IT WAS WAITING FOR ME on my desk when I turned in to my office from the flavor development studio. A plain white envelope. No stamp or postmark, no return or mailing address.
I sat down in my chair and pulled at the beaded brass chain of my shaded green desk lamp, then held the envelope up to the light. The silhouette of a small rectangular object appeared. I tore the envelope in half and dumped its contents onto my desk.
Just as I suspected: a single packet of Sweetness #9.
It shouldn’t have had the power to shock. I’d seen these packets in restaurants and alongside the free coffee in the lobby of every hotel—even in my own kitchen cupboards. Still, I looked down at it as if I were a young boy again, attempting telekinesis for the first time.
The packet gave off a warm pink glow from inside, meaning it had either been harbored in these United States for at least four long years or been sent to me from Mexico, where the granules of The Nine were still bathed in a bright pink dye during production.
I sprang from my chair and popped my head out of my office.
“Where’d this come from?” I said. “This envelope you left for me?”
Eliza sat at the front desk, working on the computer. She offered me a cool reptilian stare over the rims of her bifocals, then said she’d found it beneath the mail slot when she’d come in.
“I wasn’t about to touch it, either,” she said. “I worked for the Post Office when the Unabomber was still doing his thing. Did you open it already?”
I nodded.
“Then consider it a good day. You live.”
As she returned to her typing, I went back to my desk, closing the door behind me. It was as if an accelerant had been released into my bloodstream, quickening my thoughts. Had the Albanians found me, perhaps because Priscilla had ordered the report using her name? Or were Mexicans to blame? Why else the pink granules? I blew into the mouth of the torn envelope, first the one half, then the other, thinking there must be a note inside, something making threats against my person or demands upon my bank account, maybe a map describing where and when to meet. But no, empty, so I turned in my chair to face the window, remembering now that night of the Society meeting. Hickey! Why after all these years had I seen Hickey—and then awoken a short time later with a packet of sweetener in my pocket?
I pulled open my pencil drawer; the orange bottle of lorazepam rolled toward me. I grabbed it and closed the drawer, then slid it open it again and felt around until I’d found something else: the trial pack of anti-anxiety medication.
Dr. White had said it would make me feel more anxious the first seven days I used it, and that, along with the belief that I didn’t have a problem requiring daily medication, had been enough to keep me away from it until now. But (and if every unhappy person is different, their story of obsession is somehow the same) I didn’t want to feel like this anymore. I was always pushing down at the top of my skull or pawing at the side of my neck, conscious of the beating of my carotid artery. Some mornings I stood over the toilet studying the shape, consistency, and color of my stool as if it were a work of modern art; other days, I’d have Betty take Polaroids of all my most suspicious moles so we could compare them with those she’d taken three, five, or ten years ago. I saw death, disease, and degeneration in everything that I faced, and I thought so much about what I should’ve done and couldn’t do that the immediacy of the present all but disappeared.
Dr. White was right. We all could use a little help every now and then. So I pushed the first pill through its foil backing and laid it on my tongue, telling myself not to think of the anxiety that might swell and surge over the coming seven days. It was like being in a burning building. You had to throw yourself through a wall of fire to escape. And besides, I thought, as that pill dissolved like a Communion wafer on my tongue, what better time to do this than now? In seven days, at the end of my most anxious period, I’d sit down to a plump Thanksgiving turkey, thankful for my new, worry-free life.
I had gained no new responsibilities as a result of my promotion, but I had been given a new title (Chief Creative Flavorist, Director of Flavor Development, and Chief Financial Officer) and a few additional perks, the foremost of which was an increased ownership stake in the company. I suspect Beekley and Tennessee wouldn’t have agreed on which of these was the least deserved, but one thing is certain: they had responded to the transfer of power about as well as the Romanovs had responded to the transition to Communism.
Tennessee was more reserved in my company these days, though also more voluble in the men’s room. I learned this one morning while he was chatting away at the urinals and didn’t realize I was behind the door of the second stall. Beekley, on the other hand, never said a word against me in public, preferring to wage a more covert form of warfare.
