Save the Enemy Page 8

  Lee smiles. “I see a lot, honey. Not everything. But when I see something, I see it. Speaking of,” she says, “if you want to work a shift or two, I can find something for you to do.”

  “Thank you,” I say. “Yeah. I really could do that.” Then, “What about the dog? On that one card. The one with the little dog on it.”

  “The dog usually represents loyalty. Faithfulness. Faith itself.”

  “Do you see anything in the cards about my dog? Roscoe. He’s a husky. He’s missing. He got lost the night my mom was killed.”

  “I’ll be honest. I don’t see anything about Roscoe in the cards, honey,” Lee says. “But I hope you find your doggie.”

  We go back into the dining room.

  Pete’s drinking his chicory, reading a paperback. I glance at the restrooms—a heretofore unexpected downside to having a sudden and unplanned-for live-in boy is that one can never really poop—but Lee had been so insistent about taking action now. I do not think bowel action is what she had in mind. It pains me that there is this pressure in my gut, and also that I am so very susceptible to woo-woo types of stuff when my father is not there to suggest to me that only stupid people would take advice from some painted pieces of paper. Mom liked going to palm readers and tarot card readers. I think Mom would have liked Lee a lot. I think she’d have appreciated the austerity of the office, even, because it shows a real commitment to a particular vision.

  And, you know, I think Mom would have liked Pete, too. I don’t think Dad would like either of them, but he’s not here to tell me not to listen to their advice or accept their help.

  But I can still feel myself trying to disregard what Lee is saying to me. I’m still trying to imagine that Pete, with his “you’ve got changes coming, I can see it in your lifeline,” is full of shit. I’m still thinking that Ben isn’t really talking to Mom every night. Kid won’t use a cell phone but has a direct line to our dead mother, eh? Nothing makes sense if these things are true. A spiritual world that really exists and isn’t just a metaphor? Forget about all that being illogical—which it is, because, as Brian Keegan’s physicist uncle says, there isn’t any place in the universe for things like ghosts or gods to be hiding out.

  And also, I mean, what if palms and cards really can be read? What do you even do with yourself then?

  Back outside, the sun is shining. It is one of those spring days you only get this time of year, with the kind of sky that’s light but not bright blue. A hint of flowers wafts—yes, it wafts, that’s what it’s doing—through the air, into my nose. I sniff the delicate hint of a scent. I sneeze.

  “Bless you,” Pete says. He asks if I’ve ever been to India. I tell him I have not. He tells me about that trip he took with his mom and twin sister there, when he met the palm readers. He went to a town called Kochi, a southern port city which is famous for its spice markets.

  “I met this dude there. I don’t even remember his name. It was at this gallery in Jew Town—yeah, that’s what the neighborhood is called. No, it’s not anti-Semitic or whatever. One of the oldest colonies of Jews in the world was there. Can you say colonies of Jews? Like bats? They’ve been there for almost two thousand years. Two groups of them. Well, there’s hardly any left now. But I’m getting off track.

  “I met this dude who told me he’s an accidental guru. He had this amazing hair and was wearing a long, embroidered tunic of some sort. Different from the other tunics. But I can’t really say what exactly made him different, just that he was. I knew it as soon as I saw him. And I’m not the only one. I had a cup of tea with him at the gallery and he got to telling me that all his life, people have met him and decided that he was their guru. He told me he tried to send all these people away. He wants to draw and run his gallery. But they kept coming. And they wouldn’t leave. So finally he started giving them things to do. Hang paintings in the gallery. Do chores. When I met him he was having them build a whole encampment up in the hills, where the tea is grown. I wanted to go. He was going to hold Ayurvedic retreats there or something.”

  “Why didn’t you go?”

  “Eh, I was fifteen. I go to school. I’m not Hindu … But he took me to this amazing place where the people have a trance ritual. It goes on all night in this little village in the country. We stayed with his uncle in a big purple house that the uncle’s son bought for him. The son’s a lawyer. The house was almost as cool as the trance ritual. I’d love to have a purple house …”

  “Me, too,” I say.

