The Burgess Boys

  “Stay right here. I have some things to say to that motherfucker brother of yours. What’s his number? Never mind. I’ll call 411. Yes. Manhattan. Business. A law firm, please. Anglin, Davenport, and Sheath. Thank you.”

  “Pam—”

  “What? My shrink was just saying, just half an hour ago, why did everyone in the family cater to Jim? And I thought, yeah, why? Why hasn’t anyone confronted him about how disgusting he’s always been to you? He told me that day— Oh, never mind. He can tell you himself what he said about you, how you’d always driven him nuts— Yes, I’d like to speak to Jim Burgess, please. Pam. Pam Carlson.”

  “Pam, why are you bothering a shrink about—”

  She shook her head at him. “Oh, I see. He’s unavailable. Well, you have him call me.” She gave out her number, furiously, coldly. “What’s that?” She cocked her head, put a finger to her other ear, looked at Bob with a deep scowl of puzzlement. “Did you just say, Mr. Burgess no longer works here?”

  The ride to Park Slope was not long or short, merely a piece of time in which Bob stood pressed against others as the train rumbled beneath the streets of Manhattan and then beneath the East River. Everyone on the train seemed innocent and dear to him, their eyes unfocused with morning reveries that were theirs alone, perhaps words spoken to them earlier, or words they dreamed of speaking; some read newspapers, many listened through earbuds to their own soundtrack, but most stared absently as Bob did—and he was moved by the singularity and mystery of each person he saw. His own mind, had it been peered into, was filled with odd and shocking thoughts, yet he assumed that those around him—tugging on the shoulder straps of their bags, lurching forward as the train stopped in a station, murmuring Sorry for a foot stepped on, the nod of acceptance—had everyday things on their minds, but how did he know, how did he know, the train rocked forward again.

  His first thought—or visitation of feeling, for it was not really a thought—once he freed himself from Pam on the sidewalk and tried, without success, to call Jim, then Helen, was that some terrible crime had been committed, that Jim Burgess had secretly murdered someone or was to be murdered, the family fleeing in one of those twisted awful stories that made their way to the front page of a tabloid— The ludicrous aspect of this was not lost on Bob, but the fear of it caused him to love the innocence of, and be gently envious of, the ordinary people around him, who were either dreading or not dreading their day of work, but who were not standing there contemplating their brother’s murder. His head was not quite right, he recognized this. More people got off the train, and by the time it pulled into Park Slope only a few people were left in his car, and his quietly exalted state was gone. Whatever was going on with Jim—Bob had a foreboding—was not dramatic, just dismally quotidian. Bob was weary as he walked; even in fantasy his brother demanded the grandiosity Pam had spoken of.

  But doubt pricked him, and four blocks from the house he called his nephew Larry, who surprised him by answering, and surprised him more by saying, Oh, Uncle Bob, things are a mess, hold on, I’ll call you right back, and then calling back and saying, Yeah, Mom’s home, she said you can come over, but they’ve split up, Uncle Bob, my dad was sleeping with some girl in his office. And then Bob walked quickly, out of breath, turning down the street where his brother lived.

  Stepping into the house, Bob sensed the difference, though it took a moment to understand it was not just an atmosphere of loss; things were gone. The coats, for example, that always hung in the foyer. There was only one short black coat of Helen’s. And the bookshelves in the living room had at least half their books missing. The big flat-screen television was gone.

  “Helen, did he take all this stuff with him?”

  “He took the clothes he was wearing at the time he came home and told me what had happened with that filthy paralegal. Everything else I threw out.”

  “You threw out his clothes? His books?” He glanced quickly at his sister-in-law. Her hair was tied back, and the shorter sections by her ears were gray. Her face had the naked look of someone whose glasses were removed, but Helen did not wear glasses, except on her nose when she was reading.

  “Yes. I threw out that big TV because he liked it. I brought up the old one from the basement. Anything to do with him is gone from this house.”

  “Wow.” Bob said slowly.

  “Wow?” Helen turned and looked at him, as she sat down on the couch. “Don’t judge me, Bob.”

  “Not judging.” He held up both hands. The rocking chair was gone. He sat down in an old leather chair that he couldn’t remember from before.

