“Proustian?” That seemed wrong.
“Uh, they’re in town shopping. Listen. Are the three records you have in there all you’ve got?”
“There’s this and
Their Satanic Majesty’s Request.”
Leo made a face. “That’s not a good one of theirs.”
“I am humbled.” Leo laughed again and Richard was tempted to give up any seriousness. “This is a very bleak aspect of my life. My record collection is like a middle-aged person’s idea of being hip.” Even Mark got that one.
His brother and Mark went back to the newspapers and Richard felt deserted. He knew it was irrational, but he needed companionship desperately. I’ve got to separate my loneliness from a desire to be friendly to them. He would relax and let them make the advances.
But there were none. They left him eating his breakfast, the kitchen in a sun-filled chaos of drained orange juice glasses and dirty plates. He put away the milk and the melted butter and read about Koosman’s arm problems but lost the thread of it thinking he was like a spinster: eating breakfast alone was an emotional problem.
He looked out the window at them as they talked on the lawn. His brother was tall and strong. Leo had a man’s body and Richard lacked that. But his brother’s long face and his eyes with their open expression always had something childish about them. Richard realized the look was gone. Leo leaned against a tree, talking, and his face was concentrated and joyless. Louise seemed harassed, even worried, as she looked at him.
I’m making it up, he thought. Drama, drama, drama. Fuck it. He got up and the chair legs scraped. The sound was loud and hollow unlike noise in the city, where every sound is met and engulfed by another. Mark, he noticed, looked a little bit like him. A moon face with small eyes and a low forehead. No, Mark’s uglier, he thought. He was coarser. Broad, hairy forearms, his hair mousy and knotted.
Richard decided to go out. Opening the front door made a noise and they all turned to face it. They had abruptly stopped their conversation and they watched his progress up to them. Louise said, “Hello,” with too much formality.
“Am I interrupting?”
“No, man.” Leo was almost scornful of that possibility. “Anyway,” he went on, “we should do that today, Mark.”
Mark sat on the lawn in a half-lotus. He nodded with great deliberation, his eyes fixed on some spot in the distance.
“All right,” Louise said in a rush, “so that’s decided. But I have a lot of work to do, so I won’t go along. Is that all right, Leo?”
“Sure, sure.” He looked at Richard. “Uh, we were thinking of going to a pond near here to swim. You wanna come?”
“Swim? Well—”
“Why don’t you come, man? It’ll be good.”
“Okay, I’ll tag along, but I may not swim.”
Leo seemed to disapprove but he said all right and he and Mark went in to change. Richard looked at Louise, who still seemed disproportionately tense. She was pretending to be absorbed.
He was in the back of Mark’s Volkswagen half-back sedan, the sun roof and car windows open, trying to inhale cigarette smoke that was caught, right out of his mouth, by the wind, when his brother asked him, “Do you know where would be a good place to buy guns?”
“Guns?”
His brother nodded with what was supposed to be complacency, but his mouth was nervously tense like a child’s before weeping.
“Well, you mean for a rifle or—”
“Yeah, a rifle. But I mean, you know, the best store for that?”
“Well, I don’t know very much about it.” His brother didn’t hear him and he repeated it. “But I would say that Sears, whose gun department is very big, is the best.”
“Sears?” Leo seemed almost offended. Mark smiled. “I don’t think so, man. I was thinking more of a local store.”
“You should ask around. But the only store that I’ve seen guns in is Ralph’s Hardware, and Sears. And Sears has an enormous section.”
“Let’s check them out,” Mark said. Leo dragged carefully on his cigarette and squinted out the window of the car. Richard saw him as if in a movie. Leo nodded yes grimly with hard-won integrity, his eyes seeing a tragic future. Something was up, Richard knew, but he also knew that he shouldn’t ask. So he was not surprised when they drove past the pond they normally swam in and drove on to town. They stopped at the hardware store, and Leo told them to stay put while he browsed. Richard and Mark said nothing until Leo returned and said that it wasn’t very good. “We’ll go to Sears,” he said, and a moment later laughed incongruously.
