The Absolved

by Matthew Binder

  At this, Karl pumps his fist triumphantly and bursts into a song Bradford has been playing at his rallies.

  This world was made for man

  But we’ve fallen victim to the times

  The robots have stolen much from us

  But man will surely rise!

  Karl’s devotion is nothing short of religious. No amount of evidence could convince him the tenets of his faith are unsound. In Bradford, Karl has found a savior, someone he’s certain will create a new Earth and a new Heaven, where he’ll be safeguarded against the perils and evils that have robbed him and those like him of the dignity and self-respect that is their birthright.

  I, however, know too well that there are no solutions in life, that to hope to be rescued is the pinnacle of folly, that men only create heroes by wrongfully giving them our envy and devotion. Yet I can’t help but be tempted by the prospect of salvation, of course. Karl’s reaction to Bradford is a study in human nature. He’s pure reflex, pure instinct—what goes so far beyond the cerebral, into something primal. I can’t help but be jealous. He has all of the answers to life’s most unanswerable questions: Who am I? Why am I here? How shall I live? The twenty-first century, with all its science and technology, has provided us with a maximum of choice and a minimum of meaning.

  I am lost where he is found.

  Karl dons his rucksack and makes for the door, moving seamlessly through the crowd, virtually unnoticed, the dog at his side. My curiosity gets the better of me, and I decide to follow. By the time I make it outside, Karl is pedaling up the street.

  “Follow the man on the bicycle,” I tell Chloe. “Give him plenty of distance.”

  Chloe asks if I’m moonlighting in espionage. Her sense of humor is improving, I say, and she informs me she’s been processing old comedy routines by Groucho Marx, Bill Hicks, and Amy Schumer, to improve her timing and delivery.

  For someone who’s been drinking, Karl shows remarkable nimbleness and endurance. He keeps a steady course, his line straight and true. Even as he negotiates steep hills, the pace never wavers. The dog, too, is a model of fitness. He runs right along by Karl’s side, ears back, his stride smooth and his tongue hanging long.

  A hot, sticky breeze is blowing, and with it all variety of dust and debris. A plastic grocery bag, the type that was banned in California nearly a decade ago, floats past my windshield. I gaze at the moon. It seems impossible to me that with all our technology man hasn’t stepped foot on it in over sixty years.

  Karl’s been riding for almost an hour now, and we’re in an industrial zone, near the airport. The city lights give way to vast stretches of empty warehouses along the port’s edge. Most of these buildings sit in idle disrepair—nearly everything we once imported is now manufactured here in the States by robots. Driving past the remains of these forgotten relics, sensing my uneasiness, Chloe turns on music. Bruce Springsteen’s “Nebraska” plays softly in the background. A distinctly bitter sensation rises in me, growing sharper and more undeniable, until I’m overwhelmed. In the mirror, I see my eyes are glassy with tears.

  “You aren’t allowed to play me guitar music,” I say.

  “I couldn’t help myself,” she replies. “It was a fitting soundtrack.”

  Karl stops in front of a chain-link fence crowned with barbed wire. There is a sign on the gate, decorated with pictures of grapes, blueberries, avocados, and lettuce that reads, “Sunny Hill Foods.” Inside of the fence sleeps an enormous fleet of eighteen-wheeled trucks, and beyond them a two-story brick building, as long as a football field, with a couple dozen loading docks.

  Chloe pulls into a shallow ravine and cuts the lights. Karl has laid his bike on the ground and with what looks to be a hacksaw is cutting a hole in the fence. He climbs through, and I follow, creeping along just out of the dog’s range of hearing. Karl pries open the hood of one of the trucks and begins snipping wires. Over the next fifteen minutes, he sabotages six of the trucks. When he’s finished, I retreat to the car, and with the lights off and the engine set to silent, I slink into the night.

  At home, I crawl into bed with Rachel, who, watching a program on her gram, doesn’t even ask where I’ve been. I try to kiss her, but she moves away. I tell her I was having a drink at Anodyne.

  “Tomorrow is Julian’s first baseball game,” she says. “You need to take him.”

