Authors: Elizabeth Strout
“Well, I’m sorry,” Helen continued. “But he did. You and Bob act like there’s a government conspiracy against him, and what I don’t understand is why he’s not expected to be held accountable.”
Jim put his lamb chop down and said again, “He’s my nephew.”
“Does that mean you’re going?”
“Let’s talk about it later.”
“Let’s talk about it now.”
“Look, Helen.” Jim wiped at his mouth with the napkin. “The AG’s office is thinking about filing a civil rights violation against Zach.”
“I know that, Jim. Do you think I’m deaf? Do you think I don’t listen to you? Do you think I don’t listen to Bob? It seems it’s all that’s talked about these days. Every night the phone rings: Help! The change in bail conditions was denied. Help! The motion for a gag order was denied. All procedural, no worries, yes, Zach will have to appear, get him a sports coat, blah, blah,
blah
.”
“Hellie.” Jim put a hand over hers for a moment. “I agree with you, sweetheart. I do. Zach should be held accountable. But he’s also a nineteen-year-old kid who apparently has few if any friends and cries at night. And has a very tense mother. So if there’s anything I can do to help this thing die down and go away—”
“Dorothy says you have a guilty conscience.”
“Dorothy.” Jim picked up his second lamb chop and ate it noisily. Helen, who long ago recognized this as a sign of Jim’s poor upbringing (and detested it), had also learned that Jim was more apt to eat noisily when he was tense. Jim said, “Dorothy is a very skinny, very rich, and very unhappy woman.”
“She is,” Helen acknowledged. Adding, “Don’t you think there’s a big difference between feeling guilty and feeling responsible?”
“Yes.”
“You’re just saying that. You don’t have any interest in whether there’s a difference.”
“My interest is in seeing you happy,” Jim said. “I think my idiot sister and ridiculous brother managed to screw up our nice vacation. I wish it hadn’t happened. But the reason—if they do go ahead and ask me—that I would go, if I
do
go, is because from what Charlie understands it’s an assistant AG, Diane something, in charge of the civil rights division who wants to pursue this. But moron Dick Hartley would have to back her, being her boss, and of course he’ll be speaking at the rally too. So it gives me a chance to schmooze with him, reminisce about the old days—who knows? If everything’s all peaceful and happy he may call Princess Diana into his office Monday morning and say, Drop it. And if that happens, there’s a better chance the U.S. attorney will say, Yeah, fuck it. Leave it alone as a misdemeanor, goodbye.”
“Why don’t we go to the movies this weekend?” Helen asked.
“We can do that,” Jim said.
So it seemed to begin: the business of Helen hating the sound of her own voice, its undercurrent of unpleasantness, and trying to get back to what she thought of as herself. Each time, like tonight, she hoped it was merely one incident, related to nothing else.
4
The day before Zach was to make a court appearance—where Charlie would ask again for a change in bail conditions and also a new gag order—Susan sat in her car on the edge of the mall’s large parking lot. It was her lunch break, and the tuna sandwich she had made that morning sat on her lap in a baggie. Her cell phone was on the seat next to her, and she glanced at it many times before picking it up and poking at the numbers. “What is this regarding?” asked a woman’s voice that Susan didn’t recognize.
Susan opened the car window a crack. “Can I just speak to him please? I’ve known him forever.”
“I’ll need to pull your chart, Mrs. Olson. When were you last in?”
“Oh, for God’s sakes,” Susan said. “I don’t want an appointment.”
“Is this an emergency?” asked the receptionist.
“I need something to help me sleep,” Susan said, squeezing her eyes shut and pressing her fist to her forehead, because in her mind she might as well have just taken a bullhorn and announced to the entire community that Zachary Olson’s mother was asking for sleeping pills. Maybe she’d been hooked all along, people would say. No wonder she didn’t know what her son was doing.
“You can discuss that with the doctor when you see him. How’s next Thursday morning?”
Susan called Bob in his office, and Bob said, “Ah, Susie, don’t you hate that? Call a different doctor, say you’re dying with a sore throat and fever and they’ll see you right away. Make the fever high. Adults aren’t supposed to have high fevers. Then when you see the doctor, tell him why you came.”
“Just
lie?
”
“Be pragmatic, is what I’m suggesting.”
