Mislaid (24 page)

“He was nine years old. You and Mom had a shotgun wedding. How was any of you going to make a choice? It’s silly to think you have choices. That’s what we learned in philosophy class. It’s very liberating.”

Byrdie came back after half an hour, never having gotten farther than the bar. He had drunk two cups of coffee and calmed down a lot. “You ready to grant a general amnesty?” Lee asked him. “Mireille has us convinced we need not postpone joy.”

“You and Mom need to cop a plea,” he said.

“Guilty as charged!” Meg said. “I should have written to you.”

“That’s a start,” Byrdie said.

“I should not have terrified her into going underground,” Lee said.

“I should have told Karen the truth and let her make her own decision.”

“I should have been faithful to your mother, not that I had any choice in the matter.”

Karen and Byrdie cast bewildered looks on Lee, and Byrdie said, “What’s that got to do with anything?”

“It’s true! I screwed around on her because I couldn’t help myself. The first time, it was with a girl she was in love with. I can’t believe I was such a crumb.”

“You’re hardly displaying remorse,” Meg observed. “You’re trying to distract them and show off. What about the time you broke all my portraits of you and your pinhead friends?”

“I should have filed for divorce and paid you to stay far, far away,” Lee said. “You would have done it, too.”

“You don’t make that kind of money,” Meg said.

Byrdie said, “You know, on second thought, forget the plea bargain. Go back to pretending you’re innocent until proven guilty. I like you better that way.”

“But to find out what happened, we need a guilty plea under conditions of amnesty,” Karen said. “And then tabula rasa!”

“That’s only if you want to love me,” Meg pointed out. “Love’s optional. I wrote my parents off a long time ago. I know next to nothing about them, and I could care less. I don’t deserve any better.”

“But I want to love you,” Karen said. “You’re weirdly fascinating, plus you’re my mom.”

“If you think she’s weirdly fascinating, wait till you get to know Dad,” Byrdie said.

“They’re ganging up on us,” Lee said. “Time for another distraction.” He rang for the wine steward.

“Here’s the deal,” Karen said. “We forgive you if you promise to tell us the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Okay, Byrdie?”

“I don’t think Dad ever lied to me once,” Byrdie objected. “He never cared enough about how I feel to lie.”

“We could make him promise to be nice from now on,” Karen ventured.

“I’m in,” Lee said. “Love means never having to say you’re sorry.”

“I would take that deal,” Meg said.

“And what do we get?” Byrdie pleaded. “Nothing?”

“Parents!” Karen said.

It was weeks before Byrdie would let his guard down with Meg. But they were reconciled only a short time after he first glimpsed the beautiful squirrel sanctuary.

His hosts were aware that he had invoked his right to remain silent and refused a plea bargain. This raised him numerous notches in their estimation above a certain immature and dangerous little sister. After all the others went to bed, Flea took Byrdie under her wing. She read his palm and told his fortune with playing cards. She led him through meadows and down to the dock. She started the boat and steered it quietly toward the center of the water where the shadows were palest. She bade him take the wheel and do full-throttle doughnuts. The stars whirled above his head and the lights of the inlet twinkled red and green. He bounced over his own wake until the cabin swayed and shuddered like the howdah on an inebriated elephant. Flea stood straight as a reed in the light of the Milky Way, hair blowing
across her face, watching him. Suddenly she reached down to cut the engine. In the noise of water lapping against the agitated hull she whispered, “Save me, please, Byrdie.”

She was sweet and fragile, lithe and delicate, innocent and ignorant, with the face of an angel and primroses in her hair. In short, a person Byrdie had thought existed only in Grateful Dead lyrics and the photography of David Hamilton. Yet here she was, swaying atop her boyfriend’s cabin cruiser, demanding sex as an urgent moral imperative.

Byrdie understood. He would drop-kick Lomax into the shitcan of history. Erase the memory of Lomax from her body. It would be ignoble to refuse a service so necessary and overdue.

When he hugged her his elbows met behind her rib cage. Her waist almost fit in his hands, if he squeezed. Her teeth, her ears, everything was perfect. Her hair was dense and liquid as a child’s. Her long, tiered skirt was nearly as soft as her skin, and instead of a bra, she wore a slippery, patchouli-scented camisole. She was trembling with joy, crying on his shirt, mystified by his belt buckle. When he entered her, he noted that it was epoch-making. He had never been a matter of life or death before, or anybody’s savior. He liked it.

