Nineteen

They were playing Meet the Linguist. Cook hated to play Meet the Linguist.

The in-laws had arrived in a bunch, and Beth had herded everyone out onto the deck, where her parents had settled at the glass table, and Cook—again introduced as “an old college friend”—had ended up with brother Bruce near the hors d’oeuvres table. After some chat about Bruce’s printing plant, Bruce asked Cook what his line of work was (“General linguistics,” said Cook), then what the point of it was.

Cook said, simply, that linguistics was “interesting.”

Bruce said, “So say something interesting.”

Bruce’s wife, Doris, walked up to them at that moment and said, “Yes. Say something interesting.” She said it in a light way clearly intended to make up for her husband’s aggression. She had been with the two of them earlier, but when they had started to talk about the printing business she had drifted down the deck to the table, where Beth was talking with her parents about Robbie’s new camp. Now she was back with Cook and her husband. She had a tired look that suited her apparent dissatisfaction with the available conversation.

Cook tried not to disappoint her. First off, he told them why so many unrelated languages have words sounding like “mama” and “papa” that mean “mama” and “papa.” Then he told them about the three levels of diction in English, giving them examples of triplets for the same concept, one native English, one borrowed from French, and one borrowed from Latin, increasing in formality in that order: “fear,” “terror,” “trepidation”; “goodness,” “virtue,” “probity.” Finally, he gave them his killer of an explanation for why some people say “Missouree” and others say “Missouruh.”

Doris seemed as fascinated as her energy level allowed her to be. But Bruce was a tough sell. All he had given Cook was a nod, a frown, and a cleared throat. Cook decided it was time to tell him about Thoreau’s Indian.

“One more little linguistic story,” he said. “Henry Thoreau writes about it in one of his travel books. Thoreau was on a canoe trip with a friend, on some river in Maine, and they picked up an Indian who traveled with them for a few days. One night around the campfire, Thoreau and his friend were discussing some point, gesturing in the normal way. The Indian knew very little English—too little to follow their talk—but at the end of every exchange, he would say, ‘He beat,’ pointing either to Thoreau or to Thoreau’s friend, depending on who he thought had won. The Indian had appointed himself judge of their chat, and he was picking the winner just from their gestures!”

Doris laughed. “Talk about competitive,” she said. Cook looked at her husband. Bruce evidently found no personal meaning in the story. He was busy frowning at the remains of the shrimp he had just bitten.

“Beth,” Bruce called, “where’d you get these shrimp?”

Beth stopped in midsentence—she had been speaking to her mother—and gave Bruce a blank look. “In the open-air market.”

“They tell you they were fresh?”

“No,” she said impassively. She turned back to her mother.

“Because they’re not,” her brother said. “They’ve been frozen.” Getting no further response from Beth, he speared another shrimp with a toothpick, dipped it in some red sauce, and held it out for Cook. Something in Cook rose up in resistance, but he dutifully took it and ate it.

“Well?” said Bruce.

Cook chewed and looked at the sweat glistening on Bruce’s forehead.

“Well?”

“Let him taste it, honey,” said Doris.

“How long does it take to taste a shrimp?” Bruce said to her, his eyes still on Cook. “Well? Frozen?”

Cook swallowed. “I have no idea,” he said.

“If you had to say, what would it be?”

“I couldn’t.”

“If you had to.”

Cook laughed. “I do have to, what with the way you’re going on, and I still can’t.”

“If your life depended on it.”

Cook glanced at Doris.

“He’s always like this,” she said.

“I’m holding a shotgun to your head,” Bruce said. “If you refuse to answer, I shoot. Now, frozen or not?”

“Coming through!” Dan called out as he backed into the screen door from inside. He sounded almost like a happy host. His hands were occupied with a platter, on which lay sprawled a huge raw fish. “Coming through!” Since no one was in his way, and since he easily managed the door by himself, his cries hung in the air, unanswered. He threw a grin out that didn’t seem to land on anyone and went down the stairs to the patio.

