Imagine Me Gone (23 page)

“Don’t be ridiculous. I’m just not that hungry. Let’s not spoil it, let’s just have our meal, can’t we?”

We reapply ourselves to the menus, the moment passes, and Michael asks Alec if he thinks he’s becoming identified with the white-male power structure now that he works for a national news magazine. “Purely at the level of the psychic,” Michael says, as if clarifying. “I’m not saying you’re a reactionary. As such.”

“I’m a researcher and I edit news summaries,” Alec says. “And my boss is a woman.”

“Right,” Michael says. “But is she a radical feminist?”

“She’s a features editor. She’s not radical about anything.”

When the waitress circles back to us, I’m allowed my soup.

“But would you say—again, at the level of the psychic—that the life-worlds of the people you work with are constituted at least in part through an identification with the structures of wealth and power they report on?”

“I’d say they’re underpaid and distracted, and most of them are political junkies.”

“I’m not talking about electoral politics.”

“Why? Because you think they’re irrelevant?”

“I wouldn’t say
irrelevant
. They’re obviously central to the fantasy of nationalism—”

“I’ll have the stuffed chicken,” Alec says.

“I told you Alice Jolly went to Vassar with your godmother, didn’t I?” I ask Alec, not certain if I remembered to or not. The three of them glance at me dumbfounded, as if braced for the outburst of some insane relative at Thanksgiving. “Alice Jolly, she’s married to Arthur Jolly, the man who edits your magazine. She went to Vassar with Ursula. Didn’t I tell you that?”

“What does that have to do with
anything?
” Michael says.

“I just thought it was quite a coincidence.”

“That’s precisely what it
isn’t,
” he says, at which point I give up.

As usual in such places, the portions are obscene. Michael’s pork chop could feed a village. My soup comes in a bowl a foot wide with an extra basket of bread I neither want nor need.

Alec consumes his food with something akin to lust, devouring it in minutes. His creaturely habits haven’t changed since he was a boy, though they are strained now through his more elaborate persona, which makes for a certain tension. It’s as though the fever of his adolescence never burned off, but he’s desperate not to show it. He wishes he were smoother, and tries hard to be. Which can make him brittle. Difficult not to think that it has something to do with his being gay. The effort to control people’s impressions of him.

He was only seventeen, still a boy, when he announced it to me, and yet he did it with such seriousness and finality. When I suggested he might want to keep an open mind, that people often go through phases, he asked if I’d said the same to Michael and Celia when it became obvious they were heterosexual. Which I obviously couldn’t say that I had. He seemed greatly satisfied by his rhetorical victory. I know better now than to tell him I worry about AIDS.

“So,” Celia says, “just so everyone’s been informed, we’ve got our appointment on Tuesday.”

“Is it with a Lacanian?” Michael asks.

“He does family therapy,” Celia says. “We’re not lying on couches and being told to leave after five minutes. We’re not doing theory.”

“Isn’t that what you studied?” I ask Celia.

“Mom, I have a degree in social work. Michael’s talking about literary criticism.”

“Not literary,” he says. “In fact, I think we need to move away from the text, into the realm of pure affect.”

“He’s a psychotherapist, okay? He’s going to talk to us about the dynamics that have built up over the years.”

“The dynamics,” I say.

“Patterns,” Celia says.

“Which are a bad thing?”

“If you don’t want to go,” she says to me, “you don’t have to.”

“No, no,” I say, not wanting to upset her. “I’m sure there are patterns. And no doubt they’re my fault.”

“Case in point,” Alec says.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I ask, eliciting another roll of the eyes, as if it’s too obvious to explain.

“No doubt I was a wretched parent,” I say. “And burdened you all with all sorts of things I shouldn’t have.”

“Oh, Mom, come
on,
” Michael says, “
please
.”

“What?” I say. “That’s what you think, isn’t it?”

Their expressions go blank with patience.

“I should have sold the house and moved us somewhere that doesn’t remind you all of the past. Somewhere you wanted to come back to more than twice a year.”

“No, you shouldn’t have,” Alec says. “You like the house.”

He has always been the most protective of me, in his way. It’s been true since he was young. I remember walking with him when he was only five or six, holding his hand, and his looking up at me and saying very earnestly, “I would die so that you could live.” It was one of those preternatural utterances children sometimes make when they first glimpse that things don’t last forever. It has always stuck with me, though. He may have been a hyperactive child, and may still be stubborn and overexcitable, but his love is the simplest.

About the house, he’s right. It took time, but I am comfortable there now. My first instinct was to leave. The alarm would startle me awake in our bed each morning, and I’d think: He’s going to be late for work, you have to get him up. And then I’d see the unruffled covers beside me, and I would feel ill once more, as in that first moment—
John. Never again
. But you can’t sustain that sort of thing. It wears you out. Celia and Alec had high school to finish. Michael needed a place to come home to. When Alec left for college—Celia had instructed him to follow her example and apply only to institutions with need-blind admissions—and before Michael dropped out, I thought again about moving, wondering if being there on my own would be too much. But there were the things I liked. The quiet street, with no house opposite, just grass and trees running down to the path along the brook, and the fireplace, which I use most evenings in fall and winter, and the old sash windows like the ones I grew up with, and two healthy pear trees in the front yard.

For the longest time, I didn’t have the energy to do anything to the yard. But eventually I dug up the old beds that had gone to seed, and tilled a larger patch in the back for a garden. I cut off the lower branches of the trees that blocked out the sun, and took the evergreen bushes that had climbed up past the windowsills down to their stumps. The garden doesn’t amount to anything grand—daffodils, tulips, a few rosebushes, some tomatoes and herbs. But there’s satisfaction in it.