Shortly after swallowing my first anti-anxiety pill, I went into the break room and found him and Koba bargaining over a tube of summer sausage that had arrived in a gift basket delivered by Federal Express. I was so focused on their conversation (“Would I lie to you, Koba? Americans consider the summer sausage far more valuable than chocolate”) that it was only as I reached for the kettle that I realized what Beekley had done.
“Oh dear god,” I said. “Your hair, what on earth did you do to your hair?”
He’d shaved it down to the skull in a fashion he described as a “fade” and said was very popular in the late-eighties hip hop community.
“Do you like it?” Before I could answer, he’d turned back to Koba to give him a new homework assignment. “Listen to Kid ’n Play and Kris Kross, then interview no less than five people of color about hair, reversed blue jeans, and the placement of the other in white culture.”
Koba was taking this down in a tiny notebook he carried with him every day in his breast pocket. “Did you say reversible blue jeans?”
“Reversed,” Beekley said. “As in worn backwards.”
For a moment, Koba looked no less stupefied than I did. “I don’t understand,” he said.
“Of course you don’t,” Beekley answered. “That’s why you need to do your homework.”
“Is this because of the new dress code?” I asked him.
I had announced it a couple of days earlier, saying in a memo that all hair should “be trimmed and neat, suggesting one word above all: Business.” Beekley, though, as only a small child or an egotist could, had taken this all too literally. He’d had his barber etch a variant of that word into the side of his skull: Bidness.
“It’s one thing after another with you, isn’t it?” I said.
“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.”
“Just as you didn’t know you were parking in the Kraut’s old space this morning?”
“Oh, I’m sorry, David, I didn’t realize that type of thing meant so much to you. Perhaps you could send out another one of your memos. How does that new color-coding system work? Is it orange that’s below red in terms of urgency, or is that yellow?”
“I believe yellow requires a response,” Koba said, before seeing my expression and returning his notebook to his breast pocket. “I think I’ll just take my summer sausage and go.”
When he had turned out into the hallway, I filled the kettle and put it to a boil, telling Beekley if this was a game of chicken, I wasn’t the one who’d be driving off the cliff. “You’re only hurting yourself, you know. Or tell me: You think you’ll ever go on a third date looking like that?”
It wasn’t just his hair that made me say this. Today he wore burnt-red polyester pants, a seasick green button-up dress shirt whose collars stuck out over the shoulders of his unbuttoned lab coat, and a mustard-yellow tie so wide it could have doubled as an apron.
“A Mormon missionary wouldn’t wear that tie,” I said, swatting at the thing. “A teenaged boy from Provo, Utah, would rather sin before the Angel Moroni than walk the streets of Mongolia looking like that.”
“‘All flavorists and food scientists,’” he said, quoting from the dress code, “‘should wear business casual clothing, with women’s outfits not too revealing and men expected to wear ties.’”
“You’ve read the words, but you don’t understand a thing.”
He snatched a card out of the gift basket then, saying there was one thing he did know. He cleared his throat and read: “‘As our new line of children’s medicine debuts in the marketplace, I wanted to send your team this small token of our appreciation. By the way, our test panels were especially enthusiastic about the wild cherry! I’m so glad we stuck it out until finding the right one.’”
Beekley handed me the card. “‘With gratitude,’” he finished, “‘your Corporate Overlord, etcetera, etcetera, P.S. Do give Beekley a raise.’”
Eliza popped her head in then, saying I had “a Mrs. Goldfarb” on three.
I didn’t recognize the name, so I asked her to take a message. But Eliza said she’d already tried to do that and been told it was important. “She’s the vice principal of your son’s school.”
I marched into my office and grabbed the receiver while punching the flashing button marked Line 3. “David Leveraux,” I said.
Mrs. Goldfarb got right to it. After acknowledging how valuable my time must be and saying she’d try not to waste it, she told me she was only calling because “it seems your son has stopped using verbs. Were you aware of this?”
I sat stiffly in my chair, as if a sniper had me in his sights. “Yes. Yes, I was,” I said. “May I ask how you found out?”
