The Altruists

  “As the mother of the groom,” she said, tugging on the oo in groom with sinister relish, “I want to congratulate these two young people on their wedding. What a lovely service, wasn’t it?”

  There was unmistakable sarcasm in her voice. Was this on purpose, or how she talked?

  “I’m proud of these two.”

  Okay. Maybe she’s just being nice.

  “However . . .”

  No!

  “However, I find it odd that they’re getting married. After all, they already live together. I mean, why buy the cow?”

  Whispers slithered through the room. Fourth cousins dropped their forks. Mrs. Klein had not let on to the more conservative faction of the Dayton contingent—people Francine didn’t even want at her wedding in the first place!—about the newlyweds’ prior cohabitation. Someone coughed. A napkin fell softly to the floor.

  Francine excused herself. She walked briskly to the women’s room and leaned over the sink. Her shoulders heaved. She whimpered. She knew now what Arthur meant about getting the day over with. The wedding was not about the two of them. It was about her mother, and her mother’s people. If I have children, she thought, already four weeks pregnant with Ethan (though no one, not even Francine, knew it), if I have children, I will not dominate their lives. I will give them the opportunity to make their way in the world, for better or for worse. She looked up at herself in the mirror. The color had left her face, her lashes clumpy with mascara.

  The door swung open, and Bex entered. “Oh, Franny,” she said, embracing her sister.

  “It’s all wrong,” Francine cried. “It wasn’t supposed to be like this. I knew Mom would make it difficult but I couldn’t have imagined . . .” She hiccupped between sobs. “Why anyone would . . . and that speech . . . so embarrassing . . .”

  “It’ll be okay,” Bex cooed, rubbing Francine’s back. “Everything is going to be fine. It’s one day. One day in the course of your whole life.”

  Arthur barged in. “I know I’m not supposed to be here,” he said, pausing in the doorway. “But you’re wanted in the ballroom. The mothers are having it out, and we need all the help we can get.”

  FIFTEEN

  On Sunday morning, in sync with the bells, Maggie woke to find her father at the foot of her bed.

  “What . . . what time is it?” she asked, dropping her head back on her pillow.

  “I want to apologize.”

  “For . . .”

  “Piggy’s. I shouldn’t have taken you there. I should’ve been more thoughtful. I should’ve been better.”

  Maggie yawned and wiped some morning crud from her lips.

  “Let’s spend the day together,” he said. “Father-daughter.”

  She spoke into the pillow. “What time is it?”

  But she knew: it was six a.m. Maggie’s father possessed an internal alarm that rang at five thirty in the morning, every morning, and by six he was showered and dressed and probably waking his children to deliver news that could have easily waited another few hours. In Ridgewood, Maggie had been in the habit of sleeping until the men began work on the pit outside her window at nine. But here was Arthur, a petty tyrant of the morning, slinging propositions at her while the sun was still low in the sky. She didn’t know how to respond. It was an ambush.

  Maggie sat up and blinked herself awake. Arthur was already dressed in his weekend wear: a white, sweat-wicking collared T-shirt and brown pants. Not denim, not khaki, just pants, woven from an indeterminate material and sold at stores known only to fathers.

  “What did you want to do?” Maggie asked through a film of throat-clog. “I was going to visit Mom.”

  “Later. There’ll be time later. I need you today. Please.”

  “All right. Let me get dressed.”

  He left and closed the door behind him. She rose from bed, stretching. She felt the sleep draining from her body, but it was replaced by a nervous, skittish feeling that rose up from her stomach. Sundays were, for Maggie, one long witching hour. An open portal through which demons came, interminable stretches when the ghosts of her grief piled on top of her boilerplate anxiety. Sundays in St. Louis were especially rough. The city hushed, and nothing tempted her monsters like silence. She shuddered at the thought of the empty day before her, and steeled herself for whatever Arthur had planned.

  On her way to the bathroom, she ran into Ethan in the hall.

