The Altruists

Marriage was a barter economy. Domestic obligations were currency. Parenting, the active kind, could be currency. Currency was currency. I’ll cook if you buy groceries. I’ll do both if you read to Ethan. Everything was, in a way, for sale. In those years Arthur’s salary was greater than Francine’s, and that had implications. Francine spent more time with their son, which also had implications, but they were of a different kind, both more and less meaningful than Arthur’s material contributions. Debts accumulated. Some were forgiven. None were forgotten. The money Francine had inherited from her father, the money that Messner invested for her, was never far from her thoughts, particularly when it came to these negotiations. She hadn’t told her husband about it because he’d never asked; that is, he’d never asked about Messner in the first place. She’d been grateful for that at the time, but now it bothered her. Didn’t he want to know what she’d been up to that whole year? Wasn’t he curious about the man he had found in their apartment? Have it your way, she thought from time to time. I won’t tell you—any of it.

  Francine managed to keep her financial secret by paying all the family’s bills and taxes. Whatever Messner had done was working. The value—Francine’s net worth—continued rising, given a substantial lift by the state’s economic Miracle. When things were going well with Arthur, and the kids, the money brought her nothing but guilt. What kind of person was she, concealing something like that from her husband, especially when they lived as many parents of their class did, investing everything they had in their children? But on bad days—the days she and Arthur had it out—the money was all she had to lean on. The thought that she’d be financially secure if ever they split up. The thought that her children would always be safe. And then there’d be a good day again, Arthur showing Ethan how to fix his kiddie alarm clock, Ethan staring in wonderment at the plastic parts laid out before him, and she’d think, What do I need it for, anyway?

  * * *

  • • •

  It was different the second time around. In preparation for her time in the hospital, Francine got her nails done, slept ten hours for five consecutive nights, and delivered Maggie Ruth Alter in one crisp October hour with relative ease and comfort. Francine knew what she was in for this time. She asked all the right questions about the anesthetic. And having Dr. Malouf around made the delivery room a place she didn’t mind being, a place where she felt like putting forward her best self, cosmetic concerns being a surprisingly effective distraction in the face of physical pain.

  “She’s a beautiful girl,” winked Malouf, “like her mother.”

  “Easy, now,” said Arthur.

  Despite his iffy track record, Francine once again put her faith in her husband. She had no other choice. Arthur rose to the occasion. On the day Maggie was born, he presented Ethan with a set of small metallic Egyptian figurines from the Museum of Fine Art’s gift shop. “They’re from your sister,” he told his credulous six-year-old son. “She says thank you for letting her into our family.”

  Francine wasn’t bothered that the move came straight from one of her parenting books. It meant that he had read the parenting books! She even forgave the gift itself, the copper pharaohs small enough for a child to swallow. It made her happy to see him being thoughtful. It made her happy to hear him say the words our family. On the night they brought Maggie home, Ethan crawled into bed, and, as the radiator sputtered, trapped air clanking inside the pipes, the four of them kept each other warm.

  Francine loved having a girl, and felt a similar affinity toward her daughter that she’d experienced with Ethan on that first day home. Two, she thought, was the right number after all. Though Ethan had already developed the habits of an only child, now the kids had each other. Nothing made Francine smile like the sight of Ethan pushing his sister in her stroller around Jamaica Pond. “Doing laps,” he called it.

  But there was no ignoring the differences. As she got older, it became clear that Maggie was much more combative than Ethan. Though she fell in line behind Francine, she took great pleasure in testing boundaries with her father, and was wily where Ethan was amenable. In this way, Arthur was forced to take a more active role with her. Ethan was self-sufficient, could sit still for hours with nothing but his thoughts, but Maggie wouldn’t leave Arthur alone. She was forever needling him, asking, “Why?” in response to everything he told her—not with a child’s curiosity, but in an effort to expose him as a fraud. Where some children believe their parents to possess a godlike omnipotence (and Maggie seemed to think this about her mother), she made it her goal, even as a girl, to journey to the limits of her father’s knowledge. If Arthur met the challenge, he did it begrudgingly, but Francine was content just to see them together.

