The Wisdom of Perversity

by Rafael Yglesias

  He nodded. That was really good news.

  “From now on, sweetie, I’ll tell you the day before Cousin Richard wants to visit you. And when Cousin Richard is going to be coming over, I want you to make sure Brian will be here. The whole time. Okay?”

  He pushed the Matchbox English taxi down a ramp. It skidded, got stuck. “Brian doesn’t like Cousin Richard,” he said.

  “That’s not your problem,” she snapped. She was back to normal, annoyed at him. “Promise me you’ll make sure Brian is here when Cousin Richard comes.”

  He nodded.

  “Say it out loud. I really want you to promise me that you’ll make sure Brian is here when Cousin Richard comes over.”

  “I promise,” he said. Then she left him alone.

  Jeff tried to repair the central tower, but Hattie had taken the tin pan and Heinz baked beans cans back to the kitchen. Anyway, it made more sense to wait for Brian’s help tomorrow. Together they could make it right.

  Cleaning Up

  February 2008

  THE BATHROOM HAD been swept. Still needed to be vacuumed to make sure every shard of glass had been cleared, and mopped to soak up every mite of makeup powder from the tile’s grouting. That took only twenty minutes, so Julie continued cleaning while waiting to tell her husband she wanted a divorce. She made the bed, puffed up couch pillows, carried a half mug of caramelized coffee from Gary’s study to the kitchen, left it soaking in the sink.

  She decided against straightening the mess in Zack’s room. She stood at the doorsill, nearly gagging at the musk of male adolescence, and chose not to cross into his swamp: crumpled boxers; soggy towels twisted into agonized abstract sculptures; T-shirts tortured, expiring inside out, sometimes housed within a similarly mangled sweater, stitching and labels exposed. Also scattered on floor, desk, and bookshelves were crumpled papers that she knew if investigated would turn out to contain a hurt teacher’s complaints that Zack’s paper showed little effort. Or, more painful, that he had at long last lived up to his potential and thrilled with his insight into Oedipus or the causes of the French Revolution, soon to be followed by other papers with comments lamenting that recent progress hadn’t been sustained. He was as careless of praise and success as he was indifferent to advice and criticism. Gary was right about their son. He was determined to fail in order to annoy his father. Her love, her support—they counted for nothing.

  That’s his problem, she decided. If he wanted to live like a pig as a rebuke to her, that was his prerogative. If he wanted to squander his talents to insult his father, also his mess to make. What she had realized in these past few, tumultuous days is that she could provide an example of something much more useful than cleaning up after yourself: to be honest, no matter how painful; to be who you are, no matter how scary.

  Still, the boys were astonishingly sloppy. After rinsing the coffee mug, she discovered the dishwasher was loaded sloppily, bowls upside down, all the silverware in a single compartment, and the dishes had been left overnight, food becoming encrusted. She took the worst examples out and rinsed them thoroughly before neatly stacking them back in proper positions.

  And the cabinet doors! Half of them were open as if raided by starving cats. Shutting them, she spied all the items Gary insisted she keep stocked for him: pretzels and Orville Redenbacher’s light-butter popcorn; in the freezer were Skinny Cow fudge bars and in the fridge no-fat Swiss Miss chocolate puddings. Gary seemed to think no fat meant no calories. Whenever she “forgot” to buy one of these favorite items, in the hopes of reducing his girth, he would demand restocking. Looking at his supplies, she felt pity, not the usual disgust. Of course, he fills himself, because I can’t. He’s trapped in a bulimic marriage.

  Her despair over her shortcomings was so complete she didn’t hear him tumble the locks, didn’t realize he was home until the door shut behind him. She rushed to hallway to ask, “How’s your eye?” when she saw the surrounding tissue had faded to a tinge of purple. The brilliant eye of Satan was gone, although there were still a few lightning bolts of red.

  “I’m just fucking great,” he said. He took off his Burberry and slung it on a hanger casually. The trench coat immediately slid off, onto the closet floor. Gary stared at it, then left it there. “We have to talk,” he said before she could. He nodded at Zack’s door. “Is he here?”

  “No,” she said.

  “Good,” Gary said. “Let’s talk before he gets home.” He announced, “I’m hungry. Is there anything to eat?”

