Unraveling

by Owen Thomas

  I am saved by Peaches Pinkle who has just arrived with her husband, Harris. As I shake Harris’ hand, Peaches gives me a hug and tells me I’m looking smart – you always looks so smart David; you and Tilly are the smartest, best lookin’ kids I’ve ever seen. Then she adds without taking a breath, now where might an old woman get a glass of scotch? I take her to the kitchen, leaving Rhonda with Harris.

  There is no scotch. I refresh my wine and offer a glass to Peaches, but she is not having any and continues to scrutinize the liquor cabinet with the same abject desperation of a teenager leaning on an open refrigerator door.

  Jude Dobbs appears from behind with a clap on my shoulder. He is very tan and his hair is thinning and he is sporting a pair of sunglasses that hang outside his shirt pocket, pulling the thin cream silk out and down, like his chest is in the process of emptying itself into a single odd-shaped breast.

  Jude, I see, has discovered green-tinted contacts. I half-expect him to meow; which might have been oddly refreshing. Instead we talk about how well I have been, and how good I look and how I am taller than he remembers and how busy I have been, how truly wonderfully terrific and great I have been lately given the long stretch of nice weather – amazing weather, incredible with the sun and all – and the unquestionable promise of the Buckeyes this year and of how he and Mikki have been great and wonderful and terrific and very busy and enjoying the great weather we have been having and how they have bought some land up at Christopher Lake and how they are looking into buying a boat and how he wants to talk to my father about that and where is my father anyway, and how my mother looks great as usual, and…

  I am saved by Dr. Swensen, who waves to me from the dining room, drawing me out of the single-breasted, brain-sucking feline vortex of Jude Dobbs who, as I step sideways from the kitchen, I can hear pouncing on Peaches. “Peaches, ol gal! What’r you, alphabetizing the entire liquor cabinet?”

  Swensen is a pleasant relief. We talk about Tilly, mostly, about how he knew from the first moments of her life that she would amount to something; about how thoughtful it was of my parents to include him and Dana in this celebration. We talk about Peppermint Grove and about how convincing Tilly is as Katie Finn and how quickly she is maturing, recalling her earlier movies with that high, silly laugh.

  He asks about school and I give him the mixed review version: the kids are great, but are challenging; the administration is awful, but has its moments. I decide to leave out the part about being suspended and arrested and under suspicion for the still theoretical, but entirely possible if not anticipated, rape and murder of a student. What is he to do with such details? What am I to do with such details?

  My work turns to his work and I ask about his practice, which I realize almost instantly is a bad move. He has been sued. Not a big deal, he says. Part of the job, he says. But still. He wants to talk about tort reform. He wants to talk about trial lawyers and the litigious entitlement culture.

  “There needs to be some serious legislation, David. Bush needs to move this up on his agenda. He needs to spend some of that political capital. I’m all for the Iraq effort, but there’s a war going on right here at home.”

  I check out of the conversation, putting my head-nodding on autopilot.

  Mae has not arrived and I am convinced she is not coming. I am simultaneously distressed and relieved. Not coming to the party would mean that dinner together and the laughing and the sex had not been a reconciliation. It would mean she is, at best, still conflicted. It could even mean that Mae has sampled the prospect of reconciliation and has concluded that she is not at all interested. That thought is awful. Depressing. Maybe even devastating. It is confirmation of my lot in life and the state of my existence. When I am not overcome with angst about whether Mae will suddenly step through the front door, I am filled with a oddly calm assurance that all is as it was ever intended for me.

  Past Dr. Swensen’s shoulder, I can see the front door open. I am instantly flooded with a bright hope, reconfiguring my worth and re-plotting my life’s trajectory. I am now sheepishly amused at my former ambivalence and my tendency to shrink from fortune.

  But it is not Mae. It is my father and a woman in yellow I do not know. My mother joins them in the foyer and pantomimes through the gracious hostess, welcome to our home routine. My mood dims again into a muddy, fatalistic mixture of angst and disappointment and inexplicable relief.

