So Much Pretty (15 page)

The play was growing monotonous, and Con guessed Alice was trying to figure out when to jump to the loft when she hopped like a bird and then slid straight down, still holding the ropes until she smacked her chin audibly on the bar of the trapeze, where she now clung with one hand. Gene and Claire gasped and stood up involuntarily, and Con raced into the center of the barn, ready to catch her. The trapeze was swinging out over the loft and back as she hung tightly, her face blank with concentration. Without a word or the slightest fearful sound, she pulled herself up. But instead of folding her waist over the bar
to regain her balance and stand, she simply pulled the bar against her neck and rested her chin on it, continuing to swing her body so that the trapeze would reach out over the loft and she could drop. As if this had all happened before, Theo continued his fake slumber.

“Alice,” Gene said firmly as they watched her right hand release its grip, “no.”

“Goddammit,” Claire whispered.

“Alice!” Gene called to her again as she took her hand away, stretched her right arm out at her side. “What the hell are you doing?” He took a deep breath. “Not when it’s swinging!” he shouted, but she was ignoring everyone, concentrating on the trick. She tucked her chin forward and then took her other hand off the bar, extending it, her arms spread out like wings. They were dumbstruck. She pointed her toes, and Con could see the muscles in her arms and legs and back. It was amazing. She looked exactly like Gene, had a finer, compact version of his morphology, but clearly the same poise and strength. And the same idiotic sense that she could not get hurt.

When the trapeze swung far enough over the loft, she raised her head, spreading her arms wider and arching her back as she slipped delicately from the bar, landing nearly on top of Theo, ducking to miss the backswing of the trapeze as it grazed their heads.

Once her feet were safely planted on the loft, Con relaxed and sat back down, but Gene continued to stand in the center of the barn.

Theo began barking.

“For God’s sake!” Alice shouted, grabbing the dog mask and flipping it up on top of his head. “Wake up! Wake up! You were dreaming!”

Those were the only words in the play. Then they stood together on the loft, held hands, and bowed.

No one clapped but Michelle. And there was an unpleasant
silence during which Alice folded her arms over her chest and shrugged down at her parents.

“What does ‘dog in the manger’ mean?” Michelle asked brightly. “Death-defying feat?”

Alice smiled. “No, it’s like somebody’s taking food away from somebody else who needs it. Like a dog gets into the animal’s trough.”

“How significant,” Michelle said, raising an eyebrow. “But in this case, the dog is the main guy, the animals are gone, and the dog is having a nightmare.”

“That was definitely a nightmare for everyone, as far as I’m concerned,” Gene said, looking pointedly at his daughter.

“The dog ate everyone’s food and fell asleep in the manger,” Alice said, exasperated, “but when the moth flies around the ceiling and abolishes gravity and wakes him up, then he’s never going to go in there and eat all their food again! She has to save him from what he does to save everyone else because he’s always taking stuff. She wakes him up and makes him float up into the air. Didn’t you figure that out?
God!
”

“Hm,” Michelle said. “I don’t know how I missed that.”

“Well, the floating doesn’t come across that great,” Theo explained.

“I strongly suggest you never do that trick again,” Claire said, simply nodding at Alice. “Does your chin hurt?”

“Yes,” Alice said, looking down at them, laughing a little.

Con was stunned at the way they dealt with their daughter. He could still feel the adrenaline in his system and a hollowness in his stomach from having watched her slip from the bar.

“Certainly don’t do it again until you have more practice,” Gene said, “because you could die.”

“How can I practice if you’ve suggested I don’t do it again?”

“You practice with me,” he said. “And we’ll lower the trapeze. You don’t want to land on your neck and break your windpipe. Claire has made a very reasonable request.” Then he clapped
his hands and said, “Hup,” and she jumped off the loft into his arms with the same careless joy as a person jumping into a pool of water. Con was impressed and horrified. She was obviously much lighter and more coordinated than other kids her age, but her lack of fear was disturbing.

“Well,” Michelle said. “I guess the show’s over. Thank you very much, trapezists.”

“We have another one tomorrow,” Alice said. “Every day at four or seven.”