  “So the people in this village stay up all night for the ritual. They build a big bonfire. They wear costumes—these crazy costumes, some with straw—and dance and dance and dance. The idea is that eventually you become a deity yourself, with all the dancing. And then you throw yourself into the fire. People standing around watching pull you out. Then you throw yourself back in. They throw themselves in. I didn’t do it. I don’t know why they didn’t burn up. I dunno. I think about it a lot. The world has all these rules. Don’t jump into fire. And then here’s a bunch of people who jump into fire. And they’re okay. At least they were at the ritual I saw. What explains that?”

  “What did your friend say?”

  “He said that when you dance like that you go into a trance and then you’re, um, impervious to sensations that ordinarily would be shocking. He said there are neuroscience explanations. That going into a trance releases endorphins. I like the religious explanation. You really become a god. But I wonder why gods don’t burn.”

  “Where are you going to college next year?” I ask.

  “I’m not,” he says. “I’m going to Europe for the year. Going to bring my guitar and play. Write songs. Live some of my own life so I have my own things to write about.”

  “I’m still waiting to hear from Berkeley,” I say. “I bet I don’t get in. I probably won’t be going to college.”

  “You should come to Europe!” Pete says. “I figure I’ll start with Sweden. There’s a fishing village all the way up north where they found a new Stonehenge. It might be in the south, actually.”

  “I don’t have money,” I say.

  “Oh, me neither. I’m dipping into my trust. My mom is totally not happy about it. But … I just feel like I can go to college any time. I have my whole life for that …” He’s looks at me. “I sound like an asshole, don’t I? I don’t mean any of this in an assholey way. I just feel like there’s a lot of things in the world that I don’t know about, and I want to know about them. Don’t you?”

  I nod, but don’t answer. Pete’s world is much bigger than mine is. My world is small, and getting smaller, and there are no reluctant gurus (or trust funds) in it, and it’s still full of mysteries. Not pleasant, interesting mysteries. Horrible, life-threatening mysteries.

  We get back to the house and go inside. I check the stove first thing to make sure that nothing is on fire in it. Nothing is. So I don’t need to solve the mystery of why my brother sometimes seems hell-bent on ruination.

  “Ben? Ben?” I call out. I run upstairs. First stop: my nightstand. The gun is there. I’ve got to remember to ask Pete for the bullets back … Next stop: my brother’s room to see if he is in there. He is. He is asleep. The notebook is lying next to him. I pick it up.

  He’s filled in more pages. “X.C.,” an address in Montreal, a date from a few years ago. “K.S.,” an address in Miami, a date from about nine years ago. “S.G.,” an address in Cape Cod, a date from two years ago.

  I scowl at the page. We went to Cape Cod two years ago as a family. On vacation. At first we’d tried going camping because Dad, for some reason, got all excited about the Great Outdoors. He bought, like, $700 worth of gear—tents and sleeping bags—on account of us not being an outdoorsy family already in possession of such things.

  Then, when we were at the campsite in North Kingstown, only a few miles from our actual house in Rhode Island, Mom saw a snake. And that was it. Camping over. We tried to pack up the tents and sleeping bags that were already halfway being set
up, but we couldn’t get them folded properly, so we just left them with some other campers.

  We ended up driving from North Kingstown to Cape Cod. Ben got horribly antsy. He was in one of those moods of his, when he said, or rather screamed, no to everything—did he have to use the bathroom? Did he want ice cream? Did he think that Narragansett Bay looked pretty? It looked like the whole trip might fall apart, between Dad’s sulking about Mom’s snake and Ben’s fidgety whininess—and me being me, both sullen and also trying to make everyone else get along. I tried to read in the car but got nauseated. (That was the trip I learned the difference between nauseated and nauseous. I’m puking by the side of the road, and Mom is giving me an English lesson.)