  She offered to make him a dinner out of what they had: spaghetti with clam sauce, microwave defrost and broil a steak, or a favorite impromptu meal of his, a Nova and onion omelet. He listened thoughtfully as if she were a waitress listing the specials and announced, “I’ll have a PB&J.”

  “Let me make you a real meal,” she pleaded.

  He ignored her, removing chunky Skippy from a cabinet door he left open, jerking the fridge door, rattling its metal rack as he dragged out a jar of Sarabeth’s strawberry preserves. He pulled apart, rather than untied, an Arnold’s rye, nabbing six slices. He nodded toward the hall where he had left his computer bag. “I’ve got copies of the retracted statements from the Huck Finn boys. And two other statements accusing Klein the press knows nothing about.” He spun the Skippy lid with a finger. It soared off the jar, crashed on the counter. He jerked open the cutlery drawer, removed a knife, and bumped it closed with his stomach. “I got them out of my source after swearing on Zack’s life that they would remain private, and even that wasn’t good enough until I explained about you.” He plunged the knife into the peanut butter as if stabbing a villain’s heart.

  “Explained about me?” she repeated, appalled he had exposed her.

  “Yeah, I couldn’t get them to let me have copies of the sworn statements until I explained I had a personal stake in their confidentiality. To do that, I had to explain about you.”

  “You told somebody in the DA’s office about me?” She wasn’t really surprised, but she was outraged.

  He pulled out the knife with an effort, bringing along a rock-sized lump of Skippy. “Not the DA’s office,” he said. “The state attorney general’s office. They have broader powers than a DA, and that’s important. They can subpoena all kinds of things a DA can’t. Klein, Rydel, Jeff, or whoever can buy off witnesses, but he can’t stop the state attorney general from subpoenaing documents that might lead them to more boys or families that he’s bought off, and maybe, just maybe, one of them will regret having agreed to keep quiet.” He tried to slide excess peanut butter off the knife back into the jar. It remained glued on.

  She said, “Let me do it.” He surrendered the jar and knife. “How could you tell them about me, Gary?” she asked, then proceeded to make his sandwich.

  “Not them. I told David Sirck, the assistant AG—”

  “And he’s going to tell his boss, his wife, his best friend, and they’ll each tell three people they trust. Jesus, Gary, I’m not that naive. I can’t believe you are.”

  “Listen to me!” he pleaded, voice quavering. “I’m trying to help you. I really am, Jules.”

  “How?” she asked, genuinely puzzled. “How are you helping me?” She handed him the PB&J.

  Gary took a bite, chewed thoughtfully, and then said, “Your story isn’t evidence of a crime because the statute of limitations has run out on all aspects of it. Klein can’t be charged. Rydel was a minor at the time, probably couldn’t be charged because of that, but even if he didn’t have use of the excuse that he was acting under the influence of Klein, the statute of limitations has run out on him too.” He didn’t finish. He added quickly, as if she were about to hurl something at him, “It shouldn’t, there shouldn’t be a limitation on molesting a child, but there is.”

  That dispelled her anger at his meddling. For Gary to say the law was wrong was unprecedented—and not convincing. Obviously he was conceding that out of consideration for her. He still loves me? she wondered. On second thought, she marv
eled at another, impossible possibility: He feels compassion for me?

  “Does it help,” she asked, “if I went public about it with some others who saw it happen?”

  “Others?” He frowned. “You mean Jeff?”

  She explained about Brian, including an account of their reunion, Jeff’s attempt to bribe them, and the phony medical report. Gary interrupted eating his PB&J to comment, “Your friend Brian was very smart to see through that. Jeff must have gotten the idea from Rydel. Sure, since the investigation started, Rydel’s been claiming Klein is suffering from severe dementia, but there was nothing about it before then—Klein was still appearing at Huck Finn and academy events. It’s a typical dodge. The DA’s office takes for granted any eighty-year-old accused of a crime will throw up medical excuses as to why he can’t be tried.”

  She resumed her account, that Jeff blew them off in spite of Brian’s threat to write about it, and finally that she and Brian resolved after the disastrous Four Seasons breakfast to go public anyway, to force Jeff’s hand if nothing else.

