Short Century (12 page)

“Emily, come on,” I said. She shrugged and frowned and looked extremely young.

“Don't you wonder sometimes,” Miranda asked, “whether women have all the power or no power at all?”

“I wonder that all the time!” Emily said, and in her excitement she accidentally swept her hair into her beer. Miranda laughed but grabbed some napkins and shepherded her into the ladies' room. I looked at them as they waited in line and whispered to each other. It occurred to me that I could leave right now, get on a bus and go somewhere, never see either one of them ever again, and become a different person. But to do any of this, I would already have to be a different person.

That night Emily slept on the floor of my dorm room while Miranda slept beside me. Two girls in my room at night was a pretty clear violation of parietals, and I congratulated myself a bit on my rebellious nature.

Emily fell asleep quickly and very lightly snored. Miranda reached for my penis but I pushed her hand away.

“She won't wake up,” Miranda said.

“Let just not do it tonight.”

Miranda took my hand and put it on her breast but I pulled it away. This made her mad and she turned to the wall.

“If you're tired of my breasts, maybe you should look at your sister's.”

“Miranda, come on.”

“Maybe you can feel her up without waking her.”

“Don't be gross.”

“It feels like you're getting hard against my leg because I'm talking about your sister.
That's
gross.”

“Miranda, please be quiet. I don't want her to wake up and hear you saying these things.”

“Why did you never tell me you had a brother?”

“I was ashamed of him.”

“You should have been. That's okay. You don't have a brother. You don't have a sister either.”

“What?”

“We don't have families. We're new. That's what Jersey Rothstein was really trying to tell us. We're as new as we have the courage to be. After she leaves tomorrow, let's never talk to or see your Paul-murdering sister ever again.”

I wanted to argue with her, but I didn't want to wake Emily. Besides, I knew Miranda was just trying to bait me, and that in all likelihood she thought very highly of Emily. This thought was confirmed the next morning, when I woke to the sound of Miranda and Emily, both already awake and sitting on the floor in their pajamas, giggling about something. Later, Miranda hugged Emily goodbye at the train station and said: “Maybe Arthur and I will get married and you and I will be sisters.” Part of me was too happy that Miranda wanted to marry me to think about anything else, and part of me was incredibly disappointed. Part of me wanted to have no sisters rather than two.

3:00
p.m
. Saturday, May 12, 2012

Jersey just called me
at the Chappine. I was hoping that he would have some news about Sydney, but he didn't.

“A few weeks ago,” he said, “Miranda told me that she never loved Jason. Or Daisy or Sydney. She said she had read my book too well.”

“She was in a lot of pain. I doubt she meant that.”

“Could you tell me what happens to a body after a suicide bomb?”

“Don't think about that. Remember what his friends told you? Jason was almost certainly killed instantly and never felt any pain.”

“I'm not talking about Jason's body. I'm talking about what happened to the body of the suicide bomber. The one wearing the vest. Does anything survive, or is the entire body incinerated in the blast?”

“The man who killed your son is dead, Jersey.”

“Is that so?”

“What does that mean?”

“I haven't asked anything about my son. What I asked is what happens to the body of a suicide bomber.”

“Jersey, I think you should probably get some sleep. Is Daisy at home to make you some tea or something?”

“Excuse me, Arthur, but do you know the answer or not?”

“I don't know the answer.” This was a lie.

“Thank you. Goodbye.”

Miserable again, I hung up the phone. To forget this conversation, I turned on the television to discover a repeat of Norture's broadcast from last night. Norture is onscreen, with a recent photograph of Miranda floating next to his eyes.

I should have mentioned earlier that Miranda is dead. Shortly after I started writing this manuscript I received this text message from Daisy: “My mother is dead. Sydney soon to follow. Don't contact my father. Go fuck your family and leave what's left of mine alone.” So, yes, Miranda is dead. Facts are facts. That's one tautology I've been made to see the truth of.