  I tune back in. Dr. Swensen is now on to the issue of taxes and tax relief and the dangers of creeping economic disincentive that will stifle production.

  “The entitlement culture is cutting its own throat, David, because eventually, those in the world who produce will eventually throw up their hands and stop producing and there will be nothing left to be entitled to.”

  He wants to know if I have read Atlas Shrugged.

  I am saved by a woman in a sport coat trying to squeeze behind me to get to the crab cakes. She smiles at me seriously and tells me her name is Gayle as she stretches for the table. A tattoo of something sinuous emerges from the cuff of her sleeve, but I cannot make it out – red trimmed in blue, but the blue has not known its place and the red has not held the line and the blue has made atomized inland incursions over its twisting borders into foreign epidermal plains, making the red mottled and resentful.

  I introduce myself, and then Dr. Swensen and she brightens when she learns that I am my mother’s son. She is a friend from the Fingerhut campaign, she tells me. She calls my mother a real gutsy lady with a lot of class. Dr. Swensen and I emphatically agree but I have absolutely no idea what I mean by my agreement.

  “If anyone can get me through the rest of the Voinovich and Bush administrations,” Gayle says, coming down hard and decisively on the crab cake, “it’s gonna be your mother.”

  She chews at us and we watch her in silence for an awkward moment.

  “That may be,” says Dr. Swensen, finally, “but I think you may be a little out of step with the country about Bush. Give his second term a chance.” He smiles encouragingly. “You might be surprised.”

  “I’m getting tired of the Bush surprises, thank you,” she says.

  “I’m not saying he’s perfect, mind you. There’s plenty in this country that needs attention. I was just telling David that what we really need is some serious tax reform with attention to the economic incentives that…”

  I am saved by my mother, suddenly at my side with a hand on my shoulder.

  “David, I’d like to introduce you to someone.” She gestures to the beaming figure in yellow standing next to her. “This is Bethany Koan. A friend of your father’s – well, the daughter of a friend of your father’s – visiting from California.”

  “New York, actually,” says Bethany, shaking my hand. “I’m from California, but I go to school in New York.”

  “What school?”

  “Columbia,” she says.

  “Good school.”

  “I guess.” She shrugs as though it really is no big deal. My mother disappears into the kitchen with an exclamation about something still in the oven.

  “What brings you to Ohio?” I ask, glancing hopefully at the front door for Mae.

  “I’m looking at business schools.”

  “You’re leaving New York … to come to Ohio … for business school?”

  “Crazy?”

  “A little backwards, yeah. An MBA from Columbia is nothing to sneeze at.”

  “I’m tired of New York. I’d like to settle in someplace quieter. More wholesome. Less, you know… New York. Hollis has been really great about showing me around. He’s such a sweet man.”

  “Well, I think sweet may be debatable, but you sure found the right guy. He knows just about everyone in the state. He can open a door or two for you in Ohio.”

  “Maybe Ohio, maybe not. I’m off to Michigan next. Then Illinois. Then Texas…”

  “Texas?”

  “Then to California. Yeah. Anyplace but New York.”

  “Well, I gu
ess you can’t get much more wholesome than California.”

  “Hey now, some parts of California can still do wholesome.”

  “Yeah, I guess L.A. can do wholesome in a sexy, violent, depraved sorta way.”

  “There’s more to California than L.A.”

  “It’s all Hollywood, if you ask me.”

  “Hollywood!” She grabs my forearm and squeezes it like the restraining bar of a roller coaster car. “I cannot believe your sister is Tilly Johns. I’m still reeling.”

  “Yeah, so are we. We thought she was a flight attendant.”

  “No way.”

  “Yeah. Went to a movie one night and there she was. Forty feet tall.”

  She is staring at me with her mouth slightly open, frozen as she reads my face and processes my words. Not real bright, this one.

  “That’s not true,” she says smiling as her cheeks redden.

  “You’re right. I actually saw her first movie on a plane so she was like only about, oh, five inches or so.” I show her what five inches looks like between my fingers.