  Gary had finished his PB&J by then and was washing it down with Diet Coke. He swallowed. “Don’t.” He took another slug of soda and swallowed hard. “Don’t go public yet. With or without this Brian guy, let’s you and I go to Jeff and talk this through with him. Sounds to me like Brian blew it, got too angry at Jeff. Call Jeff. Tell him you and I want to meet with him.”

  “You’ll go with me?” She was surprised by his helpfulness, until she remembered he didn’t know she was divorcing him. “How’s that going to change Jeff’s mind about covering up for Rydel?”

  “I’m a lawyer. I can scare him. I’ve got the suppressed sworn statements of other molestations. I know the state attorney general. I can be convincing that it’s all going to come out anyway and Jeff had better fess up. Call Jeff. Tell him I have info from the state AG that he needs to know about. That’ll get his attention.” He crumpled the can of Diet Coke as if demonstrating his power and tossed it in the garbage.

  She didn’t want to threaten Jeff. She wanted him to go public voluntarily. Gary would think that naive. But she didn’t want to argue with Gary. He was being sweet and chivalrous. She felt sorry for him and said the hurtful words she had to say sadly, “Gary, before you help me, there’s something we really have to talk about.”

  “What?”

  “I can’t be your wife anymore.”

  Gary blinked. Stared. Blinked again. There was a long silence. Finally he said, “What?”

  “I’ve been—it’s so unfair to you—I’m sorry, but I just can’t be married.” Her legs were shaking. She leaned against the counter, she was so unsteady.

  “It’s not me, it’s you,” he mocked.

  “I shouldn’t be married. I’m not capable of a normal relationship.”

  “With me? Or with anyone?” He was cross-examining her, arguing, not listening.

  But in fact, his question was clarifying for her. At that moment she understood how much she had always wanted to be married, for the lie of her life to be true. She didn’t want to say, Not with anyone. She couldn’t give up hope. Yet she couldn’t say the cruel Only you. She had to lie to Gary even while being honest. That was the problem: she couldn’t be truthful with this man. She evaded. “Gary, I’ve been hiding all my life and I’ve hurt other people by keeping quiet. I’m responsible for what happened to those children, those poor kids. I’ve got to deal with that. And I can’t deal with it by pretending . . .” She got stuck. Pretending what?

  Gary was looking at her, but he didn’t seem to be focused on her. He was staring through her. “Not wanting to be married. That’s about sex, isn’t it?”

  Was it? It couldn’t be. Was her whole emotional life colored and controlled by sex? Would she be happy with Gary if only she weren’t a pervert?

  “You don’t enjoy sex with me?” he asked.

  “I don’t enjoy sex with anyone,” she said, relieved to not make it personal. “I’m sorry. What I did to you was awful. I shouldn’t have married anyone. I’ve done a terrible thing to you. But I want to stop it. That’s all I can do now. I can’t change what I’ve done. But I can stop doing it.” Tears dripped off her chin and jaw. She hadn’t felt them release, had no sense she was crying. “You don’t have to give me a penny. I don’t deserve anything from you. I’m sorry. I’m a terrible person.” She covered her mouth to stop the mean words.

  Gary tossed his head back, throwing off a burden, and spoke in his lovely voice, the persuasive tones that had swayed juries and booked him on TV. “I don’t care what you like in bed or if you don’t like anything in bed, if that’s what you’re talking about, and I think that’s what you’re talking about. I love you. We can have any kind of sex you want or no sex at all. I love you, Jules. Being with you is all that matters to me.”

  “You don’t understand,” she said, pleading as she staggered backward into a chair, bending over, head in her hands. In her imagination, told what she had just told him, Gary was supposed to throw an angry self-righteous fit, to storm out or hit her. His offer that she didn’t have to change at all and they would still be a couple was completely unexpected. It left her nowhere to go but to confess that she found him physically unattractive and intellectually unsympathetic. She had married what she wished she wanted, not what she wanted.

  He knelt. He groaned at the effort of getting to his knees, but he went down in front of her, capturing her hands. He begged: “Let me help you, Jules. At least let me help you through this. Once we straighten this out with Jeff, I’ll go into counseling with you, whatever you want. But let me help you through this.”

