We're All in This Together (15 page)

A nauseated feeling came over me and I didn't want to hear anymore. I locked myself in the bathroom. Perched on the toilet,
I told myself this was it, what I wanted all along. I was vindicated; the truth about Dr. Vic had finally come out. It wasn't
evidence of a murder, but something almost as bad—proof that Dr. Vic donated money to George W. Bush's campaign.

From inside the bathroom their voices sounded tiny and detached, but somehow that brought the argument closer, as if it were
happening inside my own mind, and being fought between warring personalities. "And what the fuck are you doing sifting through
my checkbook, I'd like to know?" asked Dr. Vic, finally gathering steam.

The matter of Dr. Vic having surreptitiously donated two hundred dollars to the presidential campaign of George W. Bush turned
out to be only the starting-off point, for this raised questions about their entire relationship. My mother wanted to know
if Dr. Vic had been leading her along from the very beginning, pretending to support her career at Planned Parenthood; and
whether he was lying when he said he believed in a woman's right to choose. What about contraception? Did he realize that
in the eyes of the man in the White House, the man he gave money to, that his fiancee was bound to burn in hell for the mortal
sin of teaching teenagers how to use condoms? Did it concern a big-money Republican donor like himself that—and so on, and
so forth, and even when I retreated to my bedroom, their voices chased me up through the windows and the floors, and with
my head buried in a pillow, I begged them to stop.

I fell asleep for an hour and two, and woke to find the house quiet. My mother had slipped a note under the door.
I always told you that
you could succeed at whatever you wanted. What you're doing now,
what your grandfather is helping you to
do
—
to Victor and
me
—
is no
exception. I wish I could be proud of you again. I don't know if your
grandfather put you up to it, but it doesn't matter. I raised you better.
I'm so ashamed of you both.

The silence was only an intermission, however, and they started up again almost as soon as I finished reading. At the same
time, the Laddies yelped and hurled themselves against the chain-link fence of the kennel, like rioting lunatics. My mother
and Dr. Vic took their argument out to the dock now, where so recently they had drunk wine and danced and kissed and laughed
about all the funny things you learned about someone when you fell in love with them. Their voices were now indiscernible,
just sounds, Dr. Vic rumbling in protest, and my mother snapping back, every word like a whip being cracked. The barking and
the yelling mixed with a series of splashes, but by then I couldn't even bear to raise up and see if they were drowning each
other.

11.

I dreamt that I was stranded at the side of the road. The moon hung in the air like a porthole in the night, like an entrance
to the day.

I started walking. A Studebaker taxi pulled past me, then ground up onto the shoulder. It kept on going, just staying in front
of me, but I was tired of being left behind. I hurled a rock off the back window. The taxi crunched to a stop.

Myrna Carp pushed open the door and told me to come on. From the Bob Dylan album she was holding, she suggestively extracted
a record-sized condom.

"I thought you were on the pill," I said.

"Just get in the damn taxi," she said.

I did.

12.

The cackle of a loon roused me at dawn. I went to look out the window.

The night sky had paled to a woolly gray, but the lake was still black, so the silver circles floating in the shallows by
the dock were sharply defined. There were roughly three dozen of these flashing objects, drifting on the placid water like
tiny, baffled UFOs.

I cracked the window to let in some air. I wiped my eyes with my fists and took a few deep breaths to clear away the last
of the dreaming.

The silver circles were still there when I looked again, slowly rotating on the surface of the lake. The first ray of the
sun shot over the hills on the southern end of the lake and burst across the circles in a single snap, like a giant flashbulb
going off.

They were compact discs, I realized, all those silver circles. There was something mesmerizing in the sight, the way the little
pieces of plastic filled with light. It didn't seem strange, only sad and pretty.

I worked it out, then, that there was only one person in our house who had a vast enough music collection to account for so
many discs. From there it followed that when the argument proceeded onto the deck, the splashing I heard must have been the
sound of my mother throwing her fiance's maudlin CD collection into Lake Keynes.

This was a very humorous development, I decided, a final comeuppance for everything that made Dr. Vic, Dr. Vic. "It's a wonder
the lake didn't spit them back," I pronounced, because the moment of victory was not the time for the hero to drop his cavalier
attitude. Oddly enough, however, I found it impossible to produce the correct grin of satisfaction.

I reminded myself of the situation: there was a line, and it was our line, and you had to be very careful about what kind
of person you let come across. Just as a union acted for mutual benefit, it was founded on mutual trust. It had never until
now been more clear to me why I couldn't believe in Dr. Vic's commitment—what made him so different from the men my mother
dated before, Paul and Jupps and Dale and the others, who had respected the line, and understood exactly how close they could
toe up to it. What made Dr. Vic different was not his big, lumpy, ridiculous body, or his pockets full of dog biscuits and
peppermints, or the corny scraps of poetry that he stuck on the fridge. What made him different was the cross-training, the
same act that had made Tom Hellweg a blackleg. If he simply wanted to be my mother's husband, maybe that would have been okay,
maybe we could have negotiated some kind of settlement. I could be reasonable. Except, Dr. Vic had been cross-training from
the beginning: sitting me down to talk about life, taking me for a walk to discuss things—all the time, trying to be the man,
the man of the house, the one who explained how things were and how the world worked, the man who gave me rides home.

That first blast of daylight clung to the silver discs and rimmed them with gold sparks. "It's a wonder the lake didn't spit
them back," I repeated to myself, because it was just so funny.

