MISS those girls like my left arm,” Daniel was saying. “Left and right arm.” He was watching Spook, who was packing his clothes to move to the farm. An open suitcase was on the bed and Spook was slowly and deliberately folding shirts and putting them carefully into the suitcase. “You don’t need to take them off the hangers. Just carry them out there on the hangers, Spook. Why are you folding them up?”
“You got to let them go,” Spook said. “I’m getting tired of telling you that, Daniel. You act like they was some little wives you had that went off and left you for other men. Quit thinking about them. You need to get you a new wife and start you a life of your own. Mooning around here drinking whiskey every night. Letting everything go to pot.”
“It’s gone to pot. I’d sell that business this afternoon if I could come out even. But I can’t. The economy’s bust and I’m bust. You don’t know a thing about children, because you never had any. You never invested your heart in a child. What do you know?”
“That’s another thing. Getting out all them pictures of them when they was little and setting them up everywhere. Quit living in the past, Daniel. You’re only forty-seven years old and you act like you’re a hundred. Your granddaddy was the same way, the one you favor. You’re turning into past people.” Spook lay a white shirt down on top of a blue-and-white-striped one and looked Daniel in the eye. “Look at me, boss. If you got to come out here and stand around when I’m busy, at least act like you’re listening when I talk.”
“I’m listening. I was thinking maybe I’d move out to the farm too. Sell this goddamn house and clear on out if they won’t even come and visit.”
“Olivia came for the Fourth of July. Correct me if I’m mistaken. Did she or did she not come here for four days and scarcely left this house?”
“Four days out of a whole summer.”
“You going back to work this afternoon, or not?”
“Yeah. I’m going back right now. If Margaret comes by to get the vacuum cleaner, let her in.” Daniel turned and walked out onto the patio and lit a cigarette and stood underneath the walnut tree thinking over the conversation. Hell, maybe he’d charter a plane and fly down to New Orleans and apologize. Except it would cost at least a thousand dollars and that was half a month’s payment on one of the loans. So that was out. Spook came up behind him.
“You got a cigarette, boss?”
“Sure. Have one of these.” Daniel extended a package of Camels and Spook took one and lit it and went over and sat down on the stone steps.
“I’m sorry I’m leaving you. And I’m sorry for what I said in there. I know you’re hurting.”
“I am hurting. I’m hurting real bad.” He went over and sat down beside the black man and they smoked in peace for a while. Then Daniel got up and put his hand on Spook’s shoulder. “It’s the lowest of the low for me,” he said at last. “It’s the worst summer I can remember.”
After Daniel left, Spook went back into the guest house and began to take the shirts out of the suitcase. He couldn’t leave him now. He was standing by his closet shaking his head and trying to get a train of thought going, when Margaret came walking out onto the patio from the kitchen calling to him.
“He’s in a bad way,” Spook said, coming out his door. “We got to do something about him if we love him. It’s gone as far as I can let it go. Call Niall on the phone and tell him to get on over here and help us think.”
“Good,” Margaret said. “He’s lost his spark, Spook. He won’t even kiss me. I know I’m not Miss America, but at least he used to find some comfort in my arms.”
An hour later Niall, Margaret, Spook, Daniel’s nephew James, who was the Alcoholics Anonymous expert in the family, and Helen’s ex-husband, Spencer Abadie, were in the kitchen planning a surprise. “It’s called an intervention,” James was saying. “We gang-bang him and break through his defenses. I think we ought to do it. We ought to do it tonight.”
“He’s getting so depressed,” Margaret said. “I wouldn’t put anything past him, the mood he’s in.”
“Okay,” Niall put in. “I’m for it. I’ll go along.”
“We could bring Farley in from the farm,” Spook said. “He’ll tell him what it’s like to never know from one day to the next what’s going to get done.”
“Okay,” James said. “Tonight. Definitely tonight.” He was excited. He had always wanted to be part of an intervention. He felt like his whole life had been moving toward this day. Now, on his slender young shoulders, the fate of his family would ride to victory or defeat.
“James?”
“Yes. Sir.”
“Don’t get carried away, you hear.”
“We may need a straitjacket. Sometimes they try to run away. We have to have people stationed at the doors. We have to immobilize all vehicles. And we need to either tie him or get him in a jacket.”
“We ain’t putting him in no jacket.” Spook stood up. “We get him in a room and we say our piece. I’m all for that. But we ain’t going to tie him up or try to get a straitjacket on him. Not that any of us could do it anyway, if we really made him mad.”
“Well, that’s the recommended way. He’ll leave when it gets painful if we don’t restrain him.”
“Restrain him, my ass. You ever try to restrain Daniel? He’s six feet four inches tall. You couldn’t restrain him if there were fourteen of you.”
James put his arm on the mantelpiece. “You’re supposed to have a hospital ready for them to go to. The police are supposed to be standing by. It’s an intervention. There’re supposed to be doctors and people standing by in the reception room. It isn’t supposed to just be a lot of people going to talk to someone.”
“You mean, you want us to arrest Daniel? That’s what you’re saying now? Think thou because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale,” he added, just to see if James would catch on.