“We administer routine testing to ensure our students are being properly served. Now”—I imagined her flipping through a folder at her desk—“your son did quite well on the written portion of his exam, but his scores on the oral portion…”
I stood. “Did you say ‘oral’?”
“…were not exactly up to standards.”
“Of course not. He doesn’t use verbs.”
“Yes, we’re aware of that now, but it’s not what causes the score that’s important, it’s what we can do to bring it up to the state-mandated level.”
She spoke in a steady, precise manner, as if being deposed by the legal offices of Jackson, Dean, and Hershowitz.
“It’s the student we must look out for, you understand, and so to ensure that he receives the help he needs, we’ve reassigned him to a classroom for students with language-based learning difficulties.”
“Pardon?”
“A letter saying the same will go out in the mail today, but I thought it important that I call you and let you know.”
I had walked as far as the phone’s cord would allow. “Do you mean to say he’s in ESL?”
She laughed. “Oh, we don’t call it that anymore. It’s English for Speakers of Other Languages.”
“Other languages?” I imagined a room in the basement with low overhanging pipes, condensation on the walls, and Jeremiah sitting in the back row, holding a thick pencil in one hand and drooling freely. “But Ernest doesn’t—you don’t think he’s a foreigner, do you?”
She seemed amused by the question. “We don’t investigate the immigration status of our students, Mr. Leveraux.”
“Well, maybe you should! He’s an American! Born in Battle Station!”
Her voice tightened. “I think you should know, your son has become something of a distraction. Just last week he was humming during an exam. He got up and started pacing.”
“Was this an essay test?”
“I’m sorry?”
I sank down in my chair, still holding the card from the gift basket, I realized. “Perhaps he was composing his thoughts,” I said. “Ambulation—it’s well known to aid the writing process.”
She spoke as if not having heard me. “We believe your son would be best served if he were placed on Ritalin.”
“What?” I flung the card across the room. “You think you’re going to put him on drugs? Have you talked to our doctor about this?”
“We have our own specialists.”
“As did Hitler, but that’s no reason—”
“Mr. Leveraux!”
“—to put my child on Ritalin!”
“I lost many relatives to the Holocaust!”
“And my father was a member of the 4032nd Mobile Baking Division! He stormed the beaches of Normandy and passed out the first loaves of bread at Buchenwald!”
Our emotions got away from us. We had to settle down with some heavy breathing and a few conciliatory remarks. As we recovered, I opened my desk drawer and reached for the bottle of lorazepam, telling Mrs. Goldfarb as I unscrewed its cap that we’d spent the last several weeks visiting many, many specialists.
“Our son’s fine,” I said. “His brain checks out fine, his vocal cords aren’t tangled or damaged, he’s not allergic to the eight most common food allergens”—I popped the pill into my mouth and dry-swallowed it—“and his chromosomes and genetic material show not the first sign of a known abnormality. He’s just a quiet, verbless boy, that’s all.”
“I’m very glad to hear that, Mr. Leveraux, but the fact remains that Ernest does exhibit ‘stimming.’ The humming and walking in class, I mean. It’s very common among children with Attention Deficit Disorder.”
“ADD? My son and I sat through an entire James Bond marathon this summer, and you’re going to tell me he has ADD?”
“The situation requires our attention.”
“The boy can play the same computer game for seventy-two hours.”
“And Ritalin has been proven to be quite effective—”
“Mrs. Goldfarb.”
“Goldenfarb.”
“Everything’s proven! That’s the last thing you learn as a scientist and the first thing they teach you in business school. ‘Don’t worry, we’ll prove it.’”
“Ernest fidgets. He won’t look his teacher in the eye.”
“We can’t all be salesmen.”
“He mumbles.”
“As did Gould, Glenn Gould. The man wouldn’t even stop for a recording session.”
“Are you suggesting your son sit at a piano instead of a desk?”
“Are you telling me music is no longer part of the public school curriculum?”
“Mr. Leveraux, if you don’t like the idea of Ritalin, there are plenty of other drugs we can try.”