  We got out by Hyannis, which wasn’t where Mom wanted to go—she wanted to go to Provincetown, all the way at the tip of the island—and we settled into a bed and breakfast. It was on a strip mall. The B&B’s chief attribute was having one vacant room. But what a room! Painted bright blue, the room was decorated entirely in paintings and other representations of dogs. Dog bedspreads, dog lamps, throw pillows with embroidered dogs on them. Many varieties: labs, Boston terriers, Chihuahuas, poodles. No golden retrievers, thank goodness, or Mom and Dad might have started fighting about John Galt being sent to Scituate again.

  My parents both snore like crazy. Snored like crazy. Sharing a room with them meant no sleep. I stayed up all night reading A Moveable Feast, but that was nice, too; I imagined one day I would move to Paris and eat long, drunken dinners with writers, and maybe even be a writer, if I were not already being a marine biologist, an astronaut, or a bike messenger.

  At some point during the night Mom got up, got dressed, and went out for a while. Another of her solo peregrinations. Maybe she got herself to Provincetown for a stroll. She got back around seven A.M., seeming happier and more relaxed than she had the night before. She rustled us all out of bed and woke us all up to enjoy the “breakfast” part of this establishment.

  I replace the notebook and stand in the room for a moment, still lost in memories. I am also trying to think of how a person of action would act right now. By checking her cell phone for new texts, right? But there are no messages. Which means Dad is … what?

  I go back downstairs. Pete’s sitting on the couch again, strumming the ukulele.

  “Does someone here smoke?” he asks when I join him. “There was a cigarette in the toilet.”

  MARRY THE MED STUDENT

  Chapter Eight

  I am about to call the police when I get an all-caps, unpunctuated text on my cell phone.

  DONT CALL THE POLICE YOU HAVE FIVE DAYS TO PRODUCE JFILE

  OR WHAT? I text back. WHO ARE YOU? WHERE IS MY DAD? DO YOU MEAN FIVE DAYS INCLUDING TODAY, OR STARTING TOMORROW?

  No response.

  I don’t even know who we are supposed to get the J-File to within five days. Shit. Shit. SHIT SHIT SHIT. How are we going to save Dad when we don’t have the J-File? Should I tell the kidnappers that the J-File has been destroyed? But then what if they just decide to go and off Dad on account that he no longer makes for a worthwhile trade?

  What do I do? What do we do?

  I don’t want to confide in Pete, for lots of reasons; among them, I don’t want him to think I’m a freak. Not to mention that I don’t think he’d really be able to help, being a teenage musician and not a super-detective with his finger on the pulse of crazy lobbyists who are kidnapping my father in an effort to gain control over this “J-File.” (Yes, this thing that dead Mom told sleeping Ben no longer exists.)

  I can think of someone who does appear to have his finger on that pulse. Someone who gives me the creeps—someone I know not to trust but who could possibly help. It’s hard to see how it could hurt getting in touch with him, anyway. He already knows who we are and where we live and all of the relevant circumstances.

  I call P.F. Greenawalt, Political Consultant.

  Before he’s even said hello, I’ve told him about the cigarette in the toilet bowl and the text message. He is quiet for a moment.

  “Is the J-File still in the house?” he asks.

  “P.F., I don’t mean to be rude, but how the hell should I know? I don’t know what it looks like or where it is. It might have been destroyed for all I know,” I say, playing coy.

  “I’d like to search your home. I’ll be right over. Sit tight.” He hangs up, preempting a reply.

  I do not sit tight. I sit uptight.

  Pete strums the ukulele, oddly oblivious, or pretending to be oblivious. (Maybe he’s having second thoughts about me? Third or fourth thoughts about me?) My brother is still asleep. Then I stop sitting at all and go around ransacking the house, throwing books off the shelves, ripping clothes from drawers. Even if the J-File has been destroyed, pieces of this thing might still be around. I get distracted by access to Mom’s things—Mom never let me wear her clothes (they were too delicate and I was too slovenly), and Dad kept respecting her wishes after she was no longer around to have wishes. I like this pink silk tank top of my mom’s; too bad it’s not my size. Could I get away with wearing a gigantic tank top like this? I wonder. But then I go back to work.