  “We need to talk about the photos.”

  “What photos?”

  “In the dining room. On the wall?”

  “Oh, those. From that trip he took, right? To Zambia?”

  “Zimbabwe. Did Mom never tell you?”

  Ethan shrugged.

  “Oh, god. Well, there’s a story there. I’ll explain later.”

  “I thought they were kind of nice.”

  “Nice? Not, I don’t know, self-indulgent? Egotistic? Megalomaniacal? Admit that they’re bizarre, at least. Dad looking all white savior.”

  “He looks happy.”

  “He does look happy.”

  “I’ve never seen him that happy.”

  Maggie nodded. “Same.”

  “Well, I think it’s nice.”

  “Am I insane? I feel like an insane person. Did he brainwash you or something? At the ballet?”

  “He’s a human being,” Ethan said. “I think he’s making an effort this time. Didn’t you say this time was different? Wasn’t that why we came?”

  “Sure, right,” she said. “This time is different.”

  Maggie was skeptical. She had to be. To lower her guard was to make herself vulnerable to whatever scheme he was running. And there was definitely scheming going on. Something was up—and so it was with great wariness that she lowered herself, two hours later, into the passenger seat of her mother’s old car.

  “You get breakfast?” he asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Eat enough? This is going to be an excursion.”

  “Where are we going, anyway?”

  “You’ll see.”

  She held still while her father backed the car out of the driveway, her nerves creeping up with every silent second.

  “Dad? Can I ask you about the, um, new addition? To the dining room?”

  “Of course. I’m glad you noticed,” he said.

  “You are?”

  “Absolutely. I’ve always meant to tell you about my time in Africa.”

  Maggie blinked. “You have?”

  “It’s something that I think would interest you.”

  She felt her pulse at her neck, in her wrists. “Tell me.”

  Arthur scratched his head. “When I was young,” he said, “I wanted nothing else except to be a good person. It’s funny, you know, we have that in common, even if you don’t realize it. One thing you’ll learn as you get older is that empathy gets harder to drum up. That muscle atrophies. You have a family, you’ll understand. You start to look out for yourself, your personal unit, and soon enough you forget how to look out for anyone else. But back then I was young and I wanted to do something with my life. I wanted to be a person of consequence. That’s who I was. Your mother and I were dating at that point. Dating but not married. I was working at an engineering firm where I came up with a, a, building material, you could call it, that wasn’t going to be implemented in the States.” He lowered the sun visor. “I’d been reading up on Zimbabwe. A friend of mine from work had family there. And I thought, ‘That’s a place I can go. That’s a place where I can help.’ I thought I might build things with this material. It was cheap to produce and the standards there were much lower. In rural areas you didn’t need contracts, patents, all of that. They let you build. So I did. Outhouses. It’s not a sexy cause, I know that, but it’s a necessary one, and I wasn’t afraid of the work. Sanitation. It’s the unacknowledged bedrock of civiliz
ation. I got a grant. Maybe you’ve seen my proposal. There’s one in the African Studies Library on campus. A little bound book. We used to have some at home but they were lost in the fire.” He shook his head. “Anyway, I was there for about a year. Safe, inexpensive, sanitary outhouses. That was the idea. It was an eye-opening experience to say the least. I can tell you, I’ve never felt more purpose in my life. Growing up, I didn’t have all the advantages that you did. My father worked hard, but he drank, and though he wasn’t a mean drunk, he wasn’t exactly the model of a responsible parent. We didn’t have money to throw around. I got a chip on my shoulder about this, even in college. Especially in college. What I’m trying to say is that I thought I knew what struggle looked like. What poverty looked like. But until I went to Zimbabwe I had no idea. I’ve never understood how anyone can spend money so conspicuously once you’ve seen how other people live. Even if you haven’t seen them, you know those people are out there. Everyone knows. Now you have the internet. I’d witnessed it firsthand. There was no coming back from that. I know this sounds strange but I was thinking of you the whole time I was there. Not you, you weren’t born yet—but I was thinking about my children. How I’d want them to learn from my example. How I’d want them to be proud of me. I wanted to raise my kids to be good people and I wanted to have done some good myself. I can’t stand hypocrisy. You and me, Maggie, we’re not all that different.”