“Not with my son.”
“Wellbutrin. Effexor.”
“You’ll see I’m quite firm on this matter.”
“Dextrostat. Desipramine.”
“You’re wasting your breath, Mrs. Goldenfarb.”
“Or Prozac,” she said. “Because I should warn you, if he persists in his behavior—and you persist in yours—this could be considered a matter of parental neglect.”
“Neglect?” I stood so quickly my chair flew out behind me. “Are you threatening me?”
“I am merely making a recommendation.”
“And why are we having this conversation on the phone? Shouldn’t we be speaking in person? What are you, afraid of confrontation?”
“This conversation is over, Mr. Leveraux.”
“I should go before the school board and say you need a pill!”
But I was already talking to a dial tone.
Betty and I descended on the school that same afternoon to demand that our son be returned to his proper classroom. We spoke of lawsuits and bad publicity, of friendships with state senators (a lie) and forthcoming letters to the editor in the local, regional, and national papers (true). But it wasn’t as simple as escorting Ernest out through one door and in through another, as Mrs. Goldenfarb herself told us. Our son had already been reclassified in databases available to the district, county, and state.
“We can’t just hit a few buttons on the keyboard and make it all go away,” she said.
“And why is that?” I asked her. “Because you’ve already hit a few buttons on the keyboard and made it all happen?”
She smiled firmly, sitting back in her chair. “There’s a protocol to follow. So unless your son retakes the test and passes, we’ll just have to let it play out.”
As Betty drove us home (she had met me at FlavAmerica and gone with me to the school from there, saying we could carpool the next day), she suggested we just go ahead and do it.
“Medicate him?” I said. “But why?”
“It could be aphasia voluntaria.”
Before our insurance carrier had sent us its first letter denying the dubious and explaining its policy on the experimental, we had met with a specialist who had said just that.
“You think he’s faking it?”
“It’s not that he’s not talking on purpose; it’s that something’s holding him back.” These too had been the doctor’s exact words. “It could be Social Anxiety Disorder.”
“And it could be demonic possession, but that’s no reason for us to rush out to one of Aspirina’s old botánicas and a buy a black candle and a smudge stick of sage.”
Betty gave me a steady, unblinking look, then turned off the highway toward home.
“What is Social Anxiety Disorder anyway?” I said. “A few years ago none of us had heard of it, and now we’re not even allowed to doubt its legitimacy? You watch. Here, soon they’ll be warning us about Social Adaptability Disorder. ‘Do you enjoy speaking in public? Do you make friends quickly when you move to a new town or place of work? You may have Social Adaptability Disorder.’”
“David, our son is in ESL. We have to do something.”
“How about military school?”
“You can’t be serious?” She saw that I was. “Well, why don’t we just beat the verbs out of him? Have you thought of that? It’d save us some money.”
As she turned onto our street, I told her he could probably use a little discipline. “I’m starting to think I’ve been lax as a father.”
Betty shook her head, then told me that she’d gone online after getting my call and done a little research. “And apparently there’s this girl in Wyoming who didn’t speak at all until the second grade. Then they gave her liquid Prozac and now she’s talking a mile a minute.”
“Well maybe we shouldn’t be putting words into her mouth,” I said. “Are we going to guarantee her a job on one of these cable news channels?”
“What’s gotten into you? You used to be perfectly sensible. You could even say morbidly sensible.”
“Morbidly sensible?”
“But now you’re no different from Priscilla, afraid of progress and new ideas. Why don’t we at least try it? He’s in ESL, David!”
She hit the button on the clicker and drove the car into the garage, in beneath the tennis ball hanging from a string.
“It’s English for speakers of other languages,” I said.
She didn’t answer; just sat there listening to the hot oil dripping into the collecting pan beneath us.
I took a deep breath, then told her that I too had gone online and done a little research. “And do you know what I learned? The pharmaceutical industry spends eight billion dollars per year on gifts to American physicians. That’s eight billion with a ‘b,’ Betty. And we’re not just talking pens and coffee mugs and memo pads either. They’re shelling out for trips to ski resorts and Honolulu. Honolulu, Betty! And yet still you don’t think Big Pharma exerts an undue influence over our lives?”
