We're All in This Together
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Authors: Owen King
We're All in This Together
We're All
in This
Together
A Novella and Stories
Owen King
BLOOMSBURY
Copyright © 2005 by Owen King
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from
the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information address Bloomsbury
USA, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
Published by Bloomsbury USA, New York
Distributed to the trade by Holtzbrinck Publishers
All papers used by Bloomsbury USA are natural, recyclable products made from wood grown in well-managed forests. The manufacturing
processes conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin.
The Library of Congress has cataloged the
hardcover edition of this book as follows:
King, Owen.
We're all in this together : a novella and stories / Owen King.—1st U.S. ed.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-1-58234-588-8
1. United States—Social life and customs—Fiction. 2. Grandparent and child—Fiction. 3. Mothers and sons—Fiction. 4. Teenage
boys—Fiction. 5. Maine—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3611.I5837W47 2005
813'.6—dc22
2005006926
First published in the United States by Bloomsbury in 2005
This paperback edition published in 2006
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
Typeset by Hewer Text Ltd, Edinburgh
Printed in the United States of America
by Quebecor World Fairfield
For Kelly,
the prettiest girl in Yuma
Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns;
there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do
not know. But there are also unknown unknowns—the ones we don't know we don't know. And if. one looks throughout the history
of our country and other free countries, it is the latter category that tend to be the difficult ones.
—Donald Rumsfeld on the question of
Iraq and WMDs, February 12, 2002
DON'T MOURN!
When you are a kid, adults are always telling you about their
revelation, the moment when the mist cleared and they saw what
it was they wanted, or finally understood what it was that never
made sense before.
For instance, my grandfather told me that he decided to be a union
organizer after he saw the man who lived next door at the boardinghouse
come home one morning after a late shift at the paper mill,
remove his shoes at the door, and pass them off to his wife, who then
slipped them on and continued out on her way to another job. As the
man handed off his shoes, my grandfather realized that what the man
was actually handing off was his dignity, and that a life without
dignity was no different from a life without
love
—
because how could
a man without dignity bear to love another person, when he must
hate himself so much?
Dr. Vic claimed that he fell in love with my mother when he looked
out his office window one sunny afternoon to see her striding up to
the elderly Catholic priest who sometimes prayed on the sidewalk in
front of the Planned Parenthood office for hours at a time. The old
priest appeared to be swaying slightly; Emma helped him from his
knees over to a bench. After that, she went back inside, and came out
a minute later with a cold bottle of water for the holy man. Dr. Vic
watched it all, and wondered how many times that old crank had
warned my mother that she was on the path to hell, and there she was
anyhow, doing the decent thing to save him from a case of sunstroke,
or worse. Until then I only thought she was beautiful, said Dr. Vic,
but that proved it.
At a rally for striking longshoremen in Portland, my grandmother
said she heard Papa relate the story about his neighbors who had to
share a single pair of shoes, and while she felt compelled by his
words, she didn't fully devote herself to the cause until after the
meeting
—
when he came down from the platform and shook her
hand. Nana had seen other union men talk, and dramatically whip
off their coats, and stomp around in their braces while they railed
against the bosses. She even met one of these big stomping sorts once,
and it was like shaking hands with a liver. When she was introduced
to my grandfather, though, Nana realized immediately that Papa was
different: in spite of his suit, my grandfather wasn't a college boy, or
a
politician
—
he was an actual stevedore, just like her brother and her
uncle. She could tell this by the fine dirt in the creases beneath his
eyes, what her mother used to call "Working Man's Scars." Then
Papa stuck out his hand, said, "How do," and Nana grasped it. He
had clean hands, dry hands. She was moved to think of how hard he
had worked to get himself clean. Finally, she thought, here was a
young man who believed in something.
What I take from these stories is the impression that until that
certain
moment
—
the awakening, the
sign
—
each of us is waiting
outside the life that we are meant for, like a stranger with nothing to
do but sit on the steps until the Realtor arrives. Then she does appear,
charging up the walk, a fury of possibility and jingling keys. She
throws open the door, and hurries you inside, and you know, right
then. This is the place, the one place you really belong.
