As we were studying the bar, Lindsay appeared at the dining-room door. She looked a bit confused.
“Look at this,” she said. Then she held out the stuffed animal—Peabody the penguin—that she had owned since her first birthday.
“Hey, it’s Peabody!” I said. “I thought you said you left him on the airplane.”
“I did,” Lindsay said. “But this is him. See? He has the tear on his collar and the chocolate stain on his chest. This is Peabody! He was waiting for me on the bed in my new room.”
Lindsay looked nervous.
NOT ONLY had I made Friday night’s dinner, I was also such a cool husband that I was even doing the cleanup. Megan and the kids were outside exploring the backyard.
The meal itself had been a huge success: boeuf bourguignonne (Julia Child’s secret recipe), Tuscan potato torta (Mario Batali’s recipe), Key lime pie (Jacob Brandeis’s recipe). Why Key lime pie? Whoever had stocked our kitchen included a graham cracker crust, sweetened condensed milk, eggs, and six perfect Key limes.
I was on my second Brillo pad when Megan returned to the kitchen.
“Jacob, c’mon outside,” she said.
“Soon as I finish.”
“No. Now. Right now.” Her voice was surprisingly serious.
“Sure, sweetie,” I said. But I wasn’t moving fast enough for Megan.
“Now! Please. You’ve got to see this.”
This time her voice was urgent. I didn’t bother rinsing my hands. I simply wiped off the pink Brillo suds with a dish towel.
“Look up there,” Megan said, and she pointed (or so I thought) to the bright starry sky above the garage-door basketball hoop.
“It’s a beautiful night,” I said.
Impatience filled Megan’s voice. “Show him, Alex.”
Alex skipped a few feet to the hoop. He squatted, then he jumped and hung from the rim with his left hand. As Alex dangled he pointed to a small instrument made of glass and gray metal—almost undetectable against the gray paint of the garage. Then Alex snapped it from its holder. He dropped to the ground and tossed it to me.
“It’s a camera,” I said. “A tiny camera, like a…spy camera.”
Megan, Lindsay, Alex, and I stared at it. We looked like a group who had just discovered a rare diamond. And I guess, in a way, we had.
I broke the silence.
“Son of a bitch!” I shouted. “In New York, they have street surveillance, but this shit is going too far. Cameras right in our own house.”
“Jacob, calm down,” Megan said.
“Megan! C’mon. People can expect reasonable goddamn privacy in their own houses, can’t they?”
“Maybe in Nebraska the laws are different,” Megan said.
“No,” I said. I was beginning to shake with anger. “You can’t ever do something like this in someone’s house.”
Then I exploded: “That’s illegal!”
I looked at the tiny camera in my hand, then flung it with all my strength toward the garage door. I heard the crack, the immediate shattering of the pieces.
I rushed into the house. When a man goes beyond mad, he becomes a madman.
Megan and the kids were right behind me.
I looked around the kitchen. I began studying the ceiling and the tops of cabinets. In the tiny space between the Sub-Zero fridge and the appliance garage, where the industrial-size mixer was stored, was another camera. I wedged my fingers into the tiny space and pulled it out.
“That’s illegal!” I yelled.
I found another camera in the window over the very sink where I’d been doing the dishes.
“That’s illegal!” I yelled.
In the front hallway was a camera over the coat closet, perfect for recording guests.
“That’s illegal!” I shouted.
Room to room. Lindsay was sobbing. Megan was as angry as I was.
Over the living-room fireplace.
“That’s illegal!”
Behind the corner cabinet in the dining room.
“That’s illegal!”
As I bounded up the stairs, Lindsay said, “They’re probably watching you bust up their camera stuff.”
“Let them. What the hell do I care? And you know why?” I yelled as I yanked a camera from the medicine cabinet in the kids’ bathroom.
“Because that’s illegal!”
From our bedroom to the attic. From the guest room to the basement playroom.
“Illegal! Illegal!”
We stood—a sweaty, crazed group of four—in the center of the playroom. The ghost of a video game made an occasional gargle on the TV screen. The silent furnace in the utility room cast a long shadow on the playroom floor. We surveyed the room. We were like the four-man crew of a ship that had survived a terrible storm.
“You think we got them all?” Megan asked.
The truthful answer would have been “No, I don’t,” but my wife and kids seemed scared enough.
I said, “Yeah, probably.”
We sat at the bottom of the basement staircase. We were covered with perspiration. I was gasping for breath. There were a good sixty seconds of silence.
“What now?” Lindsay asked.
“Now we wait,” I said. “It’s their move.”