Con was beginning to feel that the whole afternoon was surreal. This homesteading thing of Gene’s, Claire so silent now, the shock of seeing Michelle. All this pretend and risk taking from everyone. And he was astonished that the children had made up this story, felt oddly sick and exposed by it, as if he’d seen some native interpretation of his life via imaginary animals. A living nativity of his troubled sleep.

Gene lowered the trapeze to a few feet above the ground and the children were now hanging by their knees side by side. “You better set up the tent if you want to sleep outside,” Claire told them.

The adults left them hanging and walked toward the house. Once out of sight of the barn, Gene stopped walking, Claire put her arms around him, and he bent his head to touch hers. Constant watched her kiss the side of his face and wrap her arms around him, whisper something in his ear. Constant and Michelle walked ahead toward the house.

“I think that play was a sign you should quit your job,” Michelle said.

“I think it’s a sign they need a net in that barn. And it was definitely a sign I need to be more of an influence on Alice. Girl’s a little shaky on the concept of risk.”

“You mean Gene Junior,” Michelle said.

“Yeah. Well, both of those kids, actually.” He put his arm around her waist, and they walked in step along the mowed path.

“Come to Zelingei with me,” she said quietly.

He shook his head.

“Haven’t you seen enough of Manhattan after last year?” she asked.

“No. I love the city now more than I ever did. Now is not the time to leave.”

And it wasn’t just for himself that he stayed, it was for all of them. Didn’t she know one of the reasons he kept his fucking job was because of her? Because they were all so unaware of how little they had? Their poverty and grandstanding were actually based in privilege. He literally hated his job. And if the opportunity arose to have a real impact on something, he would probably take it, but you don’t just do that until you have it all figured out. How could they not know that throughout history, the difference between getting across a border at the right time or getting shot came down to money or a decision people couldn’t influence without it. He was astounded by their ignorance sometimes. He was not the CEO of fucking Pharmethik. He was not Eichmann. Not a dog in the manger.

The fact that they didn’t understand the value of a risk-benefit analysis was one reason they were constantly fighting the same monsters in the same ways. Why Gene believed he could “live the alternative” in order to convert people to organic farming. But that lived alternative was subsidized by wages coming from a pharmaceutical company Gene wasn’t willing to work for himself. How was that sustainable?

“I’d like to live with you again,” he said to Michelle. “But the problems you are trying to fix won’t go away if I personally stop working. I don’t know how to get out of it yet, baby.”

He didn’t say the rest, which was that things were so overwhelmingly bad, so redefined, in the world, and he was so entrenched in what he was doing, that he couldn’t imagine a defining political moment that could possibly have enough impact to make him leave. If last fall didn’t do it, what would? You
keep waking up to a next day. Shredded documents on clinical trials, the lack of polar ice, the lack of any coherent community manifest in the incessant conversations people had
about
television that sounded like conversations people had
on
television. He did not know how to get to the core of it to fix things. And for all their staying on the right path and applying pressure to the wound, he knew that they didn’t, either.

“It’s morally wrong,” she said. “Your work is morally wrong.”

He nodded again. “I know that. I can do something that is wrong in order to achieve something good, something of a greater magnitude, down the line. I’m not afraid of doing something bad in an isolated circumstance if it can yield a greater result. I know who I am, Michelle. I can do this one thing and move on.”

“When?”

They had reached the porch and sat looking out at the fields. Inside the house, the needle had reached the end of the record and made a static hiss and click over and over. He looked down at their feet. Her socks had dry leaves stuck in them. He knew she hated his shoes, knew the point she’d been trying to make by staring at them. He’d heard her talk about uniforms before, uniforms and language, heard her describe the world as Orwell had. And he had no disagreements with her. She was disgusted by the violence inherent in the businessman’s uniform and by the power it conveyed. He could take the shoes off and throw them out into the woods for what it would mean to her. But he knew if he did, he would be buying a new pair on Monday. That was the kind of waste that was born from believing in symbolic gestures and poorly conceived individual acts.

“When it makes sense,” he said.

She took his hand and kissed it. “I’ll pray for you, then.”

