The Brothers K (40 page)

But Irwin did far worse than that. First he began to loon-laugh so uncontrollably that he knocked his chair over, lost his allowance forever, and got himself grounded clear up into his mid-forties or so. Then he managed to wheeze that normally he hated tattling, but that since this gathering was just a big old tattletale session anyhow, what the heck, it was too funny not to tell: the
Playboys
had been a going-away present to Everett, when he quit church, from his young friend and lifelong admirer, Dougy Lee Babcock.

While Elder Babcock turned to stone and Mama turned a number of interesting pastel colors, Elder Barnes heaved a sigh of relief: he’d felt sure that Irwin was about to finger Micah. Meanwhile Brother Beal scratched his nose, checked his watch, stared at his lap, but was finally reduced—by his herculean struggle not to explode with laughter—to the public twiddling of his thumbs. The twins might still have joined in Irwin’s mirth, but they’d never seen
Playboys
before, felt confused by the mixed reaction to them, and were pooped out anyhow from all the fun they’d been having. So for quite a while—maybe fifteen or twenty seconds—there was no sound in the room but Irwin’s loonlike glee. And though Babcock was too angry and ashamed to look at him, let alone stop him, he never forgot that sound. And he never forgave it.

When it finally dawned on Irwin that the Elder was genuinely humiliated, he cut his laughter off and apologized for it. A long silence ensued. But no length of silence could hide the fact that Mama and Babcock had just been doused in the very dunking chair they’d hoped to use on Everett, Peter and me. All they felt now was confusion. And all they now wanted from their tribunal was a dignified escape route. Lucky for both of them, Babcock was just the fellow to provide it.

Throwing everything back into his briefcase and slamming it shut, the Elder stormed off into the one kind of prefabricated activity he knew could never be sullied by contact with anything so unpredictable as tolerance or intelligence or laughter: the nonstop, slag-slinging sermon. Yet the entire gathering—Irwin and the twins included—was nothing but
grateful for the molten verbiage he proceeded to pour over them, because yes, it was hot, but it was a steady, predictable heat; and yes, the words threatened, insulted, and condemned them again and again, but the sound of the words, the physical experience of them, only warmed and lulled them. Like sitting in a sauna, like watching TV, like listening to loud rock or getting pleasantly drunk, Babcock’s brimstoning allowed each listener a total cessation of energy and thought, severed each from his neighbors, and preserved for each the dignity of his or her privacy until the embarrassment of their botched togetherness could end.

Boys, this game may be your only chance to be good … You might screw up everything else in your life and poison the ones who love you, create misery, create such pain and devastation it will be repeated by generations of descendants. Boys, there’s plenty of room for tragedy in this life … Don’t have it said that you never did anything right. Win this game.

—Garrison Keillor, “The Babe”

W
hen Papa found out about the “Washougal Inquisition,” he got into a two-hour shouting match with Mama, slept on the couch that night, came home from work with a thrift-store set of twin beds the next day, dragged his and Mama’s old double mattress out back, and converted it into a new target pad for his shedball pitches. “Is that a metaphor or a simile?” Everett asked Peter as they stood watching out the kitchen window. I remember this remark clearly, because I didn’t understand it, and didn’t like it when Peter laughed.

Next Papa, for the first time ever, walked down the block to the crappy little 7-Eleven that had replaced the Walsh family’s old corner grocery, bought himself a short case of Miller beer, and toted it home on his shoulder, sort of like a bazooka. Sliding all but one into the refrigerator just as the rest of us were sliding into our chairs for supper, he poured his one bottle into a white plastic Huckleberry Hound glass, carried it over to our forever-alcoholless suppertable, sat casually down in the heat of Mama’s blowtorch stare, and rattled off his trusty old
Giveusgratefulhearts
grace. He then said, “I live here.”

This statement got no argument. But it didn’t turn down the blowtorch either.

“I’m the father here,” he added. “And I pay the bills here. That gives me the right to make some decisions. Not all the decisions. But some. So here’s three.”

Mama still just sat and stared.

