American Subversive (33 page)

“Sorry,” she said, snapping out of wherever she'd been.

“It's okay. We can talk later.”

“No, no. It's just . . . God . . . you must think I'm crazy.”

“Not crazy. But I can't pretend to understand. Why, I mean.”

“I don't expect you to,” she said quietly, as if it were all too much to articulate.

“Fine. We can keep talking about nothing if you want. I'm good at it, believe me. I can go all night.”

“But what
would
you understand? What do you
want
to understand? I've read Roorback, Aidan. You don't see the world I see. Our experiences are so different—what we've lost, and loved. And still love. Do you really want my worldview? Because it's pretty bleak these days. Everything I once saw as a problem with others—the numbness, the detachment, the disillusionment that came with being American—everything I once sought to fix . . . I'm coming now to feel myself. The horrible realization that you really can't change anything or trust anyone. We've become a nation that buckles down and endures instead of rearing up, instead of revolting against unacceptable circumstances. And why? Because no one will lead the way: the poor are too weighed down by the task of survival, and the wealthy will never challenge a system that's taken such good care of their interes—”

“Come on, seriously, not that old argument. The rich do plenty.”

“They marry trophy wives and move to Connecticut.”

“And what, besides the obvious, is the problem with that?” I asked. “My father's allowed to do what he wants. He worked his whole life to earn the privilege. You can't just invent a revolution because people are complacent. Tell me, what's so bad out there? Most people actually get by. Sure, they've got their meth labs and their shitty mortgages, but
they manage
. Christ, America's one big sprawling suburb, and it's hard for me to look at it and conclude that the system—capitalism or democracy or whatever you're fighting—doesn't work for the majority of the people.”

“And a majority is enough?”

“In a strikingly imperfect world? Yes, a majority is fucking great. Look, I'm not saying we've perfected anything here, but, hell, half the rest of the planet's in flames.”

Paige lit a cigarette and leaned forward, into the argument, as if trying to swallow it. Did I sound as stupid as I feared, spouting watery
platitudes straight out of freshman poli-sci? But how else to talk politics with a stranger, or present a middle ground to a fanatic? Yet, in truth, I couldn't remember the last time I'd had a conversation like this. Thousands of hours huddled over drinks in bars, thousands more serving them, and all that time
talking
. . . but about what exactly? Sure there'd been a groundswell of hope surrounding Obama a few years back, visions of a fresh start and all that, but hope always ended badly in America, or at least got bogged down in Congress. Really, I wondered—indeed had adopted as a mantra—what was the point of getting involved at all? If the American game wasn't rigged, per se, it was certainly out of our hands.

“Look,” I said, “systemic change is an earned thing, fought for over decades. That way, the big victories—civil rights, say, or legalized abortion—are nearly impossible to overturn, and major policy mistakes, like Prohibition, or Vietnam, or, to some extent, Iraq, don't come along that often, and don't cripple us when they do.”

“To some extent?”

“Well, recognizing that there are viable arguments for and against. Not that I was pro-war”—Paige had stubbed out her cigarette and was getting up, brushing off her jeans—“I mean, Afghanistan, obviously, we should have, but . . . where are you going?”

She'd grabbed her duffel bag and started looking around the room for anything else. Evidence of her presence in such contemptible company. There was none.

“I'm sorry. I can't do this, can't stay here. It's my fault, I should never have come.”

“Wait, what did I say?” I stood up, dumbfounded.

She was moving toward the door. “I was trying to understand, on your level, on any level, but—”

“You can't go out there. They'll find you and—”

“—it turns out you're just like everyone else I've met in this city, in
every
city, completely oblivious until it's too late—”

“—that'll be it. You don't have a car now or any place to stay.”

“—and only then do you wake up and see the empty horror of the whole thing—”

“Paige.”

“—only when it's you they bankrupt, only when—”

“Paige!”

“—it's your brother they kill.”

We were both standing by the door. At some point, as we'd spoken over each other, I had grabbed her wrist, and now I let it go. She looked at the reddening marks on her skin and said nothing. Her hair was hiding her eyes, her tears.

