Shelter in Place

by David Leavitt

  “You make it sound as if fear is something only liberals feel.”

  “No, everyone feels fear. The difference with you people is that you let fear be your guiding principle, instead of choosing the better solution, which is open carry.”

  “Open carry? How does that lessen fear, when every time you turn around, someone’s gunning down a bunch of kids in a high school cafeteria?”

  “Oh, but that’s not the gun’s fault. If you ask me, it’s not even the shooter’s fault. It’s the parents’ fault. These parents, they’re like the lunatics on TV with their precious hyenas. They’re not raising children, they’re raising hyenas.”

  “Like the ones at Trump’s rallies?”

  “Those aren’t hyenas, they’re just ordinary fed-up working white folks.”

  “Like you?”

  “Oh, I see where you’re going with this. The strange bedfellows argument. You’re wondering how I can bear to climb into the basket of deplorables.”

  “Who said anything about the basket of deplorables?”

  “She did. The way you people go on, you’d think Trump’s the only candidate who ever made a gaffe, when the fact is, she’s made plenty, and hers … well, let’s just say they tell you a lot more about her than his do about him. The deplorables thing, for instance—it shows that she’s a snob and a hypocrite. All the coastal elites are, the way they’re constantly going on about redressing the historical injustices done against blacks, Hispanics, women. And yet when it comes to the injustices that have been done to poor white men—radio silence.”

  “So you’re saying that open carry will help poor white men?”

  “Tell me something, Bruce. Do you own a gun?”

  “I do not. How about you?”

  “Five, actually. Three hunting rifles, a revolver, and a pistol.”

  “And tonight are you carrying the pistol?”

  “No need in this neighborhood. On the other hand, if for some reason I had to go to the South Bronx, I’d definitely carry it.”

  Bruce laughed. He couldn’t help himself.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “I’m not sure … I guess it’s that what you just said gives me so much better an understanding of why my wife wants to get out of this country. I mean, at least in Italy they have gun control.”

  “Oh, sure. No guns in the land of the Cosa Nostra. Anyway, what’s it like, this apartment?”

  “I can’t really say. I’ve only seen pictures.”

  “Hold on—you mean you’re buying it sight unseen?”

  “Eva’s seen it. I suppose I’ll see it when we fly over for the closing.”

  “But if you haven’t seen it, how do you know you want it?”

  “Who said anything about wanting it? My wife wants it.” Bruce stopped and turned to look Alec in the face. “The thing you’ve got to understand about Eva and me is that we have a system. She does the wanting, I do the paying. That’s how it’s always been with us, and if I’m to be honest, until now it’s suited me as well as it has her. Maybe better, since it’s spared me the burden of having to want things for myself.”

  “But you must want things. Everyone wants things.”

  “What about you? What do you want?”

  “Oh, Lord, where do I begin? A new set of golf irons, a motorboat, an eighty-six-inch LCD TV, Maria Sharapova on call 24/7 … Speaking of which, how are things with your secretary? Have you slept with her yet?”

  Bruce frowned.

  “Sorry, I meant that as a joke. Not in very good taste, I see now.”

  “Worthy of your president.”

  “That’s fair. I won’t pretend that’s not fair … All right, let’s start again. How’s your secretary?”

  “All things considered, OK. Of course, the chemo is taking its toll. Luckily it’ll be over soon. This round, at least.”

  “Last time we talked, you said she was having money problems, that you wanted to help her out. Have you?”

  “Not yet. I’m trying to figure out the best way.”

  “There is no best way. Trust me on this. Giving people money is always a mistake. Much wiser to make a donation in her name to the American Cancer Society.”

  “But it’s not the American Cancer Society I want to help. It’s this one particular woman. It’s Kathy.”

  “So you do want something.”

  “For her, not me.”

  “All the more reason why you shouldn’t give her money.”

  “Hold on, isn’t part of your president’s—”

  “Our president’s.”