  The whole time Arthur was talking, Maggie had been bracing herself for the turn. The part when things went awry. But Arthur had slowed the car to a stop, and was looking at her expectantly. As though that was where the story ended.

  “Who’s the boy,” she said.

  “Sorry?”

  “In the photos. Who’s the boy with you.”

  Arthur nodded solemnly. “Ah. Yes. There was this boy, he lived near the outpost where I worked. He used to come around sometimes. We couldn’t communicate, not verbally, but we passed the time together. Great kid. He’d come around and watch me work. We developed a, a, friendship, you could say. A colleague of mine took those pictures of us. On an old film camera. I had to get them digitized. I think they bring a little life into the house. Am I wrong?”

  I think they bring a little life into the house.

  Maggie trembled. “Yes.”

  Arthur cut the engine. “What?”

  “Yes. You’re wrong. I don’t think they bring life into the house. I think—I think they have the opposite effect.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I know what happened over there.”

  He tensed. “You know what, exactly?”

  “I know about the flies, Dad. I know about the sleeping sickness.”

  Her words hung in the air. Arthur coughed. “Does Ethan?”

  “No. But he deserves to. I don’t know how you can live with yourself. Honestly. To do what you did. To facilitate a plague—regardless of your intentions—and walk away, unpunished . . .”

  “Unpunished?” he erupted. “Unpunished? Who said anything about unpunished? Did it ever occur to you that I’ve been punishing myself ever since?”

  “It’s not the same thing!”

  “I know it’s not! I know, dammit! I’ve been waiting to be punished all my life! Every morning I wake up—” He clapped his hands together. “Nope, still here. Still feeling awful. Fucking awful. But I can tell you one thing. When that day comes—when that other shoe finally drops—it won’t be you who does the sentencing. Hold anything you want against me, Maggie, anything I’ve done to you, but for god’s sake don’t judge me for that. It’s not your place. You weren’t there.”

  Maggie was pinned to her seat. She’d seen him yell before but never like this, with such lacerating self-awareness.

  “Let’s go inside,” he said, shaking his head, “and try not to spoil the morning.”

  Maggie looked out her window. She’d been so consumed in his story that she hadn’t even noticed where he’d taken her.

  The Future Pet No-Kill Shelter for Animals was located in the Hill, an Italian enclave rich with bakeries, and churches, and fire hydrants painted like il tricolore. On the corner of Wilson and Marconi sat St. Ambrose Roman Catholic church in all its brick and terra-cotta glory. A mile south was Sublette Park, once home to the Social Evil Hospital, where nineteenth-century prostitutes were given medical treatment and taught life skills.

  Maggie knew the neighborhood well. The shelter, which provided a home for more than four hundred homeless strays (plus low-cost spay-neuter programs and a pet-food pantry), had been her extracurricular stomping ground in middle school. Ever since she was young she’d had a soft spot for animals, and dogs especially. (Cats were too self-involved, prickly, and judgmental—too human—to return the love that made caring for animals worthwhile. On top of that they were too smart, and Maggie, the child of a university professor, did not place a great deal of value on raw intelligence.) But dogs were her Achilles’ pet, capable of dissolving all her angst with the flick of their dumb, furry tails.

  For years she’d been a regular volunteer at the no-kill, feeding, handling, and socializing with the homeless pups every Sunday afternoon. But between her college workload and her growing interest in human suffering, she’d found it difficult to keep up her visits. She missed it. Her contact with animals in college had been restricted to the fraternity-funded petting zoo that came to campus during finals as a stress reliever. In Ridgewood she had only Flower, the Nakaharas’ miserable Lab, resigned to his cramped little corner.

