I was struck by what she had written because it explained much of what happened that weekend in Schuyler. And my role in it, and hers.
* * *
Aaron and Jenny arrived an hour before dinner, carried from the regional airport in one of the ancient black Lincoln MKTs the local taxi company passed off as limousines. Aaron rang the bell, he and Jenny were duly hugged and handshaken, and Mama Laura sent Geddy out to fetch their luggage: two identical hardshell travel cases of a high-end German brand.
My elder brother had learned to carry himself with the kind of assumed authority people call “statesmanlike.” Shoulders square, chin up. His hair was styled and streaked with gray at the temples. The gray didn’t look natural, and I pictured him in front of a bathroom mirror, painting it on. Maybe a good move for an inexperienced junior congressman. His handshake was a quick, decisive squeeze. This, too, felt rehearsed. “Hey, little brother,” he said.
“Hey back at you, Aaron.”
Jenny gave me a hug. She lingered a moment before we broke apart, but I tried not to read anything into it. The obvious question was on my mind: was she still willing to do what she had offered to do?
But there seemed to be no uncertainty or indecision about her. The old tentative, soft-spoken Jenny—the it’s-okay-with-me-if-it’s-okay-with-you Jenny, the Jenny I had known and halfheartedly courted as a teenager—was gone. In her place was someone not just older but vastly more cynical. Her eyes were wary, her smile more mechanical than genuine.
Mama Laura called us to dinner as soon as Aaron and Jenny had dropped their bags and washed up: “You got here just in time!”
We took our places. The head of the table was empty until my father came shambling downstairs. He wore dress pants and a crisply starched white shirt, tragically loose on him now. We waited in silence until he had eased his body into the chair. He nodded at Jenny and gave Aaron what was probably intended as a cheery wink. “All right then,” he said. “Let’s eat.”
“Not before the blessing,” Mama Laura said. She asked Aaron to say some words, and he bowed his head and reminded the Lord that we were all thankful for what we were about to receive.
Four hours before the lights went out.
* * *
I harbored a faint hope that my father’s illness had mellowed him, but there wasn’t much evidence of that. True, there were no lengthy tirades, and for most of the meal it seemed as if he had abandoned his lifelong habit of correcting the opinions of others. He put a serving of Mama Laura’s glazed ham and a mound of Mama Laura’s candied sweet potatoes on his plate but did little more than poke at them with his fork. He looked at each of us in turn, rotating his gaze around the table, pausing at each face as if he needed to commit it to memory. Our talk was amiable but subdued and he listened to it with an unreadable expression.
Then, as the serving dishes made a second round, Rebecca asked him whether there was any news from India.
She knew he had been upstairs watching television news, and I guessed she meant to include him in the conversation. Full credit for good intentions, but I held my breath like everyone else at the table.
My father focused his eyes on her and pursed his lips in an expression of distaste. After a long moment in which the only sound was the screech of Geddy chasing peas across his plate with a fork, he said, “There are drones.”
“Drones?”
“Yeah, drones, you know, pilotless aircraft?”
“I know what a drone is, but—”
“Probably Chinese. From their ships in the Arabian Sea.”
“Surveillance drones?” The Indian government had been complaining about Chinese surveillance drones for weeks now; they had shot down a couple and put the wreckage on display.
“No. They’re blowing things up. Big news.”
That caught the attention of Aaron, who had recently been appointed to a House subcommittee on military affairs. He said, “Blowing what up?”
“Military installations. Whole cities, maybe. The TV people don’t know anything. Communications are down all across the subcontinent.”
“Jesus!” Aaron said. Mama Laura shot him an injured look. “I apologize for the language,” he said, “but if things get really hot I might be called back to DC.”
He started to reach for his phone. “Aaron,” Mama Laura said before his hand made it past his lapel.
“I should check my messages, at least.”
“Did the people you work for have our home number?”
“Sure, but—”
“In that case, in the event of an emergency, the phone on the side table will ring. Until then, please enjoy your meal with the rest of us, no matter what’s happening halfway across the planet.”
It was not a negotiable demand. “Of course,” Aaron said, though for the next few minutes he cast reflexive glances at the video screen in the next room, blank and silent in its corner. I couldn’t help exchanging a look with Jenny. If Aaron’s visit was cut short, we might have to change our plan. Or abandon it altogether.
But Rebecca’s question seemed to have piqued my father’s interest in her. “You’re Geddy’s girlfriend,” he said, though they had already been introduced.
“That’s one thing I am.”
“I guess that means you’re a lot of things.”
“Aren’t we all?”
“They tell me you belong to one of those Affinity groups?”
“Actually, no—”
“Adam here works for one. I forget which.”
“He’s a Tau,” Rebecca said. “But I’m not a member of an Affinity, Mr. Fisk. I’m enlisted with New Socionome.”
“Enlisted with what now?”
“New Socionome. It’s kind of a global collective for designing new ways to connect people, outside of the framework of the Affinities.”
“You’re probably wise not to call it an Affinity, given that Aaron wants to pass a law against them.”
“He means the Griggs-Haskell bill,” Aaron said. “You’ve heard of it?”
“Of course,” Rebecca said.
“It’s just a way of regulating a troublesome and problematic business. I’m no fan of government regulation, but in this case it’s necessary. I guess you approve of that, given that you’ve chosen not to join an Affinity?”
“Actually no,” Rebecca said. “I don’t approve of it. I think it’s worse than unnecessary. As it’s written, the bill would grant oversight powers to the largest Affinity, which is Het, which would just give an authoritarian Affinity even more political clout than it already has. It’s a clusterfuck.” She blinked into the silence that descended on the table. “Uh, sorry, Mrs. Fisk.”
My father was less offended by her language than by her refusal to defer to Aaron. “How’s your club work?”
“New Socionome’s not a club. It puts together small circles of people in ways that enhance cooperation toward loosely defined long-term goals. Each circle has open valence, which means they can expand any way they want and include anyone they feel like including. It’s like creating the grain of dust that nucleates a snowflake.”
“My word,” Mama Laura said, awed and bewildered in equal parts. “I’ve never heard it put that way.”
My father said, “I guess it’s not a particularly exclusive club. For years, the golf club here in town? You couldn’t get in if you were a Jew. But they relaxed that rule.”
Geddy flushed but said nothing. Rebecca seemed, not startled, exactly, but at a loss for words.
It was Mama Laura who finally spoke up.
“Charles,” she said, in the tone she usually reserved for misbehaving children. She waited until she had my father’s complete attention—a hostile, skeletal stare. “Charles, we all know you’re ill. Believe me, I know it. The doctors told me exactly what to expect. I know what my duty is. I will feed you if necessary, clean you, see to your needs. Speaking plainly? I’ll empty your bedpan when the time comes, and I don’t expect to be thanked for it. But Geddy has come home with a new friend he wants us to meet. And I think she is a lovely person. And I am very happy for both of them. And it matters a great deal to me that my son is happy. So even though you’re sick, and even though the fact of your sickness has tied the tongue of everyone else at the table, I won’t let you ruin this meal as you have ruined so many others. Speak civilly or keep your mouth closed, because I mean to have a pleasant dinner this evening, with or without your help.”