Alec, whose chicken is actually quite tasty, explains to Michael how a thirty-year mortgage works, speaking to him like a tutor incensed by the dimness of his charge. He’s trying to get through to his brother that I’m still paying for the house, and will be for years, which is why, he says, Michael can’t keep relying on me to pay his student loans for him.

“What business is that of yours?” Celia retorts, instinctively shielding Michael, who keeps his eyes on the table. “She can do whatever she wants to. You’re obsessed with money.”

I’m inclined to agree with her, but I don’t say so just now, as it seems unfair to Alec.

“I had an interview this week,” Michael interjects. This comes as a surprise. I’ve heard nothing of it. He usually tells me everything, in great detail. “It’s a record distributor. They’re not sure they have the money yet. She said she’d let me know soon.”

“That’s good,” Alec says, more softly now, chastened by the news.

He gets so frustrated with Michael. They think that I don’t see these things, that I’m distracted or exhausted. But I see them as clearly as when they were little, chasing each other around the octagonal house, shrieking in the yard, Alec forever wanting his brother’s attention. Most all of who they are now was there then. They trace themselves no further back than adolescence because that’s when they began getting their ideas. But so much of them has nothing to do with all that. They are their natures. Which they’d shout me down for saying.

For dessert, Michael is kind enough to split a berry tart with me; he leaves me most of the filling, and I leave him the crust.

When the bill arrives, I reach for it first, and am astounded by what I see. Michael and Alec had one beer each; there were three entrées, a soup, and two desserts. And yet you’d think we’d emptied the cellar and kitchen. When I dare to express my disbelief, they exhale in unison.

The trouble is that my direct deposit isn’t for two more days, and my checking account’s off because of Christmas. They should have just let me cook. Michael didn’t even finish his pork chop. I reach into my handbag and get out my credit card, but Alec says, “You’re not paying.”

“Don’t be silly, there’s no reason for you all to do this. It’s too much. Really, it is.”

He’s counting the bills Celia has handed him from her wallet. From his messenger bag, Michael produces a ten, which he holds out sheepishly to his brother. Alec takes it without looking up and adds it to the count, which Celia follows from across the table. He puts the cash in his wallet and clicks a Visa down against the bill, closing the plastic folder over it and sliding it to the edge of the table. I’m still holding my card out but he ignores it. I just can’t help wishing we’d gone somewhere less lavish. I appreciate their intention to treat me to something, but I’d honestly be more relaxed at home.

We wait in our own little zone of silence while the nice young waitress takes our bill to the register. A moment later she is at our shoulders again.

“So this got declined,” she says. “Did you want to try another card? Cash is fine too.”

“Yes, another card,” I say, holding mine up to her, but Alec has already snatched the bill and tells her we’ll need another minute. “Now come on,” I say, “don’t be ridiculous,” but he’s left the table, bill in hand, and is headed out the front door of the restaurant into the beginning of the snow.

“Of course,” I say to the other two, “there are perfectly nice places that aren’t quite so expensive as this.”

Celia shoots a glance at me in a clear warning of anger. She’s the only one who looks at me that way, who can wither me with my failings so easily. All I didn’t protect her from is right there on the surface still, in her shiny black eyes.

“It wasn’t my idea,” she says. “It was Alec’s.”

“Did he go to get cash?” Michael asks, as if he materialized at the table seconds ago and has no idea what is transpiring.

“Yes,” Celia says.

A woman at the door waiting to sit down with her family glares at us, as if our delay in paying were a purposeful goad to her. I look the other way, at a couple in their late fifties who are eating one table over with a young man in a blue blazer and a young pregnant woman who is either their daughter or daughter-in-law. By the horsey features she shares with the older woman, I’m guessing she’s the daughter. I noticed the husband earlier, when we came in, consulting with the waitress over the wine list. John was no expert, but he always chose the wine, and took great care in doing it, which I appreciated, making me old-fashioned, I’m sure.

Alec takes the bill straight to the cashier’s podium and disposes of it there. We gather our coats up and follow him into the parking lot.

The snowflakes are small and dry, floating like dandelion seeds over the tops of the cars. They haven’t begun to stick and are barely visible on the drive home, even looking for them as I do from the backseat, gazing over the darkened public school athletic fields, where only Celia did much playing, and into the yards of the houses, and across the lawn in front of the town hall, sights I take in now as I never do when driving by myself.

It’s inevitable, I suppose, that when they’re here I feel guilt for having dragged them back, knowing that they’d rather be getting on with their lives apart from me and this place, and yet their presence is such a comfort, the chance to be able at least to shelter and feed them, no matter how powerless I am to help them out in the world. Even their size is comforting, how they take up so much more space than they used to, their bodies warm and full, a good in themselves, not nearly so fleeting as all their worries.

I’ve vacuumed the house, tidied and dusted in the hopes Michael and Alec won’t be quite so affected by whatever it is in the air that bothers them. None of them seems to notice, but then they’ve just arrived so I suppose there’s no reason they should.

It’s Michael who resists the place the most, though he lives the closest and is here most often. It’s been true since we first moved here.

From the kitchen, I hear Alec sneeze, followed by the tap and release of Michael opening a bottle of beer. Celia’s bag knocks against the spindles as she climbs the staircase.

It’s only when they return and I see these rooms through their eyes that I realize how little of the inside I’ve changed. I did strip off the dried-grass wallpaper in the study and paint over the dining room’s drab green walls with a few coats of solid white, but most everything else I’ve left as it was: a watercolor landscape we were given as a wedding gift still hangs over the couch; the side tables I found decades ago at a stall in Chelsea sit on either side of it, supporting the fluted-glass lamps my parents gave us for our wedding, and which we had in our living room in Samoset. When they’re not around I see right through these objects, back to when the five of us were all together.