The Easy Way Out

by Stephen McCauley

  When I mentioned all this to Sharon, she laughed. “You’re missing a crucial point here,” she said. “In fact, you’re missing the crucial point.”

  “What’s that?”

  “You’re unhappy! You aren’t getting what you want out of this relationship, and that’s what’s killing your optimism and making you bitter. And frankly, it’s probably what’s speeding Arthur’s aging process, too.”

  “I’m happy enough,” I said. “At least I think so. I’m certainly as happy as anyone else in my family.”

  “I’ll be the judge of that,” Sharon said, “after I’ve met Ryan.”

  * * *

  Arthur suggested that we have the dinner with Ryan and Sharon on the back porch, providing the mild weather held. I vetoed the idea. If Ryan caught a cold while having dinner at my apartment, my parents would never forgive me. As it was, they’d called several times to grill me with questions about what I intended to feed Ryan and why I’d invited him to my apartment all of a sudden when I hadn’t done so for several years.

  “He likes a nice healthy meal,” Rita informed me. “He can’t digest all that spicy food you live on. He’s got enough problems without adding an ulcer to it.”

  “You don’t get an ulcer from spicy food,” my father said on the extension. “You get it from constant stress and anxiety, like if you live with someone who’s always driving you up the wall.”

  “That poor slob is so upset about this divorce, he can’t take much more. Why not give him a rain check? Have him over to see the new house. By then he’ll be through with the divorce.”

  Since talking with Tony in New York, I’d been looking forward to seeing Ryan. I realized that I never spent any time with him and, in a certain way, I’d almost written him off as a hopeless case. The more I thought about it, the more likely it seemed that Sharon might be a good friend for him, encourage him to stand up for himself and, if nothing else, at least tell Elaine how he’d felt about her all the lost years of their separation.

  “Why’s that Sharon coming?” my father asked. “You’re not trying to set something up, are you?”

  “Oh, my God!” Rita cried. “Even Patrick isn’t that heartless, Jimmy. Give the kid some credit for something.”

  It was unclear to me why they were so upset about the dinner until, at the end of one conversation, my father said, “I hope you’re not planning to talk about Tony at this banquet.”

  “Tony?”

  “Remember him? Your younger brother, the one who’s getting married?”

  “I suppose his name might come up.”

  “You see, Rita, I told you,” my father said. “Didn’t I tell you? That’s what this whole thing is about. He’s trying to get everyone lined up against Loreen.”

  “And I suppose that’s my fault—is that what you’re saying?”

  “Well, you didn’t try to stop it, did you? At least I had a man-to-man talk with Ryan and told him not to go.”

  “The last time I checked, Jimmy, it would have been impossible for me to have a man-to-man talk with anyone.”

  As usually happened when they were on a conference call, they began having their own private battle. Once I had the gist of their conversation, I hung up. It was unlikely they’d notice for a good five minutes, not until my father’s strength had waned and the fight ground to a halt.

  Tony had phoned twice since our meeting in New York, to report that my parents had made five calls to him in less than a week. But instead of hammering at him about Vivian, as Ryan and I had suspected they’d do, they were trying a different tactic. They were smothering him with daily praise for Loreen, how lovely and sweet and naive she was, how eagerly she was planning for this wedding, and how many thousands of dollars’ worth of nonrefundable deposits she’d laid out thus far. The other woman had never been mentioned. Tony assured me that he’d steeled himself for an attack against Vivian, but he was totally unprepared for this assault. Every time he said Loreen’s name, his voice dropped to a whisper, almost as if he felt he was causing her greater misery by discussing her.

  “Can you imagine how desperate your parents must be to be going on like this?” he asked. “They’re in this wedding up to their necks. Who knows what they’d do if I backed out of this.”

  “Have you talked with Loreen since you got back?” I’d asked.

  “We talked: weather, movies, diets, and Sunday dinner. I told you,” he said, “I’m a coward.”