Cook wanted two things: to avoid being shot by Bruce’s shotgun, and to get a closer look at Beth’s parents in action—presumably the point of Missy Pillow. Thus far he had gotten the merest impression of them. Beth’s father had a remote air, but Cook couldn’t tell if this came from arrogance, shyness, the general distractedness of age, or specific confusion about who Cook was. As for Beth’s mother, Cook associated her with Dan’s phone antics, and on meeting her he had found it hard to look her square in the face. His only feeling about her, based on a few sentences of hers that had drifted his way, was that she was absolutely conventional.

Cook felt it would have been rude to leave Bruce and Doris and go directly to the table to be with Beth’s parents. He hit on a plan. He would excuse himself, ostensibly to help Dan at the grill, and once he had checked in with Dan, he would ease over to the table where Beth sat with her parents. This felt like the typical sort of foolish maneuvering he engaged in at parties to avoid bores—or that he feared others engaged in to avoid him. He excused himself and trotted down the stairs. Behind him, a pretend shotgun went off, and he heard Doris say, “Oh stop it.”

At the patio grill, Dan was staring at the glowing stack of coals. He took no notice of Cook. “Okay,” he said unconvincingly. He set the platter on the rock wall, picked up a small dead branch from the ground, and spread the coals out with it. He stared at the result. “Okay,” he said.

“Nothing but the best tools, eh, Dan?” said Bruce, suddenly appearing from behind Cook.

Dan frowned. Then he looked at the branch, with its smoldering tip. Cook had the impression that Dan wanted to poke Bruce in the eye with it. But he just dropped it and put the grill over the coals. He picked up the fish platter and eased the fish onto the grill. He looked at the fish. “Okay,” he said.

Bruce said, “Don’t you have hamburgers or something for the kids?”

“Oh, shit,” said Dan, and he turned and hurried to the stairs and into the house. As he went in, Robbie came out with Bruce’s two children—a noisy boy somewhat older than Robbie and a docile-looking girl a little younger. They headed for the Ping-Pong table. Beth’s father swung his chair around, away from the glass table, to watch the children. He called out to them, but they didn’t seem to hear him. Doris was now at the table with the adults, uninvolved in their conversation. Her glance fell on Cook, and they looked at each other for a moment.

Bruce chuckled. “Old Danny boy,” he said, shaking his head. He eased the fish over to one side of the grill, where there were no coals underneath. “His heart’s just not in it. He hates having the family over—always has. So look what he does. He forgets the burgers and puts the fish on first. Your heart’s got to be in a thing or you might as well not do it.” He looked at Cook. “Am I right?”

Cook was reluctant to agree with anything coming from Bruce, but he said, “Yes. You’re right.”

“Get into it or get out of it. That’s my philosophy. Take the business. I knew it was there if I wanted it. But did I want it? A son inherits a family business, everyone says big deal, he sat on his ass and it fell in his lap. You have to fight that all your life. Did I want people saying big deal, it fell in his lap?” He grinned. “Hell, yes. Because I loved it. I loved the print shop. I’ve loved it since I was a kid. And over the years, it’s become mine. It’s become mine as much as if I’d built it out of an empty lot. That’s because I was into it. That’s what it takes.”

“Who owns it, exactly?”

Bruce took a moment to answer. He seemed a little disappointed that Cook hadn’t responded directly to his self-lionization. “Dad, Beth, and me. He’s handing it over to us, year by year. He’s no kid.” Bruce looked up at the deck. A quarrel over the rules had broken out among the children. Beth’s father shouted something to them, and they quieted down and resumed playing.

“Dad’s an amazing guy,” Bruce said. “Great business instincts. It’s tough for him to let go of it. Just think about it.” Bruce looked at Cook. “Your own kid taking over everything you’ve created, and in a year it could be right in the toilet. It must be awful. I’d hate it if I was him.”

“He’s probably proud,” Cook said. “If the business is going well …”

“Sure it is. But you never know.”

“But if it’s going well, he’s probably proud.”

“But you never know what’ll happen! It’s terrifying!”

