The Family Unit and Other Fantasies (5 page)

“That was wonderful,” Dorothy said after a final bite of pecan pie.

“Absolutely,” Sam said, leaning back and patting his stomach in overalls he had changed into. It was clear to Alan that if the Lynches ate in such a way they hadn’t done so in years, since way before the hurricane. So he didn’t hold it against them when Sam now lit up a pipe with only the most cursory head cock to ask permission. Anna touched Alan’s hand, secretly, to say allow it, though she hated smoke in the house even more than he did.

Perhaps to further show his appreciation, Sam then brought out a banjo and strummed and sang some American standards, from “Polly Wolly Doodle” to “This Land is Your Land” and “Stardust.” Sometimes Annabelle sang along in a voice Alan hadn’t heard (or maybe just hadn’t listened to) in years, one as pure and unaffected and touchingly flat as a child’s. Then the Lynches said goodnight with a stalwart handshake (Sam) and a heartfelt hug (Dorothy) and went to bed.

As he did the dishes, Alan looked out the kitchen window at the clear night sky. A storm said to be crossing the country toward them was changing course, he had heard, maybe heading out to sea. Maybe the hurricane had been the worst of the “extreme” weather that summer. He heard Annabelle leave the table and, humming a little of Sam’s last song, go upstairs.

When he reached their bedroom himself, Alan realized that he had left his watch downstairs. He tiptoed back to the living room, hoping that the creaks wouldn’t awaken Annabelle, who had passed out—smiling—the second she lay down.

On the first floor, where the Lynches were, the bedroom door was shut, the light out. But a light still conspicuously shone from beneath the bathroom door beside it.

Alan looked for the watch in the places he usually set it: the side of the kitchen sink where pots still soaked, the arm of the living room chair on which the day’s paper was piled. However, he couldn’t get to his third usual place, the rim of the tub in the downstairs john.

The bathroom door suddenly opened and he hid in the shadows of the dark living room.

The light stayed on for a second and displayed with almost vulgar overtness a naked Sam Lynch. His body was a map of a male physique devoted for decades just to action and forbearance: flat where it was not muscular, scarred, with no place for the results of self-indulgence, no spare flesh, all of it in use. Even his penis—“weathered” was the only word for it—seemed more a weapon or utensil than an instrument for his pleasure or anyone else’s.

The one jarring exception was his right hand, which Alan swore gripped the glittery and frivolous gold of his watch. With his other hand, Sam reached up and—his tortured bicep flexed—turned off the light; everything, including truth, disappeared.

The next morning, Alan was awakened by the clock radio, static-y and stuck between stations. He made out that the weather forecast had changed a bit: the storm might not pass the Northeast entirely. He turned it off, quickly.

He waited until Annabelle had cleared the breakfast dishes (bacon, toast, even an omelette, not just bran cereal). He studied Sam for any sign of guilt or any other kind of nefarious behaviour—and Dorothy, too, for she might be if not his active partner then his acquiescent accomplice. But the couple did nothing untoward or odd; they ate with the same deep and quiet appreciation of the food as they had their dinner. And did they have to say grace before every meal? Wouldn’t food sort of
stay blessed
from before? Watching and coarsely wondering was easier for Alan than looking at Anna, because her pleasure at serving (saving?) the Lynches made him feel ashamed. Still, his watch hadn’t turned up and he instinctively rubbed his bare wrist now in response. (It was a good one, waterproof, a fortieth birthday present from his sister.) He hadn’t mentioned it to Annabelle.

Alan excused himself before the others, drifted to the bathroom, then pivoted in secret to the spare bedroom. Standing in the doorway, he checked the space out: most of the bundles still sat where they’d been, some shabby clothes hung in the closet; the Lynches had made the least and most humble use of the place. Checking behind himself, he cautiously entered.

A chest of drawers was the only piece of furniture except the bed; its top was clean. Alan opened the skinny first drawer; saw just a few pairs of men’s underwear, neatly folded, and one old wedding night-type slip, placed at a discreet distance from them. He closed it then knelt slightly to open a bottom drawer more likely to be used for hiding.

“Wonderful breakfast,” someone said.

Alan looked up, suddenly, and saw Sam in the threshold—looked
up
at him, for he was now unfortunately fully on his knees. The man stood casually cleaning his gums with a toothpick, one he must have brought with him for they kept none in the house (or had Annabelle bought a box just for them?).

“Yes,” Alan said, blushing. He awkwardly started to stand and closed the drawer he had not had time to examine. It was his house, he could do in it as he pleased; perhaps the whole thing would go unmentioned?

It did not. “Did you leave something in here you wanted?” Sam asked with—unless Alan were crazy—a touch of insinuation.

Well, he had asked; why not answer? “Yes, actually,” Alan said, now at his full height which was still less than Sam’s. “My watch.”

“Your watch.”

“Uh-huh. Gold. Engraved. Have you seen it?”