  Twenty-one

  The evening of the dinner turned out to be pleasantly cool. The heat of the previous days gave way to more comfortable temperatures, which I didn’t trust; I was convinced the early hot spell was lurking in the clouds, waiting to swoop down again. I walked around in shorts and T-shirts even though I was freezing, and I ended up as disconcerted by the relatively seasonable weather as I had been by the heat wave.

  With the memory of Ryan’s famous pot roast fresh in mind, I wanted to serve my older brother something special. I can be quite a good cook if I try, but I tend to be distracted by options. In preparing a big meal, I usually buy too much food, start out determined to make one thing—a beef stew, let’s say—and then decide midstream that I’ll turn it into something else—a casserole, perhaps. A culinary freak results, one that only Arthur would find edible. I decided it was safest to make something with limited possibilities: sandwiches. I’m a masterful sandwich chef. There’s only so much you can do between two pieces of bread. The real secret to making a perfect sandwich is to choose a thin and sloppy filling and serve it on slices of bread that are unevenly cut and not quite fresh. I’d concocted a recipe using roasted red peppers, smoked mozzarella cheese, and an anchovy-and-pine-nut spread, which I was fairly certain Ryan would like. And it wasn’t very spicy.

  Arthur was in charge of making a salad. Arthur cooks the way he drives; a little too cautiously and hesitantly. While I pounded the pine nuts with a mortar and pestle, he sat at the kitchen table chopping vegetables with the meticulous care you might use to perform eye surgery. He had on a short-sleeved shirt and a red tie, and he was breathlessly trying to sing “Love, unrequited, robs me of my sleep.”

  He held up a thin slice of cucumber. “Does this look about right, sweetheart?”

  “It looks fine,” I said.

  “Are you sure? You barely glanced at it.” He held it up to the light. “I think I should cut it thinner. I can tell you want me to.”

  “Thinner would be all right, too.”

  “Well, I don’t know how you expect me to accomplish that, unless you give me a razor blade.”

  “Believe me, Arthur, if I had a razor blade, I wouldn’t be standing here pounding anchovies—I’d be in the bathroom shaving around my jugular.”

  “Don’t start getting critical, sweetheart. I asked a question, that’s all.”

  I took out a sudden murderous impulse on the pine nuts, and Arthur began singing his patter song, cheerful once more. “You know,” he said, “I don’t understand why you didn’t just tell Tony that your parents had lied to him in the beginning about the engagement. That might make him feel less responsible to them or at least angry.”

  Since I’d sent in my mortgage application, Arthur had been a lot more willing to discuss my brother’s dilemma.

  “To tell you the truth, I don’t understand it, either,” I said. “I suppose I must want to protect them.”

  He held up an absurdly large carrot. “Should I cut this in strips or in chunks or in those coin shapes?”

  “Julienne it.” I wasn’t altogether sure what that meant, but it sounded complicated enough to keep him quiet for a while.

  He went to the counter, got down a cookbook, and began leafing through it. As he scanned the glossary, he began recounting the story of one of his clients, a nineteen-year-old Salvadoran who was seeking political asylum in the U.S. If Arthur wasn’t able to help him with asylum, the young man would be sent back home to face imprisonment or military service for a government he despised. The case involved
the potential breakup of a marriage—mandatory in all the cases he told me about—and the additional heartbreaking detail that Arthur, who spoke fluent Spanish, was the only person his client trusted enough to confide in. I listened for as long as I could and then, derailed by the sheer weight of his compassion, took the cookbook out of his hands. “We can do without the carrots,” I said. “And I forgot to thank you for the flowers.”

  “You didn’t like them.”

  “I loved them.” Despite his doubts about Sharon, he’d brought home a handful of tinted carnations and baby’s breath, which I’d stuck in an empty mayonnaise jar. Every time I caught sight of them in my peripheral vision, their ugliness broke my heart. I’d probably weep buckets when the hideous things finally flopped over dead.

  * * *

  Ryan arrived at the apartment in a state near nervous collapse. He handed me a bag filled with cans of the Australian ale he always drank. His hair was matted down around his ears, and his shirttails were sticking out of his pants, and he was sweating. “You’re a wreck, Ryan. What’s up?”