By the end of the day Susan had a bottle of tranquilizers and a bottle of sleeping pills. She had driven two towns over so no one in the pharmacy would know she was using these things. But when it came time to take one, the black of the sleep she imagined sinking into felt like death and so she called Bobby again.
He listened. “Take them now, while we’re on the phone,” he suggested. “I’ll keep talking until you get sleepy. Where’s Zach?”
“In his room. We already said good night.”
“Okay. You’ll be all right. Zach doesn’t have to say anything tomorrow except whatever Charlie tells him to say, it should take five minutes and then you’ll be out of there. Now you relax, and I’ll talk you to sleep. So I spoke to Jim and guess what? He’s coming up with me for the tolerance rally. He’s going to speak. He’ll do his politician’s come-to-Jesus thing—I’m joking, he’s not going to say a word about Jesus, of course, God, can you imagine? He’ll speak after Dick Hartley, who will bore people into sleep, you could buy a bottle of that, Susie, and Jim will say, Dickie, you’re amazing, make the guy feel good, then Jim will try not to upstage him, which of course he can’t help but do. Jim will speak better than the governor, did you know the governor was coming? Jim will speak better than anyone. And we’ll make sure Zach is safe and then we’ll drive the car back to New York. Did you take the pill? Drink half a glass of water, you want to get it all the way down. Yuh, at least half a glass.
“Turns out,” Bob continued, “that City Hall in Shirley Falls—hey, that almost rhymes, City Hall in Shirley Fallzzzz—is sick of all the publicity this thing’s getting. According to Jim, according to Charlie, inner feuds are developing. Between the police, the city council, and the clergy—Anyways, you’re not to worry about it, Suse, that’s my point. Just like you said, it gives every liberal a cause—which is good for them, especially up there in Maine. Like doing calisthenics, breathe in, breathe out, we are the righteous, the mighty, mighty righteous. How’re you feeling, Susie, sleepy at all?”
“No.”
“Okay. Don’t worry. Want me to sing to you?”
“No. Are you drunk?”
“Not that I’m aware of. Want me to tell you a story?”
And so Susan fell asleep listening to the time Jim got fired as a crossing guard in fourth grade for throwing a snowball and the other crossing guards went on strike and the principal had to give Jim his job back and it was the first time Jim understood the strength of labor unions—
5
Helen, raking leaves in their back garden a few days later, said, “She acts like a sleeping pill is heroin. It’s insane.”
“It’s Puritan.” Bob shifted his weight on the wrought-iron bench.
“It’s insane.” Helen stopped raking and tossed the rake onto the pile of leaves.
Bob glanced at Jim, who stood by the back door, his arms crossed. Beside Jim was the large barbecue grill, now zipped inside its black tarp covering. The grill, which had been new that summer and seemed to Bob to be the size of a small boat, was protected also by the wooden deck above it, whose steps down to the garden were covered with scattered leaves. A pair of hedge clippers leaned against the bottom step. Where Bob sat, the brick walkway and the circular area around the bird-bath had the trim look of someone with a new haircut, but the rest of the garden still had leaves from the plum tree covering the ground, and there was the pile where the rake lay now, its prongs upward. Children’s voices could be heard in another back garden; there was the sound of a ball bouncing. It was Saturday afternoon.
“Well, it seems insane,” Bob finally said. “But it comes from our Puritan ancestors. Who were kind of insane, when you think of it. Too insane to stay in England. Puritans have a lot of shame,” he added. “You have to understand.”
“Not my ancestors,” Helen said, surveying the pile of leaves. “I’m one quarter German, two quarters English—not Puritan—and one quarter Austrian.”
Bob nodded. “Mozart, Beethoven, that’s good stuff, Helen. But we Puritans didn’t believe in music or theater because it ‘excites the senses.’ Remember, Jimmy? Aunt Alma used to tell us that stuff? Nana too. They loved our history. I don’t love our history. Let’s say I am profoundly uninterested in our history.”
“When are you going back to your graduate dorm?” Jim put his hand on the knob of the back door.
“Jim, stop it,” said Helen.
“As soon as I finish this whiskey your wife was hospitable enough to pour for me.” Bob emptied the glass in one swallow. It stung throughout his throat, his chest. “I believe we were celebrating Zach living through his court appearance and Charlie’s success in getting better bail conditions and the gag order.”
“You sang Susan to sleep?” Jim crossed his arms again. “You two hate each other.”
