The Exact Nature of Our Wrongs Read online

  “Maybe they could get someone to come cook. A little nursing,” ClairBell suggested, but the words had scarcely left her lips when everyone, including ClairBell, laughed. Their parents were too stubborn for this to work. Hattie hated to have anyone in her kitchen. She stood like a looming heron over anyone who tried to help, beady-eyed and alert, suggesting better ways. Abel was worse. Things had to be just so. And he feared theft. He had accused more than one workman—he had accused his own sons—of stealing.

  Doro said, “They need to get out of that house. Sooner rather than later.”

  “I don’t know,” said Jesse. “You never know when things will hit bottom.”

  Gideon grinned, lifting his beer can as if in a toast, casting a look toward his brother. “Yep, you never know.”

  Doro looked away. Gid’s sarcasm was sometimes hard to take. She knew he assumed the stance to compensate for his feelings of failure, but it could get old, especially as he made no attempt to change. She felt on edge, with him, with everyone. Trying to deal with her brothers and sister was a trial, like trying to line up snakes in a box. She wanted to go home.

  “Mom could have a stroke or another heart attack and then where would Dad be? Or Billy could get in some kind of trouble.”

  “Could?” ClairBell mugged a dunce face.

  “Neither one of them should be driving,” Jesse said.

  Gid smirked. “Try to tell that to His Honor.”

  ClairBell put in, “And Her Honor.”

  Jesse said, “The other day I saw Mom’s Camry coming out of the bank drive-through. First she signaled to turn right, and then she changed her mind and signaled left. Then right again, then left. Her turn blinkers looked like some whacked-out carnival ride. Car behind her got spooked and backed up and pulled out of the lot a different way. Mom sat there a while and then finally, just when another car was coming toward her, she hit the gas and shot out. Other car stops in time and she waves her innocent old lady wave—tee-hee, little old me—and drives on.”

  ClairBell said, “And she drives uptown. She still tries to be Billy’s beck-and-call-girl. She probably shouldn’t even be driving to the Farmland for groceries.”

  Gid stood and leaned against the railing. “Same old same old.” He crossed his arms and looked at Doro. “So have you decided where they ought to go?”

  Doro had given the matter consideration, and she’d done some research online. “Well, Dad would need skilled nursing because of his tube and his other problems.” She would say it, say the word they’d all been refusing to use. “His dementia. They won’t take him at Amicus Health. I’m guessing because of the guns. Mom’s a better candidate for independent living, but who knows how much longer that will last. I was thinking we might check out this place down in Clearwater. They have levels of care. It’s expensive but…”

  Jesse tipped back in his chair. “That’s all well and good, but what if they don’t want to move? How do we get them out?”

  Gid popped another Bud Light and the hiss, coming at a still moment when the guineas ceased clacking and the locusts gave out, sounded loud and sinister. “Crowbar?”

  Jesse laughed. “WD-40.” He put his feet on the railing. “The place looks like ten kinds of shit. All Dad’s junk around. Tape around the junction boxes. A wonder there hasn’t been a fire.”

  When Jesse turned to look at the charred barn roof, Gid cleared his throat and looked darkly off into the distance. Doro suspected words had passed between her brothers, but now didn’t seem like the right time to ask what was going on. They ran hot and cold. Jesse would get a bellyful of Gid’s irresponsibility and go off on a tear trying to get him to meetings. Gid would refuse. Jesse couldn’t stand being estranged, so he’d relent, and little by little they’d slide back into their uneasy brotherhood.

  “And Mom’s kitchen?” she put in. “She’s like a pack rat. How many Cool Whip tubs does a person need? How many pickle jars and coffee cans?”

  “Bread sacks,” Jesse added.

  Gid tittered in falsetto, “Why, a body just can’t have too many twisty ties.”

  ClairBell took a sip of her iced tea. “She’s washing plastic forks and spoons and reusing them. She brought some home from somebody’s funeral. Plastic cups, too. One day I got one out of the cupboard to get a drink and there were hot-pink lipstick prints on it.”