Richard wasn’t frightened in Sears, despite the nervously breezy manner that Mark and Leo affected. He thought, They’re obviously not going to rob it, so there’s nothing to fear. They think it’s illegal to buy guns—confusing motive with action. He trailed behind them and enjoyed looking at the gun section. It was commingled with the games section: Ping-pong, pool, tennis, baseball, football, and basketball equipment reminded him of his childhood when he often came to the sporting goods department to strengthen his resolve to blackmail his parents into buying him a new glove. But Richard was included in Leo’s and Mark’s paranoia enough to be anxious when a salesman approached them while Leo handled a rifle.
Richard felt he should stay away from them while they were being waited on, since his nervousness would make him appear suspicious. He noticed that after a brief moment of awkwardness the salesman showed them various rifles with great enthusiasm. His brother was amusingly ignorant of guns—he deduced from the slight smiles that Leo’s questions were greeted with—but of course the salesman took Leo for a city boy interested in hunting. Leo bought a rifle and a Puma knife, and Mark showed Richard some knives that looked as if they had rubber tips but were in fact throwing knives.
“You mean like out of a Western?” Richard asked him.
Mark nodded at him excitedly. “It’s heavy.”
After his purchase, Leo strode through the store carrying the rifle in its pouch and a few boxes of bullets in his other hand. Richard was both nervous and pleased by this dangerous flair of Leo’s, but nobody even turned his head in the store. Out in the parking lot, Leo and Mark held a conference over the best way the gun could be concealed in his duffel bag. When they had placed clothes and books so that there was no bulge, Leo grabbed Richard by the elbow and squeezed. “You understand, of course, that Mother mustn’t know anything about this?”
“I
hardly know anything about this.”
“I mean she mustn’t know that I’ve bought a gun.”
“What about Dad?”
This was apparently a close question because Leo made a face. “Let’s get in the car,” he said.
Leo’s face continued its calculations and he didn’t answer Richard until they were out on the open highway, with the wind blowing hair over Richard’s face. Leo spoke loudly to top the wind’s noise. “You see I have to register this with the town. The guy at the store registered it but a similar thing has to be done with the local town. Do you know who’s the person who handles that?”
“I can’t be sure but probably Mr. Snow. He’s the tax man.”
“I don’t think it would be him, man.”
He always contradicts me.
“He’s the guy who we register the car with and pay taxes on the house. That’s his job. Town clerk.”
“Well anyway, I’ll need Aaron for that. ’Cause I said I was a resident and I’ll need Aaron to prove it.”
“Why didn’t you say you were a resident of New York?”
Leo was contemptuous of that remark. He shook his head. “No, man. That would fuck everything up.”
“Well, I can’t advise ya unless I know what you’re tryin’ to do. I mean you don’t have to tell me, but—”
“Yeah, yeah, that’s right.” He shifted so that he faced Richard. Leo lowered his voice. “See, it’s not legal to have a rifle in New York.”
“Are you sure?”
“I don’t think that’s true, Leo,” Mark said.
“It
is,
man. I’ve checked it out. Anyway, I don’t want them to know. If it’s registered here they’ll never get it together to find out.”
“If you use it they will.” Richard was horrified.
“I don’t mean if I use it.” Leo laughed.
“That’s heavy,” Mark said, laughing with him.
Leo reached out and grabbed Richard’s knee. He lowered his voice and spoke out of the side of his mouth, whispering, “See, man, the pigs have been busting in lately and icing people. And then they justify it because there were guns inside.”
“Oh, I get it. Okay.” He smiled at Leo. “That’s cool. I thought you thought you could use the gun and they wouldn’t be able to trace it.”
“I’ll be underground when I use it.” Leo said it casually, as if it were merely an obvious practical solution to an awkward problem. He’s going underground?
He might.
Richard needed the correction. He was scared by Leo’s seriousness, but with a sibling’s inability to imagine a brother acting with independence and energy, he decided it was a bluff.
Their parents came out to greet them when they reached home. “So,” Aaron said, and nodded wisely at them, “went out exploring, eh? Isn’t it good, Betty, to have these strapping young fellows about—”
Betty’s eyes narrowed with amusement. “Strapping!”
“—getting up first thing—”
“And leaving the dishes.” Betty went off into peals of laughter and said, “Don’t be silly,” when Richard, abashed, apologized for his neglect.
“What are you forgiving them for, Betty? Pretty sexist behavior if you ask me.”
“Look who’s talking,” she said to her husband, and Leo joined in, pointing his finger at Aaron and saying, “She fixed your wagon.”
