As long as Rob still resided in Indianapolis, the other two Wangert brothers could pretend to be totally independent. Officially still connected to family and home, Anthony and Duncan unofficially fancied themselves as Citizens of the World. Anthony grew a beard and moved off the Yale campus to an apartment near Wooster Square. Sixty miles away, Duncan, with his sideburns and a newly pierced ear, strutted across the Rokeby campus. They comfortably ignored each other.
When Rob moved east, the situation changed. Each brother wanted independence, as evidenced by their joint action against Ward’s tipsy dorm phone calls, but they also wanted confirmation from each other of their shared heritage. This took the form of family-lore confabs that allowed them to maintain dual identities as young men of the east and as Indianapolis Wangerts.
Anthony, in the indestructible Dodge Dart (inherited from his grandparents), drove up to Rokeby once or twice a semester, and sometimes taxied his brothers down for a weekend in New Haven, or over to Kathryn’s house on the Hudson River. Their meetings became a kind of confessional sport. Who could stump the other with family trivia questions?
These discussions were aided and abetted by Kathryn. She phoned Mary for data to bring up at the next meeting, and having made a pilgrimage to Indianapolis, actively promoted her sister-status in the Wangert clan.
After dinner, they flopped in lounge chairs amid the hanging vines of Swanset’s solarium. Grateful to see their only-child thus engaged, Lana and Randolph Chapman aided and abetted the proceedings with desserts and liqueurs.
Exaggerations abounded. Anthony, to everyone’s surprise, mustered impersonations of Rusalka and Elbert. The Vincent Report became a regular feature.
Rob, more than anyone else, stayed in touch with their Indianapolis friends. The Vincent Report was a cautionary tale on delinquents mired in Naptown. It claimed first spot on the agenda. As self-appointed mistress of ceremonies, Kathryn nudged Rob. “And now, ladies and gentlemen, the latest on Vincent the Wanker.”
“Vincent is getting more into explosives,” Rob said. “He blew up a dumpster last week. He thinks if he can become an expert in explosives that will win his dad’s respect. Vincent says it will soon be possible to build a nuclear bomb from scratch.”
“Can’t happen!” Duncan laughed.
“Yes and no,” Anthony shrugged. “There is a small cult out there who think it can be done from scratch. What the government is most concerned about is something called a ‘dirty bomb,’ meaning not a huge explosion, but lots of toxic radiation.”
“And that’s the latest, folks! Vincent the Wanker wipes Indianapolis off the map!” Kathryn said.
The Kayla Report was less prominent, because Kayla actually seemed to be maturing. Ruby found her a job filing X-rays at a doctor’s office, and Rob reported that she’d started in vocational school to become an X-ray tech.
On the weekends in New Haven, Anthony’s friend, Telford ‘Trip’ Ames, joined the fray. The Yale campus, architecturally a fantastic mishmash of building styles, provided a labyrinth of unexpected nooks and crannies that students individually adopted as their own. Anthony and Telford met by accident. It turned out they adopted the same cranny, an inset stone bench tucked away in the Law Library. Telford used it on Tuesdays between classes to read his mail and newspapers, and Anthony used it for similar purposes on Thursdays, except for the one Tuesday when they collided after lunch. Literally. Telford stumbled and dropped all his books.
Son of a military socialite and hostess, Telford Ames called on his southern manners to transform this showdown into a bond. He noticed the three newspapers under Anthony’s arm and started a conversation about syndicated columnists. Telford instinctively ‘got’ Anthony Wangert. He loosened him up, often with unplanned pratfalls. Anthony nicknamed him ‘Trip-on-Dirt.’
An aspiring journalist, Trip had turned the Yale Daily’s dating column into a popular Kinsey-style study. He enjoyed needling the sentimental Wangert brothers at their New Haven meetings: “And now Anthony will tell us about bathing in the crick each morning before walking five miles to his one-room schoolhouse ….”
“And now Mr. Rob Wangert will relate his adventures in whittling ….”
“And here is Duncan to describe all the topless action from the infield at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway ….”
Impervious to the smirks of Trip and Kathryn, the Wangert brothers draped themselves around the second-hand couches in Anthony’s apartment and took this prodding as license to expand their tribal narratives to past generations.
A percussive rain blew against the windows of Anthony’s Wooster Street apartment, conveniently located near the famous pizzerias. They listened to the tapping, as sharp as gravel, coming in off Long Island Sound.
“Is that someone knocking at the door?” Duncan asked.
A long, draughty hallway separated the living room from the front door. Flow charts for Anthony’s latest project—tracking the RAND Corporation’s development of the neutron bomb—covered the walls. Sometimes it took a while to notice the bell or a knock at the door. Trip turned down the music.
“Did you order a pie?” Rob asked.
Relying on strength in numbers, they rose en masse and slid down the bare hallway floor in socks. Anthony gazed into the door’s peephole. He stepped back and shrugged quizzically. Trip took a turn with the same result. Rob leaned in, scrunched one eye to the peephole, and quickly undid the chain and the locks.
A wet, wide-eyed goon with a backpack said, “Uh, hi, man.”
“Vincent!” Rob exclaimed.
“I didn’t recognize you,” Anthony said.
Trip extended a hand and introduced himself. “Good gracious, in the flesh. I’ve heard a lot about you.”
“I’m running away,” Vincent explained, “and I didn’t know where to run away to, so I figured that was the kind of thing you guys would know. That’s why I came here, you know, to ask where I should run away to.”