  She followed her father into the no-kill. His admission of guilt, or at least of guilty feelings, put her in a complicated position. How could she shame someone who had already shamed himself? Arthur’s self-hatred robbed her of the fun of hating him. Where had this man been all her life? And what were they doing at the shelter?

  They approached the front desk. A wire-haired woman in a turtleneck apologized for the state of the place as a dusting of ceiling plaster fell from overhead.

  Maggie sighed. Severely underfunded, the no-kill competed for public grants and private donations with two other shelters within fifteen miles. A few years earlier, one of the other shelters, which euthanized unadopted strays, sent a libelous mailing to local residents, slamming Future Pet for laundering money. When there wasn’t any money to launder! God, Maggie thought, recalling the incident. What some people will do to kill a dog.

  “My name is Arthur Alter. I called ahead. I spoke to a Suzanne?”

  “That’s me.”

  “Well, hi.” He flashed a creepy smile. “I believe you said my daughter and I might be able to help out around here today?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Let us know how we can be of use.”

  She reached into a drawer and removed two brushes, which she placed on the desk in front of her. They were combination brushes, with pins on one side and bristles on the other.

  “We have a limited range of tasks for first-time volunteers,” Suzanne said. “We like to start out simple. You’ll take these back to the kennels and work your way down the hall, one by one. We have a lot of shedders, and we want them looking cute and clean and ready to be whisked away to a forever home.” She smiled and two coins of light settled on her round red cheeks.

  “I’m not a first-time volunteer,” Maggie said. “I used to work here.”

  “You did?” The woman looked confused. “That’s funny. I don’t recognize you.”

  “Worked, volunteered, whatever. It was a while ago. Anyway, I know where the kennels are.” She turned to Arthur. “Let’s go.”

  “Lead the way,” he said.

  They walked through a narrow corridor to the fluorescent hallway where the dogs were kept. On either side of the hall were individual kennels with cinder-block walls and barred doors. When Maggie had started volunteering there in high school and asked about the prison-like conditions, s
he was told that the atmosphere, in addition to being cost-effective, actually encouraged adoptions. “If we make the dogs look too comfortable, no one will take them home,” her supervisor told her. “Guilt is a powerful force in a place like this.”

  Maggie let herself into the kennel of a yellow Lab. It was a cramped little cell. She could almost touch the walls on both sides if she stuck her arms out. Arthur stepped into the kennel next to hers. She couldn’t see him through the cinder block but the wall didn’t reach the ceiling. She crouched beside the lab and nuzzled it. The dog licked her face and panted stupidly, happily. Remain skeptical! she thought.

  “Dad,” she said, her voice carrying over the wall. “Do you remember Céline Default?”

  “Guy Default’s kid?”

  “That’s her.”

  The student children of Danforth faculty formed an awkward coalition. They all knew each other, all nursed the same insecurity regarding the merits of their intelligence, and rarely interacted in public lest anybody think they were admitted on nepotistic grounds. Céline was double legacy, if “legacy” connotes a parent employed by the third school to call itself the Harvard of the Midwest. Independently wealthy, Guy and Mathilde Default nonetheless both taught full-time in the French department, he theory, she language. “Did you know,” asked Maggie, “that her dad wrote a book?”

  “Well,” said Arthur, from his kennel. “I assume he has.”

  “Not an academic book. I mean, a novel.”

  “A novel?”

  “Self-published.”

  “He didn’t.”

  “He did. Yeah. During his and Céline’s mom’s separation. It’s super awkward. It’s this thinly veiled account of his affair.” The Lab panted, its hot breath on Maggie’s neck.

  “Oh.”

  “Yeah. It made Mathilde out to be this shrill monster. And of course the Guy character was totally put-upon, shouldering the family’s burden, mourning his youth. Mopey-middle-aged-man stuff. There are two—two—scenes in which he stares at his naked body in the mirror and, you know. Evaluates himself.”