  Helen crossed her ankles. She seemed quite small. Her shoes were like ballet slippers with little black bows. She wore no jewelry, he noticed, no rings at all. She did not offer him a drink, nor did he ask. “How are you, Helen?” he said, cautiously.

  “I’m not even going to answer that.”

  He nodded. “That’s fair. Ah, look. Can I help?”

  “Maybe because you were divorced you think you know what this is like, but you don’t.” She said this without harshness.

  “No, no, Helen. I know I don’t.”

  They sat. Helen asked if he would mind closing the shutters. She’d opened them earlier, but really, she was more comfortable with them closed.

  Bob got up and did that, then sat down again. He turned on a lamp near him. “Where is he?”

  “He’s teaching at a swanky little college somewhere. Upstate. I don’t know what town, and I really don’t care. But if he beds down some student, he’ll lose that job too.”

  “Ah, Jimmy won’t do that,” Bob said.

  “Don’t you”—and here Helen leaned forward and whispered furiously—“fucking get it?”

  Bob had never heard Helen use that word.

  “Don’t you get it?” she asked, tears glistening in her eyes. “He is not. The person. I thought. He was.” Bob opened his mouth to answer, but Helen continued, still leaning toward him. “Do you know who she was? This tramp at his office? She was the girl who lived below you, who kicked her husband out. She said you told her to apply to Jim for her stupid, stupid, stupid job.”

  “Adriana? Adriana Martic? Are you kidding?”

  “Kidding?” Helen’s voice quieted, and she sat back. “I’m not kidding even mildly, Bob. Oh-o-oh, not kidding a bit. But why would you send her to Jim, Bobby? Why would you do that?” She looked at Bob with such sincere confusion that he started to say, “Helen—” But she was asking, “Can’t you tell a whore when you see one? No, you can’t. I always thought Pam had a slut quality too. You have no idea, Bob. You can’t, because you’re not a woman. But a woman who makes a nice home, who raises children, who keeps herself fit—it’s not like it’s easy. And then the man wants some cartoon of a sleazy girl that must remind him of high school or something, I don’t know, but it hurts, Bob, you can’t imagine. And of course you never think it will happen to you. It’s why I don’t go out. I have friends who would love to come over and hold my hand. I’d rather die, I really would. They’re happy, deep down, because they think it can’t happen to them. It can.”

  “Helen—”

  “She made him feel important, that’s what he said. He gave her advice about her divorce. Thirty-three years old, his daughter is almost that age. She kept a record of everything, then turned him in. Does he tell me? Of course not. Instead he lets himself slide farther down the sewer pipe and decides he’s headed for hell—no, wait, says he was in hell, can you imagine, I’m supposed to feel sorry for Jim Burgess who put himself in hell, he actually acted like that, Bob, like maybe I was supposed to feel sorry for him, always, always, always, about him—so he goes off with a life coach, Bob, just in case you don’t think it’s unbelievable enough, and she takes him out to Fire Island, her husband’s away, and Jim tells me he’s in Atlanta. I found out because she called him here. After he’d gone. Can you believe that? After lying to me for so long, what’s another lie?” Helen gazed blankly in front of her. “Nothing. Ano
ther lie is nothing. Because everything is nothing.”

  There was silence for a long while. Then Bob said quietly, more to himself, “Jim did all that?”

  “Jim did all that. And probably more. The kids are a mess. They all flew home to help me, but I could see they were scared to death. You want parents, Bob, no matter what age you are. They lost the golden image of their father, which is terrifying to them, I couldn’t let them see a wretched mother. So I had to act strong and comfort them and send them away and it was just exhausting, you can’t know.”

  “Ah, Helen. I’m sorry.”

  And he was. He was terribly sorry. He was also unspeakably sad. It was like the universe had cracked in half; Helen and Jim were one unit, they couldn’t possibly be two. He felt a sickening pity for their kids, he felt like he had lost what they had lost. But they were younger and it was their parents and it was so much worse— “Oy,” he said. “Oy.”

  Helen nodded. After a moment, she added, reflectively, “I did everything for him.”

