“At least give it a good night’s sleep,” Lisa says. “In the morning, if you still want to leave, you can leave.” She’s watching Richard, talking to Diane. Richard watches Michael. Michael watches his lap.
Jake reaches for a pretzel, seems to change his mind, and gives the ceramic pretzel bowl a spin. The bowl’s one of Diane’s. She’s good with pots, less good with paints. She’s no Jake, of course, another thing everyone knows and no one says.
Sword in head, the king of hearts watches Richard from his hand. The hand is weak. Too few face cards to take tricks, too many trumps to go nil. Unless Jake’s cradling some monster spades, they’ll be off to a slow start.
“I could use a drink,” Richard says, leaving his seat.
“Me too,” Michael says.
His son can drink. More than he should. More than the others seem to notice. Richard only sees his son a week at Christmas and a week each summer, so maybe it’s a vacation thing. He hopes Diane would tell them if Michael had a problem. Unless Diane knows something and is afraid to say, the way Richard suspects and is afraid to ask.
He pulls the last of the summer mason jars from the freezer and two tumblers from the cabinet above the sink. He pours two fingers into each. The moonshine is called Apple Pie, and he’s never met the locals who distill it. Instead, he calls a number, leaves a message, drives his car to the county dump, then takes a twenty-minute walk. When he returns, the money under his front seat is gone, the moonshine in the trunk. His Cornell friends would find this procedure troubling, dangerous, but it’s been done this way for decades. It’s a North Carolina thing, and Richard gets it. These are his people. He was born a Southerner, and he’ll die a Southerner. No PhD or professorship can change this fact.
He sets a tumbler before his son and sits.
“Go slow with that,” he says, and Michael nods, then gulps. Moonshine, plus wine with dinner, plus painkillers can’t be safe, but Richard bites his tongue.
The rain is slowing.
“It’s a brave thing you tried,” he said, driving Michael and Diane home from the hospital. Did, he should have said. Did, not tried. He wanted to say more, though anyone who’s watched someone die knows just how cold cold comfort in the face of death can be.
At the table, he examines his cards, though he memorized them the second he saw them. This round, it’s him and Jake against Thad and Diane. Diane’s good. She carries Thad and Lisa. Every third turn, when Thad and Lisa are paired, that’s when Richard makes his move.
Diane bids. Richard sips his drink, and he’s pummeled in the face by bright, unfiltered joy. The moonshine, which he’s been drinking all summer, doesn’t mess around. His tongue fills his mouth. His spine is light.
Jake bids low, which means his hand is garbage. Thad bids high, so he has all the cards. Richard bids, throws down his club, and Michael leaves his seat. At the kitchen counter, Michael takes a shot, then returns to the table, tumbler refilled. In all his life, Richard’s never had three moonshines in one night.
He looks from one son to the other. “Michael got the skinny genes, and Thad got the skinny jeans,” Jake once joked. Both boys look like Richard—high cheekbones, sunken eyes, hawk’s nose—but Michael’s height and slenderness make him more his father’s son.
When the boys were growing up, Lisa sometimes invoked a thought experiment she called Smart, Happy, Good. Lisa believes people can be all three. Richard feels the best most can hope for is two. He’s smart. (Modesty’s dishonest—worse, a waste of time.) He’s happy off and on. But rarely is he good. Not that he’s bad Good, the way Lisa puts it, means giving, serving others with a sacrificial love. That’s the game: Is your life a quest for knowledge, happiness, or good works? They need not be mutually exclusive, except that they so often are. He’s known colleagues who were giddy in their meanness, had friends who were kindhearted idiots. Seven combinations, then. Seven kinds of people in the world, eight counting those with no virtue at all. Far more permutations taking rank into account, though Richard’s never taken it that far.
Thad is smart. He’s good. It’s happiness that eludes him. Michael is smart, though he has a knack for making poor choices, saying stupid things. Lisa, well, Lisa might just be all three.
Thad plays the ace of hearts, which Jake takes with a trump. Richard will have to watch Jake’s discards for hearts. Occasionally Jake cheats, which destroys the integrity of the game, which Richard can’t abide. No fun winning if the winning isn’t real.
“What I want to know,” Michael says, “what I want to know is what the fuck those parents were thinking.” His voice is liquor and painkillers. He downs his third glass and sets the tumbler on the tabletop too hard.
“Michael,” Lisa says. Her voice is firm, but there’s fear there too. Don’t, she seems to say. Don’t mess this up. As if the week isn’t already wrecked.
“Those people,” Michael says.
“Glenn and Wendy,” Richard says. He lays his cards on the table, facedown.
“Who?” Michael asks.
“The people you’re about to slander,” Richard says. “They have names, and their names are Wendy and Glenn.”
“Wendy and Glenn,” Michael says. “I’ve got a few choice fucking words for Wendy and Glenn.”
“Language!” Lisa says.
His wife is not a stickler. She is a person of faith, but she’s the crunchy, progressive, God-is-love kind, not the turn-or-burn, no-bad-words kind. The lake house, though, is sacred. She’s ecclesiastical in this, if nothing else. A time to curse, a time to refrain. A place for anger, a place for peace. For her, this house has always been a place for peace.
For Richard, peace is illusory. There’s beauty in the world, sure, but look closer. The world wants you dead and will not rest until it gets its way.
Jake plays the queen of diamonds, a wasted play. Thad plays the two of diamonds. Richard discards a club, and Diane takes the trick.
“I mean, who brings a kid who can’t swim on a boat?” Michael says.
“Darling,” Diane says, but Michael slaps the table. The pretzels tremble. The rain has stopped.
“Those people are everything that’s wrong with America,” Michael says, voice loose with moonshine. “Rude and white and upper middle class.”
“Michael,” Lisa says, “we’re white and upper middle class.”
“You’re upper middle class.” Michael shakes his head. “Those people should be in jail.”
Lisa stands. She sits. She so rarely grows angry, Richard had forgotten what it looks like when she does. But Lisa’s angry now.
“Some things are no one’s fault,” she says. “They just happen. They happen, and they’re no one’s fault.”
She watches the ceiling. She is a mother. She had three children. Now she has two.
“Please,” she says. “Leave those poor people alone.”
All eyes on Michael. What happens next depends on him. Around this table, they’ve had some mighty blowouts, thanks mostly to things Michael has said. Just two years ago, he made his mother cry. “No son of mine is voting for Donald Trump,” Lisa said, storming from the room. This evening, though, she’s going for diplomacy.