“I’ll get it.” I walk inside through French doors, cross the living room, a thousand square feet covered by antique Persian carpets illuminated by chandeliers hanging from sixteen-foot ceilings, then the dining room, past an oval table that seats twenty, huge old sideboards with china displayed on the shelves, to a phone hanging on a wall in the kitchen, which is the size of my Manhattan apartment.
My stomach drops as I pick up the phone. I brace myself for the manic version of my brother, Mr. Hyde. “Hello?”
“Harper.”
“Hey, Mama. You and Dad back home safe?”
“There was no traffic. It was a nice drive. Have you heard from Cage?”
I hear Nanny pick up the phone in the sitting room.
“Margaret?”
“Hello, Mother. How are you feeling?”
“Fine. We were just on the porch. Everything is lovely and green and the cicadas are making an infernal racket. Has Cage called you?”
“No, Mother. All we can do is pray.”
“Every minute,” Nanny says.
“Have you given him any money since he went to San Francisco?”
Nanny hesitates. “About a week ago I wired him money for a bus ticket to come home.”
“I remember that and I begged you not to do that again.”
“I know. But he was my first grandchild. When I hear his voice . . . A few days ago he said that he didn’t have a place to sleep, so I had him find a hotel that would take my credit card. I gave it to the man at the desk.”
“No, Mother, you can’t do that. Under no circumstances should you do that again,” Mama says. “I know it seems harsh. It scares me to death to have him on the streets. The only way he’s going to get well is tough love. Harper, explain it to her.”
“I know what it is,” Nanny says with a hint of irritation.
“We’re not going to give him the money to come home because he’ll spend it on drugs or sushi, God knows.” Mama is talking rapidly, all wound up. “He’s got to want to be well so badly that he’ll take measures. It breaks our heart. We have to treat him as we would an addict. If we send him money, it will reinforce the idea that we will support him. We can’t enable him—”
“I know all this, Margaret. If a hotel man calls me tonight, I’ll tell him that we can’t help Cage. I’ll ask him to suggest a shelter or a homeless place.”
“You absolutely must, Mother. We must not enable him.”
“I know all this. I know all this. You don’t have to tell me all this. I won’t do it. When the hotel man called the third night, I told him no. Cage called back really upset. Said he’d spent his last dollar getting to the place. I said, ‘Cage, I’ve talked to your parents, you must check yourself into a hospital.’ He said he was taking his medicine and had seen a doctor—”
“Unlikely,” I say.
Nanny goes on, “Cage said, ‘Well, you promised.’ I said, ‘I know. I’m real sorry, Cage.’ You never heard such cussing.”
“The really horrifying thing to me,” Mom says, “is that he pressured a ninety-year-old woman. After Harper leaves, I beg you to take the phone off the hook.”
“I’m not going to answer,” Nanny says. “It will hurt too much to turn him down.”
“He’s not helpless for getting home,” Mama says.
“He can always sell his guitar,” I say. “Where will he come home to?”
“I can’t have him here again,” Nanny says. “I’m just an old lady.”
“He’ll have to go into a hospital until he stabilizes,” Mom says.
“He’ll never agree to that,” I say.
“I think he’ll come back to Tennessee,” Nanny says. “I think he’s coming.”
“I’ve been thinking all day about him,” Mom says. “I have a sense of profound sadness that’s with me all the time. We’re going to have to let him bottom out in San Francisco.”
There’s a long pause.
“The last thing . . .” I hesitate, thinking that the last thing any of us should do is help him, because it’s not help but a complete fucking waste of time. “The last thing Uncle Ned asked of me, um, was to go out and find Cage.”
“Will you go, Harper?” Mom’s voice is a mixture of relief and eagerness.
“That would be a fine thing for you to do, Harper.” Nanny’s voice is calm again.
“And probably pointless,” I say. “I don’t know. I’m in the middle of a project. If I can organize some time off. What the hell. I promised Uncle Ned.”
“Oh, Harper. You’re such a good son,” Mom says.
Nanny says, “Your brother’s keeper.”