“Big Pharma?” She got out of the car and moved in through the utility room. “Since when do you call it Big Pharma?”
“I’m not saying this medicine doesn’t do what they say. I’m only saying maybe they’re giving it out too freely. It’s as much crowd control as it is therapy.”
“And so you’re sure there’s nothing wrong with our son? And what if you’re wrong?”
“Betty. Betty, listen.” We were moving up the stairs to the second floor, speaking in strained whispers. “The adolescent brain is very plastic.” These had been the words of a more optimistic specialist. “If one part can’t do its job, another will adapt to pick up the slack. So if Ernest really is suffering from some condition we haven’t yet uncovered, we probably just have to give him time to heal.”
She chuckled as she moved into the walk-in closet to change. “And to think it’s you who’s saying this!”
“What?”
“A plastic brain? That’s a biological Communism! ‘Do what you can, take what you need.’” She took off her blouse. “And this from the man who campaigned for Nixon?”
“Patience, that’s all I’m saying. Just have a little patience.”
“And that’s it? That’s the full extent of your plan?” She stepped into her tracksuit. “Because if it is, can you tell me one thing? Just one thing. When does patience turn into doing nothing at all?”
I didn’t answer her, not even after she’d said it again.
“When, David? Tell me.”
When she saw that I wouldn’t speak, she moved out past me and went into the great room, from which I soon heard the militant cries of Cher’s personal trainer: “Jab, kick, knee punch! Body blow, body blow, body blow!”
Dinner that evening had the feeling of an intervention. It began normally enough, with our complimenting Priscilla on the pasta she’d cooked, but soon thereafter we’d exhausted this small talk and were looking round the table like poker players trying to intuit the bluff. Finally I set my knife down and wiped my mouth with my napkin and looked directly at our son, telling him that we needed to have a talk.
“Your mother and I are very worried,” I said. “We all are,” I added, taking in Priscilla with a look. “Obviously you know you’ve been assigned to a new classroom.”
He nodded. “Me and Jeremiah.”
“Is that right? Yes, well, what you may not understand is that the school is asking us to start giving you some medicine.”
“Like Jeremiah,” he said.
“Yes, like Jeremiah. But the thing is, while he may need it, I’m not sure you do.”
“It’s poison,” Priscilla said, before her mother could shush her.
“It’s certainly nothing to mess around with,” I agreed. “So if by chance you’ve been faking it all this time, the not using verbs, I mean, I need you to tell me now so we can tell the school, and you can go back to your old classroom. Do you understand?”
He nodded. I took in a slow breath.
“So what do you have to say, Ernest? There is something you’d like to tell me, isn’t there?”
He stared down at his mound of spaghetti so long I thought he might have forgotten the question. Everyone looked at him, and then me, and then him. Then at last Ernest looked up and shrugged, and he said to me, he said, “Salt.” Just like that, just the one word. “Salt.”
I picked up my fork and twirled some pasta on it, then just as quickly set the fork down and reached for my napkin. “What salt?” I said.
The shaker was nearest my plate. Ernest sat across from me, looking between me and it.
“That salt?” he said.
“What what salt?” I said.
He looked to his mother. She looked no less nervously to me.
“What what salt?” I repeated.
“Please?”
“What what salt?”
He tried parroting me. “What what salt?”
I threw my napkin onto my plate. “Pass the salt!” I stood from the table. “Pass it! I know you can say it! Now c’mon! Pass the salt! It’s not that hard!”
When I realized everyone was looking at me and not him, I knew I’d gone too far. “I’m sorry,” I said. I started for the stairs. “I’m sorry.”
Betty came into our room a few minutes later and sat down beside me on the foot of the bed.
“It’s been a stressful day,” she said.
She didn’t know the half of it, though, so I told her about what I’d received in the mail that morning and showed her a piece of paper I’d scribbled on minutes after opening that anonymous envelope.
