said. “Temple could go to jail.”
“On paper I’m eighteen, and you won’t rat me out.”
“Far be it from me. Pederasts in glass houses. But I will prevent you from marrying Temple until he’s had at least four years of school. That theory of his sounds to me like Kafka in a blender with Hegel and Manichaeism.” A waiter entered the room as Byrdie began to giggle. “Appetizers, thank God.” Lee sighed. “You all are really going to like this quail.”
Later, when Karen went to the bathroom, Byrdie remarked, “You’re scoping out Temple already, you sick fuck.”
Lee replied blandly, “Mireille thinks she’s fated to marry Temple, because otherwise she’s going to have a hard time explaining to herself the advantages of growing up in a housing project.”
“I know exactly what you mean,” Meg said to Lee. “Going up a level resolves the cognitive dissonance. But if you say it to her, I literally will kill you.”
“And I’ll hold him down while you do it,” Byrdie said. “Temple is the one constant in her life.” His parents gazed at him in surprise as he pressed on. “Letting her think she has no father! Not knowing when she was born, or where she’s from, or even her name, thinking history starts and ends with Temple! Look at how you dress her! What is that thing, a nun’s habit from the dump? She calls herself his shadow!”
“That was something his mother said,” Meg said. “We thought it was funny because he’s, you know, dark.”
“You’re her mom and you make racist jokes about her?”
“I said it was his own mother! She’s black!”
“How does that make it not racist?”
Meg gulped and looked around for help.
Lee came to her aid by saying gallantly, “You just reminded me of a terrific racist joke. So Jean-Paul Sartre decides to tour the back roads of the South, and he runs out of gas at the bottom of a long hill. He takes the gas can out of the trunk and starts walking up the hill. He can see there’s a black guy at the pumps, so he yells, ‘Y’all got any gas?’ and the black guy yells, ‘Yeah!’ So Sartre keeps walking and he gets up to the top and he says, ‘I’ll take three gallons, please.’ And the black guy says, ‘Sorry, man, can’t sell you no gas today. Huis clos.’”
Byrdie wailed, “Mom! Why are you laughing?”
“Because I haven’t heard that joke in a long time.”
“You should relax, Bird Dog,” Lee said. “You’re just jealous of Temple because he got to be big brother and you didn’t.”
“That’s it,” Byrdie said. He picked up his napkin off his lap and dropped it on his plate. “I hate the both of you. I’m out of here.”
“Don’t go. Karen will be back in a second,” Meg said.
“Mom, I’m glad you weren’t around when I was growing up. I just wish Dad hadn’t been there either.”
When Karen returned, Meg was dissolved in tears with her head thrown back, and Lee was finishing Byrdie’s entrée.
“What’s wrong, Mom?”
“I’m a horrible person. I stole you away from a happy life.”
“Am I missing something? I thought Dad threatened to have you committed, so that if you stayed, we would have both grown up without you.”
Meg wiped her nose and sat up. “Good point!” she said.
“Did Byrdie leave? Why is Mr. Fleming eating his food?”
Lee said, “He got upset. He’ll be back. He’s very emotional.”
“I like him a lot,” Karen said.
“So do I,” Lee said. “He’s feeling bad because he chose to grow up with me. He’s thinking what his life could have been like if he’d gone with his mother.”
Lee expected to be called a bitch as usual. But Karen proclaimed resolutely, “It wouldn’t have made any difference. Everything that happens is predetermined. We just don’t know how until afterward.”
“What, you don’t think he had a choice?”
“He was nine years old. You and Mom had a shotgun wedding. How was any of you going to make a choice? It’s silly to think you have choices. That’s what we learned in philosophy class. It’s very liberating.”
Byrdie came back after half an hour, never having gotten farther than the bar. He had drunk two cups of coffee and calmed down a lot. “You ready to grant a general amnesty?” Lee asked him. “Mireille has us convinced we need not postpone joy.”
“You and Mom need to cop a plea,” he said.
“Guilty as charged!” Meg said. “I should have written to you.”
“That’s a start,” Byrdie said.
“I should not have terrified her into going underground,” Lee said.
“I should have told Karen the truth and let her make her own decision.”
“I should have been faithful to your mother, not that I had any choice in the matter.”
