The Diviners (53 page)

Glenn wasn’t like other teens. Glenn felt like Eduardo was someone he could look up to. And this was the first time, in all the years that it had been my job to look after young people, that I felt like I was really interacting with kids, really having an impact. Back when I worked with child welfare, I would look in on a kid and I’d tell him, You aren’t using drugs, are you? Because you really shouldn’t use drugs. And then I’d go back to my house and smoke reefers, like I’d been doing since the seventies, and meanwhile the kid was probably sniffing glue and he wasn’t paying any attention to anything I was saying. Why should he? Glenn didn’t feel like I was an asshole, and when I was Eduardo, with Glenn, I had this sudden need to teach him things, to learn the kinds of things myself that I could pass on to Glenn, in the process proving to him what a special kid he was, how brilliant, how full of energy. It didn’t make any difference if he was using drugs. Eduardo’s attitude was that if Glenn was using drugs then maybe he was learning something about himself and something about his identity.

When Glenn brought Nina around, that was a big bonus, because it was like my caseload had expanded. I was starting to merit the kind of responsibility that I’d had when I was working for the state. Nina was sensitive. I could really learn some things, some crazy things, alternative philosophies, and I could tell Nina about these things, and she would really listen and her eyes would get wide. All the things that seem so impossible in the world, like genuine change, you could tell Nina about these things, and she would just eat them up. Maybe I did fall a little bit in love with Nina, I’m not sure. I know I never laid a glove on her, never even hugged her, but I know I wanted to impress her.

What do a bunch of teenagers get from listening to teachers at school, where the curriculum is about the same old shit in the same old way, making sure that you fit into the mold that society wants you to fit into? That wasn’t going to work for you guys, because you were special, and I just wanted for you what nobody else wanted for you. I loved all the crazy things about you, your ideals, and I guess I created ideals for you to love even more. The fact that you guys wanted to come over to my place and hang out with me, that made me feel like I could do better, and go further, for each of you. Like I was the parent who really loved who you were, instead of wanting you to be a certain kind of person so that you were easy to love.

I designed everyone’s training along these lines. I designed stuff so that people could improve at being who they were. I designed stuff that would build on your confidence, make you feel better when you left my house. So you could go to school and you could mess with some football player if you had to. You could walk around with head held high. Each of you had secrets, and they were good secrets. Bits of wisdom.

But the more I lived out the lies of Eduardo, the worse things got. I began feeling paranoid everywhere. I would walk out on the street, and I would think that people were going to find out. I would think that people were going to call me Sy. I worried I’d run into some guy from social services when I was out with one of you. I started wearing glasses and I grew a beard and everything, just so that people wouldn’t recognize me, and maybe this way I’d bury Sy Molina for good.

You’ve probably figured out that I don’t know anything about dowsing. I think dowsing is very interesting but I don’t know anything about it. That time up in the woods, well, I knew where magnetic north was before I dowsed, because I had a compass with me. And as for your finding the spring, I had my hand on your shoulder. I was trying to steer you in the right direction.

Things changed when you showed up, Max. First of all, you’re a brilliant guy, and I expect you’ll go to Harvard to learn about liberation theology, or whatever it is they teach there now, and you’re going to make a difference in this world, and if your parents have been too busy lately to remind you how brilliant you are, then accept this letter for the message it contains. You have a brilliant life ahead of you. I knew it from the second that Nina brought you through the door to my house. I knew that you were a kid who wasn’t going to be deceived for long. I’ll never forget your brother getting into the van. I was scared shitless about the trouble he was in back in New York, and I was scared that he was going to bring the police down on us. At the same time, I was trying to be credible, so that your brother wouldn’t tell all of you kids that I wasn’t who I said I was. I could see in your brother’s eyes that he was a troubled guy but also that he wasn’t going to be taken in. I could see all of that.

I never would have hurt Nina. You know that. I mean, I don’t know if you can understand that now, but I never would have hurt Nina. I was starting to panic and I had some idea that maybe I could get your brother to move on, go back out wherever it was that he was supposed to go, to the county jail, or whatever. That was a little selfish, considering that I always had a real affection and respect for you.