“Is this an enemies list?” she said.
I hadn’t titled the page, but I understood how she could make that interpretation.
“You’ve got Priscilla listed here.”
“At number five,” I said in my defense. “I was trying to be exhaustive. And you have to admit, she is something of a fundamentalist when it comes to food.”
Beekley was at number four, if not because I feared he’d been turned by his knowledge of one of the conspiracies of the post–Cold War age, then because he’d brought a shotgun to work.
“And Hickey?” Betty said. “The man from Animal Testing?”
At number three, right behind the Albanians. “I thought I saw him that night of the Society meeting,” I told her. “I drank too much and fell asleep in the lobby—”
“David!”
“—we were fighting, I wasn’t at my best. Anyway, when I woke up, I had a packet of Sweetness #9 in my pocket.”
I could no more explain its meaning than I could provide a reason for placing “Mexicans” at the top of my list, above even the Albanians.
“I suppose it’s wrong to think it must be one or more Mexican nationals,” I said. “It occurs to me now that it could be someone who bought the packet off eBay. You know, to emphasize my connection to Sweetness #9’s early days. But for the time being”—I shrugged—“we’ll just leave it at that: Mexicans.”
Betty gave the list back to me, sighing loudly.
“Should we tell the kids?” I asked.
“What? No! Why?”
“Transparency.”
“And what would you say? That you got a vaguely menacing letter in the mail this morning? That you’re not sure what’ll happen next, but if a man with a wooden leg isn’t involved, it could be a rogue Albanian or a group of radical Mexicans?”
I nodded. “You’re right. Not presidential.”
She reached for my leg, then, and gave it a little rub. “Are you feeling okay? Because you’ve looked a little jumpy today.”
I realized only then that I hadn’t told her about the anti-anxiety medication I’d begun that morning.
“When did you get a prescription for that?” she said.
“I should schedule a daily press briefing,” I told her. “Dr. White gave it to me, but I didn’t think to say anything before now because I didn’t think I’d ever use it. Anyway, apparently the first seven days you’re on it, you can feel increased anxiety.”
“Well, maybe you shouldn’t be taking it right now. Do you really think this is the best time?”
“It’s always going to be something, isn’t it? And besides”—I fished an orange medicine bottle out of my pants pocket—“I’ve got the lorazepam to even me out. Took another one just a few minutes ago, in fact. I feel great.”
Betty couldn’t help but smile.
“What?” I said.
“Nothing.”
“No, what is it?” I said.
“It’s just you don’t want Ernest to take anything, and yet you seem to have a full pharmacy at your disposal.”
I suppose I could have answered her by speaking of Sweetness #9 and my experiences with it. If The Nine had been deemed safe for public consumption, after all, what did it matter if the medicine they wanted to give our son had also been approved for use? But none of that came to me in the moment. My answer was far simpler, even reflexive. “We always want better for our kids,” I said. “Don’t we?”
Now, I can’t help but wonder what might have happened if I had answered differently and agreed that the Ritalin or Prozac was something we should try. It wouldn’t have made the medicine any better or worse for our son, but it would have brought Betty and me together. It would have been a decision we’d both made as parents, placing the burden of its consequences between us, not only with her. But I’m getting ahead of myself here. For now, let it be enough to know that it’s yet another moment I wish I had back.
Even after everything I’d taken that day, I couldn’t sleep, so when the microwave beeped a little after midnight—just once, someone there to open it before it could make another sound—I popped up from bed and went downstairs, thinking I’d need to tell Ernest to get off the computer and remind him it was a school night.
The hallway was thick with the smell of cooked meat, but its trail didn’t end at my son’s bedroom door—it carried me on to Priscilla’s. The floor creaked beneath me as I stepped up to it. I heard a thump from inside, and then racing footsteps.
“What are you doing?” I said, pushing into her room.
She stood alone at the window, struggling to open it while holding a plate in one hand. On it was a half-eaten microwaveable hamburger.
Priscilla returned slowly to her bed and set the plate down on top of her green comforter.
