by Ali Benjamin
She keeps her eyes on the screen.
“Alex.”
She growls at him in response. Difficult today. Irritable. Dark. He makes a mental note: Get those stupid pills. He will. As soon as the rally’s over.
“Get dressed. We’re going to find Mommy.”
“No thanks.” Alex’s eyes are already back on the TV. “I’ll stay here with Maddy.”
“Maddy’s not here. Maddy’s…not going to be living with us anymore.” If this bothers Alex, she doesn’t show it, or ask any questions. “Alex,” he snaps. “Come on, get up. We’re going to help Mommy fix the world.”
“I don’t want to.”
He takes a deep breath. Patience. He needs to have patience.
“Listen, Alex. What matters to Mommy matters to us. Everything we do to others, or for others, or refuse to do to and for others, we’re doing or not-doing to and for ourselves.”
Alex looks at him like he’s insane, and he can’t blame her. Even he can hear how convoluted that was.
“My point is, we’re a family. So let’s go.”
Yes, from now on, he’ll take charge. He’ll be firm and loving, give Alex whatever help she needs. He’ll give Zo the help that she needs, too. The world isn’t post-narrative. It isn’t post–happy ending. They just haven’t yet written the next part of their story.
Alex stands. Puts her hands on her hips. “Okay,” she says, then stomps upstairs.
Yes. He’s going all-in. Even if it means standing next to his wife on a village green in a tiny town in the middle of nowhere, holding signs that few will read, at a protest that is based on a half-truth. Maybe it’s the bigger truths that matter anyway. And his big truth is that he still believes in this family. He wants to give it everything he’s got. One hundred percent. Forward motion only.
He’s starting today. He’s starting right now.
* * *
—
While Alex dresses, he picks up his phone. He reads all the messages he’s gotten from Randy in the last couple of days. The final messages or so are something to behold.
Randy: Hello
Randy: Still not there?
Randy: Hello
Randy: Talk to me
Randy: Hello
Randy: I’m not going away
Randy: at least answer me
Randy: hi
Randy: hola
Randy: ni hao
Randy: motherfucker, answer.
Randy: FINE, FUCK YOU THEN.
Ethan starts to type out a final response, then stops. No. He wants to talk.
Randy picks up on the first ring. “E.”
From somewhere in the distance, Ethan hears a distant snare drum strike up a beat. He pictures Zo out there, holding her sign: Burn it all down. She said the protest was going to be big. What does that mean in a place like Starkfield? Forty people? Fifty?
“Randy, I’m sorry,” Ethan says. “I can’t help you. I just wanted to tell you that.”
On the other end of the phone, Ethan can hear Randy’s television. A voice says, Republicans managed to get the nomination through the Judiciary Committee with an eleven-to-ten vote. Ethan pictures Randy sitting in front of his television in Bel Air, the place like something out of a David Hockney painting: all bright colors and pool views and clean lines. Now the confirmation is in the hands of the Senate.
Or who knows. Maybe Randy’s in an airport, or at a bar, or standing in the middle of Best Buy, and the voice is playing on forty different screens at once. What does Ethan know of Randy’s life?
The drum downtown sounds like a regiment marching toward battle.
“And if I refuse to go quietly?” Randy asks.
Ethan thinks about what will happen if Randy releases Evie’s tapes. The tsunami of fury she’ll face. He pictures action and reaction, opposite and amplified. Then he imagines stepping into the fray himself to tell the truth about those tapes. The way all the world’s invective will suddenly be aimed straight at him. “I guess I’ll have to explain what those tapes are,” he says.
“They’re your tapes, too, you know,” Randy says. “You were an equal partner.”
And then: “You’ll become radioactive, E. You’ll lose everything and everyone.”
“Yeah,” Ethan says. “I think that’s probably true.”
Randy’s voice is bitter. “Still playing the part of the good guy, I see.”
“Not so good, Randy. Not really very good at all.”