Norture is, or was, asking the audience's forgiveness for “taking a portion of this evening to honor the passing of a dear old friend. This was a woman who stayed in her marriage even though it was much less than perfect, and if I have strong differences with her husband's if-it-feels-good-do-it philosophy, I cannot help but applaud them both. What God joined, they let no man put asunder. And of course I must also salute their son Jason, who bravely fought and died in Iraq.” Here, the photo of Miranda was replaced with a photo of Jason in uniform, looking self-important and humorless in a way that there is every reason to believe he would have outgrown. Norture then started talking about how Miranda believed those who had successfully called for a premature end to the war in Iraq had dishonored Jason's memory.

Jason's memory. Once I finished college, I didn't see the Rothsteins again until shortly after the fall of the Wall; that encounter had ended acrimoniously. It was not until January of 2003 that they came back into my life. Miranda sent me an email that wound up in a spam folder along with a couple thousand other emails about the Iraq War. I would never have seen it were it not for the fact that I read every one of those emails carefully.

Her son had, apparently, grown obsessed with my books and articles and had “been spending all his free time crouching in the Current Affairs section of Barnes & Noble” reading everything I wrote. It was flattering to hear this, and maybe something in addition to flattering. Surely sowing ideas into the mind of his child is a more ruthless and satisfying way to cuckold your enemy than is merely fucking his wife.

But then I read further and saw that he was thinking of joining the Army because of what I had written. This sentence felt like a slap. It had not occurred to me that my articles would inspire anyone to join the military.

“Though I have nothing but miles-high respect for anyone who serves in the military,” she wrote, “I'm terrified for my son. Would you be willing to call him? Maybe you can suggest some other things Jason could do to support the war without actually going over there.”

I didn't want anyone's death on my hands, so I called the number she provided immediately. On the other end was the deep and sleepy voice of a college male. I expected that introducing myself as Arthur Hunt would make him feel honored, but instead he groaned.

“Did my mom tell you to call?” he asked.

“She did. She mentioned that you're a fan of my work.”

“She asked you to call so that you could talk me out of going. I should never have let her buy me a cellphone.”

Naturally, his tone put me off. He also, strangely, sounded a bit like Paul. But this was important. “She told me you would want to talk about my work.”

“Talking is exactly what I don't want to do. I've read your work. Now I want to act on it.”

“There are lots of ways to act on it. There's no reason to…”

“Mr. Hunt,” Jason said. “I know you dated my mother like five hundred years ago and I know that you're trying to do her a favor. I
do
love your work, and if we were talking for any other reason, I would be incredibly honored. But you can't ask me to be a coward. Iraq is the great cause of my time and I have to be a part of it.”

“You should finish school. There are important things you can do…”

“After reading your work, I made the only choice I could make.” Then he talked about how this was the new Spanish Civil War. The rhetoric all sounded silly in his voice.

“Nobody else I know is serious about this,” he said. “All of my friends who support the war and all of my friends who oppose the war are just applying for internships in Washington. Except for a few of them who are writing novels.”

“There are more important ways to fight the war than…”

“Than fighting it?”

He had a bit of a point.

“Mr. Hunt,” he said, suddenly sounding disturbed. “Is it true that you…”

“Is it true that I what?”

“Is it true that you…look, I just think that a man should follow his ideals.”

“Please don't enlist,” I said. “Please just don't enlist.”

But he did enlist. And for a while I was happy that he had. I thought that the war might go much better for the presence of a boy who was, after all, most likely every bit as smart and dedicated as he was naïve and unprepared.