1983
H
arper hated his mother’s car. It was a Buick Century with a bizarre hatchback box shape, a style that was only made for a year due to abysmal sales, which Franklin had bought new for half price from the dealer who gave discounts to the dozen Episcopal clergy in Baton Rouge. Over the years since they’d bought it, from the age of nine to thirteen, Harper’s loathing of the car grew with the onset of adolescent hormones until the sight of his mother standing by the hunchbacked Century in a shining line of Mercedes, Cadillacs, Thunderbirds, and Broncos filled him with resentment. So did her smile, the big smile always glued to her face twenty-four hours a day.
Standing by the flagpole at Louisiana Episcopal School, Harper watched a thousand uniformed students swarming out of the long pink-brick and white-columned buildings, encircled by verandas on two stories like giant South Louisiana plantation homes, fanning across the lawn for yellow buses on the boulevard and mothers parked along the oval drive by the chapel. In the midst of the teeming uniforms, Harper could see the Century and his mother’s smile at fifty yards.
Father Crewes couldn’t get her on the phone, Harper thought; she wouldn’t be smiling if he’d told her. He walked toward her with three classmates, Robert Crespo, Trent Nightengale, and Rebecca Mornier. The boys wore blue trousers and white polo shirts with gold knight logos over their hearts, Rebbeca blue plaid, which reached her knees and hung by thin straps over her shoulders. The weather was so hot only a few of the girls wore white blouses under their dresses.
“Nice ride,” Crespo said for the hundredth time since September.
“Watch out.” Trent pushed Crespo from behind. “He’ll break your nose.”
“The blood was all over his face.” Crespo sidestepped a few feet to avoid Nightengale so that the two shorter boys book-ended Harper, bobbing at his shoulders while Rebecca trailed quietly along a few feet behind.
“One punch,” Trent said.
“Sounded like smashing a pumpkin,” Crespo said. “You could be the first thirteen-year-old to knock someone out. I’ve never heard of a kid KO’ing anybody. Have you?”
“I’m sure Ali did when he was a kid,” Harper said. “Any number of people.”
Margaret Rutledge waved from thirty feet.
“My mother hasn’t heard.”
“What do you think she’ll do?” Trent asked.
“Yell a lot,” Harper said. “Ground me. I don’t know.”
“Averatte had it coming.”
“Thanks, Crespo.”
“He’s an asshole,” Trent said. “I’ll tell your mom you were right.”
“Execute with extreme prejudice,” Harper said, echoing a phrase he’d heard Cage use. Crespo and Nightengale laughed.
“Extreme prejudice,” Crespo said between cackles. “That’s what you did. Fist to nose.
Whap!
” Crespo stopped laughing and tried to look serious as Margaret Rutledge called out, “Hello, boys. Hi, Rebecca.”
Harper set his jaw. Margaret saw the brooding in his eyes, wondered vaguely why he was always so smoldering. She glanced at her watch. The damn car pool always fell on a day when an important visitor wanted a tour. Margaret was the most charming and knowledgeable guide at the Louisiana Historical Association, the first one to be called when VIPs were coming to town, often at the last minute. Today a group of Exxon executives from the Houston headquarters suddenly wanted to see Magnolia Mound and Oak Alley. If the traffic didn’t catch her, she could be at the Hilton without keeping them waiting.
“Pile in, boys. I’m late for an appointment.” She opened the driver’s door and brought her seat forward. Trent and Crespo crawled into the backseat.
“Let Rebecca ride in front, Harper,” Margaret said. “Where are your manners?”
“It’s his turn.” Rebecca spoke for the first time in five minutes.
As Rebecca climbed in the back, Harper looked down her uniform, glimpsed the top of her bra and a sliver of round flesh. Sometimes during car pool Rebecca felt his eyes on her and nervously covered her throat or adjusted her dress.
Margaret sat rod-straight behind the wheel. She craned her neck to see the traffic on Robin Hood Boulevard, gunned the heavy car across the oncoming lane, and swerved around the break in the median, a strip of grass with spindly young live oaks planted in the sixties every thirty feet for a mile to the gate of Sherwood Forest. The developers cut the original oak giants. The largest now looked like big broccoli spears. Perhaps in a hundred years these would shade the land again from the deadly ultraviolet heat of the Gulf sun.
