The Burgess Boys

  The nurse who handed her Zachary must have assumed that Susan was weeping with joy, but Susan was weeping at the sight of him: skinny, wet, blotchy, his eyes closed. He was not her little girl. She panicked at the thought she might never forgive him for this. He lay on her chest with no interest in suckling. On the third day a nurse put a cold facecloth to his cheek to see if that would rouse him, but he only opened his eyes and looked startled before his tiny face wrinkled with sorrow. “Oh, please,” Susan begged the nurse, “don’t do that again.” Her breasts hardened with milk, became infected with their engorgement. She had to stand in blistering hot showers, pressing the milk out. Her skinny, shriveled baby boy remained indifferent, lost weight. “Why won’t he suck?” Susan wailed, and no one seemed to have an answer. A bottle of formula was produced and Zachary sucked on that.

  “He’s strange-looking,” Steve said.

  He seldom cried, and when Susan checked on him in the night she was often surprised to see his eyes open. “What are you thinking?” she would whisper, stroking his head. At six weeks he gazed at her, and gave the smile of someone patient, kind, and bored.

  “Do you think he’s normal?” she blurted to her mother one day.

  “No. I don’t.” Barbara was holding Zach’s tiny hand. He had, at thirteen months, just learned to walk, and he was moving between the sofa and the coffee table. “I don’t know what he is,” Barbara said, watching him. Adding, “But he’s dear.”

  And he really was: unfussy, quiet, his eyes on his mother. It’s not that Susan forgot about the little girl she’d lost—she never forgot—but the love she had for the lost girl seemed to merge with the love she felt for Zach. Sent to preschool, Zach suddenly cried without stopping. “I can’t leave him there,” Susan said. “He never cries. Something’s wrong with that place.”

  “You’ll turn him into a wuss,” Steve said. “He’ll have to get used to it.”

  A month later the preschool asked that Zachary leave, his crying was disruptive. Susan found another preschool in a neighborhood across the river, and Zach didn’t cry there. But he didn’t play with anyone. Susan stood in the doorway and watched the teacher take his hand and lead him over to another little boy, and Susan watched while the other boy pushed her son, who, so skinny, toppled over like a stick.

  By elementary school he was teased mercilessly. By middle school he was beaten up. By high school his father left. Before Steve left, there were loud arguments that Zach must have heard. “He doesn’t ride a bicycle. He can’t even swim. He’s a total weenie and you made him that way!” Red-faced, Steve was adamant. Susan believed her husband, and thought that if Zach had turned out differently, his father might have stayed. So that was her fault too. These failures isolated her. Only Zach was present in her quarantine, mother and son knit together by an unspoken sense of bafflement and mutual apology. At times she yelled at him (more often than she knew), and she was always, afterward, sick with regret and sorrow.

  “Good,” he said, when she asked how it had been at the hotel with his uncles. “Oh, yeah, totally,” when asked if they’d been nice to him. “Talked and watched TV,” when asked what they had done. “Stuff,” he said, shrugging pleasantly, asked what they had talked about. But when her brothers had left, she felt Zach’s mood sink low. “Let’s call your uncles, see they got back to New York all right,” she suggested, and Zach made no reply.

  She called Jim, who sounded tired. He did not ask to speak to Zach.

  She called Bob, who sounded tired, and he did ask to speak to Zach. Susan moved into the living room to give Zach privacy. “Good,” she heard her son say. “Yeah, it was.” Long silence. “I don’t know. Okay. You too.”

  She couldn’t help herself. “What did he say?”

  “To keep myself busy.”

  “Well, he’s right.”

  That Jim had told her Zach may have used the pig’s head to impress his father was not something Susan wanted to mention now. Zach’s current vulnerability kept her from being mad at him, and while she felt mad at Steve (as she almost always did), she was not going to mention that either. She told Zach she would make calls to see where he could volunteer; Uncle Bob was right about staying busy.

  She tried: The library. (No, said Charlie Tibbetts, far too many Somalis were in there all the time.) Delivering meals to old people. (They had enough volunteers already.) Working at a food pantry. (No, Somalis showed up there, too.) And so every night when Susan got home, she asked Zach what he had done that day and the answer was that he had done nothing. She told him he should take a cooking class and cook their supper each night. “Seriously?” The quick fear on his face made her say, “No, heavens, I was kidding.”