The screen door banged. They watched Dan come out with a platter of hamburger patties. Bruce frowned in annoyance. “What in the hell is he doing now?”

Dan had set the platter on the broad railing and had gone to the Ping-Pong table, where Robbie was shouting at his older cousin. Dan said that if there was any more arguing he would put the equipment away.

“That’s what I said,” Dan’s father-in-law called out.

Dan began to explain the rules to the children, slowly and carefully, demonstrating each one with the ball. Bruce laughed softly as he watched. He was no longer impatient for the hamburgers and even seemed amused by Dan’s detailed instructions.

“What about Dan’s role in the business?” Cook asked.

Bruce’s face became expressionless, save for a quizzical smile at one corner of his mouth. “Why do you ask?”

Cook shrugged. “Just curious.”

Bruce looked up to the deck. “Danny boy’s a loser. I’ll tell you why. He’s a vacuum cleaner of information. When he came into the business, he learned everything I knew in less than six months. He drives me nuts. There I was, been in the business since I was a kid, and Danny boy comes along and sucks it all up in six months. And I wasn’t the one who taught him all he knows—I can’t even get the satisfaction of saying that. He just watched and asked everybody a million questions. They all loved it—the pressmen, the salespeople, all of them. They loved it and spilled their guts. Dad, too. Dan would spend whole evenings with him, pumping him and pumping him.”

“All of that makes him a loser?”

“It makes him a loser if he’s gonna throw it all away. He’s a natural, and he’s gonna give it all up.”

“What do you mean?”

“He’s quitting the business. He wants to teach! Grammar school! How’s that for taking a cut in salary?”

Cook was so surprised he felt panicked. He felt he must have missed key signs. “Are you sure?”

Bruce nodded. “I get the pleasure of being the only one who knows. He’s been working up the guts to tell Beth. And Dad. I’ve known about it officially for about a month, but I saw it coming down the pike a long time ago.” He looked at Cook. “You obviously didn’t know. And I’ve gone and told you. That’s just too bad, isn’t it? The whole thing has me pissed off.”

Cook looked to the deck. Dan was still demonstrating the rules, holding on to the ball and thereby holding the children’s attention. Cook said, “If he’s unhappy there, he’s got a right to quit.”

Bruce shook his head. “It’s a dumb move. He’s a loser.”

“Is that why you’re so anxious about the business? Because he’s leaving?”

“Hell no,” Bruce said sharply. He began to fuss with the grill.

Dan’s voice came to them from the deck as he called a parting word to the children: “It’s supposed to be fun, okay?” He picked up the platter of hamburgers and walked down the stairs to the patio.

Cook waited uneasily, feeling pummeled by questions. When did Dan plan to quit? How would Beth take his decision? Why hadn’t he told her? Cook distractedly watched Bruce’s son miss the Ping-Pong ball and run after it. He watched him lift his foot up and deliberately crush it, then pick it up and show it to Robbie with a grin.

Robbie burst into tears. Dan heard or sensed something was wrong, and turned around in time to see Robbie throw down his paddle and run into the house. Beth stood up from the table and went after him. Dan gave Bruce the hamburgers and went back up the stairs and followed Beth into the house.

Bruce saw the crushed ball, but evidently he hadn’t seen the precipitating event. As he put the hamburgers on he said, “What’s the big deal? Don’t they have another ball? Why would a kid bust out crying like that?”

Cook excused himself—yet again—from Bruce and headed for the house. When he reached the deck, he heard Beth’s mother asking her husband what was going on. Doris was at the far end of the deck with her son, asking him the same question. Beth’s mother looked at Cook and called out cheerfully, “Lots of excitement!” Cook frowned and went into the house.

He went through the kitchen and paused at the bottom of the stairs. In the upstairs den, Robbie was throwing a fit. Cook had never heard anything like it. Robbie was banging doors, stomping his feet, and screaming in unearthly wails. After one huge bang, Cook heard Dan yell loudly at Robbie to stop it, just stop it, and then Beth yelled, though whether at Dan or Robbie he couldn’t tell. Then the only sound was Robbie crying softly, and Dan and Beth asking him what was the matter, what had happened.

