The Burgess Boys (39 page)

“I’m on my way to work.”

“I know that, Bobby. I was just thinking about you. This shrink is really good. He says we have unresolved issues.”

Bob stopped walking. “When did you start believing in therapy?”

Pam looked thin and worried. “I don’t know. I thought I’d give it a shot. I’m feeling kind of adrift these days.
You’ve
practically disappeared. Hey, get this.” She touched his arm. “Before I went to this shrink, who’s pretty good, I went to a woman shrink and she kept calling Shirley Falls ‘Shelly Falls,’ and I finally said, Why can’t you get that straight? And she said, Oh, Pamela, a small mistake, excuse me. And I said, Well, people in Shirley Falls might not think it’s a small mistake. What if I said, Oh, your office is on Flatbush Avenue, I got it mixed up with Park Avenue,
saaawwry!
”

Bob stared at her.

“She was an asshole. She kept calling me ‘Pamela’ and I said my name was Pam and she said that was the name of a girl and I was a woman. Honestly. A dipshit in a red blazer with a huge desk.”

“Pam, why are you paying a therapist to talk about Shirley Falls?”

She looked taken aback. “Well, I don’t talk about it all the
time
. It comes up because, you know, I miss it or something.”

“You live in a huge townhouse and you go to parties with Picassos on the walls, and you miss Shirley Falls.”

She looked down the street. “Sometimes.”

“Pam. Listen to me.” He saw fear drop onto her face. People moved past them on their way to work, briefcase straps slung across their chests, heels clicking on the sidewalk. “Let me ask you one question. After we split up, did you track down Jim and get drunk and tell him he was attractive and tell him stuff you’d been up to when we were still married? Just tell me.”

“What?” Her head ducked forward slightly, as though trying to find him. “What?” she asked again. The fear had changed to confusion. “Tell your brother I found him attractive?
Jim?
”

“He’s the only brother I have. Yes, Jim. Many people find him attractive. One of the sexiest men of 1993.” Bob tried to step back from all the people moving down the sidewalk toward their bus stop or the subway. Pam followed him; they were almost in the street. He told her what Jim had said about her in the hotel in Shirley Falls when they had gone up for the demonstration. “That you made poor confessional choices,” he finished.

“You know what?” Pam spread her fingers through her hair. “You listen to this, Bob Burgess. I can’t stand your brother. You know why? He’s actually kind of like me. Only he’s
not
like me because he’s hard and successful and manages to find himself new audiences. I’m anxious, a little pathetic, and I can’t
find
my audience, which is partly why I like going to this shrink even if I have to pay him to be my audience. But Jim and I—we recognize each other, always have, and in his passive hostile way, he’s put me down. He
craves
attention, his need for it is so transparent it makes me sick, and poor Helen puts up with it because she’s too stupid to see it. So he demands attention and then keeps people out when he gets it, because wanting attention has nothing to do with
relating
to people, which is kind of what most human beings like to do. And yeah, I had a drink with him. He
got
me to say stuff, because that’s what he does. A whole career spent getting people to say what he wants them to, whether it’s a confession or a lie. Did I tell him I found him
attractive
? Does that sound like a word I use? Oh, Jim, I’ve always found you so
attractive
. Are you kidding me? That’s the kind of thing Helen, poor rich Connecticut stuffed sofa, would say.”

“He said you were a parasite.”

“Nice. Nice of you to repeat that.”

“Ah, Pam. Who cares what he said?”

“You care! Or you wouldn’t be accosting me like this.”

“I’m not accosting you. I just wanted to know.”

“Well, what
I
want is to tell your brother he has no business screwing around with your head.
He’s
the parasite. Feeding off the back of Wally Packer. And then off the back of white-collar criminals. Oh, that’s holy work, isn’t it?”

She was not crying. She was not close to crying. She was the most Pam he had seen in years. He apologized. He said he would find her a cab.

“Fuck that,” she said. She pulled her cell phone from her bag. “I feel like calling him right now. You can hear what I have to say to him.” She pointed her cell phone at Bob’s chest. “Jim and I aren’t really parasites, Bob. We’re statistics. Two more baby boomers not doing all the great things for society we thought we’d do. And then we get whiny about it, boo hoo. Yes, I go to dinner parties with Picassos on the wall, and sometimes, Bobby—shoot me—I feel sad, because I kind of thought I’d be a scientist tramping around Africa finding parasites and people would think I was
great
. Half-dead people wouldn’t die because of me. Hell, I’d save all Somalia! It’s called grandiosity, Bobby. As far as I can tell it’s a sickness like any other—

“Stay right here. I have some things to say to that motherfucker brother of yours. What’s his number? Never mind. I’ll call 411. Yes. Manhattan. Business. A law firm, please. Anglin, Davenport, and Sheath. Thank you.”

“Pam—”

“What? My shrink was just saying, just half an hour ago, why did everyone in the family cater to Jim? And I thought, yeah, why? Why hasn’t anyone confronted him about how disgusting he’s always been to you? He told me that day— Oh, never mind. He can tell you himself what he said about you, how you’d always driven him nuts— Yes, I’d like to speak to Jim Burgess, please. Pam. Pam Carlson.”

“Pam, why are you bothering a shrink about—”

She shook her head at him. “Oh, I see. He’s unavailable. Well, you have him call me.” She gave out her number, furiously, coldly. “What’s that?” She cocked her head, put a finger to her other ear, looked at Bob with a deep scowl of puzzlement. “Did you just say, Mr. Burgess no longer works here?”