“Will you . . .” I started. “I'm sorry . . . I . . . your brother died?”

She didn't answer. I reached for her, but she raised her arms protectively.

“Please,” I said, as softly as I could. “Come sit. There's nowhere to go. Not tonight.”

She shifted her weight, one leg to the other, and sighed, long and heavy. It was the saddest sound, the sound of a person who'd reached the end, then realized she had to continue. And so she did, one step at a time, back to the couch. She put her face in her hands and let the tears flow freely. I poured her a glass of water, rounded up the rest of the napkins that had come with the food (of course I had no paper towels), and brought them over. I'd have left her alone, but there was no place to retreat to, so I just sat down next to her and tried not to cause more damage.

“I'm sorry,” she said, managing an embarrassed smile. “This is the first time I've cried in ages, but . . . it's been such a long year.”

And I said, “I know.” I wanted to tell her to
just let it out
. But how do you say that to someone like her? Anyway, she was starting to laugh, in that wrenching female way that can come after tears, opposite emotions following one another so brutally quickly.

“I don't suppose you have any hair clips,” she said, pushing her bangs back off her forehead again. She picked up a napkin. “I shouldn't have said any of that. About you. About my brother.
But he's why, Aidan
.”

“Tell me what happened.”

“Do you really want to know? Do you really want any of this? Me, here? Because it's not too late. I can still . . .” But it was too late, and she knew it. She took a sip of water, slipped off her shoes, and this time, when she began to speak, she started at the beginning.

With her father. And her mother. He was a soldier back from Vietnam. She was a wife who had waited. Paige's parents had grown up in the mountains, and after the war they settled down there. They had a
son, then a daughter, both bouncy and curious, test cases for a developing theory of how to live. Paige's father was no radical—he would end up working for years as a floor manager at the BorgWarner plant in Asheville—and yet he felt America had somehow let him down, in wartime and peace, its shortsighted policies steering the world toward some not-too-distant cataclysm. So he focused his family on what
could
be known and understood—the land itself—and brother and sister, a year apart but together in all else, spent their youth outdoors, the boy a champion of the physical world, the girl capable, too, but shy, and more bookish. . . .

Paige was lapsing into a Southern accent, and I told her so. She smiled as she caught the insinuation: that the layers were beginning to peel.

“Keith was big on stamping out our roots,” she said. “It was another way to blend in, become some formless other. Accents, habits, hobbies. We even had different names, though Lindsay's the only one who actually had to use hers. Mine's Isabel Clarke, which is what you should call me if we're ever in public.”

“Isabel Clarke,” I repeated. The words produced a thrilling shudder.

Paige filled me in on Isabel's San Francisco backstory, then returned to her own, which had entered a phase familiar to me: a series of unfocused college years, followed by a move to New York, where she rented an apartment on the hip and vulgar Lower East Side—my town, my people.

“This was the year after 9/11,” she said.

“I was living in Brooklyn back then. Williamsburg.”

“I could have guessed.”

“But I was in your neighborhood a lot, too,” I told her. “Luna Lounge, Motor City, Casimir.” The idea that we'd been circling in the same spheres, that in previous incarnations we might have brushed past each other in a restaurant, on a sidewalk—except a previous incarnation assumes some kind of metamorphosis. And I'd just been carousing on Rivington Street a few nights before.

“I didn't go out much,” Paige said. “Or I did in the beginning, but . . . I don't know, I was working a lot.”

“Where?”

“At the Earth Initiative. It's a research institute funded by a group of billionaire entrepreneur-turned-philanthropists.”

“The Gang of Six,” I said.

“Well, then, you know.”

“It's in the news all the time.”