“How was school?” Margaret asked. No one answered. “Harper?”
“Long.” Harper adjusted the radio from NPR to
KISS
FM.
“Robert, how was your day?” Margaret moved on brightly.
“It was okay,” Crespo said. “I think I failed the science test.”
“I’m sure you did better than you think.” Margaret smiled at him in the rearview mirror. “Rebecca, how was your day?”
“Fine.”
One-story homes with the odd low-sloping Louisiana roofs flashed by on either side, identical except for the color of the brick—brown, yellow, red—and the trim around the windows and gutter line. Margaret’s attempts at conversation failed. She wondered why they were so quiet today. Usually she had to raise her voice to make them quiet down or stop Trent from beating on Robert. Outside the subdivision, after passing a Denny’s and McDonald’s, several gas stations, she forced the Century with the pedal to the metal up the ramp to the freeway, off-white concrete divided in short sections that thwapped the underwheels every few seconds.
“Why on earth is everyone quiet?” Margaret asked as she reached cruising speed, seventy miles an hour, fifteen over the limit.
Harper looked out the window. He might as well go on and tell her. Still gazing at the cars in the slow lane, he mumbled, “I hit Joey Averatte.”
“Beg your pardon?” Margaret said.
“Harper broke Joey Averatte’s nose,” Rebecca said clearly. “Knocked him out cold.”
“Averatte had it coming,” Crespo nearly shouted.
“Just one punch,” Trent said.
“You should have seen the blood,” Crespo crowed.
“He deserved it,” Trent said. “Everyone hates Averatte.”
“He’s not popular with the guys,” Rebecca said. “But all the girls like him.”
“He’s a jerk,” Crespo said.
“Hush, now,” Margaret shouted.
Elton John sang “Island Girl” into the silence. Margaret reached over and flicked the radio off.
“Harper,” she said calmly, “tell me exactly what happened.”
“Joey Averatte has been bugging me all semester, teasing me about being on a clergy scholarship.” Harper massaged the knuckles of his swollen right hand. “He cut in front of me in lunch line today. I told him to get in the back of the line. He said, ‘Make me.’ We squared off and I hit him once in the nose.”
“Knocked him out cold.” Crespo leaned over the seat. “With extreme prejudice.”
“Robert, sit still and shut up!” Margaret dropped her mask of southern grace, which rarely happened in public.
Crespo inhaled loudly, clutching his backpack to his chest, and leaned back.
“You broke his nose?” Margaret’s voice, meant to be calm, was low, strained. She glimpsed Harper smiling and raised her voice, whispering, “It’s not funny, young man. This is very serious. My Lord, they could sue us, though I don’t think they are that kind of people. Though you never know. Jim Averatte is a lawyer. What did Father Crewes do?”
“He made me apologize to Joey in the infirmary. The nurse told me if the swelling in my hand doesn’t go down, I should have it X-rayed.” Harper blew on his hand.
Margaret glanced at his hand. “What did Father Crewes do?”
“He called the disciplinary committee. Commander Lirt, a few teachers.” Harper didn’t say that he had started crying in front of them, that Father Crewes had kindly pushed a box of tissues across his desk. “Father Crewes asked me if I learned that punch from watching TV.” Crespo and Trent laughed and Harper fought back a smile. “I thought I should agree with him, so I told them that I saw those cops punching out bad guys on
CHiPs
.”
Trent and Crespo laughed again.
“It’s not amusing, young men,” Margaret scolded. “Harper, continue.”
“I said there’s a lot of anger on TV shows and I think it affects the way I express anger. They bought it hook, line, and sinker.” Harper tensed his chest to keep from laughing.
“Harper, are you saying that you lied to the committee?” She looked ready to slap him.
“No, ma’am. Um . . .” Harper tried to think of the best thing to say. “I am affected by TV.”
“What’s the punishment?” Margaret glanced at him.
“They gave me three days of in-school suspension. I have to eat with the fifth graders. I have to spend all my free periods in a little room under the staircase doing homework.”