Cook backed away through the swinging door into the kitchen. Listening to this crisis, he felt like more of an intruder than he had felt in all the time he’d been at the house.

Doris came into the kitchen. She looked sad on top of looking tired. “How is he?” she said.

“They’re up there with him. I don’t know.”

“My son’s the world’s worst loser. It really upsets me.”

Cook couldn’t think of anything to say to that. He was glad, though, that she had some sense of what had happened.

Doris sighed. “Beth was about to set the table in the dining room. She wants to eat in there instead of outside, because it’s getting so hot.”

“I’ll help,” said Cook.

They began to carry the dishes and utensils Beth had set out from the kitchen into the dining room. With each trip Cook glanced through the sun-room windows. Bruce had taken over the chefly duties at the grill. His two children had tracked down another Ping-Pong ball and were playing at the table with it. Beth’s parents sat and watched them. Beth’s father seemed content, but Beth’s mother kept looking impatiently toward the door, as if wondering where everyone was and when they would come back to her. Cook felt a remembered feeling, and he successfully tracked it down to his first night with Beth and Dan, when he had felt guilty for abandoning Beth to go with Dan and Robbie to the library. Now he kept peeking through the windows, masochistically reawakening that guilty feeling with every glimpse of Beth’s mother’s sour face.

Meanwhile, Doris was playing Meet the Linguist again, but more nicely than her husband played it. She told Cook that she had wanted to major in French in college, but for some reason she hadn’t, and Cook didn’t quite catch what she did major in. Nor, in his general preoccupation, did he catch what she did for a living, and it was too late to start from scratch and ask her. His end of the conversation rather limped as a result.

Beth came into the kitchen and Doris apologized for her son’s behavior. Beth said that Robbie had been keeping some things pent up—that he was apparently more upset about the cancellation of Camp Swallow than she or Dan appreciated, and it had come out all at once. She looked at the dining room table and said, “Hey. Great. Thanks.” She looked relieved and pleased, but deeply miserable too, all at the same time. She sighed and went out to gather everyone for lunch.

When they came in, Cook waited until Beth’s parents were seated and then pulled out a chair for himself between them. As he sat down, Beth’s mother threw a glance at the window air conditioner—a noisy thing that was blasting them with cool air. She wondered aloud when Dan and Beth were going to get central air. She said it in a personally peeved, entitled way that made Cook want to dump his water glass on her head. He looked around for a reaction from Beth’s father and Doris, the only others in the room at the moment, but they ignored her. Beth came in from the kitchen with a salad, and Bruce entered bearing the platter of grilled fish and hamburgers. Dan came downstairs, threw Cook an obscure wink, and sat at the far end of the table, opposite his father-in-law. Dan said that Robbie was going to stay upstairs for a while and watch TV, until he felt better. Doris and Bruce’s children would eat at the table in the sun-room.

When they were all seated, the conversation opened with a reference to someone’s wedding, and for the next half hour the talk never once emerged from the restricted code of local items and family news. Whenever a topic came up that struck Cook as somewhat broader—first a political issue in the city, then a public relations problem a local corporation was having—a personal connection came out: Bruce or his father or mother knew the people in question. Initially, some attempt was made to include Cook in the conversation. Strange names would be explained, characters introduced as they were brought onstage. But after a while, this courtesy was dropped, and the family went about its business in its customary way.

Beth’s mother pretty much ran the show. She had a narrow, ruthless conception of what constituted conversation. For one thing, it couldn’t dwell for too long on a single topic—that was a sign of failure for her. Her impatience would become palpable, her agitation contagious. If she didn’t get a topic shift by innuendo, she would call for it, saying, “Let’s talk about something else.” In every instance she had her way, though Cook sensed that she went against the general will at least a few times. She also had rigid upper and lower limits on a scale of impersonality. If talk about something became too cold—as it did when Bruce wondered aloud about the point where tax abatement brought diminishing returns—she would shudder and raise her hands in protest. But if talk became too personal—too earthy, too dirty—she didn’t like that either. Cook watched, fascinated, as one topic after another came into being, lived a brief, cruelly circumscribed life, and then got buried without ceremony.