  She is laughing hard now, eyes closed, knees bending. I see that I have mistaken guileless innocence for low intelligence. Either that or the whole thing is a put-on. God. Am I so cynical now, so suspicious, so bitter that I cannot appreciate genuine, trusting, unsullied innocence when it introduces itself? Even if it is lovely and wearing yellow?

  She is still laughing.

  Yes. I am just that cynical.

  When she has pulled herself together, she dabs her eyes with the back of her hand and says, “I see a good sense of humor runs in the family.”

  “Oh, you should be here for Christmas around the tree. We’re a riot.”

  “Does your sister come home for Christmas?”

  “Not if she can help it.”

  “She’s probably really busy with her career and all. Gosh. Yeah, that’s true. I’m sure she’d come home if she could.”

  It is a kind assumption that I choose not to correct. Why bring the truth into it? After all, the entire evening is deliberately at odds with reality. Even tonight, I am not so much of an asshole as to start maliciously spreading the truth. Especially to this Bethany person, who, in the company of my father, might have been told just about anything. I’ll not be the one to shatter pleasant illusions about my family. I am fairly certain that the motto inscribed in elaborately scripted Latin, like a cursive rainbow over the Johns’ family crest – which is probably two ferocious lions on either side of an English commode – must be something like Preserve the Fiction.

  She is holding small sheets of paper and a pen, which she waves at me smiling. “I’m supposed to write a short review of Peppermint Grove.”

  “Ah yes.”

  “Have you done yours?”

  “Yeah, that’s just not gonna happen.”

  “You didn’t like it?”

  “The movie? Oh it was great. And she’s great in it.”

  “Then why…”

  “Because secretly Tilly’ll hate this little exercise and because I love her and because I have a solemn obligation as her sibling to abstain from lending any encouragement to those ideas that will make Tilly want to pull her hair out of her head.”

  “Really?”

  “Her hair is very important to her.”

  “Oh….” She swats in the direction of my chest. “I can’t tell if you’re serious or if you’re joking.”

  “I never joke.” I hold up my right hand as though I am being sworn. She is definitely cute and I am definitely performing. I take another furtive look at the door.

  “You’re swearing on a glass of wine.”

  “What else? The Bible? The Constitution? Never betray a glass of wine, that’s what I always say.”

  “No, I don’t think so, David. That’s not you.”

  “Your right. That’s my father’s line.”

  “I know that’s not true.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Yes. I happen to know that your father is devoted to moderation in all things.”

  “You’ve learned that, have you?”

  “Yes. He is a very wise man. Very principled. Very… oh, spiritual. And very knowledgeable. He knows, like, everything. I have been so impressed with him.”

  “He knows everyone, maybe. But not everything.”

  “Well,” she laughs and points at me with her pen, “he doesn’t know who Mike O’Donnell is. I found that out the other day.”

  “Not surprised. He’s not a real big popular culture kind of guy. Don’t tell me you’re an O’Donnell fan.”

  “I met him once.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that. You okay?”

  “He was really sweet.”

  “Now who’s the jokester?”

  “No really. He did a book signing at NYU last year and I went.”

  “You actually purchased a …”

  “Didn’t have to. He gave me one and autographed it for me. I didn’t even make it through the line. There were so many people and eventually he stopped signing and everyone left. And so I thought, well that was that, and talked to some friends for a while and then headed out to the parking lot, and I turn around and there’s Mike O’Donnell coming my direction. And he says hello, like he was just a normal person.”

  “Nice trick.”

  “No, he was really sweet and he gave me a copy of the book …”

  “What book?”

  “His novel. Those Who Traipse.”

  “Oh, sheesh.”

  “Well, yeah, I know, but it was the only book he actually had on him. He gave it to me and asked where he could get a good cup of coffee.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “No, really. We went to this bistro place and … it was just a really nice time.”

  “You went on a date with Mike O’Donnell?”

  “It wasn’t a date.” She swats at me again. “It was coffee. It was … I don’t know…forty-five minutes. Maybe an hour. He signed the book.”

  “What did you talk about?”