  Differences aside, she was careful to instill her grandmother’s philosophy in both her kids. Chores, allowance, sugarcoated cereal: everything was split evenly, despite the years between them. It took until Ethan’s eleventh birthday before he asked, not unreasonably, what sense there was in sharing a bedtime with a six-year-old. Grandma Ruth’s presence was so strongly felt in the Jamaica Plain apartment that when Arthur received the invitation to St. Louis, her ghost seemed to insist that since Francine had gotten the children that she’d wanted, she must consent to move the family back west, as always, in the name of fairness.

  They drove halfway across the country, towing a rented trailer. Francine stared out the window, overcome by a creeping dread as landscape flattened around her.

  “Mom?” asked Maggie, from the backseat.

  “Yes, love?”

  “What’s this thing?”

  Francine turned around. Maggie was holding a framed, bubble-wrapped diploma that was deemed too fragile for the trunk.

  “It’s her degree,” said Ethan. “From graduate school. Right?”

  “That’s right, sweetie.”

  “What’s graduate school?” Maggie asked.

  “Nothing you need to worry about yet,” said Arthur. “We’re still working on the college fund.”

  “It’s where you go to become an expert,” Francine said. “To become the best at something.”

  “So you’re the best at something?”

  “Sort of. I went to graduate school to study psychology. You could say I’m an expert in that field.”

  “Do you know more than Daddy?”

  Francine laughed. “Yes. In this subject, yes.”

  Arthur snorted.

  “What if someone else went to graduate school?” Maggie asked.

  “Then they’d be an expert too.”

  “Do lots of people go?”

  “Some. Not many.”

  “Ten?”

  “More than that.”

  “A hundred?”

  “More.”

  Maggie’s forehead wrinkled. “That’s a lot of people to be the best.”

  “I suppose it is.”

  The highway stretched before them, empty and long.

  “You know more than me, though.”

  “That’s true. For now.”

  “And Dad.”

  “Yes.”

  Maggie considered this. “Okay,” she said. “Good.”

  They split the drive into two days, spending the night at a motel in Columbus, Ohio. Arthur complained about the expense—it was ridiculous, when Francine’s mother lived so close—but she refused to make the call home. It was hard enough, moving back to this part of the country. She was born there, and had spent her childhood dreaming of escape. Life was long, and unpredictable, but somehow, as they crossed into Missouri the next morning and through the city limits, Francine had the chilling thought that she was going to die there too.

  EIGHTEEN

  For the Alters’ last dinner together in St. Louis, Arthur prepared vegetarian white bean chili, a thoughtful gesture compromised by his repeated mentions that the recipe actually called for chicken, which he’d been consid
erate enough to exclude. This is perfect, Maggie thought to herself. He can’t do one nice thing without making sure the whole world knows about it. She was eager to raise the issue with Ethan. She saw him softening to their father’s advances—it was lecherous terminology, but there was no other way to describe it; fatherhood was a creepy, ill-fitting look on Arthur, like a cape or a Speedo—and Maggie wanted to remind her brother that the man could not be trusted. Even if he’d behaved himself at the shelter. But when Ethan showed up around sunset, Renaissance clouds smuggling the last of the day’s light, the state of his face precluded any other conversation.

  “What the fuck.”

  “Is that Ethan?” Arthur called from the kitchen. “Tell him about the chili.” He stepped into the dining room, a tea towel draped over his shoulder. “Oh, Christ.” The ladle dropped from his hands and clanged against the floor.

  “What?” asked Ethan.

  Arthur and Maggie responded in unison. “Your face.”

  “Oh. I was . . . um . . .”

  Maggie’s eyes bulged. “You were . . .”

  “. . . spurned.”

  “What?” said Arthur.

  “Spurned.” Ethan lowered his head. Cobalt smudges shadowed his eyes. His nose was crooked. His voice had a nasal pitch.

  “What are you talking about?” said Maggie. “Your nose is all messed up.”

