She had given Nelson a piece of mince pie that she had saved in the freezer for him and said how sorry she was about what had happened. Everybody felt terrible about it, except Deet and the three children, she guessed. "No," Nelson said, "it was clarifying. It showed me what a pipsqueak leech I tend to be. There was no reason to drag you all in, my sister is something that concerns Dad and me, not you."
That was yesterday. She tells Ronnie now, "You could call him at work." He understands it as a command, for his having overstepped.
It is not an easy call to make, but no worse than hounding a prospect into buying insurance. You construct a shell for yourself, and speak from within it. "Nelson, got a minute?"
"A minute, yes." He has the Relationships group in ten minutes.
"Listen, I feel rotten about the way I spoke to Annabelle."
His using her name offends Nelson, but he listens.
"I must have been drunk," Ronnie goes on.
"Were you that drunk? Mentioning her mother's cunt?" The clients at the Center may be dysfunctional but they have rabbit ears. Through the open door of his tiny office Nelson sees several heads out in the milieu turn, including that of Rosa, who talks to Jesus. She is with a new client, a forty-seven-year-old female obsessive-compulsive. During the intake he was struck by the new client's hands, so painfully scrubbed and chapped, and the fingernails nibbled down to the pink parts. Pru had had such long red hands, he remembers-gawky in the wrists, tender at the tips.
"Look," Ronnie's voice presses on, "I'm calling to say I'm sorry, you're not supposed to make it harder."
"I'm not? Some would say that you owe the apology not to me but to Annabelle."
"I don't trust myself to talk to her. Her being such a bleeding heart for Clinton still pisses me off."
"Was it really Clinton that pissed you off? Tell me, Ronnie, when you looked at her, what did you see?"
"I saw a bleeding-heart broad too big for her miniskirt."
"Anything else? Come on. Help yourself. Think."
"I saw Ruth Leonard back in the Fifties. She'd fuck anybody."
"More. Who else did you see?"
Ronnie is silent, but his silence conveys less animosity than an attempt to think. This is the best conversation Nelson has ever had with Ronnie. His moving out has done that, in just four days. For the first lime, Ronnie owes him some respect. "You want me to say your father," he comes up with.
"Only if it's true."
"It's true. She has more of him in her than you do. Stop asking all these questions trying to make me spill my guts. You're sore at me and always have been because I ball your mother."
"Are you sure about that? Maybe I like you for it; I can't do it. The fact is, I don't dislike you, Ronnie. You don't threaten me the way you did Dad, for some reason. I like you. I like the way you take care of Mom and care about that big homely barn of a house. You're a caring guy. Insurance salesmen are caring guys, worrying about the loved ones when the breadwinner packs it in. You try to make the dead effective just like I try to make the crazy effective. We're not hotshots but we're responsible citizens. What bugs you about Clinton is that he seems to get away with everything. The same with my father. Let me tell you something, Ronnie, something I've observed: nobody gets away with anything. Those that escape punishment inflict it on themselves. We all do it. We keep our own accounts."
Ronnie is silent, weighing this, looking for the hook. "What b.s.," he says at last. "Nellie, you've become a bullshit artist."
"Another reason I like you, Ronnie," Nelson rushes on, the insight having just come to him with a force that needs to be vented, "is that you and I are about the last people left on earth my father still bugs. He bugs us because we wanted his good opinion and didn't get it. He was worse than we are but also better. He beat us out. You look at Annabelle and see living proof that he beat you out- you may have fucked Ruth but he knocked her up and he stares out of her face at you. Right?"
"You've lost me," Ronnie admits. "Tell me, what does this kid do for you?"
"Me, it's like she's something my father left me to take care of, and I don't have a clue how to do it. Thanksgiving wasn't the answer. Your sons sure weren't the answer."
Ron Harrison's voice becomes pious. "Nellie, I'm going to speak the truth in love. What I say is going to help you. She's a slick little twat and can take care of herself. Let me tell you something that will shock you. Back in the kitchen, I turned her on. She wanted me to ball her. I felt it, and I had to get ugly, for everybody's sake. I sacrificed myself."
"Talk about bullshit," Nelson says, and hangs up. While he has been on the phone so long, Rosa and the new client have been scared off, horrified by what they have overheard. He ventures out into the milieu after them, to find out what they wanted, and to show them how sane and normal and trustworthy he basically is.
From: Dad [nelsang.harrison@qwikbrew.com]Sent: Friday, December 10, 1999 5:11 PMTo: royson@buckeyemedia.comSubject: change of address
Dear Roy-Sorry to let your messages and jokes accumulate. The one about how many Texas A amp; M students does it take to screw in a light bulb is funny but it seems a little heartless, seeing that twelve young people were killed making that bonfire pile and most were freshmen who had just been told to do this by people who should have known better. Remember when you get to college to trust your own judgment. I wasted a lot of time at beery frat foolishness at Kent State until your mother took me in hand. She was a little older than I and had more of a realistic upbringing.
The reason I have been slow to answer lately is that I moved out of the house where your grandmother and Mr Harrison live, so I don't have daily access to this computer and am using it now on the sly when they are both out at the mall doing Christmas shopping and then maybe a movie, either the new James Bond or new Tom Hanks. Some rude words at Thanksgiving prompted my departure but I've been thinking of it for some time. Your mother and I used to discuss it while you and Judy were growing up there but we never got around to it, the rent was too good ($0.00).
For somewhat more than that amount ($85 a week, so tell your mother I have this new expense) I have rented a big front second-story room on Almond Street, just off Elsenhower Avenue three blocks from the underpass, where you and Judy and Mom if she wants can stay when you come east after Christmas. We can put mattresses on the floor and borrow sleeping bags from the two girls who live in the other half of the second floor here. They are both in their twenties and what we used to call secretaries but have titles like administrative assistant and corporate input organizer. I hardly ever see them but can hear them with their obnoxious dates sometimes late at night.
I have been living on Almond Street only a week but am pretty happy. The apartment comes with a cable television set and other essential furnishings and a bathroom with shower. There's no kitchen but your grandmother stood me to a little microwave, a 1.2-cubic-ft. Magic Chef, for coffee in the morning and a TV dinner at night. There's a 7-Eleven just down the street. This used to be the landlady's daughter's room until she married and moved away, so there are a lot of frilly nice touches left over.
When you come you must meet your new aunt, a half-aunt if there is such a thing, Annabelle. She is shy but very nice, and knows all about you. Those protests in Seattle reminded me of when I was about your age and people were protesting everything, rioting in the streets. Policemen were called pigs and the President was called worse, just like now. I suppose things move in cycles.