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He called Tom Buckeye from that day on.
fallout shelter he’d dug after the last war: just big enough for a cot and a shelf with a kerosene lamp, tins of water, tins of Spam. When the jackasses who ran the world decided to drop the big one, Everett said, this was where he’d be. They were welcome to join him.
But when they were together, something particular registered between them.
but he had to learn how to be in Tom’s presence and not feel terrible all over again for what he’d done, back during the war. He had to learn how to look at Tom and not wonder if Margaret had been wrong—or knew more than she was letting on. It was both a help and a hindrance that the boy bore such a strong resemblance to his mother.
Oh, for a less complicated life.
Dear Presiden Eisenhower. Blas your coral a oll o hell for all he pleasure i brings your murderous hear . Wha a fool I was o hink we had evolved beyond our incredible capaci y for des ruc ion, because you, sir, are aking us back o he dark ages. May God, if such a being s ill exis s in wha is lef of he Heavens, have mercy on all he underlings and wre ched sons of bi ches who promo e and encourage he dropping of bombs on innocen people. As such individuals are following your orders, please know ha you have blood and worse on your hands. May you suffer migh ily in a cour of
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“Oh, son,” he said, seeming mystified by his own concern, “I think I might have burned our house down.”
That night, he and Cal had a disagreement about how to operate the recliner—though it was hard to tell what they couldn’t agree on, since there was only one handle and it did only one thing.
Something about sitting down to fight—a new concept to both of them—made the fighting productive. Things came up from decades ago. Cal told his father how awful it had been to grow up with a drunk. Everett accused Cal of being a whiner and a Puritan. It all seemed to boil down to Cal’s having moved out of the now nonexistent house on Compton Road when he was eighteen. Cal had felt like Everett had deliberately crowded him out over the years—choosing stuff over him. Everett had felt misunderstood and abandoned. There was no resolution because there was nothing, really, to resolve (neither of
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suppose I never built anything with you. I’m sorry about that.” “You did,” Cal said. “We built things. We built a soapbox racer together, remember? The steering wheel came off and I got a bloody nose.”
“Didn’t bother me,” Skip said, his attention already back on the television. “I used to call you the Ogre.”
“I kind of am, though. I wouldn’t fit on your lap.”
It was as if he’d been carrying on his back all the things he’d been collecting over the years, and with their combined weight suddenly gone, he was able to lift his head.
“About what?” Lee loud-whispered back. “The books,” Everett said. Within a week they’d arranged to get together, and within a month the four of them were meeting every other Thursday afternoon, in a booth at Fink’s. They
They called themselves the Zane Grey Boys.
Was she helping him be done with the most painful thing that had ever happened to him, or was she drawing him back in?
Unless breaking his heart again was the point. The way his left arm needed to be rebroken so it could heal properly.
“If I told you, they wouldn’t be true. Just realize, you are more.”
But look what you did for me. You made it so that I could communicate with the two people I missed the most. You see yourself as a telephone operator connecting calls, but you bridge worlds, don’t you get it? What an incredible thing that is.”
“dying was unpleasant. But death? It’s wonderful.”
And he says this—that you have to keep swimming. You’re the one in the water, and you’re the one who has to swim.”
She patted his back gently, unaware that this was the same spot Cal had touched just hours before, the warmth of her hand, after the fact, overlapping his.
She’d done her best to love him as he was, she really had, but her son kept changing on her. He’d gone from being the mistake she’d had to carry around, to the mystery she’d had to keep alive, to the beautiful little boy with Cal lurking inside him, waiting to jump out. His hair and eye color meant the fuse on that bomb was long and probably slow burning, but it sparked nonetheless.
She’d aged out of childhood at Open Arms, waiting for someone to adopt her. She’d wandered into middle age in Bonhomie, waiting to be happy. And now?
Years later, she would think how fitting it was that the suggestion of showing affection to a child had started their unraveling. But it wasn’t just that, of course. It was the folded square of paper tucked into her purse. It was the day she found out she was pregnant. It was the moment she realized she was lonely at the thought of Felix’s coming home. So many things had started their unraveling.
And yet, now that she understood, he seemed further away from her than ever. His eyes would not meet hers, he was staring straight ahead at the screen, the darkness beyond it.
The idea of Becky’s being involved in their lives at all felt wrong to her—but also fitting, somehow. Margaret felt stupid. Deceived.
was step one in your experiment? This is my life, Felix. This is all I have.”
Therein, she thought, lies the unbearable solitude of a lie: you’re alone when you tell it, alone when you live it, alone when you try to dismantle it.
I’ve tried to feel what I’m supposed to feel, but I always seem to fall short, or get it wrong.
She would explain it to him when she could bear to. She would explain it to him when she understood it herself. She had to go.
It was October of 1955, one year and two months since she and Cal had separated.
He was so bothered—to this day, she said—that he couldn’t go off to war and prove something, that he’d let it define who he was. He wasn’t his leg! Did he know that he limped more when he pouted? His insecurity and self-pity were holding him back. From what? he’d asked, and she told him flat out: from being a better person.
if there was one thing Margaret was good at, it was prioritizing herself.
He was everywhere she looked; she could trip over his shadow. But he was out of her sight.
Secrets, regrets, and apologies. These made up the stuff of his life.
With all this rending, were the kids okay?
“You and Cal make it so you don’t have to do what I just did. So you don’t have to find out this way.” It was the kindest, most understated yet understanding piece of advice she could imagine. But she didn’t see how to implement it. She told him she didn’t know if it was possible. “You’re both still alive,” Everett said. “It’s possible.”
He was coming to the realization: the person who was stupid enough to do what he’d done wasn’t smart enough to figure out how to fix it.
“It’s a thousand things, Cal. A thousand bad, selfish decisions. And a child. And all the thinking you did to figure out how to live with yourself for those nine years. I trust your remorse. I really do. But you’re only remorseful because I found out about it. You’re only remorseful because you got caught.”
“The point is, with a situation like this, neither one of you can see a way out because you don’t want out. All this time, you been sticking around. She’s been letting you come over. Why? Because neither one of you wants out. Sooner or later, something’s going to happen to knock that sense into your heads, and you need to be around for it.
“He could be likable,” Cal said. “That should be his epitaph.”
The whole reason you build a bridge together is so the water can run under it, right? And not wash the two of you away?
association, but out of concern for the other’s opinion of the man in question, going forward.
He never got a word in.
Forgiveness wasn’t so great if you were the forgiver, Becky discovered. Forgiveness was supposed to be the high road, but it was low and bumpy—and long.
Over time, the collective memory of Margaret Salt molted most of its details, and what emerged was a portrait of a heartless, clothes-loving snob who’d always made sure everyone knew she was from Columbus, and who’d given up her family to return to her Big City ways.
“Capitalism only works if people are out there selling what they don’t own.”
“I Didn’t Raise My Boy to Be a Soldier.”
confirmed his suspicion that college really was just high school with beds and ashtrays. But he said,