would this nonsense with Scott and the wrestlers have even happened?
Or maybe it was foolish to think like that – one episode couldn’t have altered Scott’s entire trajectory. Scott was who he was before Charles said what he said. The past was the past. The best thing Charles could do was put it out of his mind.
By the time the meeting ended, the editorial team had decided the story lineup for the Back to the Land promotional magazine. There would be a short piece about the land the organization had annexed in central Pennsylvania for the community, a valley rife with deer and rabbits for shooting, streams for drinking, and hearty trees for log cabins. Charles had no idea how a plot of land in the middle of Pennsylvania could be desolate and remote enough to trick people into thinking they were truly alone. Sure, parts of the state were quieter than others, but evidence of modern civilization was everywhere. It was in a McDonald’s wrapper that blew northward from the turnpike. It was in the smell of a factory, the roar of a truck, the itchy tag on the back of a t-shirt. Or would the people of Back to the Land make their own t-shirts? And would they mix up their own medication, resort to Native American-style poultices and inhalants?
And yet, people thrived living this way, even chronically sick people with cancer and diabetes and autoimmune diseases. That was another story for the lineup – an interview with a doctor who had treated several people before they moved to Back to the Land, and then tested them again once they’d been living there for a year. Their improvements were amazing – allegedly, the lifestyle’s simplicity and lack of commercial pollutants had remarkable healing powers. But it had to be a placebo effect, Charles thought. They got better because they wanted to get better.
After the meeting, Charles went outside to get some air. He took the elevator eleven flights down and walked through the marble lobby and exited onto Market Street. There was a traffic jam outside the building, the cars wedged at odd angles, honking. Suburban Station loomed across the avenue, a phalanx of hot dog and pretzel carts on the sidewalk. Two cleaning women in pink smocks and white athletic shoes paused at the corner, talking animatedly with their hands.
The meeting had been especially difficult to sit through, and not just because the concept was ridiculous. His mind couldn’t stay focused on work. He kept returning to what was happening, what might be happening, what his brother might have done. Pressure was everywhere. Hazing was everywhere. It was so easy to turn frustration into misguided rage. Charles also knew Scott wouldn’t just roll over and play dead. It was unclear whether Scott even understood the magnitude of the situation – that, with a few bad decisions, so much could be ruined. Reputation meant nothing to Scott. Neither did history nor tradition or, well, family. Charles recalled how, long ago, he’d been ordered to look after Scott at one of his parents’ Fourth of July parties. Scott, then about six, grabbed a pack of matches teetering on the side of the grill and struck one. He waved it near the old trellises, threatening to set them on fire. ‘You can’t do that to the house,’ Charles hissed, appalled. It was the equivalent of harming an old relative.
Scott struck the match anyway, a cruel smile on his face. The trellises’ rotted, brittle timber was just waiting for an excuse to burn. Their father blamed Charles for not watching his brother more carefully, and Charles, frustrated and confused, said, ‘I tried to stop him, but he didn’t listen.’ And then, after a moment, ‘It’s because he’s adopted, right? Because he’s not one of us?’
His father flinched. Charles could still conjure up his dad’s red, looming face in his mind even today, at thirty-one years old. ‘Don’t you ever say that again,’ his father growled.
And, almost certainly because of the conversation he’d had with his mother last night, Charles’s old girlfriend Bronwyn was on his mind, too. Various vignettes of her had flashed through his mind all morning – Bronwyn on the living room couch, outlining the type of cummerbund Charles must wear with his tux so it would match her prom dress. Bronwyn standing on the patio next to the grill, trying to make small talk with Scott when his brother had unwittingly arrived home from somewhere when Charles was entertaining a group of friends. Bronwyn always tried to invite Scott into the conversation, so diplomatic and eager for everyone to get along. It’s not going to get you anywhere, Charles tried to tell her. He chooses to be an outcast.
And, of course, Charles envisioned Bronwyn in the mud room, standing behind Charles as he held Scott by the throat, all those hideous things spewing from his mouth. He would hear that gasp until the end of his days.
‘Charles?’
He raised his head now. ‘Charles?’ the voice said again. Caroline Silver was striding across the courtyard. She worked in the marketing department for Jefferson Hospital, and Charles edited their promotional magazine for donors. The magazine only came out biannually; Charles hadn’t seen her or needed to talk to her in a while.
He watched as Caroline crossed the square, trying to smile. ‘I’m here to see Jake,’ she explained, shaking his hand. ‘Just for a late lunch meeting. Goodness, it’s been a while, huh?’
‘It has,’ he answered.
And then she cocked her head, her expression shifting. Charles could tell she was reaching back to recall just how long it had been since she’d seen him, remembering what had happened between then and now. And then, as though Charles really did have an inside view of her head, Caroline shifted her weight and covered her eyes. ‘Oh Charles. Your father. Oh my goodness. I’m so, so sorry.’
‘It’s all right,’ Charles said automatically.
‘We read about it in the paper. So awful.’
‘Yeah.’
‘I meant to call. I didn’t know what was appropriate though.’
‘It’s fine.’ He smiled at her. ‘Thank you.’
‘What a shame.’ She clucked her tongue. ‘He wasn’t even very old, was he?’
He shook his head. ‘Healthy every day of his life before it happened.’
‘You must really miss him.’
The vendor on the corner slammed the metal lid that housed the hot dogs unnecessarily hard. Charles stared across the street at a budding dogwood tree. Further down that block was the Italian restaurant his father sometimes visited for lunch. Once, when Charles had walked down this block to a lunch place on Walnut, he’d glanced into the Italian restaurant’s front window and saw his father alone at the bar, his tie flung over his shoulder, a glass of amber liquid in his hand. There was a ball game on TV, and the waiter was leaning on the bar, watching. Charles’s dad had looked so comfortably alone, a posture Charles had never mastered himself. Charles had panicked, crossing furtively to the other side of the street so his father wouldn’t see him. He had no idea what his dad would have done if he’d noticed Charles walking by – ignore him? Or grow furious that Charles was walking down his block, invading his space? His father certainly wouldn’t have invited him into the bar – despite his mother’s Pollyannaish suggestion the day before Charles’s interview, Charles and his father had never met for lunch. And anyway, what would they have talked about?
Caroline shifted onto her left hip, waiting for Charles’s answer. Did he miss his father? He didn’t really know. ‘I–I should be going,’ he said, turning blindly toward the street.
‘Of course,’ Caroline said, her voice dripping with foolhardy sympathy. Maybe she thought he was overcome with missing his father to properly respond. Charles still said nothing, staring at the shiny spots of mica in the sidewalk, the xylophone part of a Rolling Stones
