by Mike Sager
As could be expected—for Washington was first and foremost a town of endless gossip—these evenings at Metcalfe Mansion had become a hot topic, the flames fanned by the lack of other action in the city. Ten days before Christmas, the place was emptying out; most of the people who worked in government had roots somewhere else. In one month’s time, a new administration would be sworn in. Twelve years of Reagan/Bush Republican rule—Voodoo economics … Just say no … I can’t recall … Read my lips—had come to an end. The first baby-boomer president, a hip young saxophone-playing dude from Arkansas, was waiting in the wings with his piano-legged first partner, wearing the halo of the untried. A rare calm had descended on the most powerful city in the world, the deep cleansing breath of political transition.
And so it was, as word spread, bored pundits from all across town, print and broadcast alike, waited jealously for their personal invitations to Metcalfe Mansion. They might have called him Bertie the Hedgehog behind his back, but when Bertram Hedgewick Metcalfe III snapped his stubby fingers, you came. The honorarium didn’t hurt either: it was rumored to be twenty-five thousand dollars in cash.
Metcalfe hopped down abruptly from his perch at the table, his tiny tassled loafers landing on the floor with a resounding thud—though small, he was no lightweight. He commenced pacing, moving around the room distractedly, like a professor in front of a class. “Now, I realize that these questions beg the question, so to speak. I know that there are scientific or academic answers to many of these, and plenty of intelligent speculation about the rest. Among my possessions is the largest private library in the world. I spend at least five hours speed-reading every day; I employ a dozen young scholars to read and summarize. Huge amounts of knowledge are available to me. Any resource known to man, really, and I take full advantage. I’m well versed on topics as diverse as molecular theory and Dianetics; I’ve read extensively on mathematics, existentialism, pragmatism, humanism, romanticism, world history, and Tex Winter’s triangle offense. I’ve studied the Talmud, the Bible, Mao’s Little Red Book, Mein Kampf, the Rigveda, the entire catalog of Spiderman comics. I had the good fortune to be able to hire my own team of scholars to create an alternative translation of the Dead Sea Scrolls—you would be amazed at the difference a few words can make. Even one word. Take the Koran. In one translation, a martyr to Islam is blessed, upon his arrival in heaven, with an unlimited supply of plump, ripe virgins for all of eternity. In another, the same word is translated as olives—plump, ripe olives for all of eternity.”
Metcalfe paused by the fireplace to warm his hands. “You see, gentlemen, this is the point: Our libraries are filled with opinions, theorems, hypotheses, and ideologies. We have old saws and wives’ tales and common wisdom aplenty. But what do we really know? What are we sure of? We are so smug, we humans. We think we’re so smart. We think we’re so advanced. We think we have all the answers. We think that we can manipulate our environment and our destinies to our own ends. Who else but man could come upon a pristine, snow-covered mountain and envision a ski resort?
“I ask you, gentlemen. What if we’re just deluded?” He pulled out his silk handkerchief, rubbed off a stray blotch of red sauce that had somehow come to rest upon the breastplate of one of the suits of fourteenth-century armor. “What if we’re just shitting ourselves? Who says pi equals 3.1417? And what the hell is pi, anyway? A man-made construct, something we invented. Something that just happens to fit, that happens to explain the unexplainable. That is man’s greatest talent. We rationalize. We make things fit. We explain the world around us with such confidence, such élan. Have you ever spoken at length to a college senior? They think they have it all figured out too. That’s humanity for you, the perfect metaphor: Joe College Graduate, diploma in hand, ready to take on the world. The Aztecs believed that human sacrifice had a direct impact on corn crop yields. As recently as twenty years ago, surgeons were performing frontal lobotomies as treatment for mental illness. Look at the science on dieting. Every few years it’s a total one-eighty. High carbs or low fat? High protein or high fiber? If man is so smart, if we’re so advanced, if we’re so darn clever … why can’t we figure out how to lose a few pounds and keep them off?
“And what about this,” he said, continuing his circuit around the table. “I’m sure you’ve all heard of Einstein’s theory of relativity?”