Sam seemed to snort mirthlessly. He stopped using and merely rolled the toothpick around in his mouth. Then he answered but indirectly. “I had a watch once. An old watch. A gift from my dad. Even hung on its own chain. Fob, I guess they call it. It meant a lot to me. I have to admit that, when Dorothy and I were sitting on our roof after the hurricane, holding up our signs for help, the watch crossed my mind. Funny, isn’t it, since we’d lost everything we owned, even living things, our dog? I remembered it was kind of ironical how careful I had been with that watch. Even kept it in its own little box. Why? Why had I bothered when everything is so easily washed away? I should have been careless with it. I should have left it, I don’t know, just sitting on the side of a bathtub or someplace.”

At this, he looked directly and unapologetically at Alan with eyes that said he had seen more bad times than his host—maybe more than anyone ever—and was angry and afraid of nothing.

“The government tried to give us things, to make it up to us,” he said. “But they never can. There’s no end to what we’re owed. But, at any rate, this house is a lot better than where we were.”

He smiled then, and the toothpick stuck more obviously out of his mouth like a small second tongue, one more way to say too bad and screw you. The veins in his neck grew hideously outlined, and Alan suddenly felt he could see inside him.

“Good luck in finding it,” Sam said. This time, his wink was a mix of the snotty and sincere, which was much more disturbing than being one or the other.

Like one of those bible characters God tells to slay his son or something—Anna had been the occasional churchgoer, not him, and then mostly for the music—Alan felt he faced his greatest obstacle yet to mastering his new belief and its rituals. He was on the verge of blurting out what had happened, establishing why the Lynches must immediately leave—back-sliding, as it were, results notwithstanding—when Annabelle prevented it. It was after she saw him more agitatedly rubbing the faint white circle on his wrist where the watch had been.

“You might as well know,” she said. “I gave your watch to him.”

“What?” Alan looked up, now holding the wrist hard.

“I’m sorry, but . . . maybe I’m not. He has so little—both of them do—and asks for so little. When I look at them and speak to them, I see that they’ve been made better, or—what’s the word?—ennobled by all they’ve been through and the acceptance that there will be more: why wouldn’t there, you know? Sam refused your watch at first, of course, but then I kind of folded it into his big palm and placed his fingers over it. Why not let them know that there can be good along with the bad? He almost wept—he wouldn’t, you know, not him. But she did, though it was a dry kind of crying; maybe she has no real tears left. She hugged him from behind. Then we all stood embracing in a circle of what I can only call thanks.”

She touched Alan’s hand, to free the circulation-stopping chokehold he now had on his opposite wrist. “You can always get another watch.”

Anna’s face was—well, beaming, was the only way to describe it. Alan literally bit his lip as people are said to do in stories, to keep from speaking. Or maybe he wanted to cause himself pain—that self-flagellating thing that supplicants or novice nuns do—to remind himself of what he was trying to repel. When he finally stopped biting, it was at the same moment Anna separated his hands. Then he nodded, which meant it was okay, about the watch. In truth, he no longer knew which one of them was right, what was true and not, what Sam had really said and to whom: which one of their magics was going to work?

The next day, Alan crossed the highway to the trailer park. He looked up at the darkening sky; heavy rain was now being forecast from the oncoming storm, targeting New York directly. As he entered, he felt on guard, conscious as he almost never was of his class (which was what? Working-middle-upper?) and how it would distinguish him. But he found he was dressed virtually the same as everyone else, polo shirt, jeans, and sneakers being a new American uniform. He didn’t feel as observed as he had anticipated, less the detective or undercover agent as he had feared. He tried not to judge—or its flip side, fear—the people he saw beside the American flags, the clothes on lines, the cars on blocks. He tried to keep an open mind.

In truth, he wanted his visit to end as soon as possible and provide him with answers, or at least more information. But he found, when he started asking about the Lynches, that they had made little impression on people except provoking a gossipy interest in some, and in others doubts similar to Alan’s own (were they hustlers looking for a government hand-out? Why white? Why here?). For a few, there was also an extra element of resentment: they hadn’t liked their own hardships diminished by the Lynches’ example. These people in particular were glad the couple was gone.

Only one person had more than a few syllables to say. He was a man about thirty, an inhabitant of one of the shabbier trailers. His wife—a hugely fat woman of twenty-five or so—was eager to introduce him to Alan, if only it seemed to be saved from being with him herself. She whispered that after having difficulty finding work, he had attempted suicide and a few days earlier had been released from a mental hospital farther upstate. His memory of the event and many other things, including his identity, was now faulty. Her marriage had brought her more than she’d bargained for, but she distrusted authorities too much to completely relinquish the man to them, so she was stuck. As a reflection of his fragility—or was it her own embarrassment?—she kept him in the back of her trailer on a couch piled with pillows, as if he were a cat in a closet having kittens.

“I know all about them,” he said authoritatively, his head moving spasmodically now and then. “They cause everything.”