Before leaving the house I paused at the door of the master bedroom and pressed my ear to the door. Dr. Vic's sound therapy
machine was on, a soothing tide, low breakers falling and receding, but behind the gentle rush I could hear talking. The conversation
was modulated now, almost hesitant, like a discussion of the weather in a beginners' language class. The argument was apparently
over, although I didn't know what that could mean. I waited, scared and nervous and excited, but the soft tones did not lift
and the small waves continued to lick at an invisible shore.

When I reached my grandparents', I found the two old men sitting in the living room with the air-conditioning on high, a fresh
bowl smoldering, the television on mute, and the radio on the windowsill turned to the local talk station. Gil curled up on
the couch in his pajamas, his naked head propped on a pillow. Papa slouched in the armchair, and the bowl rotated back and
forth between them.

My grandfather glanced up at me with eyes slit to bloodshot quarters, and nodded. "Grandson," he said. "Comrade." He seemed
to be searching for more words, but settled for another nod, and turned back to the television.

"You're just in time, lad/' said Gil. "We've got bare-assed Swedes."

The show was muted so that my grandfather could listen to the radio at the same time.

I sat down on the floor. I felt relieved to be away from the house, relieved and safe and somehow more myself. I realized
how tired I was then, how fitfully I must have slept while my mother and Dr. Vic yelled through the night. A part of me wanted
to blurt out, "How could you?" and demand that my grandfather tell me why he called my mother and started the whole thing.
Another part of me scolded this thought; wasn't that exactly what I wanted? Was I about to start doubting him now?

The old men coughed the bowl back and forth, the one dying, the one crazy, but the only people that I could really trust.
In this place, I felt no doubt that we were all on the same side.

"Look at all those bare-assed Swedes," said Gil. "They don't have a care in the world, do they?"

A group of middle-aged Swedish exhibitionists were taking a walking tour of the countryside, nude except for their hiking
boots and knee-high black socks. Against the backdrop of blue mountains they trod among a grazing flock of Highland cows.

I watched with my legs crossed, slightly horrified, but also enthralled by the supple rumps of the Swedish women, and the
dark flashes of their genitalia as they climbed. It seemed a kind of dream to me, to be middle-aged, and Swedish, and naked
among livestock.

"Get an eyeful, son. This is why we fought World War II," Gil said, and bestowed me one of his patented dirty winks. The waxy
tone of his skin and the depth of his eye sockets only made the gesture dirtier, as if he were dead, but still horny.

"No, we fought World War II to save the planet from tin-pot fascist imperialists who claim divine inspiration for mass murder,
and give countries to their friends." My grandfather seemed to say this to himself. He gazed at the screen with a glassy lack
of attention.

"Here we go," said Gil. "And just when we were getting to the good part."

But for several minutes my grandfather didn't say anything more, just sat nodding in the armchair, eyes fluttering. The Swedes
made a picnic, breasts and cocks drooping helplessly toward the bowls of potato salad and the crocks of meatballs. On the
radio the right-wing commentator led his audience through a litany of democratic and liberal crimes, high taxes and activist
judges and the ACLU and affirmative action and gay marriage and welfare mothers, all the things that real Americans were sick
of tolerating. "I'll tell you what, my friends, I prefer the original welfare," said the man on the radio in a voice like
Santa Claus, "It's called work. Get a job, leeches!

"For heaven's sakes, these are people who are not even smart enough to vote right! And to that, my friends, I say: 'Thank
God!'"

While some of the Swedes set up a net and played an uncommonly buoyant game of badminton, the commentator gloated about how,
only seven months after the fact, the country had accepted the Supreme Court's decision not to allow a recount in Florida.
"We got those liberals on the run, pardners!" he cried. There was a canned track of a trumpet playing "Charge!" followed by
the sound of whizzing bullets, and then the sniffling of women. "But, seriously, folks, if all these liberals don't like democracy,
then why don't they take a hike? That's—"

I switched off the radio. I had caught a movement from the corner of my eye, and rose to reach the windowsill before Papa.
Without speaking, my grandfather had stood, and held a Swiss Army knife folded open to the full blade. He was breathing hard,
face drawn, and the hair at the back of his head standing up in a white fan of static electricity from the wool-covered armchair.

Gil dropped his peppermint tin into his front pocket and groaned up into his walker. The show was over: the Swedes had arrived
at their destination, a mountain pool, and frolicked while the credits rolled. An unappealing repeat about a naked aerobics
class in Warsaw was on next.

Papa frowned at the knife, and then at me. There was something wayward in the frown, as if he were not quite sure how the
knife came to be in his hand. He carefully closed the blade. "It's not right, Gil. That man did not win. It was a coup and
anyone can see it."

"You can't save the world, Henry. You can only give yourself a heart attack," said Gil. He clicked around the couch and toward
the door. "It doesn't matter anyway," he added under his breath. "As a wise man once said, 'It's not as if there's any real
difference between the Republicans and the Democrats at this stage.'"

Papa closed the knife and set it on a side table. "I think I'm a little ragged, George," he said, and went to the stairs.
My grandfather leaned his way along the banister to the landing and out of sight.

Gil made his way to the window and gave me a pat on the shoulder. "You're a good grandson, George." He scraped forward to
the door, stopped and twisted around. He nodded with a smile toward my waist. "Just be careful you don't poke someone's eye
out with that thing."

I looked down and recognized the tent of my hard-on pressing from my shorts. Heat rushed up my neck. I dropped my hands.

"Don't be embarrassed, son. It's healthy," said the dying man. "If you can't get excited about a bare-assed Swede, what's
the point?"