  “Does it hurt?” asked Arthur.

  “It’s okay.”

  “But what happened?” she said.

  “It’s not a big deal.”

  Maggie threw up her hands. “Do you need to see someone? A doctor or something?”

  “It’ll heal.”

  “Yeah, but what if it heals wrong?”

  “If he says he’s fine, he’s fine,” said Arthur, his voice wobbly and uncertain. Then, hopefully: “Maybe he doesn’t want to talk about it?”

  Ethan shrugged. “If it heals wrong, it heals wrong.”

  “I made dinner,” Arthur said, bending to retrieve the ladle. “So . . .”

  “This is too weird,” said Maggie, shaking her head.

  “I think,” said Arthur, “it’s ready to serve.”

  Ethan went to the bathroom and returned with florets of toilet paper stuck up his nostrils. They gathered around the table. Maggie sat with her back to the photographs. Arthur placed the pot on a trivet and ladled chili into their bowls.

  “This is good,” said Ethan, spooning some into his mouth.

  “It’ll clear up your nasal passages, maybe,” said Arthur. “I’m glad you like it. Maggie?”

  “Yeah,” she sighed. “Not bad.”

  After dinner, Arthur insisted that they pile in the car.

  “Where are we going?” Maggie asked. “Tell me we’re taking Ethan to the hospital.”

  “I’m okay.”

  “See? He’s okay,” said Arthur. “No, no. We’re going somewhere a little cheerier than that.”

  “Fine,” said Maggie. “But I’m sitting in the back with him. I’m not okay with this whole situation. He looks like he got knocked in the head. I want to take a closer look.”

  * * *

  • • •

  Arthur drove south, his children whispering behind him. They had unwittingly assembled into a family pose: Dad in the front, kids in back. It was only the empty passenger seat that pointed to something missing.

  Maggie was prodding Ethan, trying to inspect his nose. He fought her off with Don’t Worries and It’s Fines. But as Arthur turned down Arsenal Street, crossing the bridge above the rail yard and the drainage channel, the bickering ceased and he swore he saw their mouths fall open in the rearview mirror. Something was understood—they knew where they were going. He pulled onto Historic Route 66, past the Catholic Supply and the tanning studio, and into the parking lot of the proud little shack that sold frozen custard.

  How many times had he driven this exact route? This fifteen-minute stretch, repeated over and over, back and forth, to and from? It was their routine, each Monday night. Francine’s idea, to make the return to school and the workweek bearable.

  Thousands of times he’d driven this way. It was almost incredible to think about. The world was large and vast, with much to explore and many kinds of people, but somehow Arthur had spent a good chunk of life tracing the same stretch of highway. Skinker, McCausland, Arsenal, Jamieson. Jamieson, Arsenal, McCausland, Skinker. Open sky, spare trees, parking lots. Blocky concrete overpasses. Think of the cumulative hours. The time invested. Think of the things you could have done with all that time. What you could have accomplished. Think of what you could have seen instead of that four-lane blacktop, those brutalist passes and artificial hills for the millionth time. So much of adulthood, of parenthood, was comprised by the same four or five repeated actions, over and over and over again. Why? Why did anybody do it?

  “Race you.”

  Arthur had hardly parked before both kids sprung from the car.

  * * *

  • • •

  The hours between ten p.m. and five a.m. were a source of anxiety for the residents of Chouteau Place, who were charged with the luckless task of regulating their neighborhood. Nights were controversial, the rules in constant flux. Decade-long grudges persisted over noise codes: How many decibels were allowed after sunset? Did that standard apply to domestic disputes as it did the playing of recorded music? Could that even be enforced? What about garden parties? Neighbor went to war with neighbor for the right to control one another’s sleep. A long-standing dispute had recently come to an end, no thanks to Arthur, who was absent at the neighborhood association vote, in which competing concerns regarding safety and light pollution were resolved with the abolishment of lampposts and the installation of twenty-six blue-light emergency telephones, which emitted a rich cerulean glow into the dark.