“Really?” Con asked, smiling. “To whom?”

Ross

HAEDEN, NY, 2003

R
ABBITS ARE NOT
something you wait for like a deer or ducks, unwitting sorts of creatures that walk or fly by while you hide. Not big visible things you track. It takes more patience. Rabbits you gotta get deep into the brush. Thick impenetrable thatches and fallen trees and briars. It’s suited to a small person. A small person can carry the animal home and feel accomplished, which is why I started her out on it.

You don’t wait for rabbits, you go after them. Some people like to go after them with dogs, which is just a hassle. I hate beagles. Fucking hate ’em. Get the rabbit running in circles and then they start baying, messing up the woods with all that noise. Plus, I don’t want anyone to know my business. Know when I’m hunting or where I’m at. I got my own business, and I had enough of people talking about it after I got back from the war and grew my hair out. Then after I married Hediyah and again later after she left. I’ll go toe to toe with anyone at the VFW who wants to talk about this war now. But I won’t have them nosing around in my business in the woods or anywhere else. Plus the thing with dogs is, it’s easy to put one of them RFID chips into the dog so you can track them wherever they go. And track the owner, too. No, thank you. Those things got recording devices in them now. I want to be surveilled, I’ll buy a telephone. I tried to tell Hediyah about this when she got her ID tags for the medical center out in Elmville. She knew it had a chip in it, but she didn’t think it mattered. Plus, that woman was dedicated. Always put her patients first. Even if she was getting her name made fun of or people asking all the time was she happy to be able to learn the
newest things here in America, be somewhere she didn’t need to wear a scarf on her face. Or was she Muslim and did Arabs have TV. Christ. Fucking embarrassing is what it was, but she didn’t care. She was here to practice rural medicine and work with the poor and finish her research on obesity. If she wanted to learn the “newest things,” or even have an intelligent conversation, she’d be back in Lebanon. Which she is now. So, I guess there it is.

Best thing that came of all that business, though, was the Pipers. And I gotta say they all remind me a little of Hediyah. Especially Claire, though Claire’s more of a family kind of woman.

I was more than happy to move out of that house and rent it to them. Don’t think I’d have rented to anyone else honestly. But I’m happy they’re there and happy to sell the land to Constant. And in a way, it means that land’s in Hediyah’s family still; that they have a spot here, which they damn well should have. Goddamn prejudice and stupidity. Christ-al-fucking-mighty people are ignorant. The way people treated my wife, who was here to fucking help their fat asses in the first place.

Well anyway, point is, the little Piper is old enough to hunt with me now, and I enjoy her company. Especially hunting rabbits, which is what I guess I started talking about. That child can learn fast, and it’s a shame her people don’t put more value on the gift she has because I believe outside of the service, I have never seen anyone take so much pleasure in hitting a target or put so much time into figuring out how to do it. Girl’s a marksman and quiet as can be. I believe by the end of the year, she’ll be using a rifle for rabbits. She’s gotten very good very fast. I guess that’s a tribute to her parents, as most people wait until it’s “legal” to let their kid learn to shoot. And that’s a huge mistake. Everyone knows a ten-year-old can learn quicker than a fourteen-year-old. Which is of course why they put them all in school, so they can make sure they’re not out there thinking away about everything they see, putting things together they’re not supposed to. Which they would if they weren’t federally mandated to go get brainwashed
every goddamn day. Gotta make sure we keep ’em pumped full of bullshit like the fucking Gulf of Tonkin. And Pearl fucking Harbor and Christopher Columbus and our great hero the Nazi Henry Ford. Don’t tell them Johnny Appleseed was some burlap sack–wearing pervert moonshiner. It’s all just a big whitewash. Keep them away from real people with real memories ’cause they sure as hell don’t want them to meet someone like me who can tell them what I really did in a uniform. Jesus Christ. Anyhow. If you start shooting at ten, you have a chance. The more practice you get, the better. And when that girl’s grown up, she’ll be able to feed her whole family. If they eat meat. That’s about the biggest mistake the parents have made, if you ask me. What kinda child goes out hunting but don’t eat meat?