  “Lord,” Doro said.

  “But the things that matter are on their last legs,” Jesse said. “Her electric skillet’s been missing a leg for the last ten years. Wobbling like a drun—” He looked at Gid and his beer and thought better of the comparison he was about to make. “Wobbling.”

  “She props it up with this little doodad she made that she’s so proud of. An empty tuna fish can with a rock in it and the whole thing wrapped in tin foil,” ClairBell supplied. “Like that makes it all right. If that thing tipped over there’d be a flood of bacon grease.”

  These things were true. The once-handsome house had grown shabby. And not just with time and use, Doro thought, but as if by design, as their parents, notwithstanding the money gift they’d just given everyone, seemed to grow cheaper and cheaper, their habit of scrimping refined to an art. Down in the family room wing, which had been shut off from the rest of the house in order to save on air-conditioning bills, Doro had come upon the lovely earth-toned paisley shawl she’d given her mother for Christmas. There it was, draped over a punched-down cardboard box that was being used as an end table, a vase of plastic hydrangeas, thirty years old if they were a day, adorning the surface. In the big bathroom another cardboard box had been covered with flowered contact paper and turned into a teetering toilet-side table. As satisfying as it was to bemoan their parents’ ways, Doro wanted to bring the talk back around to solutions, and so she said, “Okay, so what are we going to do?”

  “Listen,” ClairBell said, deciding the time was right to spring her idea. She fitted her plastic cup into the holder built into the chair’s arm and smoothed her terry-cloth shorts over her thighs. “What if we had a celebration? A birthday party for Dad.”

  Gid had been swigging his beer and he almost choked. “A party?”

  “To celebrate what?” Doro said. “The fall of the house of Atreus. In slow motion?”

  “Whatever,” ClairBell snapped, giving her the fish eye. “Wouldn’t it be nice if we did something special? I mean, he’s going to be ninety-one. We could make a party of it.” To soften her sharp answer she made her trademark charm-face, pertly cocking her head, folding her hands under her chin, and batting her lashes. Most of the time it was irresistible.

  “I don’t know,” Doro said, trying to avoid hurting her sister’s feelings, “this doesn’t seem like the right—”

  “It’s the perfect time,” ClairBell said quickly, powering up for an argument. “Here’s Daddy feeling all left out. Not to mention mad about the ambulance and mad in general. He’s got a tube in his belly, for crying out loud! And all Mom can do is chase after the Prodigal and gripe about the smell of Boost. And he did the whole thing for her.”

  She let what she hoped was guilt sink in before pretending to have a sudden inspiration. “Say, what if we had the party out at my place? We could swim. There’s plenty of room. We could invite the whole family.”

  She went on, laying out her plan as though its details were just occurring to her. For a while it seemed like the others were warming to the idea, or at least not shooting it down outright, but when she got to the part about moving the Eliot chair and staging a group portrait there was a sudden chill.

  The sun had set and darkness was coming on, but this chill was more than that. Doro, Jesse, and Gid were quiet. Nobody moved until Jesse shook a cigarette from his pack and put it between his lips. He dug in his jeans pocket for a lighter. Doro’s mouth went suddenly dry as she saw her sister’s strategy and with a sinking feeling knew that it would work. Argumentum ad passiones. If their father had a weakness, it was an appeal to flattery. She nudged Jesse and gestured toward his c
igarette pack. “Split me one of those?”

  Gid held out a hand. “Me, too.”

  The lighter flared, the three lit up, blew smoke.

  On the tip of her tongue was a sharp remark, a dart ClairBell wanted to throw at her sister for her fall from the smoke wagon, but she decided against it. Her sister’s face looked strange and stiff and stricken. Old. ClairBell realized suddenly that Doro was a dead ringer for Grandma Alice—the white hair, the same face with its string-puppet lines, same deep furrow between the eyes. Oh, oh, oh, the woman had not aged well. At. All. A brief thrill ran up ClairBell’s backbone, but she remembered that underneath it all she actually loved her bossy, praise-hogging sister and so she drew up the reach of her powers short of predicting her demise.