  “It’s awful, isn’t it? I tried to get dressed up for this dinner, and look at me. Give me one of those beers, will you?”

  “What happened?”

  “I don’t know how you live in this town, Patrick. I was driving through Harvard Square? I thought I was going to be attacked. All these hippies wandering around, crossing against the light. Hell on earth.”

  “Get off it,” I said. “There haven’t been any hippies in Harvard Square for at least fifteen years.” As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I remembered Sharon’s sandals.

  We went into the living room, and Ryan flung himself onto the brown velvet sofa. The velocity of his fall made the springs give under him, and he fell back against the cushions and let out a muffled “Oof.” “It’s a good thing I don’t have a bad back, or I’d start filing a lawsuit right now. Help me out of this contraption, will you?”

  He settled into a chair, first arranging the antimacassar so his head hit the exact middle, and began to swill down his beer. “Anyway, I don’t know if you call them hippies or skinheads or numskulls or what, but they all look like animals, and they were all swarming around the car, and I thought they were going to topple it over.”

  Ryan was performing the role of the suburban bumpkin for my sake, a role he was dressed for, in a pair of shiny gray pants and a color-coordinated, equally hideous sport jacket. He didn’t like Cambridge much and had only visited me a few times in all the years I’d been living there.

  “You sound exactly like your parents,” I said, the A bomb in the arsenal of family insults. “And don’t start talking about hippies in front of Sharon, or she might take offense.”

  “I love hippies, Pat. Hand me a joint, will you? When’s she showing up?”

  “Soon. But she has a policy of always being late.”

  Arthur walked in from the kitchen, and Ryan pushed himself out of his chair. Ryan was genuinely fond of Arthur—there were very few people Ryan wasn’t genuinely fond of—but he tended to be a bit uneasy around him, perhaps because he was uneasy about our relationship. To compensate for his discomfort, Ryan went overboard with compliments and cheery goodwill gestures, which Arthur found wearying. Arthur’s smile was a little too stiff now, and although he hadn’t said as much to me, I knew he was dreading the entire evening.

  “Look at this guy,” Ryan said to me as he shook Arthur’s hand. “White shirt, tie, real sharp. And tall. That’s the one thing you can’t fake in life, and God knows I’ve tried. You could eat beans off the top of my head, Arthur.”

  Arthur collapsed onto the sofa. “You’re looking pretty snazzy there yourself, Ryan.”

  In light of Ryan’s appearance, the compliment fell flat. There was a moment of prolonged silence, as if someone had farted loudly and no one wanted to acknowledge it. Ryan’s face was more pasty and bloated than usual, his wrinkled shirt was unevenly buttoned, and his jacket didn’t fit properly. To top it off, his upper lip was dotted with perspiration. He looked like a man who’d just held up a liquor store and made a getaway on foot.

  “Don’t mention my looks,” Ryan finally said. “Looks have never been my strong point—right, Pat?”

  “You’ve always had your charms.”

  “I’m happy to be alive, with the goings-on at the store and all this business with the marriage.” He opened the bag of beer at his feet and tossed a can to Arthur. “Ever had this stuff? It’s the only beer worth drinking.”

  “Patrick told me about your divorce,” Arthur said. “I’m sorry to hear it.”

  I was standing at the window, pulling the dead leaves off the Swedish ivy plants. The only enjoyment I ever derive from houseplants is pulling off their dead leaves, an act that gives me the same satisfaction as peeling off layers of someone else’s sunburned skin. Ryan looked over at me disapprovingly. I’d forgotten to tell Arthur not to mention the divorce. Unlike me, my older brother didn’t believe in airing his dirty laundry in public. “Pat told you about that, did he? Well, I don’t know what’s going on with that, to tell you the truth. The whole thing’s a mystery. When I said marriage, I meant the preparations for Tony’s wedding.”

  “There must be a lot,” Arthur said. “But the question is, who’s going to be the bride, Loreen or Vivian?”

  “Pat told you about that, too, did he? Well, who knows? I’ll tell you the truth, Arthur: I’m trying to stay out of it as much as I can. I’ve got enough else to worry about. I guess you already know all about that. So what about this house you’re buying?”