“Exactly,” Paige said, smirking. And now it was my turn to pick up the insinuation. “I read an article about their global-warming campaign when I was a senior at UNC and then wrote to the director, Carl Cleary, asking for a job. When I didn't hear back, I called his office and pretended I was Angelina Jolie's assistant. I guess I knew even then what these people responded to, because a minute later I had Cleary's private e-mail, which I then used to let him know he shouldn't be blowing off politically engaged twenty-one-year-olds. He should be
meeting
with them,
talking
to them . . .”

“Let me guess: he hired you on the spot.”

“Yup. To be their Web researcher, scouring blogs, videos, articles . . . anything pertaining to the causes we championed—alternative fuels, poverty reduction, disease control, debt cancellation. It was the dream job. Suddenly, instead of sex-crazed college kids, I was surrounded by these brilliant young people with a very different kind of energy, people who not only thought about the future, but believed it was malleable: if we just worked hard enough and shouted loud enough, the rest of America would come around. We armed ourselves with statistics and projections and wrote brilliant position papers that became keynote addresses in Davos, in Aspen, anywhere that money met with good intentions. But our
timing
was off. The world after 9/11 had more immediate concerns, like self-preservation, like revenge. It's hard to fight smallpox in Africa when you're worried about anthrax coming in the mail or dirty bombs detonating down the street. And then, of course, there was Iraq . . . and
still
there's Iraq . . . and it was just so hard to be
heard,
through the war and all it bred, the patriotism and cynicism, half the nation jumping feverishly on board, the other half turning shamefully away. Or
not
shamefully. Just not caring at all. The worse the war, the better the mood! Americans stuffing themselves on food and pleasure, on voyeurism and celebrity. So I guess it was inevitable that Carl Cleary would hit the road with Bono, with Beckham—”

“With Angelina Jolie.”

“Indeed,” Paige said. “We need sex to sell even poverty initiatives.”

“Well, you were doing a lot more than the rest of us. I spent my first decade in New York making drinks and banner ads. I couldn't even get through journalism school.”

“Oh, dear.”

“Right?”

“But, Aidan, I wanted those things, too. Or not
those
things exactly, but something like them. A life I could recognize, slip into. Normal stuff: dating, dinners, shopping. Don't get me wrong, I had boyfriends—a painter, a city planner, even a banker—”

“Brendan Carlyle. I met him.”

“That's right. I can't believe you tracked him down. Anyway, I kept trying, but I just never quite
fit in
. Story of my life, I guess. I wasn't glossy enough, and when I was, it was an act. The Pucci dresses. The skinny jeans. See?” She rubbed her thighs. “I'd go to dinner parties and pick at them under the table, like the denim was the problem. And above the table all the talk was about work: fashion and real estate, publishing and PR. I felt like I had to keep my job a secret lest I
bore
people. And so I gradually built up this animosity toward everything. I stopped going out. What was the point? Just to get laid? My neighborhood had become a film set, and my generation, all these kids skidding and stumbling through the time of their lives, had let the decade get away. Or maybe, I finally decided, the problem was me. Which is when I left for grad school in D.C. The Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. It's full of aspiring diplomats and spies. But they had a good development program, and I wanted to work on third-world environmental problems.”

“Did you?”

“Eventually, yes. After two years in school—and fifty-five thousand in student loans—I found a job at an environmental-policy think tank called the Carver Institute. My business card read
DEVELOPING NATIONS INITIATIVES ANALYST
, and yet I never got to leave the country. I could speak for hours about the seasonal air quality in Bangladesh, but not a word about the place itself. What it looked like, smelled like. It took me six months to figure out that think tanks were really just retirement homes for history's political also-rans, and still,
I stayed three years, working twelve-hour days, just giving myself over to causes. But no one was paying attention—not the U.S. government, and consequently, not the rest of the world. I mean, how could the Bush administration sit there with a straight face and ask the Chinese to burn less coal? Or demand that India raise emissions standards?” Paige paused. “Bobby was stationed overseas by then, and I used to come home to my shitty Dupont Circle apartment and watch the news and . . .” She turned her palms faceup—a reflexive pleading, an unwitting prayer. Her soft, dark eyes, glassy ponds again, threatened to spill over with every rippling thought.