The visiting pundits appeared to be bored. Usually they were the ones who got to talk. They nodded in unison.
“How about quantum theory?”
More nods.
“Einstein’s theory describes the large-scale universe to an astonishing degree of precision, or so they say. Quantum theory describes the small-scale universe with the same astonishing exactness. Much of our understanding of the world is based on these two hypotheses.
“But the problem is,” Metcalfe said, pausing to make eye contact with each of his three guests in turn, “Einstein’s theory is not compatible with quantum theory. The two theories are incompatible, gentlemen. Incompatible.
“To correct this little glitch, scientists came up with something called string theory, which marries the concepts of Einstein’s theory with those of quantum theory. I won’t bore you with the details, but string theory has to do with the existence of tiny strings vibrating in ten-dimensional space. Scientists say it would take a particle accelerator larger than the entire solar system to create the energy needed to actually see one of these strings. Which means, essentially, that strings will never be seen, or even detected, by humans. Which means, essentially, that we must take on faith the fact that these strings exist—in the very same way that we must take on faith the fact that God exists.”
“Excuse me, Mr. Metcalfe.” This was the one with the neatly trimmed mustache, the Washington bureau chief of the New York Tribune. “I think I’m missing something, sir. What’s the so-what graph here? What’s your point?”
“And, more specifically, what does it have to do with us?” added the cigar guy, the moderator of a popular Sunday morning political chat show. He looked left and right to his fellows, enlisting support.
“My point,” Metcalfe said archly, “is that these theories—both of which are important building blocks in the foundation of the way we profess to understand our entire physical universe—could well be meaningless. Somewhere out in the cosmos, a highly advanced race is laughing its collective ass off.”
The three pundits eyed one another dubiously.
“Interesting idea,” said the guy with the mustache.
“An excellent point,” said the guy with the cigar.
“Definitely something to make some calls about,” said the third, nodding his head sagely.
5
Jonathan Seede pulled the door shut behind him, making a mental note for the umpteenth time to oil the squeaky hinges. He selected a key from an oversize ring and locked the doorknob, selected another, locked the dead bolt. Turning to his right, he punched a four-digit code into a security keypad, then stepped outside, closed and locked the iron security gate—two more keys.
Twirling the key ring on his middle finger like a cowboy gunslinger, he joined Freeman at the rail. The landing was about eight feet above the sidewalk, the crowning platform of an ornate iron staircase that Seede had recently spent a bundle to restore. Per Freeman’s referral, the work had been done by the same craftsman who’d restored the statue atop the U.S. Capitol dome. Seede had lived in Washington since the summer after college. He’d driven or walked past the Capitol dome countless times. But it was only after they’d hired the man—who promptly removed the staircase, leaving them to their back alley entrance for the next three months—that Seede had learned for the first time that the greenish oxidized figure atop the dome was actually a likeness of Persephone—the mythical daughter of the Greek god Zeus, kidnapped by Hades, who made her his queen consort of the Underworld. Why she was chosen to reign atop the world’s ultimate symbol of representative democracy remained a lively debate in some quarters. Seede hims
elf wondered if it didn’t have something to do with the deal Persephone had struck with her captor husband, whereby she was allowed to leave hell for part of every year and return home—the same arrangement enjoyed by the nation’s elected representatives.
Freeman was still wearing his whore patrol getup, complete with orange crossing-guard vest. He gestured like a game show hostess in the direction of the street—a graceful sweeping motion, palm up, indicating the scene below: a single line of cars, inching bumper-to-bumper along the narrow one-way street. Kids on bicycles darted in and out of traffic. The sidewalk was crowded with homeboys and hangers-on, hustlers and homeless, crackheads and undercovers—and down the way an actual resident, dragging his recycling bin to the curb. Acrid blue exhaust hung in the air at the level of the amber streetlamps, mingling with fireplace woodsmoke and the booming subsonic vibrations of gangsta rap. Freeman shook his head sadly. “It’s like Grand Central Station out here.”
