Unraveling

by Owen Thomas

  “…all you have to do is look at the new patterns in alumni fundraising…”

  Hollis pursed his lips and nodded, more to himself and this silent assessment than anything David was saying. He took a drink of the Shiraz, looking past David into the reflection of the dark windows at the party mixing and shifting behind him.

  It was not difficult to find her.

  The yellow stood out clearly against the dark glass. She was talking to Susan and to Bill Swensen who had emerged from the kitchen for hors d’oeuvres. Something about her made him smile. Something about her energized him, stripping away years with a single look. Hollis thought of the surprise he had in store for her tonight and he felt an undisciplined, gleeful flutter in his chest.

  As if by telepathy, Bethany looked up and beyond Bill and Susan and in Hollis’ direction. Unable to help himself, Hollis turned to look at her and when Bethany waved, he raised his glass in return. Her wave prompted Bill and Susan to turn and look at Hollis standing with David by the windows. Dr. Swensen waved uncertainly as though Hollis’ gesture had been meant for him, an inexplicable follow-up to their previous long-distance toast. Susan turned abruptly and pushed off into the kitchen.

  “Have you met Bethany?” he interrupted, as David was saying something about university preoccupation with publishing rather than actually teaching.

  “What? Who?”

  “Bethany.” Hollis pointed.

  “Oh, yeah. Mom introduced us.”

  “What do you think?”

  “About what?”

  “About Bethany.”

  “Uh… very nice. Cute. What, are trying to set me up? I’ve got a girlfriend, dad.”

  “I’m not trying to set you up. I just wondered what your impression was.”

  “Seems sweet. Nice. Cute. She’s got this Mike O’Donnell thing, though.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, she seems to really, I don’t know, like the guy.”

  “So?”

  “Ever heard Mike O’Donnell, dad?”

  “No. I don’t really pay much mind to popular culture. I’d rather read than watch television. I find it’s mostly junk.”

  “O’Donnell’s like the poster child for irritable bowel syndrome.”

  “Mmm. If you say so. I wouldn’t know.” Hollis rotated his shoulders back towards the hors d’oeuvres. “She’s got an undergraduate degree from Columbia and she looking for an MBA program. Very smart. Very mature for her age.”

  “So, you’re playing tour guide I understand.”

  “MmmHmm. Well, showing her around. Introducing her to people she needs to meet in banking and business circles and at the university level. Yes. Her father is a close friend of mine; a very powerful figure in Japanese banking. A good friend of mine. Yes, Akahito. My friend. He asked me to look out for her.”

  “Really? Japanese?”

  “MmmHmm.”

  “Bethany?” David pointed to the vision in yellow.

  “MmmHmm.”

  “Doesn’t sound Japanese to me, Dad.”

  “Her real name is Suki Takada. Her mother was American.”

  “Ahhh.”

  “She died in a very bad boat fire when Bethany was young.”

  “Young?”

  “Younger.”

  “Dad…” David looked back out the window for a moment as if silently debating something or collecting his thoughts. “I need… I’m having… maybe later we can talk.”

  Hollis looked down at his son, smiling knowingly and then scrunching the smile up into an amused pursing of lips. David averted his eyes, looking out at Ben’s shadow moving like a ghost in the pale trapezoid of light. Hollis knew the tone and the look of need in his children. He understood what came next and he would not make David say it. He knew it was humiliating for David to have to ask, and perhaps it should have been.

  But Hollis was too compassionate to make his son endure having to ask for help. Hollis was a good father, whatever the disappointments and whatever the differences. He could, if he wished, use this moment to teach a school of hard knocks lesson about the benefits of living up to one’s potential and the inconveniences that come with settling in life. Lots of fathers would simply decline to participate in these tired exercises of enablement. But Hollis took pride in being as generous as he was wise. If he could not offer David wisdom, then he could at least offer him money.

  “You live in a nice place for a high school history teacher, David. Once we get the mortgage paid off it will be a good investment for you.”