“Decision One. From now on I keep beer in the refrigerator. It’s for nobody but me—Everett, Kade, Irwin, you got that? For Laura’s sake I put this condition on me: if I ever drink more than two in a night, I lose my right to keep it here. But otherwise, get used to it. This world can be a pain, and beer can’t change that. But it’s a slight relief at times. And this teetotally religious crap is getting this family nowhere. Everett, wipe that idiotic smirk off your face. Bet, please stop wiggling.”

Everett wiped. Bet stopped. Mama didn’t move or speak.

“Decision Two. Eight people live here, and the God I believe in put us here to love and respect each other despite our differences. I used to think this was so obvious it didn’t need saying. But after last night I see that some of us don’t believe in love or respect anymore, so those of us who do are going to have to fight back. I started fighting back at lunch hour today, when I phoned that Babcock character and told him he’s no longer welcome in our house.”

Everett flew up out of his chair with the beginnings of a great
“Hallelujah!”
in his lungs, but Papa’s fist slammed down on the table and Everett dropped back into his chair so fast that it seemed as if Papa had punched him on the top of the head. “What I need from you,” Papa said, “is silence.”

Everett got the message. Papa turned back to the rest of us. “Phoning Laura’s preacher that way was high-handed, I know. But not near as highhanded as it was for that jackass to sit down in my chair and try to teach my children to fear each other. Bet, please! Don’t kick the table. Everett, a smirk isn’t silence, and that’s your last warning. Irwin, listen. If you’re
still fond of Babcock’s sermons and like his church, by all means, keep going. I’m not trying to change the way anybody worships. It’s only in this house he’s not welcome. And I hope you see why.”

Irwin grinned hugely, and said, “It’s fair.” But Mama slid her chair back, and not as if ready to fight: she looked ready to flee. It surprised me.

“Decision Three,” Papa said. “According to the God I believe in, the six kids who live here are equal. So I see no reason why, for months now, the three who go to church have been cared for in ways that the other three haven’t. To me, that’s the opposite of Christianity. To me that smacks of Babcock. And like I said, he’s no longer welcome here.”

Papa glanced at Mama, but she just sat there, pondering some nothingness in the center of the table. “Your mother has to do what she thinks is right,” he told us. “But so do I. And I’ve kept quiet too long. I want you kids to know we disagree. I think it should be six school lunches or no school lunches, six mended shirts or no mended shirts, six goodnight kisses or no goodnight kisses. So my third decision is, well … just a warning, really. I don’t want to make trouble, but I just don’t like the way we’re living. So, what I’m saying is, if things don’t change, I may move out … at least for a while.”

I was still struggling to take this in when Irwin roared, “Okay! Okay then, Papa! Things
will
change!”

“Don’t do it, Papa!” “Stay!” “Please don’t!” “Things’ll change!” the rest of us chimed in.

“From now on I make my
own
lunches!” Irwin bellowed at Mama. “And everybody else’s if they want! And I’ll do the laundry too—the whole house’s I mean. Even nasty ol’
Everett’s!
Even his Atheistic ol’
socks!
Starting
now!
I mean it!” And with that he plugged his nose, held his breath, and dropped like a deep-sea diver down under the table, where he started wrestling the rancid high-top tennis shoes and unmentionable socks from Everett’s ankles and feet. But while Everett blushed and kicked at him and the rest of us broke out laughing, Mama stood, turned, and started down the hallway—and I saw that she was weaving like a drunk: twice she had to grab the wall to keep from falling.

“And Freddy and
me,”
Bet’s voice nearly shattered the windows with shrill goodwill, “we can keep scientific track of Mama! Like if she doesn’t kiss Kade goodnight, we won’t let her kiss us. Or if she makes a face at Peter, we’ll make her make faces at us. Or if Everett’s room’s a mess, she’ll have to leave ours messy too!”

“Your hearts,” Papa said, wincing down the hallway, “are in just the right place. But listen.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “I feel like we’re
starting to gang up on Mama, like we’re leaving her out of the fun, see. So what say, before we do anything drastic, we try ganging up in a better way? What say we all go back there, right now, and try to tell her how much we love her? That way, maybe she’ll feel so much a part of us she’ll want to treat us all equal on her own.”