  She leaned her head on his Big Brain. Once again, her timid will was defeated. That must be what had ruined her in the first place. Klein had sensed her weakness with the intuition of a predator. Now shrewd Gary was using her fear of hurting him to get his way. She was doomed. Telling the truth or living a lie she was fated never to become herself.

  The Test

  February 2008

  BRIAN CALLED THE producer’s office. After a long wait, Grace came on with a chilly greeting: “This is a surprise.”

  He didn’t bother with a hello either. “I want to adapt The Ice Pond for Jeff. Of course I want to. It’s an honor to be asked.”

  The line went dead. Muted? Was Jeff in the room with her? That seemed confirmed when Grace’s voice, along with a background hiss, returned—her words sounded chosen for an audience other than him. “Brian, I’ll be blunt. Your attitude at breakfast turned me off. I thought your being an old friend of Jeff’s was an asset, but there seems to be a lot of bitterness on your side. Not on Jeff’s. Frankly, he was hurt. And I was offended for him at how slighting you were about his extraordinary talent and incredible achievements. It was disrespectful.”

  “Jeff is the greatest director of my generation. I know that. I don’t merely respect his talent—I’m in awe of it. And of course, I’m dying of envy. Believe me, Grace, it’s not so easy to have a genius for your best friend as a child. Especially when you’ve been in the business for thirty years and he never asks you to work for him. I was hurt and I acted out. I apologize to you, and if I get the chance I’d like to tell Jeff face-to-face how flattered I am by his thinking of me at all, and how much I would like to be part of his next great film.”

  His abject speech was greeted by absolute silence on her end, the line dying again. Then an abrupt whoosh of background noise and Grace’s voice returned, its temperature a little warmer. Without asking whether Brian was available, she said Jeff was going to drop by Brian’s apartment for an hour at three to discuss the project. He said, “Great. I’ll see Jeff at three.”

  When Brian lowered his iPhone, he saw Julie’s husband looking at him with an appalled expression. “You really preferred groveling to telling her what I got from the AG?” Julie was standing beside her pompous husband. She smiled slyly. She understood the value of a plausible lie. Jeff would arrive smug, his tender white belly exposed.

&nbs
p; They took a cab from Gary’s office building to Brian’s apartment. Gary and Julie waited in the lobby while he checked on Danny and how he was getting along with the day nurse Brian had hired. Yesterday the tests had come back and confirmed the doctor’s preliminary diagnosis of congestive heart failure. He was also suffering from fatty liver disease. The combination meant Danny wasn’t a candidate for a transplant or any other radical procedure. Drugs might keep him going for a year or so, Brian had been told. The doctor had chosen to be vaguer and more optimistic when talking to his father, offering him the solace of “a few years, nobody knows.” By dinner, Danny had converted a few years into ten. The new meds, started last night, were keeping him docile and sleepy, which was good because Brian didn’t much care for the dim-witted day nurse. Her shifts, and the night nurse whom he was told he would soon need, were going to eat up all of his production bonus on Sleep of the Innocent and a hunk of his savings. If he wanted to keep Danny out of a Medicare nursing home, he needed a job. A pity he was lying to Jeff about writing The Ice Pond.

  Brian waited in the shadows of the awning for Jeff’s limo. Its lumbering approach gave him plenty of time to prepare his move. He got a bit of luck there. The driver didn’t come around to open Jeff’s door; he was sufficiently self-sufficient to do that on his own. Brian hurried over before Jeff’s feet appeared. “Hi, Jeff. Excuse me,” he said as he climbed in, forcing Jeff to the other side. He ignored Jeff’s “I thought we were meeting in your apartment.”

  Julie and Gary appeared from the lobby. Brian left the door open for them, shifting to the seat facing Jeff to give them room to get in.

  The driver was alarmed. He lowered the partition. “Mr. Mark, is everything all right?”

  Jeff looked at the trio. He didn’t react except to ask his driver, “Can we park here?”

  “It’s No Standing, sir.”

  “Drive around the block and then ask me again where I want to go.” Jeff raised the partition while he surveyed Julie and Gary. Gary unwound a string sealing a legal file. He produced three depositions, offering them to Jeff.