“Your generation has become so marinated in self-loathing. They talk about the phones and the internet as great afflictions. These are not afflictions. The utterly pointless whining about collective guilt—this is the affliction. Let me ask you something. Have you ever enslaved another human being?”
I sighed. “Directly? No, of course not.”
“Bashed a little puppy’s head in?”
“Not that I can recall.”
“Called someone…” He made quote marks with his fingers. “The N-word?”
I looked, involuntarily, at the driver, who was Black.
“No. Please.”
“I’m happy to hear it. Great job! Now as a person”—again with the quote marks—“of color, I wave my magic wand and absolve you of all crimes real and imaginary. You may go, secure in the knowledge that the best thing that can be done for so-called minorities is to stop trying to help them because they are minorities. People can rise on their own. If it isn’t on their own it doesn’t last and it doesn’t count.”
“Like you,” I said. “On your own.”
“Entirely. Albeit with the great assistance of Plato, Sophocles, Mark Twain, Homer, Shakespeare, Donne.”
I could almost hear the happy chorale that seemed to accompany Eli Absalom Stone wherever he referenced his story, though these days he did so less and less, mainly because he needed to less and less. The advent of Eli Absalom Stone, orphaned Black boy from the Appalachian mountain shack, bound for Harvard, Oxford, and the kind of cultural influence usually attached to people of entirely different antecedents, had saturated the populace.
We let him off at his apartment building and he leaned back in to say something to Harrison about dinner that night, with Roger, at Per Se, and it was arranged that they would meet for a cab at seven. Then I was given another double kiss, in which I felt the sharp edge of Eli’s bow tie against first one cheek and then the other, and he exited the limo. I felt better when he was no longer there. I always felt better when he was no longer there.
“You haven’t seen Eli since when?” said Harrison, holding the door for me a moment later.
“I don’t know. Couple of years?”
“Before he spoke at the Republican Convention.”
Yes, I thought. Very much so. “He’s looking well.”
“He should. He’s had dinner at the White House twice this month.”
This struck me as a dubious claim to health.
“And you, Harrison?”
“Once. In early August, before he left for vacation.”
“Steak and apple pie, with an extra scoop of vanilla ice cream for the commander in chief?”
“You needn’t be snide, Phoebe. Not everyone can win a presidential election.”
I said nothing. It would be such a waste to lose my cool now.
Harrison’s apartment actually comprised two apartments, purchased simultaneously and knocked together. It had also been “gut” renovated, then decorated with remorseless modern furniture. While this was not the tragedy it might have been to our sister Sally, it struck me as regrettable. The place did have a truly impressive view of the East River. Then again, I had never felt the East River to be all that attractive.
“What can I get you?” said Harrison. “I’m having a juice my doctor sends over. It’s repulsive, but supposedly good for me. I’d offer you one, but I need them all, apparently. It’s very strict.”
I asked for tea. He didn’t have real tea, just chamomile.
“Can you see our house from here?” I asked him. I was standing at one of the windows when he brought me the mug.
“I never looked. Maybe. You could fall out trying, though. It doesn’t seem worth it.”
“I study in your room, you know. I sleep in Sally’s, but I study in yours. I love looking out on the harbor.”
“Mm-hm,” he nodded. He had brought himself a glass bottle of bright green juice, and had set his phone on the coffee table. It was abuzz with social media mentions, from his Fox panel. Harrison was trying not to look at it. “Well, why not? You have the whole house to yourself. Almost the whole house.”
“If you’re referring to Lewyn, he never comes upstairs. He’s pretty much only in his apartment.”
“By which you mean: in the basement.”
“Yes, in the basement.”
“Classic,” Harrison said, drinking his juice. He had taken off his jacket in the kitchen and loosened his crimson tie (worn, I supposed, in support of his alma mater, currently under assault by all those rejected “complainants”).
“You know, Harrison, it’s a completely separate apartment. He could live anywhere. He chose to live there.”
“If he could live anywhere, why would he choose to live there? He’s afraid to leave home, obviously. It is truly pathetic.”
“Actually, I’ve always assumed that he didn’t want to leave me.”
I heard myself say this, and it came as something of a surprise: another thing I hadn’t quite put together. Like so many things these days.
“Don’t be silly. You don’t need looking after. You have a mother. You have an excellent mother.”
I shook my head. “I have a once-excellent mother who is not all that interested in being a mother right now. Which is completely understandable given that she has been raising children for thirty-four years. I’m not sure how into it I’d be, on the second go-round.”
“She is devoted to all of us. Equally.”
“Oh, Harrison,” I laughed. “Don’t even.”
“You’re mistaken,” he insisted, but he was good enough to leave it there. For a moment neither of us spoke. And then he asked me what it was I wanted to talk about.
“Stella Western, mainly,” I said, without further preamble.
He crossed his arms. “Aha,” he said.
“This is a name you are familiar with.”
“Very familiar, yes. Stella Western is someone who has caused us all a good deal of grief.”
I smiled. “Well, not me. She’s caused me no grief at all, that I know of. Exactly what grief has she caused you?”
I watched him. He was regarding his juice bottle with outright hostility, as if it, too, had offended him. His jaw was set and his eyes were nearly closed. He was looking just a little bit … old, I realized. Or was it only the hairline, beginning to alter? And the lines running across his forehead, deep now as he glared, a spattering of makeup still along his forehead, which was just like the forehead of our father, in photographs. I could see him working through the options: truth and consequences versus pride and consequences.
“Phoebe,” he said, turning to me, and this time, for the first time, without any of his prior condescension. “It’s very difficult to know when to share information like this. It might change the way you feel about things. I’m not cavalier about it. I care about you. You are my little sister.”
“No,” I said. “I’m not, really. You should try thinking of me as your own age. I mean, exactly your own age. Like, down to the minute. See if that changes things.”
He frowned at me. “All right,” he said, after a minute. “I wasn’t aware you knew about that.”
“Well, now you are. So can we move this along? What grief has Stella Western caused our family?”
Harrison sighed. “There were some legal issues. Mom needed help. She confided in me. This was … well, a long time ago. Just after Dad passed away.”
I had never had much love for this term, at least under the relevant circumstances. There was not one thing in the violent, deliberate, murderous collision of Salo Oppenheimer and his fellow passengers and their airplane with the South Tower of the World Trade Center that earned the ethereal, dreamy “pass away.” But I let it go.
“What kind of legal troubles?”
Harrison shrugged. “Just … nothing to concern yourself with.”
“Jesus, Harrison. I know they were involved. Stella Western and Dad.”
Now he was staring at me. For a moment he was truly speechless. “And you learned about all of this how?” he finally said.
“Do you mean, which of our naughty siblings decided to enlighten the baby?”
“Actually, that is not what I mean. As far as I’m aware, I’m the only one of the siblings who knows anything about this.”
I laughed at him. I had to. And besides, it felt ridiculously good.
“Who?” Harrison demanded. “Not Lewyn.”
I shrugged.