This was the sort of idea that hippies (including me) would pretty well beat to death in a few years. But it seemed fresh and wild at the time, so that was what we did. Piling out of our chairs, we traipsed down the hall, burst into her bedroom, and found her crying hard and closing a chaotically packed suitcase. But we encircled and glommed on to her with our fourteen arms and hands anyhow, and told her in three octaves and seven voices how much we loved her. It was embarrassing, at first, at least to us “rebels.” But as the thing took hold, as we saw, for instance, how Papa had shut his eyes and was cooing his very softest and kindest no matter how dumb it sounded, we began to feel how ridiculously sweet and true this expression of love was, till there stood Everett, patting Mama’s shoulders and hair the way one pats a kitty, shiny-eyed with regret for making her so mad all the time; and Peter, holding her hand, telling her how much he missed talking with her, having her tease him, hearing her laugh; and me, touching whatever I could reach in there between Irwin and Freddy, unable to speak, but moved to tears by the overwhelming, mountain-moving force I felt our united love to be …

Yet the instant we’d touched her, Mama’s tears had stopped and she’d put on a stiff smile. And the longer we encircled her, the more pained and terrible that smile became. Then, the instant we released her, she dropped the smile, lifted her suitcase so that it formed a barrier between her and Papa, and said, “I love you all too. And I’m your mother. Which gives
me
the right to make some decisions. Here’s just one.”

Knowing more or less what was coming, it stabbed me to see Irwin still beaming at her with stupid hope. “I’m leaving,” she said—and still Irwin’s smile didn’t fade. “You seem to need your father more than me, and to respect him more than me. So I’m going to go stay with my brother and Mary Jane. It’s getting to be a habit, I know. But it’s hard for me here. I spend my whole day here, every day, feeling so mad I could spit. I’m so ashamed and afraid of the terrible things some of my children have chosen to believe that I, I just don’t know what to do. I keep hoping it’ll get better, I keep hoping you’ll see the light. But it never does. You never do. So I’m leaving.”

Love really does generate tremendous power. But what the truisms about it fail to add is that the results of that power are almost impossible
for human beings to predict or control. All our sevenfold love did to Mama at that moment was give her the strength to lift her heavy suitcase as if it were made of balsa wood, and to float away after it without once looking back.

“Don’t go!” Irwin pleaded as she vanished down the hallway. And he, at least, meant what he said. But when the rest of us chimed in—as we’d done when Papa spoke of leaving—the hollowness of our pleas echoed far longer and louder than the pleas themselves.

“I
just don’t know what to tell you,” Papa said when we finally sat down to supper without her. “We tried. It didn’t work. I don’t know what to say.”

Most of us were nodding, or shrugging, or feeling confused. But then a surprising thing happened: Peter turned to Papa, and in an accusing, almost angry tone, said, “I think you
do
know what to tell us.”

The rest of us gaped at him. But Papa, for a moment, seemed stunned, maybe even a little frightened—and Peter saw this. “I think there’s something about Mama,” he said, “something
important
, that explains why she gets this way. And, whatever it is, I think it’s time you told us.”

Papa pulled enough of himself together to snap, “What are you
talking
about?”

But Peter was undeterred. “I can’t say exactly. I just know that Mama used to love us too much to act this way. So there’s got to be a reason. And you know her best. So you must know the reason.”

The twins and Irwin were still gawking at Peter, but Everett was eyeing Papa now, and looking more than a little troubled as Papa said, “Listen, Peter. If I knew any such secret, yours or hers or anybody’s, I’d just have to keep it. That’s what secrets are.”

“So there
is
one.”

“I didn’t say that. I only said I wouldn’t give a secret away. If you think Mama has one you should know about, ask her yourself.”

“But she won’t
tell
me!” Peter cried. “You know that, Papa! She thinks I worship Satan! She acts like she
hates
me! And by not telling us why, you leave us no choice but to think she’s mean and unfair and crazy.”

Papa said nothing to this, and his face had gone so dead that I had no idea whether it was fury or confession that he was close to. But he was
close to something, because when he picked up his beer he drank, without pleasure or pause, till it was gone.