Noah Hawley - Before the Fall

“Can’t afford to lose you to some jihadi cabdriver with a shoulder rocket,” he told David.

Today was Friday, August 21. Maggie and the kids were out at the Vineyard, had been all month, leaving David to pad the marble bathroom floors alone. Downstairs he could hear the housekeeper making breakfast. After a shower, he stopped at the kids’ rooms, as he did every morning, and stared at their perfectly made beds. The decor in Rachel’s room combined scientific gadgetry and horse worship. JJ’s was all about cars. Like all children, they tended toward chaos, a juvenile disorder the house staff erased systematically, often in real time. Now, staring at the sterile, vacuumed order, David found himself wanting to mess things up, to make his son’s room look more like a kid’s and less like a museum of childhood. So he went over to a toy bin and kicked it over with his foot.

There , he thought. That’s better .

He would leave a note for the maid. When the children left town she was to leave their rooms as she found them. He would tape them off like a crime scene if he had to, anything to make the house feel more alive.

He called Maggie from the kitchen. The clock on the stove read 6:14 a.m.

“We’ve been up for an hour,” she said. “Rachel’s reading. JJ is seeing what happens when you pour dish soap in the toilet.”

Her voice was muffled as she covered the mouthpiece.

“Sweetie,” she yelled. “That is not what we call a good choice.”

In New York, David mimed drinking and the housekeeper brought him more coffee. His wife came back on the line. David could hear the frazzled energy she got in her voice when she spent too long parenting by herself. Every year he tried to get her to bring Maria, the au pair, with them to the island, but his wife always refused. Summer vacation was for them, she said, family time. Otherwise, Rachel and JJ would grow up calling the nanny Mommy , like all the other kids in their neighborhood.

“It’s super foggy out,” his wife said.

“Did you get the thing I sent?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said, sounding pleased. “Where did you find them?”

“The Kiplings. They know a guy who travels the world collecting old-world clippings. Apples from the eighteen hundreds. Peach trees no one’s seen since McKinley was president. We had that fruit salad at their place last summer.”

“Right,” she said. “That was yummy. Were they — is it silly to ask? — were they expensive? This seems like something that you’d hear on the news is the price of a new car.”

“A Vespa, maybe,” he said.

It was just like her to ask price, as if part of her still couldn’t fathom their net worth, its implications.

“I didn’t even know there was such a thing as a Danish plum,” she said.

“Me either. Who knew the world of fruit could be so exotic?”

She laughed. When things were good between them, there was an easiness. A rhythm of give-and-take that came from living in the moment, from burying old grudges. Some mornings when he called, David could tell that she had dreamed about him in the night. It was something she did from time to time. Often she told him afterward, biting off her words, unable to look him in the eye. In the dream he was always a monster who scorned and abandoned her. The conversations that followed were chilly and brief.

“Well, we’re going to plant the trees this morning,” Maggie told him. “It’ll give us a project for the day.”

They made small talk for another ten minutes — what his day looked like, what time he thought he’d be out tonight. All the while his phone chimed, breaking news, schedule changes, crises to be managed. The sound of other people’s panic reduced to a steady electronic hum. Meanwhile the kids buzzed in and out of Maggie’s end of the line like yellow jackets scouting a picnic. He liked hearing them in the background, the melee of them. It was what set his generation apart from his father’s. David wanted his children to have a childhood. A real childhood. He worked hard so that they could play. For David’s father, childhood had been a luxury his son could not afford. Play was considered a gateway drug to idleness and poverty. Life, Dad said, was a Hail Mary. You only got one shot at it, and if you didn’t train every day — with wind sprints and grass drills — you would blow it.

As a result, David had been burdened with chores at an early age. At five, he was cleaning the trash cans. By seven he was doing all their laundry. The rule in their house was that homework was done and chores were completed before a single ball was thrown, before a bike was ridden or army men were dumped from the Folgers can.

You don’t become a man by accident , his father told him. It was a belief that David shared, though his was a milder version. In David’s mind, the training for adulthood began in the double digits. At ten, he reasoned, it was time to start thinking about growing up. To take the soft-serve lessons about discipline and responsibility that had been fed to you in your youth, and cement them into rules for a healthy and productive life. Until then you were a child, so act accordingly.

“Daddy,” said Rachel, “will you bring my red sneakers? They’re in my closet.”

He walked into her room and got them while they were talking so he wouldn’t forget.

“I’m putting them in my bag,” he told her.

“It’s me again,” said Maggie. “Next year I think you should come out here with us for the whole month.”

“Me too,” he said immediately. Every year they had the same conversation. Every year he said the same thing. I will . And then he didn’t.

“It’s just the fucking news,” she said. “There’ll be more tomorrow. Besides, haven’t you trained them all by now?”

“I promise,” he said, “next year I’ll be there more.” Because it was easier to say yes than to dicker through the real-world probabilities, lay out all the mitigating factors, and try to manage her expectations.

Never fight tomorrow’s fight today , was his motto.

“Liar,” she said, but with a smile in her voice.

“I love you,” he told her. “I’ll see you tonight.”

* * *

The town car was downstairs waiting for him. Two security contractors from the agency rode up in the elevator to get him. They slept in shifts in one of the first-floor guest rooms.

“Morning, boys,” said David, shrugging on his jacket.

They took him out together, two big men with Sig Sauers under their coats, eyes scanning the street for signs of threat. Every day David got hate mail, apoplectic letters about God knows what, sometimes even care packages of human shit. It was the price he paid for choosing a side, he reasoned, for having an opinion about politics and war.

Fuck you and your God , they said.

They threatened his life, his family, threats he had learned to take seriously.

In the town car he thought about Rachel, the three days she was missing. Ransom calls, the living room filled with FBI agents and private security, Maggie crying in the back bedroom. It was a miracle they got her back, a miracle that he knew would never happen twice. So they lived with the constant surveillance, the advance team. Safety first, he told his children. Then fun. Then learning. It was a joke between them.

He was driven cross-town through the stop-and-go. Every two seconds his phone blorped. North Korea was test-firing missiles into the Sea of Japan again. A Tallahassee policeman was in a coma after a car stop shooting. Nude cell phone photos of a Hollywood starlet sent to an NFL running back had just dropped. If you weren’t careful it could feel like a tidal wave bearing down, all this eventfulness. But David saw it for what it was, and understood his own role. He was a sorting machine, boxing the news by category and priority, forwarding tips to various departments. He wrote one-word replies and hit SEND. Bullshit or Weak or More . He had answered thirty-three emails and returned sixteen phone calls by the time the car pulled up in front of the ALC Building on Sixth Avenue, and that was light for a Friday.