Through all this Beth’s father said little. He listened, his eyes twinkling, and he spoke some, but his speech was slow compared to his wife’s, and she tended to finish things for him. Dan spoke just enough, like a student who didn’t want his grade brought down for not participating in class. By this measure Doris flunked. She tuned out in the early going and was the first to finish eating and begin clearing the table.

When Doris did this, Dan said he was going to make some ice cream with the children. Bruce said he would help. Cook and Beth’s father, as special guest and patriarch respectively, were ordered to stay seated while the women cleared the table and took orders for tea and coffee.

Cook asked Beth’s father about the business. It was as if he had flipped a switch on a printer, and it was off on a run of a hundred thousand copies. Cook just listened for a while. Then he gently steered the topic toward Bruce’s and Dan’s responsibilities. Two things were immediately clear: Beth’s father indeed knew nothing about Dan’s plans to quit the business, and Dan was crucial to its operation. He explained Dan’s and Bruce’s roles in terms of a “Mr. Inside” and a “Mr. Outside.” At first Cook felt patronized—he wondered if Beth’s father was going to produce little Play-Doh figures and have them act out their roles on the table—but then he realized these were standard terms in the industry.

“Mr. Outside is the guy who handles sales,” Beth’s father said, clearing his throat, which tended to be gravelly. “He’s the guy who deals with suppliers, who stays in touch with manufacturers, all that. Mr. Inside is in charge of operations, scheduling, and personnel. It takes two people in a shop the size of ours. It’s too much for one man. I know. I did it alone for forty years.”

“Which is which?” Cook asked.

“Dan’s Mr. Inside. Bruce is Mr. Outside. They’ve worked it out beautifully. Beautifully. They make it easy for each other.” His eyes twinkled under his thick eyebrows. “It wasn’t always so easy, let me tell you.”

“Is one of those jobs more important than the other?”

“There was a time when it all happened right up here.” He tapped his forehead. “I was Mr. Inside and Mr. Outside.”

“And Mr. Inside-Out,” Cook offered.

All he got for his contribution was a frown from Beth’s father. “It’s gotten too complicated for one man. Too complicated.” His voice was extra gravelly now. He cleared it, but with no effect. “Hell, it was too complicated for one man when I was doing it.” He grinned and shook his head, apparently in amazement at the foolish energy of his younger self. “They’re smart, those boys. They know how to make it go without killing themselves.”

Cook nodded. “Did you know things would work out this well when Dan decided to—”

“Bah!” Beth’s father laughed. “The first day Dan came to work, he says to me, ‘Do you ever have to have ideas in this business?’ What do you think of that? ‘Do you ever have to have ideas?’ Christ Almighty. I wanted to throw him out into the street. But he settled down. He learned the ropes. New blood—it pays off. If it doesn’t drive you crazy.” He laughed again. “Take estimating. I’ve been a seat-of-the-pants estimator all my life. A customer wanted a job, I’d whip off an estimate just like that.” He shook his head. “It’s no way to run a business. You can lose customers by being too high, or you can lose money coming in too low, or you can flat confuse ’em by being all over the place with your figures. Dan’s got a computer program that does estimating, down to the penny. Took him no time at all to tailor it to our shop. He plugs in the numbers and out it comes, almost as fast as seat-of-the-pants.”

“And that’s something you wouldn’t have done on your own?”

“Me? Bah! Never. Say ‘software’ to me and I want to punch you in the face.”

“Are you threatening the poor man, dear?” Beth’s mother had appeared with a tray of cups and saucers. She set it down and began to distribute them around the table.

Beth’s father seemed to lose his momentum with this interruption, so Cook said to her, “We’re talking about the business. About Dan and Bruce as partners.”