  “Why can’t you?”

  “So you did forget.” I stare at her, waiting for the rest. “I told you weeks ago. My mother is coming tomorrow.”

  It’s not that I forgot the conversation and now remember it. I have no recollection of it at all. If a visit from Rachel’s mother can slip my mind, what else am I capable of missing? I don’t blame Rachel for being on edge. It’s been years since the two women have seen each other, and their relationship is fraught with deep suspicion. I’ve always encouraged Rachel to seek reconciliation, but she won’t have it. Her mother, she says, is “irredeemable.” I find this curious, because in my opinion the woman has always been quite charming.

  27

  There’s never enough hours in the day to accomplish what’s required. I lost forty-five minutes this morning to another dreadful talk with Rachel. She was punishing me yet again for being an “absentee” parent. When someone is so viciously assaulting your character, it’s unwise to commit anything less than your full resources to its defense. I failed to heed this wisdom, however.

  “Rachel, darling. I understand everything you’re saying, and you’re making some valid points, but I really must be going. I have patients waiting.”

  “You put your patients’ needs in front of those of your own family?”

  “Does your life hang in the balance of this conversation?”

  “How about this? Your patients can die for all I care.”

  There was a time when I found this sort of talk endearing. In our early days, the sadist in me loved to see Rachel breaking down. Nothing, really, could stir me like the sight of her voluminous tears. It was the ultimate aphrodisiac. Those tears indicated that if I could demonstrate the precise combination of tenderness and machismo, I would soon find myself engaged in acts of unparalleled sexual ecstasy. It wasn’t even uncommon for me to incite a certain level of emotional violence against her just to put her in the mood. It wasn’t difficult. Something as innocent as mentioning that I admired the dress of a woman passing us on the sidewalk was enough to set Rachel off. She’d go insane with jealousy, and threaten to leave me. Then I’d take her in my arms and kiss her eyes and tell her that I could never love anyone like I love her. Depending on the magnitude of the injustice I had committed, I was granted license to take my adulation to dizzying heights. Once, on the Golden Gate Bridge, one foot dangling over the precipice, I threatened to hurl myself into the void for having so unforgivably hurt her. My crime? I’d failed to return a phone call when I said, which she took as a sign that I no longer loved her. She found my suicide threat to be the most romantic gesture imaginable, leading to a sexual outpouring the likes of which the world had not seen prior nor since. But the days of these fights ascending to carnal euphoria are long past. Today, they lead only to mundane frustration and regret.

  “Fine,” I said, “you’re right. Nobody’s life could possibly be so important as to deny you further opportunity to criticize me for neglecting my familial duties.”

  “Oh, so at least you admit you have them?”

  “Forgive me, I’m the worst husband and father in the world!”

  I said this last bit not so much in jest but as an admission of guilt. And I believe my tone indicated such. There was a true quality and character of sound in my voice that indicated my remorse. However, upon further introspection, even this capitulation was duplicitous. I admitted fault not to invite further censure, but to stop it.

  “It’s useless to discuss it any longer,” she said, throwing her arms in the air.

  Thinking I’d played my hand well, I congratulated myself. My victory, however, was short-lived. After a brief
silence, Rachel broke down and continued to chastise me, causing me to be late for work.

  Now it’s afternoon and though I still have to make my rounds, I’ve gathered Julian from school to share a little father-son quality time. As we drive he tells me about a girl at school who can predict the future, whom he calls the “fat girl oracle.” She is so large, he says, that the teacher had to order her a special desk. None of the kids make fun of her, though, he assures me, but just the opposite. They hold her in complete reverence. She’s as much a god to them as she is human. Her first demonstration of clairvoyance came during a math lesson, when the teacher called on her to demonstrate how to “carry the one.” The girl, Julian says, has a very high aptitude for math, but on this day she sat with her eyes shut while incoherently mumbling. When the teacher began to shout at the girl, “How do you carry the one? Tell me, how do you carry the one?” the whole class formed a circle around her until at last she burst from her chair and hollered, “Jon Bon Jovi will die!”