He liked the motion of the creaking boat, like a house trailer standing in the living waters of the lagoon. It was loud with splashing creatures, nothing like a river, so unlike Stillwater Lake. The moon began its metallic rise above the ocean. Satellites chased each other across the sky, and something in the boat beeped because the depth was less than two fathoms. Flea lay exhausted on his cashmere coat, her soft body powdered with fluids drying in the breeze. In his mind he was on the edge of dark water, preparing to dive. She was the last of her kind, endangered, like the squirrels. Of course he would save her. He would fight to win her, and work to preserve her habitat.

When they brought the boat back in, Meg was waiting for them on the dock. “You kids were in trouble for a while there,” she said. “He wanted to tie you to the boat and burn it. But we talked it out. He’s cool now.”

After that, no power on earth could have induced Byrdie to be on poor terms with Meg.

As for the rapprochement between Karen and Lee, it took several minutes. “I underestimated you,” he said, as soon as they were alone together at a gay (the owner, not the patrons; it’s important to realize that progress isn’t when minorities come out of the closet—generally speaking, black people have been out of the closet since time immemorial—but when they can make money selling vital necessities, not cream soda and carrot cake) bakery on Cary Street in Richmond. Byrdie’s sojourn with Meg, Luke, Lomax, et al. had gone on for nearly a month, but Lee was still wearing his bike shorts. Karen had invested in a nine-gore hip-hugger suede wrap miniskirt, red cable-knit sweater, khaki trench coat, orange tights, and saddle shoes. It was a thrift-shop look that combined punk, golf, and Antonioni in a way Lee could not help but admire. “Compared to you,” he declared, “we all have frontal lobe damage. You’re the one who noticed the ground rules had changed.”

“Thanks!” Karen said.

“Yes, our brains are like Swiss cheese,” he added, sort of undermining his compliment after the fact. “So what do you plan to do with your newfound freedom, besides follow Temple around?”

“Just be myself. I like having a new identity. It’s like being in witness protection. I can drop everything and start a new life like Mom.”

“Ooh, and what does Temple say to being dropped?”

“He doesn’t care about my identity. He’s been calling me Blondi, like Hitler’s dog.”

“You should make him stop that.”

“No, it’s just since this morning. I think it might be his art. Nicknames are a major art form in the black community. Mom’s girlfriend is a scholar of black culture. She’s been collecting them. It’s so aggravating. Temple’s meeting her halfway, and then some. He started calling Mom Hal, like the insane computer in
2001
.”

Lee said, “Priceless. So back to my question. Is there anything else you might want or need, as part of your new life? I’m here to help!”

“I think a new life is plenty enough on its own. It’s confusing but exciting. I mean, I’m glad I grew up black, because it’s cooler, but it’s white people who run the place, obviously.”

“Not all white people.”

“Well,
some
of them. Like Byrdie at his trial, telling the judge what to do. That was cool. I want to be white like that.”

“So your goal in life is to be white? Isn’t that a tad, uh, minimal?”

“What do I need a life goal for?”

“You refuse to be pinned down.”

“What do you mean? With a pin like a bug, or somebody holding my arms?”

“You’re your mother’s child.”

“Well, if you really want to know, I was thinking I could go to law school like Uncle Trip. I could help Byrdie. His housing projects are a really horrible idea, because what’s cool is when poor people get to move into rich-people neighborhoods. The houses they build for poor people are not nice. Houses should be for rich people only, but shouldn’t discriminate by income. Let people live in them even after they lose all their money.”

Lee sighed. “Listen, kiddo. That’s cute, and insightful, but there’s something imperialist—something third world—something profoundly
Southern
and just
wrong
about the way you and your brother both approach thinking on this issue. Neither of you has ever seen money being invested, just harvested, and you think it grows in the ground. It’s what the structuralists call a homology, like people believing in the trickle-down effect after they spend their lives waiting for their inheritance to trickle down. Byrdie’s my son, I raised him, but more than that he’s a child of his generation. And his generation can kiss my ass. Freelance city planner. My God. He’s going to wake up fifty years old in a squat on Church Hill. And Temple is worse. Temple ought to be at West Point, learning discipline, with a job when he gets out and a place to stay. But no, it’s got to be comp fucking lit. Those pretty-boy parasites are going to bankrupt both of us. I won’t be around to see it, but I can see you already. Picking up the pieces, paying their bills. The levelheaded little woman, keeping things in line. Darling, take my advice and major in accounting. Get your CPA.”