“Ah. They’re a perfect pair,” she said brightly. “I’ve said so from the beginning. Poor Bruce is a worrier. He wakes up every morning expecting a disaster to happen. But Dan …” She screwed her face up. “As far as I can tell, Dan wakes up grinning. He always expects the best.”

“It’s a good system,” Beth’s father said. “Checks and balances—that’s what you want. A business needs an optimist and a pessimist. It’s tough for one guy to be both. Me? I had to be both. It’s tough for one guy to do that.…”

With the recapitulation of this theme, Cook had a sudden feeling that he had known the family for years, that he was indeed an old college friend of Dan’s and had heard the same stories, heard people presenting themselves in the same light, over and over.

They continued to talk—Beth’s father now giving the history of the printers the firm had purchased over the years—as the others drifted in and out of the dining room. Doris came in, sat down, and half listened for a while before she left. Bruce passed through the dining room into the living room, where he sat down and thumbed through a National Geographic. The coffee was still brewing and the ice cream wasn’t ready yet. There was a certain drift to the proceedings.

Beth’s father said, “Of course, with Dan in the picture now, the question of succession is a whole lot simpler.”

“It is?” said Cook.

“Sure it is. And succession is tricky stuff, tricky as hell. The original plan was for Beth and Bruce to get equal shares. But if you think about it, you see the problem. Bruce is in it, running it. If it took off, shouldn’t he get the benefit? Or if it went the other way, if he ran it into the ground, shouldn’t he be the one to eat it? Beth shouldn’t be penalized for that, should she? See the problem?”

“Yes. I see it.”

“The solution was to have the business appraised the moment I officially retired, to have a fixed value assigned to it. Bruce could buy Beth out for half that assessed value—no more, no less. If the business took off, good for Bruce, he’d get the benefit of it. But if he ran it into the ground, he’d have to eat it. Her half would be solid, but he’d have to eat it. You follow? You with me?”

“Sure.” Cook glanced at Bruce, who was still in the living room. He had tossed his magazine back onto the pile and it had slid off onto the floor. He picked it up and put it on the coffee table, then left the room by the other door, into the entryway.

“But now, with Dan in the picture, we’ve scrapped all that. I didn’t even have the business appraised—a pain in the ass anyway. Dan and Bruce are in it together, fifty-fifty. Whatever comes down the pike, they share it, fifty-fifty. I’ve had new papers drawn up, if I can just get that son-in-law of mine to come over and sign them.”

“So Dan’s share is half of the business? But what if something happens? What if, let’s say, Dan and Beth got a divorce?”

“Nice talk,” said Beth, coming into the room with a tray of small bowls filled with ice cream. A stick of peppermint stood up in each one.

Beth’s father said to her, “When can I get that husband of yours to sign these papers?”

Beth shrugged. “Anytime.” She distributed the bowls around the table and sat down.

“I’m anxious to do it. It’s my way of saying something important to him.”

Beth’s mother, returning to her chair, said, “Ah. The succession.” She gave the word a dramatic pronunciation and rolled her eyes to the ceiling. She looked at Cook to make sure of his attention, and she seemed pleased to have it. “Talking about it makes us feel like such royalty.”

Cook smiled minimally. He wondered where Dan was. Bruce and Doris were in the sun-room, talking in low, tense voices. He wondered if something was up with the kids again. Finally, Bruce and Doris joined the others at the table.

“Everything is wonderful,” Beth’s father growled, looking at his ice cream, addressing no one in particular. Dan came in and sat down.

Bruce took a deep breath. He scooted his chair back and stood up. “I can’t eat this.” He too was looking at his ice cream. “I’ve got to get back to the shop. I can’t eat this,” he said again, “or I might eat it, and I don’t want to eat it.” He looked toward his father, but his eyes seemed to glance off him into midair. Without saying goodbye to anybody, he left the room and went out the front door.

Doris patted her lips with her napkin and went after him. She caught him out on the front porch, where they talked—Cook heard their voices, but indistinctly. He kept waiting for someone at the table to say something. Finally, Beth’s mother did.

“Lots of excitement,” she said.