Duncan said, “This doesn’t make sense.”
“Come on in!” Anthony said.
Vincent said, “It’s just not the same back in Indy without you guys. And, Anthony, I’ve got a few questions to ask about red mercury explosives.”
“Nice to see you again,” Kathryn said.
Vincent grinned stupidly. Kathryn said, “Come on in out of the rain. Let’s get you into something dry.” Vincent continued grinning at her. Rob took him by the arm and pulled him into the kitchen.
“How did you get here?” Rob asked.
“Hitchhiked.”
“Aren’t you cold?” Kathryn asked.
“No, Vincent never gets cold,” Rob said. “I’ve seen him wear shorts all winter.”
“What about your car sickness?” Duncan asked, “I thought you couldn’t travel farther than fifty miles.”
“Pot,” Vincent said, “it settles my stomach. Anybody want to get high?”
Anthony fetched Vincent a bathrobe and a blanket and directed him to the bathroom. Back in the kitchen, Anthony, Duncan, Kathryn, Rob, and Trip shared a lip-biting, laugh-suppressing snicker.
“Should we report him to the police, or call Rusalka and Ruby or what?” Kathryn whispered.
Duncan said, “When he comes out, you sit him down, talk, make coffee. Meanwhile, we’ll confer.”
In the living room, the shared snicker became a shared chin scratching, a silent acknowledgment that the Wangert brothers had a decision to make. Trip stumbled and sprawled across a couch, maybe trying to break the tension, maybe not quite understanding that the chin-scratching wasn’t about tension. It was about the Wangert brothers briefly discovering the ability to agree on a situation.
“We can’t just kick him out. It would kill him. He thinks we’re his best friends.”
“It’s like trying to figure out how to corral a neighbor’s stray dog.”
Inspired by their recent family-lore conversation, Anthony made a bold suggestion: “Let’s pack Vincent and all of us into my car and drive him home. A historic road trip. Sixteen hours, plus or minus. We can trade off driving. It’s Friday night. We’ll be back by Sunday.”
Everyone got a little high, thanks to the second-hand smoke from Vincent’s anti-nausea medicine, administered every hundred miles. The others made a concerted effort to keep him talking, so he wouldn’t dwell on his return to captivity. Vincent put up very little fuss. In fact, every few miles, he giggled, “Jeez, you guys are so out-a-sight to do this!”
Rob called for a detailed explanation of Dungeons and Dragons. They all sang “A Hundred Bottles of Beer on the Wall.” Kathryn sang an aria in Italian. The focus shifted from Vincent to keeping the driver awake. They stopped for gas and traded seats. Trip, under questioning, revealed an intimate knowledge of the inner workings of the Daughters of the Confederacy. He shared his aunties’ standard greeting, “How does your mama like your hair?” Which became a refrain for the next hundred miles. Kathryn told stories about the Chapman clan, early health food nuts who championed grass-clippings served on vanilla ice cream. Somewhere in Ohio, Vincent finally got to have his talk with Anthony about rogue bomb recipes. Vincent brought up Edward Teller’s encyclopedia article on the basics of the hydrogen process. He blabbed anti-Communist slogans, expressing a particular virulence for the Vietcong. Breathing heavily, Vincent shared his mastermind computer scheme to trick the government anti-missile radar system into showing an incoming launch, which in turn would trigger a U.S. strike that would wipe out North Vietnam. Duncan, from the backseat, interrupted and insisted that, according to Kip Melton, a former astronaut, the United States’ computer network was totally secure.
Trip teasingly prodded Vincent about his mother, who had just publicly declared herself free of neuroses after coming out with Ruby. “Do y’all ever wonder if she isn’t a little bit crazy?”
Vincent coughed and choked and suddenly relapsed into car sickness. Anthony pulled over. Rob changed the subject to Elbert and reminisced about blowing up birdbaths. Anthony tried to convey sincerely that all the Wangerts thought Rusalka and Ruby were a pretty cool couple.
As they approached Indianapolis, a giddy fatigue took over that masked a renewed concern about Vincent’s reaction to his homecoming.
Kathryn squirmed in her seat. “Are we there yet? Are we there yet?”
Anthony replied, “How about we ponder Kathryn’s question as a Zen kōan?” This prompted Trip to lean over and plant a silly, sloppy kiss on his bearded cheek. The fatigued passengers didn’t know what to make of that kiss. Duncan glared, aghast at this display of his brother’s deviancy.
“What the matter, people? Don’t you have queers in Indiana?” Trip crowed.
Duncan said, “Christ, I thought you’d grown out of that. Please don’t tell Mom and Dad.”
“Why not?” Anthony countered.
“They couldn’t handle it. Mom had a hard enough time getting over the deaths of her parents.”
Trip asked, “You mean, for Anthony to come out as gay would be the same as if he were pronounced dead? That’s about what it was like for me.”
Duncan said, “No, it’s just … they’re already starting to talk about grandchildren.”
Vincent asked, “Is a faggot the same thing as queer?”
Duncan, as a kid, prided himself on being Vincent’s instructor in technical vocabulary. He said, “Yes, but not for women. Women are called ‘dikes’ and ‘lesbos.’ And hey, it’s perfectly okay to be a dike.”
They braked and pulled into the Wangert driveway. Mary, Ward, Rusalka, Ruby, and Kayla hurried out of the house. Vincent jumped out of the car before it came to a full stop. He leapt into the arms of his mother and sister and Ruby.