  Gid leaned forward and put his elbows on his knees. “This whole thing is bullshit,” he muttered.

  Jesse said to ClairBell, “You had me up until the chair part.”

  “Which is the bullshit part,” Gid put in.

  Doro stubbed out her cigarette in the coffee can Jesse had for the purpose. It had tasted terrible. “Maybe it’s not a good idea to make big changes like taking the chair out of the living room, especially at a time like this.”

  ClairBell pounced. “But you’re talking about trying to pry them out of the house. Isn’t that an even bigger change?” She licked her lips. “What if we had the party first? Get them all softened up and then spring the plans on—”

  Doro had recovered from the first shock at ClairBell’s push to win the chair, and she picked up the opportunity her sister had provided, interrupting her. “That’s what we came here to talk about, so let’s make some decisions.”

  ClairBell allowed this to happen, deciding that she’d done enough for the time being. She’d laid down a base, and she was nothing if not persistent. There would most certainly be, she allowed her private powers full rein to foresee, a birthday party in August. And she and no one else, the spirits rose up and moved about to assure her, would win the Eliot chair.

  They talked until late, deciding that the best course of action was straightforward, to call a sit-down with their parents, lay out their concerns, and give their recommendations about moving out of the house and into a facility. They would have brochures ready, and an estimate of the costs. They set the Fourth of July, when they would all be together again, as the date.

  “Who’s going to do the talking?” Doro asked.

  “Not It,” ClairBell said. Gid coughed to cover his laugh. Jesse frowned at his boots, and Doro said, “I don’t want to, either.” It was one thing to plan, one thing to orchestrate, but a completely different thing to confront them. They decided to draw straws. ClairBell went in search of hay straws, three longs and a short, and held them out. Jesse drew the short one.

  How, they would wonder a few days later when their plan backfired, had they forgotten that their parents would stonewall them when they heard what was in store, how their father could rise to any occasion, how their mother could be a wild card, and how all it took was one rogue agent to ruin a perfectly sound plan, but on this evening with their decision fresh in their minds as they sat out on the deck at Jesse’s, they hoped that this would be the time their parents would accept their help. When they finally rose to stretch and make their ways to their cars, they felt adult and industrious, that they were doing the right thing for their elderly parents. They felt saddened at the passing of the torch, sweetly beleaguered in a kind of heroic way, the responsibility heavy on them but bearable together, for they had talked themselves past their rivalrous crossfires and into believing in their own virtue. By the time they took leave of each other, the guinea flock had gone to roost in the cedars, the horses nickered softly in their stalls, and down in the timber a pack of coyotes yipped and cackled, their wild, high-pitched voices sounding like insane and far-off laughter.

  * * *

  Hattie had planned a cookout for the Fourth of July, easy enough, she hoped, given the upheaval the house had been in since Abel’s return, and anyway it was the best she could do. Hot dogs and hamburgers, potato salad, slaw, a strawberry Jell-O salad with fruit cocktail, and a store-bought cherry pie, served on the picnic table on the back patio where they would be shaded by the sweet gum tree. The day had dawned muggy and windless and by afternoon the temperature registering on the thermometer clock outside Abel’s machine barn was a hundred degrees. The American flag she’d placed in the holder by the back door hung listless.

  Abel had at first felt strong enough to man the grill. He tied on his barbecue apron, which bulged at the place where his tube and its dressing jutted out. To shield his head from the sun he put on his father’s straw hat. But before the burgers were ready to be turned he had to sit down. His knees kept giving out and the effort it took just to stand at the grill was too much. He turned the fork over to Gid.

  To torque off Gid, Jesse said, “Hope everybody wants their burgers well done.” He drummed on the picnic table and in a falsetto voice riffed the organ intro to “Light My Fire.”