All of this was about loving kids, see, and that’s what I’ll leave you with here, that I loved you kids, because I never had any kids of my own, and it looks like I never will. I got into my job because I wanted to make the world better, and I never felt like I did until I met all of you, and then I felt like I had accomplished something, for a while, anyway. People like me want to give something away to the world, and then when we get the chance, it comes out wrong. That’s not how I wanted it to go, because I loved you kids, and I never wanted to do wrong by you. I wanted to prove to you that the world is good, that you can make a difference. See, you can go out there with no more than a forked stick and find all the good in the world.

Viva la revolution,
Eduardo

Max hears the rustle of his approaching mother and he crumples the pages and shoves them into the pocket of his jacket. His mother, out of breath, leans against a sturdy oak.

“So what are you doing out here?”

He holds up his divining rod. His scanty twig. As if it will explain.

“Looking for water.”

25

Midmorning on Friday, Vanessa takes a pad from her desk drawer full of skittering pens and paper clips, and begins writing down the list of horrible circumstances: her mother going into detox, dealing with all of that; her mother having fled detox for points unknown; Annabel’s brother, and whether or not he hit some woman on the head with a brick; Lois DiNunzio, missing at first, presumed dead; the fifty thousand dollars that Lois embezzled; how to pay the rent next month because of Lois; the miniseries, the six different versions of the miniseries out there, and the eight different women who supposedly wrote the novel, or play, or whatever, on which the miniseries is supposedly based; all the producers and agents insisting that they came up with the idea or packaged the idea, an idea that now seems to have some kind of
buzz
attached to it; and that’s just a beginning on the list of horrible circumstances, at least until Annabel knocks on her door, and she waves her in.

“Got a second?”

“Have you and Madison made any headway working on a writer for the . . .”

“Not a problem.”

“Does that mean you have someone? We have to have a writer, that’s the thing. And it can’t be some movie guy. Has to be someone completely uninterested in art. It could be a woman. It could be a woman with no conscience. Someone who lives and eats and breathes the small screen, the social Darwinism of the small screen, the sentimentality of the small screen. Someone really calculating, really heartless, bloodthirsty.”

“We don’t have a
particular
someone yet, but we have names and we’re working on them. We’re ahead of you, and we’re expecting to, um, have results really soon.”

“Let me know as soon as you —”

“Well, that’s actually why I —”

“What? Are you going to
resign?
”

“Well, actually —”

A sharp, puncturing wound, here it comes, to go with the others. An awl driven into Vanessa. As if she’s a faux-leather belt being manufactured by some sweatshop preteen in Malaysia. She sets the pen on the pad, gets ready to write down
Annabel quits
before it even happens.

“A leave of absence, that’s what I want to talk about.”

And then Annabel launches into this explanation about her brother. Something has happened with her brother, a breakdown of some kind. Her brother was abducted, she says. She’s using all this language that you’d hear from cop shows: abduction, deprogramming, secret terrorist cells. Vanessa doesn’t quite get the details. Supposedly Tyrone hit some woman with a brick, as mentioned above, and then maybe he hadn’t hit some woman with a brick, and then he had taken flight, and then, Annabel claims, he was involved with some kind of ecoterrorist organization. Isn’t that just kids from Ithaca or Santa Cruz smoking weed and going without showers? Sort of like that. Not like the Red Brigades or Baader-Meinhof. Has he built himself a tree house and refused to come down? Has he started protesting in favor of hemp? No, this was some dangerous nationwide organization in which discrete cells operated without mutual contact and without any central organizing authority. The organization may have performed some kind of brainwashing on Tyrone. And on her younger brother, too. What is certain is that Annabel needs to go back to Massachusetts and be with her family while they begin the process of healing. This healing process might involve a couple of weeks. Annabel wears this resolve on her pretty face as though she has rarely been as sure of anything. She is already immersed in her journey of healing, and her resolve makes it impossible for Vanessa to complain about the timing and about how the office is shorthanded as it is because of Lois DiNunzio. How is Vanessa going to hire someone to fill Annabel’s spot? The arrangement is that you always have to hire your replacement, but Vanessa can’t say anything about it because of the journey of healing, and she just begins to sweat with anxiety about the whole thing, which is when she remembers another thing that she forgot to put on the list. Her period. She hates getting her period.