“I couldn’t help myself,” she said. “My cravings, they’re so strong.”
I sat down beside her, telling her not to worry about it. “It’s been a hard day. We all deserve a little treat.”
She looked up then, her eyes already moist. “You won’t tell Sarin, will you?”
She took in a jagged breath. “She’s been a vegetarian her whole life.”
“Let her be her and you be you.”
She reached for her burger and began to cry, saying she wanted Sarin to like her.
“Just be yourself.” Parenthood, it seems, is advising others to do what you can’t do yourself. “You can’t go through life living a lie, trying to please others.”
She took a bite of her burger, considering this; and maybe by some law of probability I had finally said the right thing, because it was then, while chewing thoughtfully, that she told me, “I’m in love with her, Dad. I love Sarin.”
I’d never suspected it, not even for a moment, but as soon as I heard those words it made perfect sense. “Be mine!” the little candy heart had said.
“Do you hate me now?” she asked. She was dressed in a pair of grey sweatpants and that black hooded sweatshirt she never went without.
“Why would I hate you?” If anything, I felt as if I’d won the lottery, because it was only here, now, that I knew I wasn’t the type of parent to throw his child’s baby book into the trash. I’d never imagined this scenario before, but once I was in the midst of it, I knew it as clearly as I knew my own name: I only wanted her to be happy.
“You need to tell her,” I said. “Because do you know what the other option is? Winding up like me. Sitting on a lie half your life. Will you listen? I know. It’ll eat you up and spit you out and you won’t even recognize yourself in the end.”
Priscilla’s chest jumped to take in a sudden gulp of air. She unhinged her jaw and widened her eyes to hold back another hot rush of tears.
“So you won’t tell her? About the hamburger, I mean?”
“Your secret’s safe with me,” I said. “I’ll even tell you one of my own. Just don’t tell your mother. Even she’s never heard this.”
Priscilla waited patiently, all eyes.
“It’s about your great-great-great-grandfather. In his later years, he traveled the eastern seaboard putting on puppet shows denouncing God and the free market.”
“Stop!”
“Now you know why your mother doesn’t know. If this got out, her reputation at the Chamber of Commerce would be ruined. He was a union man,” I said, “an agitator in the coal mines of Pennsylvania when he wasn’t much older than you are now.”
“Maybe he had red hair, too.”
“I wouldn’t doubt it, I wouldn’t doubt it. Anyway, this is the story my grandfather told me. He said they had been using dynamite to open up the shafts to get the coal out, but their methods were needlessly careless, costing a handful of workers their lives. Your great-great-great-grandfather wanted to change all that, and so he stole a stick of dynamite and used it to request better wages and improved working conditions.”
My face grew serious. I gestured with a stiff finger. “No one was hurt. He staged his protest after hours, and only the executive offices were targeted. He simply wanted to make a point: so long as our workplace is dangerous, yours will be too.”
Priscilla was smiling.
“This was a company town—nothing there but its workers, its store, its housing development—and so when the dynamite went off, everyone spilled out of their beds and onto their front porches to see what had happened. There was a full moon that night—much was made of this in the opposition press—but still no one saw anyone walking away from the mine on the single road that ran from it through town. The company was sure it had to be your great-great-great-grandfather. He’d always been the squeaky wheel, and he didn’t pipe down much afterward, either. But no one would speak against him in court. I’m sure they were threatened with the loss of their livelihood, probably offered money and promotions, but no one would speak against him when they were called in for questioning.”
We both smiled.
“He probably stopped to shake hands. Probably kissed babies and stepped inside for a slice of pie. That was your great-great-great-grandfather Jürgen.”
We sat there for a long time, considering this man we only knew through a story. Then we stood and walked together to the door, where Priscilla did something I’ll never forget. She gave me a hug and squeezed me a second time as if she wouldn’t ever let go. This is the moment where I wish my story could end, right there in her hold. But we had to break away, and I had to tell her what may have been the biggest whopper of all.
“Everything will be fine,” I said. “Do you hear? Everything will be just fine.”