Randy doesn’t do any fast talking. He doesn’t try to convince Ethan of anything. Five seconds pass. Ten. Twenty. Finally Randy says, “Well. I guess it would have been a Hail Mary pass anyway.” The statement hangs there, somewhere between Los Angeles and Starkfield, or maybe everywhere, all at once.
Ethan walks to the window, gazes out at the apple trees Zo fell in love with a lifetime ago, back when they first looked at this house. They’re half-dead, these trees, more empty branches than leaves. Just another species struggling to survive the coming collapse.
“Rand? You still there?”
“Yeah. Just sitting here thinking.”
“About?”
“Honestly? I’m thinking about my first-ever record player. Christmas present. Was under the tree when I woke up. I must have been, I don’t know, seven or eight years old? Made of plastic, you could fold the whole thing up and carry it around like a suitcase. For some reason, it was a Welcome Back, Kotter record player. Huge photo of Kotter and his Sweathogs plastered on the outside. Can you believe that? Nineteen seventies, and someone’s all, Hey, you know what will help us sell this hunk of plastic? We’ll put Gabe Fucking Kaplan’s ugly mug on the outside. I didn’t even watch that show, that’s the funny thing. But the thing is, it worked. My parents stood in a store looking at that record player, all, Should we? Maybe we should. And they did. They bought it for me, and they wrapped it in Christmas paper and Scotch tape, and I tell you what, I was as happy as a pig in shit. I played my John Denver on that thing, I played my John Lennon, my James Taylor. Figured I’d never need anything else to be happy.”
John Denver: almost choked his wife, the woman about whom he wrote “Annie’s Song.”
John Lennon: admitted to beating women. In his words, “any women.”
James Taylor: no assaults to Ethan’s knowledge, thank God for that.
“I don’t even know what happened to that record player,” Randy says. “Must be at the bottom of the Great American Landfill by now, probably leaching noxious shit into the soil as we speak. Made me happy, though. I’ll tell you that. For a while, it made me really, really happy.”
Ethan smiles. “Sometimes it’s the little things.”
More silence, then Randy asks, “Hey, remember that time we out-Baudrillarded Baudrillard?”
“I sure do. Behold the new kings.”
“We were kings then, weren’t we?”
“Hey. You’re still a king, Randy.”
“No, I’m not. Not anymore. I guess I thought I’d always be one—that once you get the crown, it’s yours to keep. But it turns out, they get to just take that crown away. Anytime they want. I didn’t know that part of the deal.”
“You’ll come back. You’re Randy Fucking Riverstone. You always come back.”
A pause. “Yeah, maybe.” But Randy’s voice sounds deflated.
“You know, we should get together one of these days,” Ethan says. “Maybe take a trip back to Kenyon, walk the old path, see how the place has changed.”
“Yeah, sure,” Randy says. “That sounds fun, actually, I’ll look at my calendar, get back to you with some dates.”
But Ethan knows that it won’t happen, that Randy won’t send him dates, that they’ll never again walk together beneath those grand trees and Gothic buildings. Instead, Ethan has a feelin
g, a knowing, really—like this, too, is already a memory, even though it hasn’t happened yet—that one of these days, maybe sooner than later, Ethan’s phone will ring. The call won’t be from Randy, but it will be about Randy. The voice on the other end will tell him that he’s now in a post-Randy world.
Maybe he’s already in a post-Randy world. This phone call, right here, is just the stray threads, the loose ends, the wispy, cold feeling of a ghost brushing by.
The king is dead, long live the king.
“It’s gonna be okay,” Ethan says. “You take care of yourself, all right?”
Randy doesn’t say goodbye when he hangs up.
Alex bursts into the room: she’s wearing red sneakers and a green plaid flannel over one of Zo’s T-shirts: get in witches, we’re going hunting. She stands there, crosses her arms.