The ride to Park Slope was not long or short, merely a piece of time in which Bob stood pressed against others as the train rumbled beneath the streets of Manhattan and then beneath the East River. Everyone on the train seemed innocent and dear to him, their eyes unfocused with morning reveries that were theirs alone, perhaps words spoken to them earlier, or words they dreamed of speaking; some read newspapers, many listened through earbuds to their own soundtrack, but most stared absently as Bob did—and he was moved by the singularity and mystery of each person he saw. His own mind, had it been peered into, was filled with odd and shocking thoughts, yet he assumed that those around him—tugging on the shoulder straps of their bags, lurching forward as the train stopped in a station, murmuring Sorry for a foot stepped on, the nod of acceptance—had everyday things on their minds, but how did he know, how did he know, the train rocked forward again.

His first thought—or visitation of feeling, for it was not really a thought—once he freed himself from Pam on the sidewalk and tried, without success, to call Jim, then Helen, was that some terrible crime had been committed, that Jim Burgess had secretly murdered someone or was to be murdered, the family fleeing in one of those twisted awful stories that made their way to the front page of a tabloid— The ludicrous aspect of this was not lost on Bob, but the fear of it caused him to love the innocence of, and be gently envious of, the ordinary people around him, who were either dreading or not dreading their day of work, but who were not standing there contemplating their brother’s murder. His head was not quite right, he recognized this. More people got off the train, and by the time it pulled into Park Slope only a few people were left in his car, and his quietly exalted state was gone. Whatever was going on with Jim—Bob had a foreboding—was not dramatic, just dismally quotidian. Bob was weary as he walked; even in fantasy his brother demanded the grandiosity Pam had spoken of.

But doubt pricked him, and four blocks from the house he called his nephew Larry, who surprised him by answering, and surprised him more by saying, Oh, Uncle Bob, things are a mess, hold on, I’ll call you right back, and then calling back and saying, Yeah, Mom’s home, she said you can come over, but they’ve split up, Uncle Bob, my dad was sleeping with some girl in his office. And then Bob walked quickly, out of breath, turning down the street where his brother lived.

Stepping into the house, Bob sensed the difference, though it took a moment to understand it was not just an atmosphere of loss; things were gone. The coats, for example, that always hung in the foyer. There was only one short black coat of Helen’s. And the bookshelves in the living room had at least half their books missing. The big flat-screen television was gone.

“Helen, did he take all this stuff with him?”

“He took the clothes he was wearing at the time he came home and told me what had happened with that filthy paralegal. Everything else I threw out.”

“You threw out his clothes? His books?” He glanced quickly at his sister-in-law. Her hair was tied back, and the shorter sections by her ears were gray. Her face had the naked look of someone whose glasses were removed, but Helen did not wear glasses, except on her nose when she was reading.

“Yes. I threw out that big TV because he liked it. I brought up the old one from the basement. Anything to do with him is gone from this house.”

“Wow.” Bob said slowly.

“Wow?” Helen turned and looked at him, as she sat down on the couch. “Don’t judge me, Bob.”

“Not judging.” He held up both hands. The rocking chair was gone. He sat down in an old leather chair that he couldn’t remember from before.

Helen crossed her ankles. She seemed quite small. Her shoes were like ballet slippers with little black bows. She wore no jewelry, he noticed, no rings at all. She did not offer him a drink, nor did he ask. “How are you, Helen?” he said, cautiously.

“I’m not even going to answer that.”

He nodded. “That’s fair. Ah, look. Can I help?”

“Maybe because you were divorced you think you know what this is like, but you don’t.” She said this without harshness.

“No, no, Helen. I know I don’t.”

They sat. Helen asked if he would mind closing the shutters. She’d opened them earlier, but really, she was more comfortable with them closed.

Bob got up and did that, then sat down again. He turned on a lamp near him. “Where is he?”

“He’s teaching at a swanky little college somewhere. Upstate. I don’t know what town, and I really don’t care. But if he beds down some student, he’ll lose that job too.”

“Ah, Jimmy won’t do that,” Bob said.

“Don’t you”—and here Helen leaned forward and whispered furiously—“
fucking
get it?”

Bob had never heard Helen use that word.

“Don’t you get it?” she asked, tears glistening in her eyes. “He is not. The person. I thought. He was.” Bob opened his mouth to answer, but Helen continued, still leaning toward him. “Do you know who she was? This tramp at his office? She was the girl who lived below you, who kicked her husband out. She said you told her to apply to Jim for her stupid, stupid, stupid job.”

“Adriana? Adriana Martic? Are you kidding?”

“Kidding?” Helen’s voice quieted, and she sat back. “I’m not kidding even mildly, Bob. Oh-o-oh, not kidding a bit. But why would you send her to Jim, Bobby? Why would you do that?” She looked at Bob with such sincere confusion that he started to say, “Helen—” But she was asking, “Can’t you tell a whore when you see one? No, you can’t. I always thought Pam had a slut quality too. You have no idea, Bob. You can’t, because you’re not a woman. But a woman who makes a nice home, who raises children, who keeps herself fit—it’s not like it’s easy. And then the man wants some cartoon of a sleazy girl that must remind him of high school or something, I don’t know, but it hurts, Bob, you can’t imagine. And of course you never think it will happen to you. It’s why I don’t go out. I have friends who would love to come over and hold my hand. I’d rather die, I really would. They’re happy, deep down, because they think it can’t happen to them. It can.”