  “Isn’t part of your president’s argument against Obamacare that if it’s abolished, and all these people lose their health insurance, private charities will step in to make up the difference?”

  “Self-sufficiency is the core principle of conservatism. At least my conservatism.”

  “Survival of the fittest? And yet your people want creationism taught in the schools.”

  “Look, all I’m saying is that once you switch on the faucet, there’s no switching it back off. It’s cultivating dependency, like those people who keep bailing out their kids even when they’re in their thirties. Or forties. We never did that with our girls. With our girls we laid down the ground rules early on, which were that we’d support them and pay for their education through grad school, but that after that, they wouldn’t get anything until Kitty and I were in the cold, cold ground.”

  “And have you kept to that rule?”

  “We haven’t had to. They have. Since she moved to Cambodia, Rebecca hasn’t asked us for a dime. As for Judy—well, she’s a tax lawyer. Her husband’s a cardiologist. They’ve got plenty of money, they don’t need ours.”

  “And do you think they’ll raise their children the way you raised them?”

  “Probably not. Already Judy’s way too indulgent with hers. At least that’s my opinion. It was a bone of contention between us when we were still speaking.”

  “Children never follow the example of their parents,” Bruce said, yet even as he was saying it he realized that he was the exception to his own rule. His parents told him as much each time they came to visit, how proud they were of him, and how grateful that he had settled into so much more wholesome a life than that of his unemployed, opioid-addicted brother, at the mere mention of whose name—Kevin—his mother’s eyes welled up with tears. “Although at least he’s given us five wonderful grandchildren,” she invariably added, pulling a Kleenex out of her purse and looking meaningly at Eva.

  “So she’s still not speaking to you?” he asked Alec.

  “Judy? No, but the other day she talked to her mother.”

  “And how did that go?”

  “Not well. What Judy said, in effect, was that the only chance for any sort of rapprochement is if I disavow certain principles I hold dear—as dear as she holds hers. And that I simply refuse to do. Of course, if it was up to Kitty, I’d lie. Lying is Kitty’s solution to every problem. But I can’t do it. The slope is too slippery. Say that five times fast.”

  “As I get older, I’m less and less convinced that lying is always a bad thing.”

  “That doesn’t surprise me, since you’re lying to your wife.”

  “You mean about wanting to help Kathy?”

  “That, and by not telling her you don’t want to buy this apartment in Venice. Correct me if I’m wrong.”

  “No, you’re not wrong. Isabel! Oh, for God’s sake, why does she always do this?”

  What Isabel had done was stop in her tracks halfway across Madison Avenue, bring her paws together, and shit. “Come on, can’t you hurry?” Bruce said to her, watching the walk sign blink and the traffic light shift from green to yellow, but she took her own sweet time.

  “She’s taking her own sweet time,” Alec said.

  The light turned red. On Madison the flock of waiting cars, mostly taxis, approached the intersection gingerly, giving the dogs a wide berth.

  “And people say New Yorkers aren’t
nice,” Alec said.

  15

  He decided to give Kathy the check on the day of her last chemo session. This was a Wednesday in late February. On this particular afternoon, he didn’t drive her but met her at the outpatient center, where she had gone by taxi after a consultation with her lawyer. To his surprise, Susie was there, as was Michael. It was the first time Bruce had met him. His green hair aside, he seemed a well-mannered boy, slim and neatly dressed, unlike his sister, with her tattoos and leggings and leather jacket. To mark the occasion, Bruce had ordered a bouquet to be delivered from Ode à la Rose, Eva’s preferred florist, but it was late arriving. Half an hour before the session was due to wrap up, it still hadn’t arrived.

  He was about to step into the hall to call the shop and ask what was holding them up when the nurses and nurses’ aides gathered round Kathy in a circle. “We got this for you,” one of the nurses said, and handed Kathy a card that depicted a smiling stick figure in a pink robe throwing a pink mortarboard into the sky. CONGRATS, CHEMO GRAD! the card read.

  “We all signed it,” the nurse added.

