Robert Tanenbaum - Enemy within

More hilarity, and it went on in this vein for the rest of the pizza, with Zak adding particularly gory edits from the side. When the narrative had descended into irretrievable silliness, Karp said, "I appreciate that you want to stick up for your brother, but I think from now on you should let Giancarlo fight his own battles."

"He can't fight," Zak said.

"I can, too," said the other disdainfully. "I just don't choose to."

"You have to fight sometimes," said Zak.

"Yeah, but not about brain-dead dumb stuff. Did you fight a lot when you were in school, Daddy?"

"Oh, I guess the usual amount. Some kid shoves you, so you shove back, and you're rolling around on the street. But I wasn't a menace to society like some people I know."

"He means you," said Giancarlo.

"I know, dummy!"

"Idiot!"

"Faggot!"

After a barely perceptible instant they both burst into laughter. Karp picked up the last slice and thought, there's too much Marlene in the mix there. He could almost see those sensible, solid, simple Karp genes fighting what had to be a losing battle. Of course his twins would turn out to be like no twins he had ever heard of, unique probably, like his sad and unique little girl. He sighed around the pepperoni and resigned himself yet again to love that passeth mere understanding.

"How're the boys?" asked the mother, when she ambled in at seventhirty. Father and daughter were on a disreputable red velvet couch, watching television.

"They're killing monsters in their room," said Karp, looking up. "I was going to put them down after this movie, but now Mommy can do it."

She ducked out and returned five minutes later, changed into faded jeans and a cotton sweater, holding a generous tumbler of red wine in her hand.

"Working late again, dear?" Karp asked sweetly. "Or is it him?"

"Oh, him! I'm glad you think I have any time for dalliance. Actually, it was a woman. What are you watching? Oh, the end of The Graduate." Marlene slid into a slot on the couch next to Karp. "Yes, indeed, the dear, dead sixties. Are you sure Lucy should be watching this?"

"She hates it," said Karp.

"Well, yeah," said the girl. "I can't believe people liked this garbage. It's practically a commercial for stalking. I mean the girl finds out he's having sex with her mother and tells him to get lost, and he keeps coming around, and then he breaks into the church and interrupts the ceremony, and what? She goes away with him? Give me a break!"

"It's romance, dear," said Marlene, although had she been entirely honest with herself, she would have agreed that the film made her feel a little creepy, too.

"Oh, right! Would you go out with him if he'd slept with your mother?"

"Well, actually, Dustin and Mom dated for a while, but I don't think they ever went all the way, so I really can't judge. How was school?"

"Mercifully brief. I ditched class after I played ball with Dad."

Marlene made a gesture of despair. "Oh, terrific. Fifteen grand a year!"

"I'll pay you back every penny."

Karp said, "That's not the point, as you well know. You're supposed to go to school. You're a kid. If you're having trouble, tell us and we'll try to fix it."

"Nothing's wrong. It's just boring."

"School is supposed to be boring," said Marlene. "That's why they call it school."

Karp gave his wife a sharp look. "Thank you, dear. That was helpful. Seriously, Luce…"

"Seriously? Seriously, I hate it. I hate the kids. I mean, like I have a lot in common with a bunch of girls who worry about their nails and what clubs they're going to bust into, and what kind of sex they're having with whom, and who eat ice cubes for lunch to stay thin. I have no friends. People go out of their way to dis me in the hall. The teachers hate me…"

"That's not true."

"It is. They want kiss-butts or girls who are terrifically rich and polite even if they're totally stupid."

"Oh, I think you're exaggerating, but nevertheless…"

Lucy let out a sharp breath and nodded. "Right. You're right. I'll try not to ditch too much anymore. But… you know, sometimes the whole thing… I just need a break."

Karp knew very well, actually. He patted Lucy's hand and said, "Okay. Sure."

Marlene asked, "So where were you all day? You look like you just got in."

"Out. Around. I served at Redeemer's for the dinner. And then I was with David the rest of the time."

"Oh, David again? When are we going to get a look at this guy?"

Lucy shrugged. "He's real busy."

"I'm sure. Meanwhile, I'm having some serious problems with you spending so much time with him, especially when you're supposed to be in school. I think you should cut down."

"Why? You'd be in heaven if I were dating all the time. Then it would be fine. You wouldn't care what I did if it was with some rich dork from Collegiate or St. X's."

"One, I would care, and that's insulting. And, two, the point is this guy is what, twenty-eight, twenty-nine?"

"He's not that old."

"Okay, but he's a grown man. And despite your talents, you're only seventeen. You've got no business spending all your time with a drifter ten years older than you who you don't know anything about."

"He's not a drifter. He's a Catholic aid worker. He lives in the Catholic Worker hostel. He's been to all the bad places. He was in Bosnia. He was in Sudan and Burundi. He's just recuperating here so he can go off to some other god-awful place."

"So he says. People can say anything about their past."

To avert the detonation he could feel approaching, Karp said lightly, "Where I would draw the line is if he had L-O-V-E and H-A-T-E tattooed on the backs of his fingers. And of course, if he wasn't a Yanks fan…"

Both of the females ignored this. Marlene said, "And all this homeless business. Okay, you want to go to a church basement and prepare a meal, that's one thing. But wandering into God knows what alley with all kinds of deranged people at all hours-I think that's completely out of line for someone your age. I mean I've been concerned, but I haven't said anything until now, and if you're starting to cut school to do it, well, I'm sorry. I think it's starting to be perverse. You have to stop."

Lucy shot to her feet. "I'm not going to listen to this… wu zhi ji tan! How can you call yourself a Catholic?"

"Oh, excuse me? I'm going to be told how to practice my religion now?"

"Girls, girls…" said Karp.

Lucy stalked off, muttering in foreign tongues. It was a peculiarity of hers that she never used bad language in English, although she could, and often did, scorch paint in any number of others.

Slam!

"Well, dear, you handled that well," said Karp after a short interval.

"She wants to kill me. She won't be satisfied until she's dancing the fandango on my grave."

"She loves you so much she can't see straight," said Karp. Marlene started to say something but stopped and instead finished her glass of wine. Karp muted the television, and they sat for some time in the flickering dark. The film ended and people sold stuff at them, silently mugging the virtues of shining things, and then the news came on.

"Unmute it," said Marlene. They watched the lead story. Richard Perry, a wealthy former congressman from New Jersey, had been kidnapped along with his party of six by unknown persons somewhere in the Balkans, where he had been engaged in a humanitarian mission. They showed some film of Perry posing with a famous photographer and a famous writer, a woman long dedicated to lost causes, in front of a white Land Rover on a muddy mountain road. Then the grave faces of the news team, male and female, the male one giving out that no group had claimed credit for the outrage, that the president, a close friend, had expressed shock. Then the human side-Perry's wife and two young children ducking in the glare of TV lights outside their New York apartment, while a mob shoved little boxes and boom mikes at them.