Джозеф Файндер - Company Man

“Thanks,” he said. The glass had FAMOUS GROUSE etched into it. It was the kind of thing you get at a liquor store packed with the bottle, a promotional deal.

“How about you?”

“I hate whiskey,” she said. The kettle began whistling shrilly. She pulled it off the burner, found a carton of teabags in a drawer, and poured herself a mug of herbal tea.

“How does it feel being home?” The whiskey had a pleasant bite to it, and he felt its effect immediately. He didn’t recall when he’d last eaten anything himself, actually.

“Strange,” she said, sitting down at the table. “Brings a lot of things back. Some good things, some not good things.” She looked at him. “I don’t expect you to understand.”

“Try me.”

“Do you know what it’s like to have a parent with severe mental illness? The whole point is, you’re a child, so you don’t grasp what’s going on.”

“Right. How could you?”

Cassie closed her eyes, and it was as if she were in some other place. “So you’re his beloved daughter, and he hugs you like nobody can hug you and he puts his forehead to yours and you feel so safe, and so loved, and everything’s right with the world. And then, one day, he’s different — except, as far as he’s concerned, you’re different.”

“Because of the disease.”

“He looks at you and you’re a stranger to him. You’re not his beloved daughter now. Maybe you resemble her, but he’s not fooled, he knows you’ve been replaced by someone or something else. He looks at you and he sees a Fembot, you know? And you say, ‘Daddy!’ You’re three or four or five and you throw your arms open, waiting for your super-special hug. And he says, ‘Who are you? Who are you really? ’ and he says, ‘Get away! Get away! Get away!’” Her mimicry was uncanny; Nick was beginning to glimpse the nightmare she had endured. “You realize that he’s terrified of you. And it’s different from anything you’ve ever experienced. Because it isn’t what happens when, you know, you misbehave, and Mommy or Daddy turns red and you get yelled at. Every kid knows what that’s like. They’re mad. But you know they still love you, and they’re still aware of your existence . They don’t think you’re an alien. They’re not frightened of you. It’s different when a parent has schizophrenia. It steals over them, and suddenly you don’t exist to them any longer. You’re not a daughter anymore. Just some impostor. Just some intruder. Some... outsider. Someone who doesn’t belong.” She smiled sadly.

“He was ill.”

“He was ill,” Cassie repeated. “But a child doesn’t understand that. A child can’t understand it. Even if anybody had explained to me, I probably wouldn’t have understood.” She sniffed, her eyes flooded with tears. She frowned, turned away, wiped her eyes with her T-shirt, exposing her flat belly, a tiny pouting navel. Nick tried not to look.

“Nobody ever told you what was going on?”

“When I was maybe thirteen, I finally figured it out. My mother didn’t want to deal, and her way of not dealing meant you didn’t talk about it. Which is pretty crazy, too, when you think about it.”

“I can’t imagine what you had to go through.” And he couldn’t — not what she’d had to go through, nor what her father’s death was causing her to relive. He ached to do something for her.

“No, you can’t imagine. But it messes with your head. I mean, it messed with mine.”

She tucked her chin in close to her chest, ran her fingers through her spiky hair, and when she looked up, her cheeks were wet. “You don’t need this,” she said, her voice thick with tears. “I think you should go.”

“Cassie,” he said. It came out in a whisper, sounded far more intimate than he’d intended.

For a while, her breaths came in short little puffs. When she spoke again, her voice was strained. “You need to be there for your kids,” she said. “There’s nothing more important than family, okay?”

“Not much of a family these days.”

“Don’t say that,” Cassie said. She looked up at him, eyes fierce. “You don’t fucking talk that way, ever .” Something had flared up inside her, like a whole book of matches, and then subsided almost as quickly. But who could blame the woman, having so recently put her father in the ground? And then he remembered why.

“Sorry,” he said. “It hasn’t been easy for the kids, and I’m not exactly doing my job.”

“How’d she die?” Her voice was soft. “Their mother.”

He took another sip. A quick scene played in his head, jittery, badly spliced film. The pebbles of glass strewn throughout Laura’s hair. The spiderwebbed windshield. “I don’t like to talk about it.”

“Oh, I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologize. Natural question.”

“No, you’re — crying.”

He realized that he was, and as he turned his face, embarrassed, cursing the booze, she got up from her chair, came up to him. She put a small warm hand on his face, leaned close to him, and put her lips on his.

Startled, he backed away, but she moved in closer, pressed her lips against his, harder, her other hand pressed against his chest.

He turned his head away. “Cassie, I’ve got to get home.”

Cassie smiled uncomfortably. “Go,” she said. “Your kids are waiting.”

“It’s the babysitter, actually. She hates it when I come home later than I promised.”

“Your daughter — what’s her name, again?”

“Julia.”

“Julia. Sweet name. Go home to Julia and Luke. They need you. Go back to your gated community.”

“How’d you know?”

“People talk. It’s perfect.”

“What?”

“You living in a gated community.”

“I’m not really the gated-community type.”

“Oh, I think you are,” she said. “More than you know.”

LaTonya’s twelve-year-old daughter, Camille, was practicing piano in the next room, which made it hard for Audrey to concentrate on what her sister-in-law was saying. LaTonya was speaking in a low voice, uncharacteristically for her, while she removed a sweet-potato casserole from the oven.

“Let me tell you,” LaTonya said, “if Paul didn’t have a steady income, I don’t know how we’d get by with three kids still in the house.”

Audrey, who’d noticed the kitchen piled high with cartons of thermogenic fat-burning supplements, said, “But what about the vitamins?”

“Shit!” LaTonya shouted, dropping the casserole to the open oven door. “These damned oven mitts have a hole in them — what the hell good are they?”

Thomas, who was nine, ran in from the dining room where he and Matthew, eleven, were allegedly setting the table, though mostly just clattering the dishes and giggling. “You okay, Mom?”

“I’m fine,” LaTonya said, picking up the casserole again and putting it on the stovetop. “You get back out there and finish setting the table, and you tell Matthew to go tell your father and Uncle Leon to get off their lazy butts and come in to dinner.” She turned to Audrey, a disgusted look on her face. “Once again, I’m ahead of the curve.”

“How so?”

“These thermogenic supplements. Fenwick is a backward, fearful community,” she said gravely. “They do not want to try new things.”

“And now you’re stuck with all these bottles.”

“If they think I’m paying for them, they’ve got another think coming. I’m going to ask you to read the small print on my agreement, because I don’t think they can get away with it.”

“Sure,” Audrey said without enthusiasm. The last thing she wanted to do was get involved in extricating LaTonya from another mess she’d created. “You know, the money isn’t the worst part,” Audrey said. “I mean, it’s not easy, but we can get by.”