  “Uncle Jim said I should take courses. He didn’t mean cooking.”

  “He said to take courses?” She got a catalog from the community college. “You like computers, look at this.” But Charlie Tibbetts said there were apt to be Somalis in those classes, wait a semester until the case was disposed of, then Zach would be free to get on with his life. So their life became waiting.

  On Thanksgiving, Susan cooked a turkey and Mrs. Drinkwater ate with them. Mrs. Drinkwater had two daughters living in California; Susan had never seen them. A week before Christmas, Susan bought a small Christmas tree at the gas station. Zach helped her put it up in the living room, and Mrs. Drinkwater came downstairs, bringing the angel to place on top. Susan had allowed this each year since the old lady moved in, but she privately didn’t care for the angel, which Mrs. Drinkwater said had belonged to her mother, and which had embroidered blue tears running down its tattered face, swollen with cotton batting. “It’s nice of you, dear,” Mrs. Drinkwater said. “To put that on your tree. My husband didn’t like it, so we never used it.” She was sitting in the wing chair wearing a man’s cardigan over her pink rayon robe, and she had on her terry-cloth slippers, her stockings rolled to the knees. Mrs. Drinkwater added, “This Christmas Eve I’d like to go to midnight mass at St. Peter’s. But I’m scared to be in that part of town so late, an old lady alone.”

  Susan, who had not been listening, had to go back over the words and find any she could remember. “You want to go to midnight mass? At the cathedral?”

  “That’s right, dear.”

  “I’ve never been there,” Susan said finally.

  “Never? My word.”

  “I’m not Catholic,” Susan said. “I used to go to the Congregational church across the river. It’s where I got married. But I haven’t been there for a long time.” She meant she hadn’t been there since her husband left, and Mrs. Drinkwater nodded.

  “That’s where I was married too,” the old lady said. “It’s a sweet little church.”

  Susan hesitated. “Then why do you want to go to mass at St. Peter’s? If you don’t mind me asking.”

  Mrs. Drinkwater gazed at the tree, pushed her glasses up her nose with the back of her wrist. “Church of my childhood, dear. Went every week with all my brothers and sisters. Confirmed there.” She looked over at Susan, who could not find the old lady’s eyes behind the huge glasses. “I was born Jeannette Paradis. And I became Jean Drinkwater because I fell in love with Carl. His mother would have none of it unless I left the Catholic Church completely. So I did. I didn’t mind. I loved Carl. My parents wouldn’t come to the wedding. I walked myself down the aisle. It wasn’t done then. Who walked you down that aisle, dear?”

  “My brother. Jim.”

  Mrs. Drinkwater nodded. “All these years I haven’t missed St. Peter’s a bit. But now I find myself thinking about it. They say that’s what happens as you get older. You think about the things of your youth.”

  Susan was taking a red ornament from a low branch of the tree and hanging it higher. She said, “I’ll take you to midnight mass if you want to go.”

  But on Christmas Eve, Mrs. Drinkwater was fast asleep by ten o’clock. Christmas passed slowly, the days between that and New Year’s interminable. And then it was done. The days, short and cold, gav
e way to a January thaw. The sun sparkled on the melting snow, tree trunks gleamed from the dripping wet. And even when the world seized back to its frozen self, you could see the days were lengthening. Charlie Tibbetts phoned to say things were going well, delays over at the DA’s office meant by the time this went to trial it would be a nonevent. It wouldn’t surprise him if the case eventually got settled, a promise from Zach that he would behave, something simple like that. The AG’s office had been silent for weeks, the Feds hadn’t moved. We have this beat, Charlie said. Just waiting now, for time to go by.

  “Are you worried about the case?” Susan asked Zachary that night as they watched TV.

  He nodded.

  “Don’t be.”

  But two weeks later the Office of the Maine Attorney General filed a civil rights action against Zachary Olson.