  “Mostly the sort of life he leads, the people he knows. What it’s like arranging an interview with the President. He has a lot of responsibility and a lot of pressure.”

  “The President.”

  “No. Mike O’Donnell.”

  “Ah.”

  “We talked about how he needs to work on his anger.”

  “Really.”

  “He said he needs to stop letting people who hate this country keep pushing his buttons. He said getting angry only encourages them.”

  “Them … the America bashers.”

  “Right. You know he’ll be in Cincinnati tomorrow night?”

  “Oh?”

  “Yes. Then Columbus. He did this one broadcast right after the election…”

  I am saved by my mother, who reemerges from the kitchen with a hot mitt.

  “Where is my… there it is.” She grabs a glass of wine from the table and does a quick survey of the hors d’oeuvres and then of the human assemblage in the living room beyond as she takes a drink. “Is Mae here, yet?”

  “Mom…”

  “Well…she’ll be here. She will. David, you leave Bethany alone, now, she needs to write her review before we call Tilly. You can sit right over here, dear.”

  “Oh! Okay!” she says smiling like an eight year old on Christmas morning. “I’ll tell you later, David.”

  “Duty calls,” I say, trying for that gracious in disappointment tone as she takes her leave. I can sense my mother is not done with me. She wants to vent some more about dad’s lack of assistance with the party, or she wants to send me around the room with bottles of wine or to chat up someone in need of conversation.

  “David…” she says, having cleared a place for Bethany at the table.

  “Back in a sec, Mom.” I wriggle free and head across the living room with a determined step suggesting a purpose I do not have. It is enough to escape interception. I make it to the back window and the relative peace of the
area behind the couch. I think of laying down right here, simply disappearing behind the sofa.

  The back yard is dark and moody except for a pond of light spilling onto the lawn from Ben’s window – enough light to make out the cotoneasters, but not enough to illuminate the difference between rescue and abduction. Ben is there, his shadow swimming in the pale pool. He is dancing and swaying, his arms over his head, spinning and bending. It is the perfect antidote to everything I am feeling. I fantasize about abducting him again. Off for ice cream or maybe bowling or another movie. Of course, I would never be forgiven and this makes the fantasy even more tantalizing.

  I get out the front door undetected and make it around the back of the house, same as before. The window is unlocked and Ben is ecstatic to see me, but he knows this time to be quiet and he is dressed and his shoes are on and he is out the window and we are off, running in the shadows and hunching low to stay beneath the windows. He pauses when I pause, he runs when I run. Quiet as mice all the way.

  But my fantasy from behind the couch makes it only as far as my despoiled Civic at the end of the driveway. It ruins things – like a projector bulb melting through celluloid – to imagine buckling Ben into the rapist-mobile, or to think of people pulling up to us at stop lights and reading that word – RAPIST – beneath the window that frames my brother in all of his innocent exuberance. I imagine that wherever we go, Detective North will be half a block behind, drinking coffee from a paper cup or obsessively grinding gum between his teeth or smoking or grunting unintelligible phrases into his radio speaker or whatever else staked-out cops do with themselves. And because he is bored and frustrated, North will pull me over – he will hit his lights and pump his siren and pull me over with my brother in the car – and he will ask me to please step out of the vehicle so that he can follow me back to his car and have a brief, terse conversation about something meaningless – just want you to know, Mr. Johns, that we still have no sign of Brittany Kline, who did not show for her recital, and we’re talking to everyone at the school because the department has made this case a top priority – just to remind me that I am under suspicion and that he is watching; just to make sure I do not ever relax about Brittany Kline, maybe just to rattle me up a little as my brother sits in the passenger seat and fidgets with his hands until he wants to get out and come find me and see what I am doing in a police car and North steps out of the car and points and barks at him, at Ben, my brother, to Please, sir, remain in the vehicle and that is the moment – the moment North’s voice, in little invisible packets of concussed air, sails through the night along some crowded Columbus boulevard, and touches the outer cochlea of my brother’s ear, that I will have to unclip the shotgun from North’s dashboard and…