“If I’m going to this rally,” she bargains, “then will you at least take me out for a Conehead milkshake when we’re done?”
They walk together toward the sound of drums. Or rather, Ethan walks. Alex hops around, making movements that seem equal parts interpretive dance and martial arts. She stops occasionally to pluck plants from the ground.
“What are they protesting today anyway?” Alex asks. Her eyes scan a patch of grass. “Is it the shooting?”
“Not the shooting. Wait, which shooting?”
“The one in Maryland?”
“I don’t know about that shooting. Remember I told you about the guy who wants to be on the Supreme Court? Who might have done something bad?”
“Oh.” Alex punches the air in front of her, makes an attempt at a karate kick, spins in a circle. Then she nods. “Okay, the Supreme Court thing.”
The drums grow louder. Ethan hears chanting now, too, though he can’t make out the words. Just how many people are down there anyway? Alex stops again, picks something small and green from the earth. Bent over the grass like that, she looks like a very young child. Age eleven: both little and big, all at the same time.
“Alex, was there really a shooting in Maryland last week?”
“Yup.” She stands, keeps walking. “I read about it on a website, where you can look up whatever mass shootings happened that day.” Ethan adds this to his mental list: Pay more attention to what Alex is looking at online. Yes, he’ll do this too. “It happened at a warehouse. One of the workers cut in front of another as they were punching the clock in the morning. The person who got cut made a comment, so then the person who did the cutting went home and got a gun.”
“Are there shootings every day?” he asks.
“Mmmm…not every day, but sometimes there’s more than one on the same day.” Alex is matter-of-fact about the whole thing, but of course, why wouldn’t she be? She’s never known a world where she didn’t have to rehearse for the moment someone shows up at her school to hunt her like an animal. “But what I don’t understand, Daddy, is why they would punch a clock at all. That’s such a weird thing to do.”
That’s the thing she doesn’t understand.
“It’s an expression,” he explains. “It just means reporting for duty. Did anybody die?”
But Alex is focused on the grass again. She brightens. “Hey, there’s another one!” She reaches down, plucks something from the ground. She holds it up for him.
It’s a clover. With four perfect leaves.
“Alex,” he says. He takes it into his hand, and examines it. “Holy cow. You did it. You found an actual four-leaf clover.”
“I found four, actually.” From her pocket, she pulls three others, already starting to wilt. “You can keep that one if you want, I’m really good at finding them. Anyway, I think three people died. Also, Daddy, I decided: I think witches are most like gas.”
“Like…gas?” The drums are so loud now, maybe he misheard her.
“Yeah. That’s what I’m going to write in my science report: that becoming a witch is like heating water. It’s like, when you put a pot filled with water on the stove, all those water molecules start moving around.” She begins moving her fists—slowly at first, and then rapidly. “And after a while, it’s just too much heat, they can’t take it. That’s when they rise into the air as steam.”
He stares at her. “What did you say?”
“I think maybe that’s what happens with witches, too: they get all agitated, so mad about stuff that they just…” Alex’s hands flutter toward the sky, indicating a witch lifting off from the ground.
“It’s a metaphor?” Ethan asks. “Your science project on witches is a metaphor?”
Alex makes a face. Dad the dumbfuck. “What did you think it was? Anyway, do you think that’s a good idea? Mr. Boorstin says that if we do a good job, we’ll get a good grade in English and Science.” She doesn’t wait for his answer. She skips ahead, does a few more karate/dance moves, kapow, kamchaka, pew-pew-pew, until they reach the Ledge. That’s when she stops, brightens.
“There they are!” She points toward the village green, this clear, unobstructed view. “Whoa.”
* * *
—
Zo was right: there are a lot of people down there. So many that he can’t believe he’s still in Starkfield. So many that they’re spilling over the green, into the street, onto the sidewalks, blocking the storefronts.