  “You did.” Bob saw this clearly. Helen had been picking up Jim’s socks right here that day he tossed them onto the floor and the coffee table while Bob was telling about Adriana calling the police on her husband. (Adriana! Bob had felt sorry for her, standing on the sidewalk that morning!) “Oh Christ, Helen, I’m sorry I mentioned Jim’s law firm to that woman. It just fell out of my mouth. I should have known she wasn’t trustworthy. I kept saying that day I didn’t think what she told the police was true.”

  Helen looked at him vacantly. “What?”

  “Adriana. You’re right, I should have known she was no good.”

  Helen smiled sadly. “Oh, Bobby,” she murmured. “Don’t take that on too. He would have found somebody else. Like the life coach. They’re just out there waiting, I guess. I don’t know, it’s a foreign language to me. I wouldn’t even know the words that are used to start an affair.”

  Bob nodded. “You’re a good person, Helen.”

  “He used to say that.” Helen raised a limp hand, dropped it back into her lap. “And it made me happy to hear. God.”

  Bob looked slowly around the room. Helen had made a beautiful home, been a patient, warm mother, she’d been friendly to the neighbors when Jim walked arrogantly past them. She’d filled the house with plants and flowers, been good to Ana, she’d packed suitcases for their expensive vacations, waited while he played golf, and mostly (Pam was right about this) listened while Jim talked about himself endlessly, how smart he’d been in court that day, how he was the best in the business and everyone knew it.… She had bought him a drawer full of cuff links, a ludicrously expensive watch, because, he said, he’d always wanted one.

  But, still: A home should not be destroyed. People didn’t understand this: Homes and families should not be destroyed. He said, “Helen, did Jim tell you why we haven’t been speaking for months?”

  Helen lifted a hand vaguely. “Some girl you were with, I don’t know.”

  “No. It’s because we had a fight.”

  “I don’t care.”

  “But you need to care. Didn’t he tell you about the fight? About what he told me?”

  “No. And I don’t need to care. I need the opposite. I need to be free of caring.”

  He told her what Jim had said on the balcony of the hotel when Zachary was missing. “Jim’s been living his whole life with that, Helen. The guy killed his father, or he thinks he did, and he was too scared to tell anyone. Helen?”

  Her eyes were squinting hard. She said, “Is this supposed to make me feel better?”

  “It’s to make you see why he’s all messed up.”

  “It makes me feel worse. I’ve been telling myself that he’s had some kind of midlife crisis, but he’s been a scheming liar all his life.”

  “You can’t call that lying, Helen. That’s fear.” He was pleading now, lawyerlike, trying to keep the pleading from his voice. “Any kid will do that, try and get out of something. He was eight years old, Helen. He was a child. Even the law says an eight-year-old is a child. So he did this thing, or he thinks he did this thing, and time goes by and he can’t tell, because the more time that goes by the harder it is to tell. So he ends up living with fear all his life, like he’s going to get found out and punished.”

  Helen stood up. “Bob. Stop. You’re making it worse. Now there isn’t one day of my marriage, not one day, that I know was truly mine, with a good and honest husband. I don’t know what to do, I have no idea how to get through the days. That’s the truth. I’m jealous of dead people, Bob. I don’t even cry, because the sound disgusts me, the pathetic, pitiful sounds I make here alone at night. I have lawyers drawing up the agreement, and then—I don’t know what. I’ll move somewhere. Please go.”

  “Helen.” Bob stood up, one arm reaching forward. “Helen, please. Feel some pity. You can’t leave him. You can’t. He’s all alone. He loves you. You’re his family. Come on, Helen, you’re his wife. Jesus. Thirty years. You can’t just toss it over your shoulder!”

  Oh, the poor woman went nuts. She was crazed, or allowed herself to be crazed, Bob was never—when he thought about it later, as he did often—sure how much of the outburst she could control. Because she said some pretty incredible things.

  She said (and Bob would whisper “Jesus” every time he recalled it) that she’d always, deep down, thought the Burgess family was kind of crappy. Close to trash, really. Hillbilly, rube trash, that god-awful little house they’d grown up in, Susan being a bitch. Susan had been cold-hearted to Helen from the moment she’d met her years ago. You know what Susan gave Helen for Christmas one year? An umbrella!