  “Knock it off,” Gid growled. If there was one thing he did well, it was barbecue meat.

  Abel closed his eyes and dozed. He’d had a feeding earlier and he felt as droopy as the flag.

  Billy was down from uptown but he hadn’t hung around with the others, instead spending his time in the back bedrooms. He was in severe pain, Hattie explained to Doro and ClairBell, who were helping her in the kitchen. His prescriptions just weren’t working. ClairBell had rolled her eyes. When Hattie called them to the table, he joined them outside, but he barely touched his potato salad and merely picked at the strawberry Jell-O. Soon he excused himself and went back inside to take a nap.

  When the meal was over and the yard was cleaned up, Doro gave the signal and the siblings filed into the house, to the living room where Abel and Hattie had gone for an afternoon rest. They took seats around the room. More than one of them thought of the time they’d gathered there to confront Billy.

  “Mom, Dad,” Jesse began, “we wanted to talk to you about…” He halted. He hated public speaking. The only time he was remotely good at it was when in his drinking days he told a story at the bar or, when he was sober, he spoke at meetings. At those times he could almost believe he had inherited the quick verbal skills most of his family had—Abel, ClairBell, Billy, sometimes Gid and Doro—for the words seemed to pour out of him without his having to think about them. But most of the time he was like Hattie, his ideas garbled in his head no matter how well he collected them ahead of time, and when the time came to speak, he was stumbling and miserable and too often what came out of his mouth had nothing to do with what he intended to say. He cleared his throat and started again. “We’ve been talking and we’re concerned about you and—”

  “Have you?” Abel said, his tone sharp. “Been talking.” Since his release from the hospital he’d sensed a gathering movement among his children. He suspected a putsch, an uprising. He’d seen this before, among clients who wanted to dispatch their elderly parents. To be done with them in order to get the goods. Yes, it was always about the goods. Abel sat up taller, looked sternly over the rims of his glasses. He allowed sarcasm free rein, the easiest of strategies but one that almost always worked with his children. “And you’re concerned.”

  Jesse tried to overcome his father’s gimlet stare. He looked over to Doro, who was nodding go ahead to him, and he knew without a doubt that whatever he said would be rebutted. And so he swerved. “It’s just that Mom is worn out and she needs a rest.”

  Abel shook his head theatrically, as though playing to the jury. “You are aware, are you not, that by concluding that I’m the one wearing her out you’ve made a fundamental error in logic.”

  “We didn’t say that, Dad.” Then everything went out of Jesse’s mind. He didn’t think he’d said anything about blame, but under his father’s gaze his memory went black. The old man cowed them all, except maybe ClairBell. He wished she would speak up.

  Abel drilled do
wn. “You’re trafficking in supposition. Correlation does not equal causation. What proof do you have?”

  Gid tried to come to his brother’s rescue. “Look at her, Dad. She’s gray. She’s thin.”

  “Argumentum ad miserecordiam! Fallacious, fallacious, fallacious.”

  Doro said, “She’s had to take nitro more often. There’s the proof.”

  “Post hoc ergo propter hoc. I taught you kids better than that.” But he turned to Hattie. “Do you have to take your nitro more often?”

  “Yes,” she said, “but it’s not that bad. I’m strong. I can handle it.”

  Doro sighed. They were getting nowhere. They should have talked to their mother first, to prepare her and enlist her support. Then they could have laid out the case persuasively. As it was, their mother’s denial had just undone any progress they might have made. She was about to call an end to the talk when Hattie cleared her throat and sat forward on the sofa.

  Hattie had been thinking. Not just in the past few minutes, but for days. She couldn’t do it. Couldn’t be nursemaid and cook and gardener and cleaner and companion. It was too much. She’d been wondering how she could go on, and then, like a miracle, the children had stepped in on her behalf. If she did anything right in her life, it should be to speak her mind now, to say what she needed. The time was ripe; her children would back her up. “Abel,” she said, taking his hand and looking into his eyes, “I think I would feel better if you went to the nursing home.”