Who are they all? Some look like college kids, but he sees people of all ages. It’s like the whole world’s come to Starkfield today. There must be hundreds of pink caps. And so many rainbow flags and equality flags and protest signs it’s hard to keep up. Tell me what democracy looks like!
This is what democracy looks like!
But it’s not only protesters who are down there. Judging by the signs, an almost equal number have come to protest the protesters, to assert a different view about what this world, this country, is and should be. Ethan scans the signs, looking for Zo:
Don’t silence women
Confirm now
#MeToo has gone #TooFar
Stop police overreach
Preventing crime is not a crime!
You are on stolen land
Don’t like America then get the hell out
Stop the witch hunts
Time’s up
A picture of a machine gun: Come and take it
Defend life
Womyn’s rights = human rights
Leftist morans
Half of white women voted for this president
Ethan thinks of Baudrillard, wonders what the philosopher would have thought of this scene—the way a single protest, grounded on a half-truth, has become an opportunity for people to assert their own dot-to-dot reality.
Welcome to the hyperreality. Will the real America please stand up?
All of these people, all of this energy, all of this human potential, and somehow the only thing this crowd seems to be able to do together is hold up traffic. A steady line of cars waits to take their turn around the rotary. A few lay on their horns.
Drums. Screams. Chanting.
Tell me what democracy looks like!
Next to him, Alex asks, “But where’s Mommy?”
This is what democracy looks like!
Ethan searches the crowd for Zo’s Burn it all down sign, but there are too many signs, too many people, he can’t find his wife. It’s like Zo’s been absorbed into something larger than herself, has ceased to exist as an individual self.
Near where he and Alex stand on the Ledge, two teenage girls stand hip-jutted, surveying the scene. “Yeah,” says one of them in a bored voice. “My mom is basically the Buddha. She meditates, like, every day.” The girl’s holding a sign that says, I’m pro-life and I vote, though there’s no way this kid is old enough to vote. Nearby, a couple dressed in black, goth-like, marches past. “But, like,” the woman says, “what if Satan was trying to save Eve from, like, blin
d authority? Since when is knowledge such a bad thing? And how do we know Eve wasn’t being, you know, raped?”
Alex points down the hill. “Oh! There’s Mommy.”
Ethan searches, but he can’t find Zo. “Right there,” Alex says. “Don’t you see?”
He gazes down at Alex, this miracle kid who can look down in a patch of clover and spy the one with four leaves, like it leapt right out at her. Brilliant girl who can look at this chaos and find the one person who matters most to her. That’s what Shreya Greer-Williams has no interest in seeing, it’s what Mr. McCuttle had promised he’d see, but didn’t.
He will, though. From here on forward, he will.
At the bottom of the hill, a car, stuck in place, lays on its horn. Futile.
Ripples of sadness, of grief: they’re here too, they rise from this crowd, from these streets, they bend the air. But sadwaves don’t remain sad, that’s the problem: they refract, become something else altogether. That’s what outrage is, isn’t it? A passing back and forth of despair, You take this grief; no, you, like the tide sloshing back and forth between shores, eroding everything in its path.
Someone starts banging out a rhythm on a cowbell.
Ethan turns to Alex. He wants to tell her that the world doesn’t have to be this way. He wants to tell her that sometimes what looks inevitable, or organic, or accidental, is anything but: that someone’s doing this. That right now, as they stand here, invisible forces are churning away, cold calculations written in code, ones and zeros designed to transform E Pluribus Unum into Show Me the Money. Soulless, these calculations: devoid of compassion or judgment or wisdom, or hope, but it doesn’t have to be this way, and she needs to understand this.
“This isn’t how we were meant to live,” he says. But Alex isn’t next to him anymore, she’s already moving slapdash into the crowd. The hill is steep and her strides are long, and with every step she looks certain to fall but she doesn’t.
“Alex, wait,” he calls, but his voice is drowned out by the crowd, a new call-and-response. What’s up? Time’s up! When’s it up? Now!