  2

  The family room in Jim and Helen’s brownstone lost the day’s light faster than the rest of the house; it was on the bottom floor, and the windows’ lower sills were level to the sidewalk. Between the windows and the sidewalk was the little front garden with its box shrubs and delicate Japanese maple, the twiggy branches rubbing up against the windows. In the winter Helen was sure to close the shutters of this room early. The shutters were mahogany and very old, folding out from enclosures built into the wall. It was a ritual she had enjoyed for years, as though she were tucking the house in for the night. But this afternoon the task was pleasureless. Helen’s mind held a small worry regarding the evening: They were going to the opera with Dorothy and Alan, and yet they had not seen them the entire holiday season. She had not cared until now; her house had been filled with her children at Thanksgiving and Christmas (Emily not going to her boyfriend’s family after all), and so those weeks were filled with preparations, then with people. Boots tossed, and scarves, bagel crumbs, high school friends, laundry to be folded, manicures with the girls, and movies at night with the family snuggled together again in this very room. Bliss. Beneath which strummed a quiet panic: They would never all live at home again. Then they were gone. The house silent, scarily so. A chill of change hung in the rooms.

  Closing the last shutter now, Helen looked down and saw that the large diamond in her engagement ring was missing. At first her mind had trouble believing this, she kept looking at the platinum prongs sticking up in the air, holding nothing. Heat springing to her face, she looked along the windowsills, opened the shutters and closed them again, looked along the floor nearby, checked the pockets of everything she’d been wearing. She called Jim. He was in a meeting. She called Bob, who was working from home because he needed to concentrate on a complex brief due the next day. Still, he agreed to come over. “Wow,” he said, taking her hand, squinting. “That’s kind of sickening. Like looking in the mirror and seeing one of your front teeth missing.”

  “Oh, Bobby. You’re awfully good.” Because it was like that.

  Bob was pulling out couch cushions when Jim came home in such a furious mood that both Helen and Bob had to stop their search. “That fucking Dick Hartley, that idiot Diane Dodge! Those stupid pukes, that stupid state, I hate that stupid state!” In this way Bob and Helen learned of the civil rights violation that had been filed that day.

  “Even Charlie was surprised.” Susan’s voice was panicky as it came through the speakerphone in Jim’s upstairs study, off the bedroom. “I don’t know why they’re doing this now. It’s been three months. Why’d they wait so long?”

  “Because they’re incompetent,” Jim said, almost yelling. He sat with both hands gripping the arms of his tilt-back chair while Bob and Helen sat nearby. “Because Dick Hartley’s a moron, and it took him this long to let his stupid assistant Lady Diane go forward.”

  “But I just don’t get why they’re doing it.” Susan’s voice wavered.

  “To look good! That’s why.” Jim leaned forward so fast his chair gave a snapping sound. “Because Diane Dodge probably wants to be AG herself one day, or run for governor, or run for Congress, and it better be on her little liberal résumé how she fought the good fight.” He closed his eyes briefly. “Twat,” he added.

  “Jim, stop. That’s disgusting,” Helen said, leaning forward, a hand covering her wedding band protectively. “Susan? Susan? Charlie Tibbetts will take care of this.” She sat back, sat forward again, adding, “It’s me, Helen.”

  Her face was flushed and moist. Bob was not sure he’d seen Helen look like this; even her hair seemed distressed into flatness as she pushed it back from her eyes. He told her, “You won’t be late, you’ve got tons of time,” because he knew she was worrying about their opera date with the Anglins, he had heard about it as they moved cushions, looking for the diamond that had fallen from her ring.

  Helen answered in a low voice, “But now Susan’s called with this awful news, Jim will be angry all night and— Oh, it just makes me sick to see this,” turning the band on her finger.

  “You guys, stop it.” Jim waved a hand backward. “Susan, tell me what’s going on with the Feds.”

  In a tremulous voice, Susan said the Feds had indicated to Charlie that their own investigation was still open, and Charlie had heard the Somali community was pressuring the Feds, especially now that the state had gone forward. Or something like that, honestly, she couldn’t keep it all straight. They were to be in court a week from Tuesday. Charlie said Zach should show up wearing a suit, but Zach didn’t have a suit, she didn’t know what to do.