Aaron grabbed Louise, who was uninvolved and looked worried, and hugged her to his side. “Isn’t it terrible how they treat their father?” He looked at Mark. “Oh, the poor fellow. Here I am behaving like a doting old man—”
“And you don’t know what to do with yourself, right?” Betty said to Mark. She was gleeful and reminded Richard of Nana. “Let’s go in the house.”
Louise demurred. She had to read. Richard was disappointed that she didn’t join in on one of his favorites: a family lunch. But it was dismaying after all. Leo kept Aaron and Betty busy describing good places to see, and Richard was bored by it. Leo hardly listened to their answers until he abruptly asked Aaron if he could speak to him. Aaron was surprised. He looked a little amused by it, but Betty glanced at Leo with a wide-eyed look that Richard understood to be serious worry.
Betty started a conversation with Mark that Richard couldn’t listen to. He spotted Aaron and Leo on the lawn. His father’s expression had taken on the grave demeanor that accompanied any treatment of equality. Richard was surprised he hadn’t just laughed at Leo and returned to announce, “My dear, our son, who has been unable to make a dental appointment for six years, wants to go underground.” Richard looked at Betty, somehow convinced that she must have guessed what was going on, and found her saying, “Well, you can’t bring up Yevtushenko in that sense. You realize that he’s practically a CIA agent.” She tilted her head as she always had when softening the blow of revealing someone’s ignorance. Richard saw Aaron go off toward the car and Leo return to the house.
Betty heard the car start and said to Leo as he was coming in, “Where’s he going?”
Leo paused for a moment. “You really think everything around here is your business, don’t you?” He walked over to her and pretended roughness. He put his hands on both sides of her head and kissed her resoundingly on the forehead.
“My God,” she said when free, “I think you’ve scrambled my brains.”
“You’ve completely destroyed any chance of serious conversation.” Richard was pleased to have said this and it did seem to right matters.
“That’s right,” Betty said. “I was trying to straighten out Mark about literature and politics.”
“Oh, God,” Leo said. “Not that discussion.”
“Isn’t it awful,” Betty said. She laughed. “I’ve been having this discussion for thirty years.” She brushed the table thoughtfully. “But don’t you realize that we learned how wrong it was to adopt that attitude in the Communist Party. I remember how foolish they were about Mike Gold. They broke his heart.”
“I mean,” Mark said. “I’m no Stalinist. I don’t say that Solzhenitsyn is wrong about the Soviet Union.”
“You’re
not
saying that?”
“Well, I mean, in specifics, no. But the effect in the United States is to play into the hands of the pigs. It just becomes anti-Communist propaganda.”
“I don’t think he’s so accurate,” Leo said.
“Mark or Solzhenitsyn?” Richard asked, but nobody enjoyed the remark. Richard hurried on. “What isn’t he accurate about?”
“Well, I mean that comic-book portrait of Stalin—”
“That is a silly part,” Betty conceded.
“Is it?” Richard said. “Is it sillier than Tolstoy’s portraits of Tsar Alexander or Napoleon?” Leo made a face and Richard’s voice rose, cracking and hurried. “Come on. You can’t tell me that any great novelist did better. Balzac on Napoleon? Or Fouché? They’re all romanticized.”
“That’s absurd,” Leo said.
“Anyway, that’s not the point,” Betty said, worried by an impending scene between the two brothers. “Take
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.
You don’t think that’s distorted?”
Leo shrugged. He looked oppressed, as if the argument was contemptible. Richard was enraged by his attitude. “I don’t know,” Leo said. “How can we know? But it doesn’t matter because he gives no analysis of why it has happened, and the effect is—”
“Oh, Leo—” Betty said desperately.
“The effect
is
one of, on the one hand, making people feel that it is the result of socialism and, on the other hand, of being totally defeatist. He never says that there’s anything that can be done about it.”
“That’s not true,” Richard yelled, but his mother held their attention by repeating three times, “Leo, that’s wrong.”
Leo, aggrieved, said, “
How
is it wrong, huh?”
Again Richard started a sentence, “The whole point of
The First Circle—”
“The ending of
The First Circle,”
Betty said, nodding at Richard. “Those men decide to die in Siberia rather than go on helping Stalin’s experiments.”