“More like Night of the Living Dead,” Seede said. He watched with interest as three hookers click-clacked past on stiletto heels, joking and cussing, headed in the same direction as the traffic, east toward Thirteenth Street, a dark and leafy corridor that served as a sort of employee lounge for Strip denizens, featuring trick pads, crack houses, and shooting galleries sprinkled among the SROs and renovations.
Hunkered on the southwestern corner of Corcoran and Fourteenth, like an anchor store in a mall, was a monolithic AME church. Built of red brick, listed in the National Register of Historic Places, visited over the years by several U.S. presidents—but only during election years—it was attended on Sundays by members of the black upper crust, most of whom now lived in suburbs outside the city. Across the street, on the northwest corner, was a self-service gas station with a bulletproof cashier’s kiosk. The east side of the block dead-ended into Thirteenth Street—it was this terminus that gave the neighborhood its intimate feel, at least during daylight hours. At that junction another historic church, Baptist and built of stone, catered to a more local congregation. Its two-story stained-glass rendering of a praying Jesus glowed softly against the night.
When Freeman first took possession of his house in the Fall of 1979, many of the properties on the street were boarded up or burned out. It had been eleven years since the King assassination riots, ten years since Marion Barry and Stokely Carmichael marched down U Street wearing dashikis in an effort to reclaim the peace. A family of eleven lived in the basement of Freeman’s house. They couldn’t afford coal for heat. They cut up scavenged railroad ties and tried to burn them in the furnace. An extension cord, plugged illicitly into a basement outlet in the house next door, kept their thirty-inch color console TV in service. Everyone told Freeman and his partner, Tom, that they were crazy to buy here. Freeman’s parents even refused to visit—though that was probably more about Tom then the neighborhood. Not only was their son gay; he was sleeping with a black man. It was something that well-bred boys from Newport News just didn’t do.
“So what’s up?” Freeman asked Seede, employing a no-nonsense tone. “Where’s your little family?”
“What do you call a grouping of hookers?” Seede asked.
Caught off guard: “Huh?”
“A gaggle of hookers. A pride of pimps. A covey of crackheads. A den of dealers,” Seede said, gesturing here and there, pointing in turn to each of the different groups. “It’s like one of those Discovery Channel documentaries out here. You ever see the one about the watering hole in the Kalahari? ‘Corcoran Street: Crossroads of the Animal Kingdom.’”
Freeman grimaced. “That sounds racist, Seede.”
“Why is it that you can call a white person anything you want—a bear of a man, pig nose, storklike, skeletal, built like a brick shithouse—but if you use an animal term to describe a black person you’re racist? Remember that kid at University of Virginia? He got into trouble for calling that girl a water buffalo? But if you ever saw her picture …”
Freeman refused to bite. “What about Dulcy and Jake?” he pressed. “What’s going on, Jonathan?”
Seede shrugged.
“What do you mean, shrug?”
“I honestly don’t know,” Seede said. “I woke up yesterday afternoon and they were gone.”
Freeman stared a hole through Seede. He’d been the best man at their wedding—a gathering of fifty that he’d hosted in his own showcase living room and grand foyer. The joke among the threesome was that Freeman had been miscast as best man—he should have been maid of honor. In fact, Freeman had been with the Seedes on every step of their marital journey—from their first meeting (at a Freeman dinner party), through the chase (an obstacle course of dating rules and modern complications), to the eventual surrender and ceremony (leading to the perilous first year of marriage, when all the grim baggage was unpacked). He’d overseen every detail of the wedding himself, down to the draping of Dulcy’s satin and lace train on the stairwell, a marvelous cascading effect that made the photos. And while he’d politely declined Dulcy’s invitation to be present at the birth of their son, Freeman was the one who’d suggested calling the La Leche League in those early days when breastfeeding had been problematic. Suffice it to say: Freeman had every right to ask personal questions. “Did she leave a note?”
Seede looked out toward the street. He watched a kid on a too-big ten-speed bicycle—he lived down the way, eleven or twelve years old—coast up to the window of one of the cars in the line. A dance of hands; the kid rode off. Down at the stop sign, meanwhile, the lead car made its right-hand turn, south on Thirteenth Street, headed for another lap of the Strip. The line of cars moved ten feet forward.