To this outburst, Karen replied evenly, “That’s why I’m glad we might move to New York. Mom says the wife needs to keep control over the purse strings and be the chatelaine. In New York they have an aboveground economy, so I can practice. This cake is so great. Mmm. It’s the first real buttercream I ever ate.”

As he finished his Death by Chocolate, Lee pondered how he might steer the conversation around to a survivable second date. He wanted to get to know his daughter, he really did. Yet drawing her out was possibly not the most rewarding exercise, while doing the talking himself was evidently also a piss-poor idea.

Ever quick on his feet, he concocted a fallback strategy: See her in action, preferably doing something that would endear him to her if not vice versa. That is, get her to have fun at his expense
while looking pretty and not getting sticky or irritable. She might not inspire his love, but he could command hers.

“Mireille,” he began, “the truth is, when I said goals, I meant stuff you might need or want, like fall clothes for school. I’m well aware you’re a teenage girl. I’m lucky you didn’t ask for world peace and a cure for cancer.” He paused, made a mental note that errant and rueful was not the aesthetic to go for, and continued. “You need a winter coat and some clothes that fit you a little better. How about a shopping trip to New York? You need everything, and I think it would be nice to go on a father-daughter excursion before school starts up again. You should let me spoil you a little. See the world. Your experience thus far has been rather circumscribed.”

“A shopping trip?” Karen said.

“We can hit the highlights,” Lee said. “Stay at the Plaza. Go to shows. Art museums. Get you a haircut. Eat some sushi.”

“But I’m going to New York anyway,” Karen said. “That’s where Luke lives.”

“If you don’t want to go there, we can go anywhere. London, Paris, you name it. All you need is a passport. We could have lots of fun.”

“Anywhere at all?”

“Anywhere.”

She hesitated. “Anywhere?”

Lee rolled his eyes and said firmly, “Yes.”

“Well, there is one place I always wanted to go.”

“If it’s Disney and Epcot, summer is out of the question.”

“Dad. I can call you Dad, right?”

“Of course.”

“Did you ever read
Kaputt
?”

Lee did not answer, so she went on. “It’s my favorite book. It’s a memoir of World War II by a guy named Curzio Malaparte.
He starts out by visiting his friend Axel Munthe on the Isle of Capri, and he thinks his friend Axel is, like,
dumb,
for caring a lot about birds. But before that, he visits his other friend, King Bernadotte, whose hobby is embroidery.” She pronounced the names “Mallaparty,” “Monthy,” and “Burnadotty,” but Lee did not smile. “He’s the king of Sweden, but what he does all day is embroider, like, napkins! And then Malaparte goes to the war. And he realizes that people really are exactly like birds. They’re innocent bystanders only an asshole would kill”—here Karen developed fierce-looking tears in her eyes—“and embroidery is symbolic of the very best part about them. He goes all around the war, seeing beautiful people and animals suffer and die for no reason, but he never looks away. He writes it all down. And in the end he goes back to Capri to build himself this house . . .”

Her voice slowed as she saw his eyes, which had turned glassy, being squeezed shut. “Dad, why are you crying? Do you think he’s a fascist? Temple says he’s a fascist.”

She lowered her eyes to her empty plate. She saw that to a sophisticate like Lee, reading Malaparte was equal in puerility to eating scabs, and that she would soon be in New York, acquiring modish things to make herself less of a rube.

Lee said, “Don’t mind me. It’s just my life flashing before my eyes. You were raised under a rock, yet your life’s dream is to see the Villa Malaparte. And now I realize I must have passed something down to you in my semen after all. The divine spark. It’s the first time in my life I ever felt like a man.”

The hush in the room was punctuated by a creaking of chair legs as interested parties leaned closer. The hush deepened, and a quiet stillness fell. A girl begging for something to do with fascism, a man in spandex moved to tears by semen: Everyone present felt that something significant was happening. Awed silence is the universe’s clutch. Which it now released, propelling Karen
and Lee from lives of neutral idling into a world of irreversible events and irreplaceable objects. She had a parent. He had a child. A busybody approached their table and whispered, “Sir—”