  “Dad, no, that’s not…”

  “And I saw your car out on the street.”

  “Oh.”

  “You know, vandalism like that doesn’t happen in university parking lots.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Did they catch them?”

  “No.”

  “Any idea why they did it?”

  “Uh, no. No idea. It’s what vandals do, I guess.”

  “Well, a new paint job will set you back. That and a mortgage payment… hmm… let’s say about two thousand. Will that help?”

  David’s shoulders slumped and he looked out the window again. Hollis clapped him on the side of the neck and shook him.

  “Don’t worry about it, David. I’m happy to do it. If… oh, here we go, your mother’s banging a glass. This will be interesting.”

  Hollis gave his son another squeeze, refreshed his Shiraz and drifted casually back towards Bethany and the others. Susan was in the center of the room tapping a wine glass with a crab fork.

  “Can I get everyone’s attention? Thank you. It’s almost 7:00, so let me just say a few words before we call Tilly. And then we can eat dinner. So… I’m not very good at making speeches, I guess. Hollis is much better at that sort of thing than I am.”

  Mikki Dobbs leaned over and pinched Hollis on the elbow, as if to personally deliver the compliment. Hollis winked and waved her off.

  “Don’t you listen to that.” It was a playfully indignant comment coming from a short, solid woman named Gayle, a friend of Susan’s from the Fingerhut campaign. “She’s a great speaker. You’re wonderful, Susan.” She had short black hair and a tattoo of some sort, the red tip of which was visible at the back of her wrist and disappearing up her sleeve. She wore khaki’s and a sport coat that hung strangely over her breasts.

  “Oh, now, Gayle…” Susan protested.

  “No, Susan, seriously. Remember Columbus? Remember…”

  Gayle was an interloper among this gathering of old friends, and Hollis didn’t like her much. He was surprised that Susan could not have anticipated that Gayle would be an awkward fit. That she would bring an element of … discomfort to the occasion. It wasn’t just that she was a lesbian, although that fact was abundantly clear. No, it was more that she was just an outsider and that she brought an outside energy; a discordant chi. She had no connection to the family and certainly no connection to his daughter.

  Gayle launched into a version of the Susan-makes-a-speech-at-the-Fingerhut-rally that Hollis had heard a dozen times, mostly from Susan herself, but also from a few other people he knew who were at the rally. The truth was, and Susan knew this, most of Hollis’ friends and colleagues would never have been caught dead at a Fingerhut rally. Hollis had voted for Voinovich without any hesitation. He made no bones about not having much respect for Eric Fingerhut. But he had respected his wife’s choice in the matter. It had, in fact, been Hollis’ idea that if she was really so restless in life and so desperate to ‘make a difference in the world’ outside her own home, then she should go to work for a political campaign. Of course, Hollis had no idea that she would have picked that campaign or that she would find such passion in the plight of poor, beleaguered Ohio homosexuals. But he had respected her choice just the same.

  Hollis understood that the Columbus rally speech – it was hardly a speech, more like a couple of remarks – whatever it was, had been a defining moment for his wife. He understood that public speaking
did not come easy for her and that this historic moment in the fevered pitch of a senate campaign was one that she liked to remember.

  He got that.

  But at some point a moment can become so tattered in the retelling that it ceases to have any meaning, like saying a common word – like sky or ball or kumquat – over and over and over again until it is simply a hollow, worthless sound.

  Gayle was making a needless production of the story, he thought to himself, simultaneously surmising that Susan must have felt the same way because she squirmed uncomfortably as she listened, shifting her weight back and forth from one foot to the other and pulling at the cuffs of her blouse as though they were too short to cover her wrists. Susan often did this when she was uncomfortable. Hollis watched her awkward agitation swell into a constant stream of these micro-mannerisms that only he could detect, until Susan finally attempted to shut the story down.

  “Oh, Gayle, really, I…” Susan was holding up her hands and shaking her head, trying to wave her off.