Freeman put a consoling hand on Seede’s shoulder. “Are you alright?”
“I’m not sure how I feel,” Seede said. “Like somebody punched me, I guess. But also kind of liberated. Kind of free. Like this huge weight of regret has been lifted.
“This whole marriage thing, the baby … It hasn’t been working out that well. They make it seem like having children is the ultimate human act—the joy of parenthood, watching them grow, all that crap. But I don’t see it. I just don’t see it. I haven’t reaped one single benefit that I can think of. What was wrong with the way things were, anyway? I liked the way things were. We were this great couple. She was smart and beautiful. She loved me. She understood my work. We had a great life. I felt so fuckin lucky. I had my career, she had her classes and her working out—she was decorating the place real nice. We had sex all the time. Things were perfect. Why did we need to change anything? What did we need a baby for?
“Now I come home from work and she hands me the kid and goes off to aerobics. If I complain, I’m not being supportive. This baby was her idea, right? I work all day—I do my job. Why can’t she do hers? Clearly she doesn’t need a husband. And she doesn’t need a helper, because I’m paying for a part-time nanny, twenty hours a week. What she obviously thinks she needs is a slave. To carry shit. To pick shit up. I swear to you: I do not exist except in the context of What can you do for me now. And I’m supposed to be alright with that. I’m supposed to be supporrrrrtive—” a drawn-out mocking tone. “How I loathe that word. Support this, you know what I’m sayin? As far as I’m concerned, it’s all a total rip-off. Fatherhood: what’s in it for me?”
Seede pulled his cigarettes from his coat, his lighter from the front pocket his button-fly jeans. “It’s like the other day,” he said, lighting up. “I was in the deli on Seventeenth Street. That Indonesian chick was at the cash register. The one with the ass? She smiles at me—this huge, friendly, inviting smile—and she says: ‘I know you. You’re Jake’s dad!’” Seede’s eyes bugged.
“You are Jake’s dad, aren’t you?” Freeman said, not comprehending.
“Yeah, but it was the way she said it—Jake’s Dad. Like that’s my fuckin name. Like that’s my whole purpose in life. I’m no longer Jonathan Seede, the guy who’s been working and sacrificing for years to make a name for himself. That guy is gone. That g
uy is toast. When she said it, it just floored me—it hit me like a ton of bricks.”
“What?”
“What about my needs, you know what I’m saying? What about my motherfuckin needs? There’s no me anymore. I have ceased to exist in my own house. Nine months of pregnancy. Eighteen months of worshipping at the altar of this squirming, shitting, crying machine and his overwrought mother. You’d think she’s the first woman who ever had a child.”
Seede took a deep drag. There were big things going on within the confines of his household, things much larger and more important than his feelings or his career ambitions, his wanton needs, the state of his marriage. Monumental things. Primordial things. The biggest thing: reproduction. And he was there for specific purposes: To serve. To accommodate. To support in every sense of the word. To pay the mortgage, the taxes, the auto and house and life insurance. To deal with the investments, the retirement plan, the leaky roof, the hinky furnace, the steaming pile of human excrement left in the alley behind their garage, crowned as it was with a soiled wad of the Washington Herald. To stay out of the way—unless called upon. To carry stuff. To drive somewhere in the middle of the night and purchase essential items. To do all the food shopping, cook half the meals, wash half the dishes and all of his own laundry. To take out the trash. (Why is it again that women can’t take out trash?) To clean the diaper genie: the long, tubular, plastic bag inside reminded him of a giant snake—a wretched, shit-and-powder-smelling python or anaconda dragged up from the depths of hell, the evidence of its swallowed prey bulging at even intervals along its considerable length. To pick up anything that was left on the floor. Waist down: that was his domain. Dulcy had not bent down to pick up one single thing—besides Jake, of course, whose every movement she tracked with the vigilance of an NSA satellite—since her fourth month of pregnancy. Seeing for the first time the swell of new life growing in her tummy, a swell she’d shown off so proudly, had literally brought him to his knees with love for her. How could he have predicted the rest to follow?