  I headed to the kitchen to put Ryan’s beer in the refrigerator and make sure the bread was getting stale. I could hear the strained tones of the conversation in the next room but none of the words. As I was slugging down a beer and giving the anchovies and pine nuts a few desultory whacks, Sharon called. She was at the office and was going to be held up even longer than she’d originally thought. She elaborated on her excuse in such detail, I knew she was lying. Sharon always skimmed over the minutiae of her actual daily life but paid close attention to the facts and figures of her fabrications.

  “I wish you’d hurry,” I said. “Ryan’s been here for an hour and seven minutes already.”

  “Right. I’m hurrying.”

  The conversation in the living room went completely dead. Both Ryan and Arthur had massive throat-clearing fits, and then Ryan came into the kitchen to get another beer. He sat on the counter and watched me as I sliced the cheese. “If you’re thinking of melting that, Pat, I’d try thinner slices.”

  “I’m sorry I told Arthur about the divorce,” I said.

  “Don’t think about it. I guess Arthur’s like one of the family anyway.”

  “Even so. I didn’t want to get this dinner off to a bad start.”

  “Considering the guest of honor isn’t here yet, we can pretend it hasn’t started.”

  “Actually, Ryan, you’re the guest of honor.” I handed him a piece of cheese. “Repayment for a pot roast you made twenty-plus years ago. Something Tony reminded me of a couple of weeks ago.”

  “That guy’s amazing. He remembers everything from childhood. It must mean he was happy.”

  “I thought you were the one with the happy childhood.”

  “Me? I was fat and miserable. Unless there’s something I’m not remembering. You and Tony are talking all the time now?”

  “I ran into him when I was in New York.”

  “No kidding? What were you doing down there?”

  “Visiting,” I said, and then waited a second too long before adding, “a friend.”

  Ryan glanced over his shoulder to see that Arthur wasn’t standing behind me. “What are you talking about?” he whispered. “What’s that tone of voice supposed to mean?”

  “It’s a long story. Anyway, I met Vivian.”

  He groaned at the mention of her name.

  “I think Tony’s in love.”

  “Good for him, Patrick. But what are you ge
tting so involved in this for? If I were you, I’d begin my charity at home, with your ‘friends’ and everything.” He went over to the bedroom door and looked in. “Too bad you have to leave this place. I forgot how nice it is to live aboveground. Somebody going swimming?”

  I explained that I slept on the air mattress.

  “You sleep on an air mattress on the floor next to the bed? What’s going on around here, Patrick? What are you up to?”

  Arthur walked into the kitchen, and Ryan quickly changed the subject, became his old jovial self again, and slugged down his ale. He took a seat at the kitchen table and started to talk in an overblown fashion about how happy he was for Arthur and me and how nicely our lives were turning out and how wonderful it was that we were about to buy a house. When he’d exhausted the topic, he told stories about his daughter in a sloppily sentimental tone. He wasn’t drunk, but he was beginning to sound a little well oiled.

  “So I’m talking to Stacy on the phone the other day, and she tells me I’m a big lout.” He burst out in exaggerated laughter and shook his head. “That kid has an incredible vocabulary for someone four years old. I could barely talk at that age—remember, Pat? I guess you weren’t born yet. I always forget I’m older. But will you tell me where a kid her age picks up a word like ‘lout’?”

  The obvious answer was that she got it from her mother. I hadn’t dared to ask Ryan what would happen to Stacy when and if the divorce went through, but it must have been troubling him. Ryan lived for Stacy’s weekly visits.

  By eight o’clock, Sharon still hadn’t shown up, and the three of us had moved back into the living room and were reduced to discussing movies none of us had seen.

  “I’ve heard that new De Niro thing is good,” Ryan said.

  “Which De Niro?”

  “Well, maybe I’ve got it wrong and it’s Dustin Hoffman. Anyway, I can’t remember the title or what it’s about or who else is in it, but I definitely heard someone say it’s a good picture.”