  Hollis felt just a little pleased that his wife was finally realizing that inviting Gayle had been a mistake. Susan, he thought to himself, had been silently fidgeting and shifting her way through to the end of the Fingerhut campaign rally story in her own mind. She has realized that the power to the homosexuals theme just may not play so well in what, except for maybe Rhonda and Peaches, was a very conservative group. Gayle hesitated, but Mikki Dobbs egged her on, encouraging her to finish.

  “Mikki, it’s really not important,” said Susan. “It was just sort of a spur of the moment thing. Hollis hates this story.”

  “No, Susan. I don’t hate the story.” Hollis spoke out, waving her away with the sweep of his hand. “You made a fine little speech.”

  He did not mean to be insulting or dismissive, but the recriminating laughter from Jude Dobbs, who was standing directly behind him, confirmed his misstep, as did Susan’s tone, suddenly sharper and challenging.

  “Well… it’s not like you were actually there.”

  “I heard all about it. Believe me.”

  “You just hated Fingerhut.”

  “I didn’t hate Fingerhut.”

  “You didn’t vote for him though.” Hollis felt the room around him shifting and settling into an uncomfortable silence, the guests uncertain whether their hosts were playing or actually arguing.

  “Lots of people didn’t vote for him. It’s not the same thing as hating. I said I didn’t respect him.”

  “You said you hated him.”

  “No, Susan. I …”

  “You did.”

  “No…”

  “Oh, Hollis. You did. You did.” She pointed into the dining room, still smiling, ever the hostess, but obviously angry. “Sitting right over there at that table.” She turned to Gayle and then to Rhonda. “He did. He said he hated Eric Fingerhut. David heard it, didn’t you, David?”

  His son tried to blend into the windowsill. “Leave me out of this, Mom.”

  “Susan, maybe we should just make the call.” Hollis kept his voice calm and level, tapping the face of his watch with a finger, hoping to move things along to the appointed telephonic rendezvous. Tap, tap, tap. Punctuality was important, even among family. It was a measure of respect. Tap, tap.

  “Hollis…” Susan’s eyes hardened sharply and she gave him a look that he understood all too well; a look that knew years upon years of collision between his penchant for promptness and her over-sensitivity to being pushed; between his unstoppable force and her immovable object. They each knew the signs of impending collision: from him, a tapping of the watch followed by a, what’s it gonna be lift of the eyebrows; from her, a steely look and tightly-set jaw followed by a kind of childish obstinacy particularly designed to twist the knife into the heart of his concern for the passage of time. Susan had long since incorporated the art of the calculated slow-down into her arsenal of passive-aggressive weaponry. The more he insisted that time was of the essence, the less possible it was for her to actually be on time.

  Tap, tap, tap.

  The reason that, on any given occasion, time might be of the essence – wedding, funeral, movie, dinner engagement, airline reservations – was immaterial. The more insistently Hollis tapped the face of his watch and raised his eyebrows, indicating that she was in grave danger of offending Bulova, the Swiss god of temporal precision, the more Susan resisted being on time. Never overtly, of course. Never, I don’t want to be on time, or I don’t care if we’re late or I want to be uncooperative. That sort of blunt honesty would have sucked all of the artistry out of it. Instead, she was fond of busily attending to a list of prerequisite tasks that seemed to grow out of nowhere, each task taking much longer than one would normally be inclined to expect. The calculated slowdown – as he waited tensely by the door or in the car or at the dining room table with his keys in his hand – involved Susan tending to any number of tasks that she cunningly understood were outside his normal province of concern and, therefore, her job – checking the oven, putting away the dishes, watering the flowers, tending to the science of clothing management. It was always something. And the more Hollis indicated his concern about the passage and essence of time, the more doggedly Susan concerned herself with a growing checklist of needless obstruction.

  Tap, tap, tap.