  Arthur leaned against the headboard, feeling, for the first time in a long while, a kind of relief. Satisfaction. Spring break was finished, the weekend at its end. His children were scheduled to leave that evening. All told he felt good about the state of things at this stage. His day with Ethan had gone well, if for reasons still unknown to him—Arthur didn’t think he’d done anything that begged forgiveness, but, okay, he’d take it—and Maggie . . . It was harder to tell with her. She’d enjoyed herself at the no-kill, he was fairly sure of that, and he suspected that the photographs were reaching her. He was glad for the opportunity to tell her about Zimbabwe. Even if she’d known already, there was value in his telling it himself. The optimism and the hope, that was part of it. The desire to do good. To be good. He had a lot in common with his daughter. Or he had, once, before she’d existed. It was a special kind of tragedy that these two people—Arthur in his early thirties, Maggie in her twenties—never had the opportunity to meet.

  He imagined a life after the mortgage was paid. He would move Ulrike in, resign himself to the life of an untenured professor, and profit off her successes as she ascended the byzantine ranks of the Danforth hierarchy. He plucked his cell phone from its charger and called her.

  “Hello?” she groaned, her voice wrapped in a film of phlegm. “Arthur? What is wrong?”

  “This house. I can’t believe I ever left,” he said. “It’s so big. It’s nothing like your place. I could work in one room, and you could work in another, and we would never know the other one was even home.”

  “Arthur . . .” She yawned. “It’s four thirty in the morning.”

  “The sunroom is all yours. You could have a personal home office.”

  “Is that what you want?” she asked, clearing her throat. “To hide from me? To pretend I am not there? If I am going to live with you, you cannot hide from me.”

  “No, no! I’m saying, we could go days without seeing one another, to illustrate the point.”

  “Do you think it will work, Arthur? Will it?”

  �
�Of course it will. I figure between the two of them I’ll have enough money to beat the grace period and use what’s left to buy off the remaining—”

  “Arthur, no. I mean us. Will we work. I worry sometimes, I admit it. I worry about us. I want to see you. I need to see you, to talk, to see if we will work. Will we, do you think? Tell me, please, I am going crazy! Will we? Will we?”

  The question didn’t interest him. He was more concerned with the conclusion of his children’s visit. The fate of the house. He couldn’t see more than a few hours ahead. “Sure,” he’d said, hoping this would calm her down. “Why not? Why wouldn’t we?”

  * * *

  • • •

  He woke on Monday to an undecided sky. Thunder, rain, hail—something was coming, though it wasn’t clear what. Midwestern weather could turn without warning.

  Before showering, he prepared an outfit. He had to look the part. Nonthreatening. The sympathetic father. As his irritating colleague Joan Vellum in media studies put it, “The twenty-first century has advanced the twentieth’s preoccupation with surfaces,” or something. But now, Arthur realized everything he owned was either gray or brown. Umber cords. Tweed blazers. His palette was a goulash of amber, beaver, beige, and buff. Smoky topaz, desert sand. Why had no one told him? Surely this was the kind of thing someone should have made him aware of. He laid clothes on the bed. A Kirkland Signature shirt from the Costco off I-55. Cords and a blazer. Too dark. Jeans—he had some somewhere. He found a pair in the back of the closet and swapped them in. Arthur stood back in underwear and socks, auditing the outfit. It wasn’t ideal. The airless garments lay depressed on the bed like their owner had been sucked up to heaven, or down to hell, as in the kind of apocalyptic scenes represented on billboards all around the city limits.

  With spring break finished, life returned to campus. Students reunited with their best friends like the week apart had been a century. All across Danforth’s main and extended campuses, they greeted one another with all-encompassing hugs that Arthur had read for years as melodrama. Now he wasn’t certain. The spectacle made him insecure. What was his deficiency? For years he’d imagined the students to be acting, performing happiness, dramatizing relief at seeing one another after separate vacations to Florence or Punta Cana. But there was something touching in the way they wrapped their arms around each other like family members separated by some catastrophic global conflict, reunited after believing each other dead.