  Dad’s laptop sits on the messy desk. I hit a random key to wake it up from its lazy electronic snooze. This computer is a deep sleeper. Dad was always saying he was going to need a new computer soon. I hope it hasn’t died quite yet … and there, it hasn’t, here’s the blue password screen.

  I bang on the keys, trying to guess once again. My mom’s name and birthday. My name and my brother’s name. My dad’s parents’ names, Eliza and Moishe, both kids of Prussian immigrants who spoke Yiddish at home but didn’t teach it to their own American offspring. They died in a car accident when Dad was twenty-one. Then I try some unlikely prospects: “I love horsies” (because I do) and “I hate lacrosse” (true, too) then “I miss Dad” (because also that’s on my mind). Next up, the more promising “JohnGalt123.” Oy vey; that gets me in.

  A search for “J-File” reveals nothing.

  A search for “file” reveals thousands of documents and emails. Oh, and a cache of photos of compromised starlets I really, really did not need to know my father finds appealing.

  His e-correspondence seems mainly to consist of discussions among a group of internet friends calling themselves “The Individualists.” These lovers of liberty have conversations about things like roads. Boring, you’d think, but the language is so odd and colorful and foul. One particularly explicit back-and-forth is on the topic of how the world would be better if all roads were privatized. Another vigorous debate concerns the government’s right to outlaw child labor (most agree that the government has that right but shouldn’t exercise it) or to mandate that kids go to school (no consensus on that one).

  I try not to get consumed reading these emails, since I am trying to save my father’s life, but it is hard not to linger on the long-winded messages he wrote himself. Like this one, from over the summer:

  TO: INDIVIDUALISTS

  FROM: ALMOST-FREE MAN 401

  RE: ENSURING LAZY DAUGHTER WILL NOT EAT CAT FOOD IN OLD AGE?

  DATE: AUGUST 21

  I have children—two of them, a boy and a girl. Do I want them to work? Verily, I think that paid labor might benefit them more than school itself. At least in certain, possibly different ways. Let me explain.

  The boy is neurodiverse. He is a brilliant autodidact. When he was a child, my wife and I worried that he would be severely autistic. Smearing feces on the walls, that kind of thing. It became clear as he got older, both through testing and personal observation, that he is certainly on the spectrum. Yet while he does have the occasional bout of … not rage exactly, but almost like a flash storm of anger from time to time … he is not, overall, so different from many of us. As we Individualists like to say, he should be free to experience his own life as it unfolds. This smidge of an issue will certainly impact his life in difficult ways. He does not make eye contact or like to be touched, except by my late wife
and our dog, whom he adores. He loathes disruptions to his schedule. I doubt he will ever meet a partner with whom he can connect with on this human level; he will most likely live alone, forever.

  On the other hand, he has a phenomenal memory, and while he is wrong about the gold standard (who raised him to think that paper money is a solid foundation on which to build an economy???), he will thrive. Professionally. He could even become rich. In which case, even if he can’t make eye contact, some woman will, in all probability, make eye contact with him. I do not believe that my son needs school. He does not need his teachers to guide his studies. He is self-directed.

  My daughter is a tougher case. Oy vey, as my parents would say. Seventeen now. Smart—very smart—but not ingenious like my son. Lazy about certain things. Like I was at her age. Indecisive. Nervous. I tried to teach her self-defense and survival techniques. I think all girls—all people—should know how to defend and care for themselves. She’s a natural, more gifted than I am, at Shotokan, for instance. But she has no interest in the art or history of this discipline. She refused to practice further once I’d instructed.

  Higher education will be more important for my daughter. Not because of the knowledge she will gain. It will serve as a signaling device to others that she is the sort of person who can be accepted into impressive institutions. But then for what purpose? How will she support herself? Would she be just as well-off working instead of studying? I believe that real-life experience could teach her to treasure her own gifts and to apply them.

  Other times I think that she should go to a prestigious university in order to meet the sorts of people who will help her attain material comfort. She may meet a boy of high standing at a young age. Perhaps I should encourage her to settle down early, have children, and skip having a profession. Except I wouldn’t want her to flounder and do some “consulting” like my late wife. She would regret that life. I know she would. I know it.