As I write this, I have placed a photo on my desk—right next to the Chappine stationery and cheap plastic pen—of Jason from the autumn before he dropped out of school. He is standing in Riverside Park with a purplish New Jersey in the background, tall, at least six foot two, with close-cropped dark hair and a big grin redolent of confidence and orthodontia. He is full of the promise that attaches to young men like leeches. Next to it is another photo of Jason, the one on Norture's show, the one of Jason in uniform looking self-important and humorless in a way that maybe he would not have outgrown. I don't know. His mother gave both photos to me after he died and asked me to keep them above my writing desk as a tribute to her son. I suspect that, at least unconsciously, she did this to make me feel awful, which it certainly does. I comply with her request anyway. Whatever her unconscious motives may have been, I am glad that she and her daughter were important parts of my life over the last several years.

Norture had said more about me, but thinking about Jason had distracted me, so I had to find the clip online in order to hear the rest. First I had to watch a thirty-second clip in which a couple in a car squabbled in a way that was supposed to make you want to buy corn chips.

Norture continued:

“As for Arthur Hunt, an occasional guest on this program, I am naturally distressed by today's frankly disgusting revelations. The sixties were a terrible time, and made some people do some truly terrible things. Hunt will no longer be welcome on my show, since to be honest, I'm not certain that I'll ever be able to look at him again without throwing up. But I will say that the support that he has shown in the last decade for his country and for our troops may redeem him a little bit.”

Redeem him a little bit. I suppose that that is a little bit more than I deserve.

f

In the summer of
1968, I declined my usual summer job at my father's firm and decided instead to drive cross-country with Miranda. My father agreed, maybe too readily, but I wasn't going to complain. I wrested permission to use the older Mercedes. Emily was upset about my decision but she would get over it. It would be good for her, I thought, to spend a summer without me. She needed to be independent, and besides, she was so much smarter than I was that sometimes I wondered whether her effusive idolatry was a covert form of mockery.

Anyway, after a few days on the road with Miranda I hardly thought of my family at all. The wheat stalks seemed to bow to us as we drove by. Throughout the summer, we were expecting a violent revolution. We speculated on where exactly we would be when the conflagration would begin.

We were in the backseat having sex when news came over the radio that Robert Kennedy had been shot. I paused, still inside of her. Our eyes locked and she arched her back as she absorbed the news, causing a jolt to my cock.

“Do you think we should stop?” I asked Miranda.

“Well,” she said, “I guess it would be racist if we stopped now when we didn't stop for Mart…”

“Yeah.” I resumed thrusting.

We went to San Diego, home of Turon University, to meet Jersey Rothstein, but a secretary at the biology department told us he was on vacation.

One afternoon I told Miranda I loved her.

“Why do you have to call it that? Love. It's so bourgeois. Why use the oppressor's words? When you name something, you kill it. Naming is like napalm.”

We intended to be in Chicago for the convention, but the Mercedes broke down in Nevada.

f

By that October, we
had been dating for a year, and I wanted Miranda to meet my family. I did not know why I wanted this. I was barely speaking with my parents and I spoke to Emily perhaps two or three times each month. Miranda and I agreed that family was a regressive institution that shackled us to the past. Still, I wanted my girlfriend to meet my family. It was a desire I didn't understand and couldn't get rid of. I felt like a pervert.

A few days before Emily's birthday I was sitting in my room with Miranda, trying to work up the courage to invite her to the hotel. There were many reasons not to invite her. Miranda had already said she didn't want to see Emily anymore. And it seemed selfish to expose my girlfriend to all the creepiness in the hotel. A good boyfriend would want to meet
her
family, not prop her up as a shield against his own.

“Miranda, why don't we visit your mother?”

“Why do you have to meet my mother? Isn't seeing me naked enough?”

“I don't have to. I'd like to.”

“Why?”

“I guess I'd just like to see where you came from.”

“You want to see my mother's cunt?”

“Miran…”

“Where I came from. Spoken like a true Daughter of the American Revolution. Or were your ancestors Tories?”

“Well, aren't roots important?”

She laughed in a way that made me feel stupid. “We're radicals, Arthur. We're supposed to tear the roots up. That's what the word means. More or less.”