“I know you have a lot going on right now,” Annabel continues, “and I know you’re really concerned about your . . . Well, my situation is important, too, otherwise I wouldn’t ask, and I just need to be up in Newton, where I can be closer to what’s going on.”

Vanessa wants to point out that she, Vanessa, is at work, and her mother has escaped from detox, and she is here at her desk while her mother is hiding out with Emilia Commito, matriarch of the Park Slope ravioli empire. Her mother is attempting to punish Vanessa for carting her off to detox in the first place, and so Vanessa’s mother has gone to Emilia’s, where she’s lying on the couch watching talk shows and complaining about Mark Green’s mayoral campaign, and Vanessa feels distraught and awful and has been having Jeanine call the police and the hospitals every few hours.

“What are you going to do up there? Isn’t it going to be kind of
boring?
”

Annabel gives her a doe-eyed look, as if Vanessa has said something really awful, and that’s when it strikes Vanessa. Vanessa always forgets that the entire office is and has long been synchronized in this area, the menses. But Annabel doesn’t cry; she shimmies up some metaphorical flagpole of resolve, to rest there pridefully. Where the healing is.

“It doesn’t have that much to do with what
I
need,” Annabel says. “It has to do with just thinking, like, what’s the best thing for Tyrone? The best thing is if I go up there and help out.”

“I don’t really think it’s that great a thing for your career. I mean, I think if you are expecting to have a long career in independent film, you need to put this organization ahead of everything else. Like Adam Weinstein, who gave up his apartment so he could sleep on the editing-room floor. That’s letting no one come between you and the project. That’s creative control. Or Hope Oliver, maxing out her credit card, persuading her mother and stepfather to take out a second mortgage, you know. Then selling the broadcasting rights for millions. People do what has to be done. That’s the way to do business.”

“We don’t always agree,” Annabel says. She’s standing by the door. She must not be feeling as bad as Vanessa usually feels when the cramps really start roiling in her. Maybe healing and closure are even more powerful than ambition and sentimentality and cramps, and who is Vanessa to criticize closure, although she just hates the fact that anything could be more important than Means of Production. Annabel tells her to take care, and then she’s gone, and Vanessa thinks she’ll probably never be back again.

She puts Annabel’s name down on the list.

The intern comes in. The intern has a bag of doughnuts. The wordless intern, who looks as if she’s about to play the role of victim in a women’s self-defense class, in her torn fishnets, miniskirt, and black long-sleeved rock-and-roll tour T-shirt. The intern has brought the original glazed doughnuts of the Krispy Kreme empire. The intern sets these on Vanessa’s desk and then she stands there digging at a hangnail while Vanessa plunges a hand into the bag of doughnuts and selects one. Nothing could be better at the present stressful moment.

The intern has been associated with Means of Production for a number of days now, despite which Vanessa has not yet thought to ask the intern if she has a name, or any interests, or what she is working on. Yet suddenly she wants to ask the intern this information because the intern has brought doughnuts (the cane, that is, loosens the tongue), and also because it is definitely the case that the intern has not been here long enough to have her period synchronize with everyone else’s. She is therefore the one person who is free of abdominal suffering.

“Hey, so what’s your name?”

The intern gives her first name.

“Do you have a surname, Allison?”

“Maiser.”

Vanessa chews the doughnut in silence, doesn’t let on that she has heard anything out of the ordinary. But she
has;
she has heard syllables that could change her entire future, that could change everything for Means of Production in this trying organizational moment. Visions of a new office in a hip downtown location again dance in Vanessa’s head, likewise awards speeches, a country house, a personal trainer, cheese of the month.