  “Oh, how lovely,” Kathy said, tears coming into her eyes.

  She was just opening the card and beginning to read the little messages written on it when the flowers were brought in—a Brobdingnagian arrangement of pink and peach roses and white lisianthus. At the mere sight of it, a hush descended. The expression in Kathy’s eyes, as she put down the card and looked at the flowers, was that of someone dazzled by a bright light.

  “Oh, my God,” she said.

  Bruce winced. I should have known better, he thought. I should have guessed that a moment this delicate could not withstand such a hammer blow of opulence.

  “Never mind those, keep on reading your card,” he said, but it was too late; already the nurses were dispersing, already Kathy was drying her eyes. Only Michael seemed to take any real pleasure in the bouquet. “I knew it,” he said as he read the note pinned to it. “I knew it was Ode à la Rose. Gorgeous.” Cautiously he touched his fingertips to one of the stems, as if he feared damaging it. “The thing you need to understand, Mom, is that this isn’t just your typical floral arrangement. This is the haute couture of flower arrangement.”

  “Is it?”

  “I’m sorry,” Bruce said.

  “Why?” Michael said.

  “I couldn’t tell from the photo on the website that it was going to be this big.”

  “Oh, but it’s fantastic,” Kathy said. “Picture me doing that thing that the Coyote does in the cartoon, where his jaw drops and lands on the ground and he has to pick it up and put it back on.”

  “I got you something, too,” Susie said, rifling through her elephantine handbag. “Hold on, I know it’s in here somewhere.”

  “She’ll never find it,” Michael said. “That bag is the black hole of Calcutta.”

  “Shut up.”

  “It’s the Roach Motel. Roaches check in, but they don’t check out.”

  “Fuck off. I know it’s here. It’s a card I made. A decoupage.”

  “You must have left it at home. You’re always forgetting things.”

  “No, I know I brought it.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Kathy said. “You can give it to me later.”

  “But I’m sure I brought it. Well, there’s only one way to find out.”

  With that, Susie dumped the contents of the bag onto the floor.

  “I’m not sure you should do that,” Bruce said. “I mean, I’m not sure it’s hygienic.”

  “I don’t think it’s there, sweetheart,” Kathy said.

  “Will you please be quiet and just let me look?” Susie said.

  “God, you are so OCD,” Michael said.

  “Michael, please,” Kathy said.

  “You can’t stand it when anyone else is the center of attention, can you? Even Mom. Especially Mom. Everything has to be about you.”

  “Will you please just shut the fuck up?” Susie said. “I’m trying to concentrate here.”

  “Why are you bothering? I mean, it’s a card. It’s not like a button or a vape cartridge. Things that big you don’t have to hunt for, they’re either there or they’re not.”

  “Don’t worry, Susie, you can give it to me when we get home.”

  “But I want to give it to you now,” Susie said, “the way the nurses gave you their card, and Bruce gave you the flowers.”

  “As if anything you made could hold a candle to those flowers,” Michael said.

  “You’re one to talk. You didn’t bring anything.”

  “But I don’t even want any presents,” Kathy said. “I never asked for presents.”

  “I think you should put all that stuff back in your bag, Susie,” Bruce said. “Your mother’s right, this isn’t the time or the place—”

  “What business is it of yours?”

  “Susie!”

  “OK, fine,” Susie said, sweeping the piles of coins and toys and chewing gum into the bag. “I’m going out for a cigarette.”

  She left. With the help of two of the nurses, Kathy got up out of the recliner.

  “I’ll bring the car around,” Michael said.

  “You have a car?” Bruce said.

  “Why wouldn’t we have a car?”

  “It’s my car,” Kathy said. “Michael doesn’t have his own car.”

  “Of course, I didn’t mean to suggest … I just assumed you’d be staying at the hotel tonight.”

  “Well, I would normally, only since the kids brought the car …”

  “Of course.”

  “Back in a few,” Michael said.