  The teacher reprimanded her profusely: “Jon Bon Jovi is a marvelous singer, an astute businessman, and one hell of a wonderful person. I will not stand for you slandering him in my classroom!” That night, as the teacher was preparing lasagna for the weekly staff potluck, she learned that Jon Bon Jovi had in fact died of a severe stroke.

  “So what else has she predicted?”

  “I’m real nervous about my game today, so at recess I asked her what my future held. She took my hand and scrutinized it, and then, really weird, she kissed it. First just a small kiss. Then, longer, like for three whole seconds. Then she touched the end of her tongue to each of my fingertips. Finally she asked if I really wanted to know what is true. I told her yes, and she said that some people develop a nihilist philosophy because they dislike the world around them but don’t know how to go about transforming it.”

  “She said that?”

  “She’s very smart, Dad.”

  Julian continues, but I quickly lose myself in thoughts of my own childhood traumas. For a short time, I became obsessed with European history and military strategy and studied all of the great battles of the French Revolution. To my father, this seemed a very strange subject to become preoccupied with, because he was strictly opposed to violence and war.

  “Son,” he said, “these generals and kings that you so highly esteem carried on in the most monstrous of ways!”

  Then one day soon after, while examining my face in the mirror, I wondered why I was living in this place and time and not another. Destiny, I felt, had delivered me a fatal blow. I had little control over my life. Everything I wanted was out of my reach. I was virtually inconsolable at the thought I could never be Napoleon, which above all else, is what I desired.

  I locked myself up for nearly three weeks. Hoping to find some philosophy that could help make sense of my quandary, I read every book I could. Finally, in an etiquette book, I found a passage that read, “What one desires is not what is truly important. Until one accepts this, he cannot expect to find happiness.” Outraged, I threw the book at my window, and when it shattered, shards of glass punctured my face and arms badly enough that I was rushed to the hospital. How could it be, I asked again and again, that what one desires is not what truly matters?

  I took Julian to see one of my patients, Mrs. Sanchez, an eighty-four-year-old former Delta flight attendant whose daughter is now the Director of Photography for the upcoming Jurassic Park XIV film. When I told Julian this, he could hardly be restrained.

  “Your patient is famous!” he exclaimed.

  “No,” I replied, “her daughter works with famous people. Mrs. Sanchez is two degrees of separation removed from fame.”

  “Hurry up, Dad,” he said, heedless, “we don’t want to keep Mrs. Sanchez waiting!”

  Julian’s enthusiasm vanished when he saw Mrs. Sanchez. She has a tumor the size of a tennis ball in her throat. The skin around it, stretched to its limit, is every shade of purple and blue.

  “Run, Dad,” Julian cried, “she’s a monster!”

  Seeing that my plan to share father-son time was badly ill-conceived, I quarantined Julian in Dr. Hines’s office while I finished my rounds. Now, returning, screaming reverberates down the hallway, and when at last I turn the corner, I find Julian holding Dr. Hines in a headlock.

  “He’s trying to kill me!” Dr. Hines cries.

  To be fair, Dr. Hines does not cut an impressive figure—light build, thin neck, sharp sloping shoulders, hawk-nosed face—but he is still a man, and Julian is in second grade.

  “He stole your coffee mug, Dad!”

  “I did not,” Dr. Hines says.

  I peel Julian off Dr. Hines and set the boy in a chair.

  “You attacked Dr. Hines over a coffee mug?”

  “It’s your mug. I got it for you on Father’s Day!”

  The boy begins to weep. I look at the mug, which says “#1 Dad” on it, and vaguely recall him giving it to me.

  Dr. Hines climbs to his feet, straightens out his clothing, and fixes his hair. “You’re raising quite the little sociopath, Henri.”

  “Did you take my mug when you moved me out of my office?”

  “This is ridiculous!”

  Dr. Hines, I can see from his face, is the sort of villain that would steal the clothes off a dead man.

  “You got your ass kicked by a child,” I say to Dr. Hines as Julian and I leave.