  On more than a few occasions, Hollis’ response to Susan’s passive recalcitrance was to simply get in his car and leave to wherever they were supposed to be without her, explaining on his way out the door that he would meet her there whenever she decided to show up. Not angrily or with punitive attitude, but simply with an all-aboard, the train is now departing the station sort of tone. If he was supposed to be someplace at 7:00, then he would be there, by God, with or without her. On each such occasion, Hollis had foolishly believed that he could teach Susan a lesson about the extent to which he was willing to sacrifice his own reputation and peace of mind for such games.

  But the lessons had never taken and Susan’s anger had grown and accumulated and hardened into an intractable resentment that reappeared every time Hollis did the tempest fugit tap.

  Tap, tap, tap.

  And since the lessons to be learned from these experiences had never taken, Hollis continued to tap his watch. They stared at each other across their crowded and suddenly quiet living room. He raised his eyebrows to offset the hardening of her mouth.

  “Susan, we are going to be late if we don’t…”

  “Hollis,” she cut him off abruptly and extended a hand in the direction of her party-crashing friend, “Gayle was talking.”

  “Yes, Hollis. Please?” It was Bethany, suddenly behind him pulling on his sleeve. “Let Gayle tell the story. I want to hear. Finish your story Gayle.”

  “Thank you… uh…” stammered the lesbian interloper.

  “Bethany. Sorry, I’m the stranger in the room.”

  “Nice to meet you Bethany,” said Gayle.

  “I guess that’s my fault,” Hollis said. “I should have…”

  “Oh, no, Hollis. That’s okay.” Bethany beamed at him, squeezing his forearm with her perfectly slender feminine fingers. The rising tension he had felt only seconds earlier was suddenly gone, replaced by an abiding, self-satisfied calm, as if her touch had wicked away a poison in his veins or neutralized some negative electrical charge.

  “No, I should have introduced you to everyone earlier,” Hollis insisted, smiling. Then, inclining his chin to his guests and addressing them as one, “This is Bethany.”

  He felt strangely proud to introduce her, one by one, to these friends of his. Not, he assured himself, proud in the way one might feel showing off a trophy wife or an association with celebrity, which would have been beneath him. Rather, he thought, proud in the way a mentor might feel unveiling a protégé. This occasion, and certainly the surprise occasion that was to follow Tilly’s party, was a kind of debut for Bethany; an introduction to society. Not Hollis’ society, exactly, for he understood that he was more a society-of-one.
But, nevertheless, it was a society over which Hollis had great influence; a society from which he had evolved and through which he was, now, at last, able to move like a hot knife through butter with an almost preternatural ease. They respected him. They trusted his judgment. They would take a keen interest in Bethany precisely because, and only because, it was Hollis with whom she was associated. It was Hollis who had found her. Not in a Henry Higgins-Eliza Doolittle sort of way. Bethany was already very much the silken purse. But her magnetism, her radiance, her genuine ways, her soft-spoken charm were all, in a way, to his credit; at least in the eyes of those who already knew him to be an excellent judge of character.

  After the introductions, his scrabble with Susan continued – tap, tap, tap – but in form only. Bethany beamed beside him, now formally a part of his world, and the tension of old battles was fully vanquished. Hollis was content even to hear Gayle finish the story of Susan’s thirty seconds as a strident gay activist. Gayle’s falsely inspiring, fist-in-the air denouement was followed by a lack-luster, uncomfortably polite response from a room full of Voinovich supporters, which, Hollis was not ashamed to admit, secretly pleased him. Susan should have listened, he thought as he wrangled the new telephone into position on the living room floor. She should have thought it through.

  “Hello?”

  “Tilly? This is Dad.”

  “Oh… dad? I was expecting…”

  His daughter had that disoriented, slightly offended sound to her voice when she answered the phone. As though he had caught her in the middle of realizing that the world was not as she had expected. Fundamental assumptions were cracking at the foundations. But then, disillusionment had always been Tilly’s favorite state of mind; she dressed it like a doll or a mannequin in shades of anger or depression or ennui or, occasionally, a high-spirited in spite of it all type of attitude.