  Helen said Bob must leave, so he went out the door, and he was halfway down the sidewalk when he heard Helen yell after him, “A black umbrella! No thank you!”

  11

  Bob drove and drove and drove. The car swooped around a curve, up over a hill, down past a creek, through a town of few houses and one gas station. He drove for hours before he saw a sign for the college. For the last many miles the road had been winding and narrow, and on both sides hills rose up, golden in the autumn sun. At times the road went along the top of one of those hills and he could see for miles around him the soft rolling curves of the earth, the varied tones of fields, brown, yellow, green, and spread out above a sky that was endless and blue with white clouds scattered. Its beauty did not touch him.

  “Oh Christ,” Bob murmured as he drove into the small town of Wilson, where the college was. He spoke aloud to get it straight: “Jim’s teaching at this college. Things change. This is not a horror film.” But that’s how it felt; Bob couldn’t shake it. There was something about the little town, the one small main street—there was something bad about it. He felt that hidden eyes were watching him, the lone red rental car going through the empty streets on a Saturday afternoon in Wilson.

  He found his brother’s apartment not far from the campus. The building was tucked into a hill, and there were many wooden steps that had to be walked up to even reach the front door. Bob buzzed the buzzer and waited, finally hearing the sound of footsteps within.

  Jim opened the door partway, leaning against it. There were purplish circles under his eyes, and he wore a sweatshirt with no shirt beneath; his neck was corded and his collarbone jutted out. “Hey,” Jim said, raising a hand laconically. Bob followed him up the stained carpeted stairway, watching his brother’s feet in dirty socks, and his jeans that were too loose. Passing a door on the second landing, Bob heard a staccato foreign language coming from inside, and there was an acrid smell of sweetened garlic and spices; the smell was insidious. Jim looked back over his shoulder and pointed upward: Keep going.

  In his apartment, Jim sank down onto a green plaid couch and nodded toward a chair in the corner. Bob sat tentatively. “Want a beer?” Jim asked.

  Bob shook his head. The apartment seemed to have little light, in spite of the large window behind the couch where Jim sat. Jim’s face seemed gray.

  “It’s
pretty awful, huh.” Jim opened a Band-Aid box next to a lamp, and brought out a joint. He licked his fingers.

  “Jimmy—”

  “How are you, brother of mine?”

  “Jimmy, you’re—”

  “I hate it here, I have to say. In case you were going to ask.” Jim held up a finger, put the joint between his thin lips, found a lighter in his pocket, and lit, dragged, and held. “Hate the students,” he said, still holding in the smoke, “hate the campus, hate this apartment”—exhaling now—“hate the—whoever they are, Vietnamese, I guess—downstairs who start that fucking smell of grease and garlic at six in the morning.”

  “Jimmy, you look like shit.”

  Jim ignored this. “Creepy place, Wilson. Football game today. But you never see anyone. The faculty live out in the hills, students in their dorms, fraternity houses.” He took another hit on the joint. “Horrible place.”

  “That smell coming from downstairs is just sickening.”

  “Yuh. Yuh, it is.”

  Jim looked cold. He rubbed one arm and crossed his legs. He leaned his head back onto the couch, exhaled, stared at the ceiling for a moment, then picked his head up and looked back at his brother. “Nice to see you, Bobby.”

  Bob leaned forward. “Jesus, Jimmy. Listen to me.”

  “Listening.”

  “What are you doing here?” It was the stubble on Jim’s face that made it gray.

  “Running away,” Jim said. “What do you think I’m doing here? I figured, sweet campus, smart kids, new chance. But I don’t know how to teach, that’s the truth of it.”

  “Do you like any students?”

  “I hate the students, I told you. Wanna know something funny? They don’t even know who Wally Packer is, not really. They go, Oh, yeah, I know that song. They think he’s practically like Frank Sinatra; they have no idea about the trial. They don’t even know who O. J. Simpson is. Most of them don’t. They were babies when that was happening. Don’t know, and they don’t care. They’re very, very privileged kids, Bob. The sons of the captains of industry. That’s who they are. One guy on the faculty told me this is where the corporate guys send their kids, knowing they’ll still come home Republican.”