“I talked Susan to sleep. And I know. That’s what made it extra nice. Very nice when good things happen to bad people. Or good people. Any people.” He stood, hitched his coat on over his shoulders.
“Thanks for stopping by,” Jim said evenly. “Come by my office next week and we’ll plan the rally deal then. They keep postponing it, but it looks like it will happen soon. Plus, jerkoid, I need my car back.”
Bob said, “I’ve apologized a thousand times. And I’ve gathered information to help with your fancy speech.”
“I’m not going,” Helen said. “Jim wants me to, but I’m not.”
Bob looked back at her. Helen was taking off her gardening gloves. She tossed them onto the pile of leaves and brushed back her hair, which had a leaf caught in it. Her quilted jacket was unbuttoned, and when she put her hands on her hips the jacket opened on both sides of her.
“It’s not a situation she feels requires her presence,” Jim said.
“That’s right,” Helen said, moving past them to go inside. “I thought I’d leave this one to the Burgess boys.”
6
The police chief, Gerry O’Hare, was also taking a sleeping pill. He opened the bottle by his bed, dropped one into his mouth, and swallowed. His sleeplessness was not from anxiety, but from a sense of being energized. He’d had a meeting at City Hall that afternoon with the mayor, the girl from the AG’s office, city council members, clergy, and the imam, whom he’d been sure to invite since the Somalis were pissed off they didn’t get asked to the press conference right after the incident. Gerry was reporting this to his wife, who was already in bed. He’d told those people gathered that he knew his job, and that job was to keep the community safe. He’d said (stealing some thunder, he suspected, nodding to his wife meaningfully, from some of the flaming liberals there, like Rick Huddleston and Diane Dodge) that studies showed racial violence went down when the community responded against it. Incidents left unacknowledged only gave permission to those citizens intent on committing racial crimes. His patrolmen, he added, had been given photographs of Zachary Olson so they could spot him if he showed up within two miles of the mosque on Gratham Street.
The meeting went on for almost three hours, and plenty of tension zigzagged through that room. Rick Huddleston (who only had the job of heading the Office of Racial Anti-Defamation by being rich enough to create the office) had to gas on, of course, about every incident unreported—“I’m not interested in unreported incidents, I said ‘unacknowledged incidents,’ ” Gerry had interrupted—and Rick continued, unstoppable, unflappable, about the vandalizing of Somali store windows, tires slashed in their neighborhoods, racial slurs hurled at women across a parking lot, school reports of taunting as well as physical assaults by kids. “I’m not going to stand here and pretend, as some of you may be pretending,” Gerry said, “that there aren’t real divides in the Somali community itself. We know some of these slurs have been instigated by ethnic Somalis against the Bantu Somalis, or against those of a different clan.” And then Rick Huddleston exploded. Yale-educated prissy Rick Huddleston, who, Gerry told his wife, brought such ferocity to the prosecution of bias-related crimes because he, in spite of the very pretty Mrs. Huddleston and three pretty prissy little daughters, was probably a closet queer. Rick exploded and accused Gerry of not providing ample protection to the Somali community in the past, which was why, Rick said, pink-faced, putting down his water glass so hard that water slopped over onto the conference table,
why
this incident had garnered so much press, locally, nationally, and even (as though Gerry was an imbecile who might not read a paper or watch the news) internationally.
A councilman rolled his eyes. Diane Dodge, plain as custard, nodded at what had just been said. And then Rick couldn’t help himself, he whipped out his handkerchief and carefully mopped up the water so the conference table could retain its luster, even though (Gerry winked at his wife) that conference table was as old as his grandfather’s casket and made of pressed plywood. Dan Bergeron, councilman, spat forth the idea that all the publicity was the fault of the Washington-based Council on Islam Affairs, who had to grab their fifteen minutes of fame wherever they could find it.
Throughout, the imam sat passively.
“Aren’t you scared about violence during the demonstration? What about the white supremacy stuff?” Gerry’s wife asked from the bed, where she was smoothing a pungent-smelling cream over her bunions.
“That’s a rumor. No one’s coming all the way from Montana to squawk about our town. If they wanted to do that they’d have headed to Minneapolis, where there’s forty thousand of these guys.” Gerry was unbuttoning his shirt, rank with body odor. He walked into the bathroom, squashed the shirt into the hamper.