Except, I think now that for most people, it's more complex than
that. In the moment of realization, maybe the mist doesn't actually
clear, but thicken, taking on color, smell, and taste. Maybe the house
is for sale because it's haunted; maybe every house is haunted.
When Papa saw the man give his wife the pair of shoes, he saw that
something was wrong, but maybe he summed too quickly, and
underestimated the depth of a man's dignity. When my mother
brought the old priest a bottle of water, maybe Dr. Vic bet too high
on Emma's generosity, and too low on the hard-earned pessimism of
a single mother and motivated activist, who undoubtedly worried a
good deal more about the news stories that would follow the death of
a priest on the sidewalk in front of the clinic, than she ever did about
the man actually dying. And was there ever a
time
—
years and years
after she took the clean hand of the dirty soapboxer that day on the
docks
—
that my grandmother wondered just what my grandfather's
effort amounted to, now that they lived in a time and in a place where
it seemed that the filthiest thing you could say about a person was
that they were liberal, that they had a bleeding heart?
Obviously, something was on Nana's mind when she died. After
January, she never again left the guest bedroom, and one morning in
early March, I found her cold. A sour, ponderous expression lay on
her face, a grimace of real dissatisfaction, as if she had been expecting
a surprise, but just maybe not the one she received. Her eyes were
open, too, and fixed on the framed portrait of Joseph Hillstrom that
hung on the wall.
In those last seconds, what did she see in the eyes of labor's truest
martyr? Did she see the cool expression of a sincere organizer? Or
did she see the passionless stare of a killer?
Four months later, in the middle of summer, and with the grass
already grown full and burnt brown on Nana's grave, I saw
something
that surprised me, too. At the time, I understood it couldn't be
real, that it was a hallucination. But, these days, I know better than
to believe my eyes. Sometimes up really is down; sometimes the
ground is the water, and the sky is a cliff.
In the morning, before setting out, I eat a bowl of oatmeal and write
my mother a quick note.
Have a lovely day with your conscience.
There's nothing unusual about this; my mother and I are regular
correspondents. Without knocking, I stride into the bathroom while
she is in the shower and smack the yellow legal pad against the
frosted glass so she can read it. I record her silence, the trickle of
water down the drain, and the squeaking of her feet, as a minor
victory.
When I roll my bike out of the garage, Dr. Vic sticks his head out
the window of his BMW and asks if I want a lift on his way to work.
"Sorry, but I don't take rides from strange men," I say. I usher my
mother's fiance on his way with a sweeping gesture.
Dr. Vic responds to my challenge with perfect, maddening
acquiescence:
he gives a pleasant nod, and simply coasts down the
driveway, when any normal person would slam on the gas and lay
down a patch of screw-you-kid rubber.
But I am feeling good as I pedal out onto Route 12, heading for the
tall white house on Dundee Avenue where my mother grew up and
Nana died. The wind and the summer smells of grass and tar make
me feel fast, and on that marker less stretch of road I can pretend I am
between almost any two places in the world. Leaving always gives
me a high feeling, and the bad
part
—
the coming
back
—
is a whole
day away. Route 12 dips and rises. I lean into a bend and the first
sign of town comes into view. The Beachcomber, a beleaguered
ranch motel, crouches across from the mouth of the interstate ramp,
catering to late-night drivers who are too tired to make it south to
Boston, or north to Bangor and Canada.
That's when I see
it
—see them.
I glance at the motel and there are
three men standing on the boardwalk in front of a room, loading the
trunk of a taxi. There is nothing distinct about these men: they are all
white; they all appear to be in the normal range of weight and build;
they are all dressed in suits and ties. In other words, they are three
men, three normal men, boarding a taxi. The taxi is a member of the
local fleet, a creaky-looking station wagon with plastic wood panels.
When the trio climbs in, I observe the undercarriage of the cab sag
slightly beneath their collective mass. Then I am around the corner
and turning into town.