Karen and Byrdie cast bewildered looks on Lee, and Byrdie said, “What’s that got to do with anything?”
“It’s true! I screwed around on her because I couldn’t help myself. The first time, it was with a girl she was in love with. I can’t believe I was such a crumb.”
“You’re hardly displaying remorse,” Meg observed. “You’re trying to distract them and show off. What about the time you broke all my portraits of you and your pinhead friends?”
“I should have filed for divorce and paid you to stay far, far away,” Lee said. “You would have done it, too.”
“You don’t make that kind of money,” Meg said.
Byrdie said, “You know, on second thought, forget the plea bargain. Go back to pretending you’re innocent until proven guilty. I like you better that way.”
“But to find out what happened, we need a guilty plea under conditions of amnesty,” Karen said. “And then tabula rasa!”
“That’s only if you want to love me,” Meg pointed out. “Love’s optional. I wrote my parents off a long time ago. I know next to nothing about them, and I could care less. I don’t deserve any better.”
“But I want to love you,” Karen said. “You’re weirdly fascinating, plus you’re my mom.”
“If you think she’s weirdly fascinating, wait till you get to know Dad,” Byrdie said.
“They’re ganging up on us,” Lee said. “Time for another distraction.” He rang for the wine steward.
“Here’s the deal,” Karen said. “We forgive you if you promise to tell us the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Okay, Byrdie?”
“I don’t think Dad ever lied to me once,” Byrdie objected. “He never cared enough about how I feel to lie.”
“We could make him promise to be nice from now on,” Karen ventured.
“I’m in,” Lee said. “Love means never having to say you’re sorry.”
“I would take that deal,” Meg said.
“And what do we get?” Byrdie pleaded. “Nothing?”
“Parents!” Karen said.
It was weeks before Byrdie would let his guard down with Meg. But they were reconciled only a short time after he first glimpsed the beautiful squirrel sanctuary.
His hosts were aware that he had invoked his right to remain silent and refused a plea
bargain. This raised him numerous notches in their estimation above a certain immature and dangerous little sister. After all the others went to bed, Flea took Byrdie under her wing. She read his palm and told his fortune with playing cards. She led him through meadows and down to the dock. She started the boat and steered it quietly toward the center of the water where the shadows were palest. She bade him take the wheel and do full-throttle doughnuts. The stars whirled above his head and the lights of the inlet twinkled red and green. He bounced over his own wake until the cabin swayed and shuddered like the howdah on an inebriated elephant. Flea stood straight as a reed in the light of the Milky Way, hair blowing across her face, watching him. Suddenly she reached down to cut the engine. In the noise of water lapping against the agitated hull she whispered, “Save me, please, Byrdie.”
She was sweet and fragile, lithe and delicate, innocent and ignorant, with the face of an angel and primroses in her hair. In short, a person Byrdie had thought existed only in Grateful Dead lyrics and the photography of David Hamilton. Yet here she was, swaying atop her boyfriend’s cabin cruiser, demanding sex as an urgent moral imperative.
Byrdie understood. He would drop-kick Lomax into the shitcan of history. Erase the memory of Lomax from her body. It would be ignoble to refuse a service so necessary and overdue.
When he hugged her his elbows met behind her rib cage. Her waist almost fit in his hands, if he squeezed. Her teeth, her ears, everything was perfect. Her hair was dense and liquid as a child’s. Her long, tiered skirt was nearly as soft as her skin, and instead of a bra, she wore a slippery, patchouli-scented camisole. She was trembling with joy, crying on his shirt, mystified by his belt buckle. When he entered her, he noted that it was epoch-making. He had never been a matter of life or death before, or anybody’s savior. He liked it.
He liked the motion of the creaking boat, like a house trailer standing in the living waters of the lagoon. It was loud with splashing creatures, nothing like a river, so unlike Stillwater Lake. The moon began its metallic rise above the ocean. Satellites chased each other across the sky, and something in the boat beeped because the depth was less than two fathoms. Flea lay exhausted on his cashmere coat, her soft body powdered with fluids drying in the breeze. In his mind he was on the edge of dark water, preparing to dive. She was the last of her kind, endangered, like the squirrels. Of course he would save her. He would fight to win her, and work to preserve her habitat.