  “I’m sorry about all this,” Kathy said to Bruce.

  “About all what?” Bruce said.

  “This,” Kathy said. “The kids, the drama about the flowers.”

  “You don’t need to apologize for anything,” Bruce said.

  Susie returned, carrying a smell of char that made Bruce long for a cigarette, followed shortly by Michael.

  “Your carriage awaits,” he said, bowing to his mother.

  “You know what, honey, would you mind terribly if I stayed in town after all?” Kathy said. “I thought I’d be up for the ride, but now that I’m on my feet, I think I might get carsick.”

  “We can always stop if you need us to,” Susie said.

  “What, so she can throw up on the side of the LIE?” Michael said. He touched his mother’s shoulder. “Whatever works for you, Mom.”

  “Do you want me to stay with you?” Susie said.

  “What, and leave me to babysit for you?” Michael said.

  “That’s kind of you, Susie, but there’s no need,” Kathy said. “I’ll be fine after a good night’s rest.”

  Susie looked at her mother, who turned away. Then she looked at Bruce, who didn’t turn away.

  “Whatever,” Michael said.

  “When will you be back?” Susie asked.

  “Tomorrow, after work. When else?”

  “I have no idea. That’s why I’m asking.”

  “I’m sorry to interrupt, but I’m parked in a fifteen-minute spot,” Michael said.

  He had already kissed his mother goodbye and was about to head out the door when Kathy said, “Wait, honey. Would you mind taking the flowers?”

  “I’ll take them,” Susie said, reaching for the bouquet.

  “No!” Michael said. “Not like that! You’re crushing them.”

  “Fuck off.”

  “Kids—”

  “How about if I carry them?” Bruce said.

  “I’m not sure they’re going to fit in Mom’s car,” Susie said.

  “What kind of car is it?”

  “An Outback,” Kathy said. “White, like yours.”

  This took Bruce aback, but only for a moment. “Well, then, there’s nothing to worry about,” he said. “If they don’t fit in the back seat, they will in the wayback.”

  He was right. “Thank God that’s over,” Kathy said to him as Michael pulled away fr
om the curb. “I don’t want to see those flowers ever again.”

  “I’m sorry, I should have known better—”

  “Oh, it’s not the flowers themselves,” Kathy said. “The flowers themselves are gorgeous. What I’m saying is that I never want to see anything that reminds me of this place ever again.”

  But the hotel, when they got there, was full. Bruce was dumbfounded. It had never been full before.

  “It seems there’s some big thing on at the UN,” he told Kathy after a brief argument with the receptionist led nowhere. “Only tonight. They’ll have rooms again tomorrow.”

  “It’s no biggie,” Kathy said. “When I told Susie and Michael I was feeling sick, I was … well, not lying exactly. Let’s say exaggerating. The truth is, I didn’t want to be stuck in the car for an hour with the two of them bickering. Is that terrible of me? Am I a terrible mother?”

  “Of course not. I completely understand.”

  “In that case, if you don’t mind getting me a taxi, I should be able to catch the six o’clock train.”

  “No need for that. I’ll drive you.”

  “That’s kind of you, Bruce, but it doesn’t make sense. Penn Station is completely out of your—”

  “No, I mean to Syosset. I mean home. What’s the matter?”

  “I don’t know. I think I’m about to faint.”

  He caught her by the arm before she crumpled. “Careful,” he said, easing her onto a sofa.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m sorry about that.”

  “Nothing to apologize for.”

  “I’m really perfectly OK. I don’t need to go to the ER.”

  “So you weren’t lying to your kids. Or rather you were lying to me when you said—”

  “I didn’t want you to worry. Look, it’s nothing out of the ordinary, nothing that requires a visit to the ER or anything like that. My oncologist told me from the start this would happen. ‘The sickness that’s the price you pay for cure,’ she calls it.”

  “In that case we’ll just have to find you another hotel.”

  This time she didn’t argue, but stayed where she was while Bruce strode about the lobby, talking into his phone.