  “Susan, listen to me.” Jim spoke slowly. “What you do is you take your son to Sears and you buy him a suit. What you do is you put your big-girl panties on and deal with this shit.” Jim reached and switched off the speakerphone, picked up the receiver. “All right, all right, I’m sorry. Hang up, Susan. I’m going to make some calls.” He shot his cuff, looked at his watch. “They may still be in their offices.”

  “Jim, what are you doing?” Helen stood up.

  “Sweetheart. Don’t you worry about that ring. We’re going to get it fixed.” He looked over at her. “And we have plenty of time to make it to the opera.”

  “But it was the original diamond.” Tears swam in Helen’s eyes.

  Jim was punching numbers on his desk phone, and after a few moments he said, “Jim Burgess. I’d very much appreciate it if she would take this call.” Then: “Hello, Diane. Jim Burgess. I don’t believe we’ve met. How are you? You have some snow up there, I hear. You’re right. I’m not calling about the snow. Yes. That’s just what I’m calling about.”

  “I can’t stomach this,” Helen murmured. “I’m getting in the shower.”

  “I understand,” said Jim. “I do understand. I also understand this was a silly prank done by a kid. And it’s unconscionable—” He gave the phone the finger. “I did say unconscionable, yes. Yes, I’m aware a little boy fainted in the mosque. And Zachary’s aware of that too, and it’s awful. I know Mr. Tibbetts is representing him. I’m paying Mr. Tibbetts. I’m not calling you as Zachary’s advocate, I’m calling you as his uncle. Listen to me, Diane. This is a misdemeanor. Last I checked that’s something the criminal law takes care of, and it will be tried in a criminal court of law. This is not what that civil rights statute is for and—” He turned to Bob and mouthed “Fucking asshole.” “Do you plan on a political career, Ms. Dodge? This smells very political to me. No, I’m clearly not intimidating you, that’s very clear. Questioning your integrity? I’m trying to have a conversation. If a Somali kid had thrown that pig’s head, would you be doing this? Well, that’s my point. If Zachary was a transgender bisexual you wouldn’t be doing this either. He’s being zealously attacked by the state because he’s a sad-sack white kid. And you know it. Three months go by? Are you trying to torture him? Okay, okay.”

  Jim hung up, tapping a pencil furiously against his desk. Then he held the pencil in both hands and snapped it in half. “Someone’s going to have to go up there.” He swiveled his chair around to face Bob. “And it’s not going to be me.” The sound of the shower could be heard
down the hall. “What are you doing here, again?” Jim asked.

  “Helen called to see if I’d come look for her diamond.”

  Jim looked around the room, his eyes running over the bookshelves, the pictures of the children at different ages. Then he shook his head slowly, looking back at Bob. “It’s a ring,” he whispered.

  “Well, it’s her ring, and she’s upset.”

  Jim stood up. “I kissed Dick Hartley’s ass,” he said. “He approved this. They’re going after my nephew—and the whole reason I went up there was to make sure this idiotic liberal fascism wouldn’t happen.”

  “You went up there to support Zach and give it your best shot, and it didn’t work out. That’s all.”

  Jim sat back down, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees. He said quietly, “If I could express, if I could put into words, if I could find the way to get it across—how much I hate that state.”

  “You got it across. Forget it. I’ll go up there for the hearing. I have plenty of vacation days saved up. You take your wife to the opera and get her a new ring.” Bob rubbed the back of his neck. Two thirds of the family had not escaped, this is what Bob thought. He and Susan—which included her kid—were doomed from the day their father died. They had tried, and their mother had tried for them. But only Jim had managed.

  As he stepped past Jim, his brother took hold of his wrist. Bob stopped at the unexpectedness of the gesture. “What is it?” Bob asked.

  Jim was looking toward the window. “Nothing,” he said. He took his hand away slowly.

  Down the hall the sound of the shower stopped. There was the bathroom door opening, and then Helen’s voice. “Jimmy? Are you going to be grumpy about this all night? Because it’s Romeo and Juliet and I don’t want to watch that with a grumpy husband on one side of me and a grumpy Dorothy on the other.” Bob could hear she was trying to be playful.