“We’re not serving anything alcoholic tonight,” James said. He sat down beside Niall and thought about how much he had always hated Spook. It was black people like Spook who made racial hatred. Spook was as bad as Jesse Jackson. Why did all the worst black people always have to come from the Carolinas? James had wondered that before. The most uppity, snottiest, ungrateful black people in the United States always came from right here. I think we got the meanest tribes, James decided, and sat back beside his uncle.
“At seven o’clock then,” Margaret said. “Here, in this house, at seven.”
“At seven,” Niall agreed. “Try to get here early.”
“What will we say we’re doing? What do we say when he says, ‘What are you all doing here?’”
“Coming to say we’re worried about you and want to let you know it.” Niall had taken over now. “We say, ‘Daniel, we are moving in for a night or two. We are here because we love you.’”
“Good,” everyone agreed. “Good. That’s a good idea. A good, good plan.”
At seven that night they were all gathered in the living room waiting for Daniel to appear. Spook stood by the door to the kitchen. He had made Jade get out things for soft drinks and had a pot of coffee going. “Don’t guess we can offer anyone a drink?” he had told Niall, so the two of them sneaked a glass of brandy in the pantry, then locked the liquor cabinet door.
Margaret was seated on the sofa. She had her head bowed and her hands in her lap. She really loved Daniel Hand, and she figured after this she would never have another love of any kind, might even have to go to India to help Mother Teresa with her work.
Spencer Abadie sat on a blue chair leafing through a back issue of Forbes magazine. James marched back and forth in front of the picture windows memorizing his speech. The truth will make you free, he chanted to himself. One day at a time. We will help you. There are places to go. We are offering you your life. Sit down with us and start to talk.
“What in the hell is this?” Daniel said, coming into his living room. “Something happened? Something happened to my girls?”
“Nothing’s wrong,” Niall said. “We came to talk to you, Daniel. Sit down a minute. Let me have a minute. We came here because we’re worried about you.”
“Goddamn, Niall, give me a minute. Let me get a drink.” Daniel started loosening his tie. He had had a very, very bad day, with creditors calling every hour and people that owed him money refusing to pay.
“No drinks, Uncle Daniel,” James said. “We came to talk to you about drinking. We came to beg you to let us help you save your life.”
“Oh, my God. Margaret, are you in this, too? You mixed up in this?”
“I’m mixed up in you. I love you. I won’t stand by and watch you kill yourself.”
“Sit down, Daniel.” Niall went to him and took his arm. “Come sit by me. Let us have our say. I beg you, let us say what we came to say.”
“Spook, get me a drink of Scotch.” Daniel sat down on the sofa beside Margaret. She was twisting a scarf in her hands. She raised her eyes and looked at him and began to cry. Spook moved in from the door. Spencer moved his chair closer to the sofa. They encircled him. James began to make his plea. “There is a place in Atlanta you can go to,” he began. “It’s better than the one I went to. We are offering you our help, Uncle Daniel. We love you. We want to fight for you. Don’t hate us. Don’t get up. Don’t fight back. For just a little while say you will listen.”
“Start talking.” Daniel sat back. Then, strangely, because she was so sad, he reached over and took Margaret’s hand and held it. “Say what you came to say.”
Many hours later Margaret and Daniel were upstairs in the master bedroom. They had made love for the first time in all the months they had fucked each other. Now they lay upon their backs and talked in whispers. “I’m not much of a catch,” Daniel was saying. “But I could settle down if I ever got this business off my back. That’s what you want, for me to settle down?”
“I want you to go to this place in Atlanta. If you still want me then, I want to live with you. You won’t want me then. If you get well, you won’t want me for a thing.”
“I didn’t say I’d go, Margaret. I said I’d think about it. Come on over here. Put your head on my shoulder. Let’s go to sleep.”
“I can’t. It was so nice. If I got any closer I’d start crying.”
“Well, don’t do that. I never saw so many tears in my life. Goddamn. Niall crying. I never thought I’d live to see that. I tried to quit a few times,” he added. “I had so much time on my hands. All I did was wait for the night to pass. Goddamn nights seemed to last forever.”
“I could teach you how to read.” She moved over closer and laid her head down in the hollow of his shoulder. “I bet you’ve forgotten how to read.”
“Forgotten, hell. I never did learn how.”
“If you knew what it would mean.” Margaret kissed the muscle of his shoulder, kissed the shoulder bone. “It would make so many people happy. You could think of it as a mission. Like Pilgrim’s Progress or the Lewis and Clark expedition. You like to do hard things.”
“You think I ought to walk to Atlanta to this hospital?” Daniel turned over on his side and let his hands slide down to the soft fat sides of Margaret’s rib cage. He was a master of tickling chubby girls into submission. He went to work on Margaret now. “Stop,” she screamed. “Stop it, Daniel. Oh, God, please don’t tickle me. I can’t stand it. I’ll do anything you want.”
“Then go to sleep,” he said at last, and patted her on the arm. “James the third’s turning into a real prig,” he added, taking a small piece of revenge. “He looks so much like Putty, it’s scary. You’d never even know he was kin to James.”