  28

  It’s the final inning of Julian’s baseball game. The setting sun mixed with pollutants makes for the most spectacular sunset—Cezanne himself couldn’t have created such a wonderful palette. The bleachers are filled with smart looking couples steeped in their mediocrity—purchasers of top-of-the-line appliances, deeply in debt, in all likelihood tragically unhappy.

  I’ve eaten a hot dog, a plate of nachos, a cola drink, and a candy bar. I have to go to the bathroom, but I’ve seen the facilities here and don’t want to risk it, even though I may not be able to hold on until we’re home. Julian has played right field for the entire game. Most of that time he’s spent with his arms held out as if he were nailed to a cross. Several times, too, he’s spun in circles until he falls over.

  There are two outs now—Julian’s team is behind by one run—and he is at the plate. If Julian can get a hit, the runner on third will score. Otherwise his team will lose. He doesn’t swing at the first pitch, and the umpire calls a strike. On the second pitch, Julian swings badly. All of his teammates and the fans in the bleachers are cheering for him. All I want is for him not to strikeout. He might never recover. The pitcher throws three pitches in a row that badly miss their mark. I say a silent prayer, to whom I’m not sure, however sincere. As the pitcher goes into his windup, I feel sick with anticipation. Julian connects, a slow roller toward the second baseman. But instead of running, my boy just stands there. It takes a little push from the umpire for him to take off. The fielder juggles the ball before the throw, causing a bang-bang play at first. Everyone is on their feet. After an agonizing pause, with a mighty roar, the ump says, “Out!” Disappointment engulfs the crowd. All of the parents look to me as if I’ve somehow failed them in their quest for glory.

  I meet Julian by the dugout. I have no words to express my sympathy for him. To my great surprise, however, the boy’s in great spirits, his face a giant grin.

  “You see me hit the ball?” he questions.

  “You did great, buddy!”

  “Do you think any scouts from the Giants were here today?”

  “There was a guy with a bushy mustache who could’ve been a scout.”

  “I’m on my way!”

  I pat the boy’s head and wonder whether his “oracle” had foreseen this moment.

  29

  Dinner with Rachel’s mother went awry, and I failed in my husbandly duty to properly support my wife.

  It had been nearly two years since we last saw or heard from Astrid in Abiquiu, New Mexico, where she had moved into a small adobe casita, on the property of a chil
é pepper farm. Astrid had newly committed herself to watercolor paintings, and she thought it absolutely necessary to take up residence near Georgia O’Keeffe’s old estate. Astrid barely had running water, and her electricity came from an off-grid solar powered system. During our visit, she had attempted to convince us to move there.

  “It’s for your salvation!” she said. “Your souls will rot in San Francisco!”

  I once read that prophets are nothing more than simple souls who deduce the future from facts they wrongly interpret. At the time, I believed Astrid to be something like this, a lunatic. She had never been right about anything, just a person endlessly bumbling from one abomination to the next. There had been the time she went to work for Greenpeace in Africa and got abducted by a gang of riotous Tutsi warlords, inciting an international incident, requiring UN intervention. And another time when she took up competitive barefoot waterskiing, broke her femur, and was in traction for three months.

  Our dinner this evening started innocently enough. Astrid looked practically respectable, having forgone the eagle feathers in her hair and the typical copious amounts of turquoise jewelry. She wasn’t even wearing her lucky necklace with the rattlesnake rattle. I was almost hopeful, and said as much to Rachel, who remained skeptical, of course, if not hostile.

  “Dress her up however you like,” she said, “but I promise you, nothing’s changed.”

  Astrid complimented Rachel for her quinoa, broccoli, and vegan cheese casserole, what Astrid considered both “nourishing” and “comforting.” Even after she had taken her first bites and realized the dish was overcooked and as dry as the Sahara Desert, she was nothing if not cordial. Everyone remained engaged and polite. We discussed Julian’s baseball prowess, Martinez’s chances in the upcoming election, and the abysmal state of American moviemaking, which sadly has been reduced to a propaganda machine for the government.