I pass another block before I apprehend very clearly what it is
that was so striking about the three strangers: that is, the three
men weren't strangers at all. Those men were my mother's old
boyfriends. They were Paul and Dale and Jupps, all of them,
together. In another block, I work out the many reasons why this
is not possible, not the least of which happens to be that none of my
mother's boyfriends ever knew each other. Besides, Paul lives way up
north, and this is tourist season, his busy time, and as far as we know,
Jupps didn't even live in the United States anymore. On top of that,
the only time I could ever recall having seen any of them wearing a tie
was Dale at Nana's funeral, and that had been a bow tie.
No, of course not. Of course, I didn't see them.
What I saw didn't even qualify as a hallucination; it was too
boring. My vision was more like some kind of sad little kid wish,
like an imaginary friend, or your Real Father. Not the crazy drunk
that your mother's ex-boyfriend once had to beat the shit out of
with a snow shovel, not the jerk-off felon who never gave you
anything in your whole life except a polydactyl toe and a five-dollar
bill for your tenth
birthday
—
not him, not that
imposter
—
but your
Real Father,
the superhero. Your Real Father is sorry to have put
you through all this, but he couldn't risk it, because if his enemies
ever discovered his secret identity, his family would have been in
terrible danger. But now everything can be
different
—
because he
needs
your help—
and the invisible spy plane is idling in a grassy
field outside of town and it's go, go, go! The fate of the world may
depend on it!
In the time it takes to consider the matter logically and, in turn,
dust off the old (but not that old) Real Father Fantasy, I have traveled
another two blocks. I have also started to cry. I slam on the brakes
and start back to the motel, standing on the pedals and pushing
uphill. But the gravel parking lot is empty; the men and the taxi are
somewhere up the road, out of sight.
I am still sniffling when I reach my grandparents' house and find a
small gathering in the front yard. My grandfather and the neighbors,
Gil Desjardins and his wife, Mrs. Desjardins, stand before the 15
×
15-foot billboard that Papa has recently posted on the lawn, and
which lists, succinctly, his deeply felt political beliefs concerning the
most recent election, between Al Gore and George W. Bush.
I roll onto the grass and pull up beside them. Between their
shoulders I make out slashes of pink paint, and even before reading
the latest accusation, the situation is evident: for the third time in a
month, the vandal, the fascist paperboy, Steven Sugar, has attacked.
"Somehow," says Gil, "that the paint is pink, that makes it worse,
doesn't it?"
Mrs. Desjardins flicks away a pink chip with her fingernail. She
clucks sympathetically.
Papa crosses his arms and contemplates the pink message in
silence.
Mrs. Desjardins purses her lips at me and gives my bicep a squeeze.
She wears a kimono and a thin black ribbon fastened around her old
woman's neck. It is accepted that Gil's wife is odd.
"Whoever would have guessed a bourgeois newspaper could lead
to such a rumpus?." Her gaze falls on me expectantly.
I shrug.
"Oh, for skit's sake, Lana," says Gil.
"It is bourgeois. The
New York Times
is bourgeois."
"That may be, but if you say 'bourgeois,'you sound like an asshole.
In fact, I've been told that 'bourgeois' is a code word that assholes use
to recognize each other when they're in unfamiliar places. If you even
spell it in Scrabble, it makes you sound like an asshole."
"I believe you're being obtuse again, Gilbert," she says, not
sounding displeased.
At the center of the group, Papa has hardly shifted. I see now that
what the vandal has sprayed across the billboard this time is the
inexplicable
—
and yet, somehow, terribly
damning
—
epithet
COMMUNIST SHITHEEL.
Papa reaches out and uses his knuckle to
trace the letter
C.
The thin-lipped expression on his face is
unreadable.
"It's enough to make a person
think
—
"
he starts, and lets the
thought hang.
My grandfather gently moves his knuckle around the letter
O.
"Well, Henry, don't kill yourself. I'm going home to read the
dictionary and try to take a piss."
Gil starts scraping his walker back in the direction of his house.
When he reaches the edge of the driveway, he encounters some
difficulty in trying to jerk the legs over the lip of the pavement, and I
rush over to help. He throws his arm over my shoulder and I guide
the walker up onto the driveway.