Robert McGill - Once We Had a Country

Maggie’s still kneeling on the floor. She remains silent long enough that Rhea glances over at her.

“Rhea, I want to be your friend,” says Maggie. “If you have something to say about Fletcher, though—”

“What? I can’t hear you.” Rhea sets to work smoothing down a cockscomb of hair on Jeffrey’s head.

“I said, if you want to complain about Fletcher, you should talk with him yourself.”

As soon as Maggie speaks the words, she gathers the camera and audio recorder, then stands to go, already regretting what she’s said. But as she turns to apologize, she discovers that Rhea’s attention is fixed on the tub. Judd and Jeffrey are flexing non-existent muscles for their mother, and exuberantly she praises their physiques. When Maggie says softly that she’ll see them later, Rhea waves without even turning around.

That night, Fletcher’s mouth refuses to move in time with his voice. “Punch me,” he says a second before his lips purse. Sitting at the card table in the playroom, Maggie rewinds the film on the editing machine and cues the audiotape again. Synchronizing the sound with the images is the most difficult part. There’s equipment that can do it more efficiently, but already she feels guilty enough about the expense of all the cartridges. “Punch me,” says Fletcher, half a second too late. She rewinds once more. “Punch me,” he says. He has his shirt off and the lighting’s good enough for her to see his abdominal muscles tighten perceptibly as Pauline wallops him in the gut. It’s a solid swing, producing a short, insuppressible grunt, but one that comes too soon, just before the little fist makes contact.

“Three-thirty,” says a voice not on the soundtrack. “You should be in bed.”

Turning from the editor, Maggie sees Wale standing by the door. Against the backdrop of the lit hall, he looks naked. Then her eyes discern the white of his underwear, and she glances away. By day she’s seen him in swimsuits, but still, he must know he’s embarrassing her.

“I’ll go to bed soon,” she says. “I just want to finish this.” He doesn’t leave as she hopes, though. “Punch me,” says Fletcher on the audiotape and viewer, finally at the same time.

“You ever think your man tries too hard?” says Wale. He has come up behind her, and he bends over her shoulder to look more closely at the viewer. “You know, to compensate for all his father’s dough.” Hot air rolls along Maggie’s neck, carrying the scent of skin and sweat.

“Fletcher’s spending that dough on you and me and this place,” she says.

Wale only laughs. “Right on, defend the guy. I know you’ve got your ideas about him.” He pauses, giving her room to retaliate, but she holds back, so he adds, “Hell, you’re only up here because he is.”

She can’t help herself. “That’s bullshit.”

“You’ve got quite a mouth,” he murmurs into her ear.

She wrenches her chair around to face him, but having completed this manoeuvre, she finds her eyes level with his underwear, so she stands and folds her arms across her nightgown.

“Fletcher’s not the only one committed to this place,” she says. “Coming up here was my idea.” And then, lest he should hear some regret in this admission, she adds, “I was right, too.”

“You’re a real visionary, Auntie Maggs.”

“Don’t call me that.”

“What, a visionary?”

“No—Auntie Maggs.” It’s too late in the night for arguments. This must be payback for filming him; he’s out to lay her open in turn. Well, she won’t have it.

“You really want to live like this?” he asks. “With all the rich kids chasing after satori?”

“If you think they’re such phonies, why are you here with them?”

“Sometimes I wonder the same thing.” There’s a hardness in his voice. She studies his face to see if he’s kidding, then waves him away.

“I almost believe you. The way you treat Pauline—like you couldn’t care less.”

“Pauline,” he replies in a flat voice, “owes her life to a broken rubber.”

“That’s a horrible thing to say.” Yet immediately she’s sure it’s the truth.

He moves into the circle of light from the lamp beside her, a shadow deepening across one side of his face even as the other gains texture and detail.

“Let me tell you something I’ve learned about myself,” he says. “The heart of me is a lump of selfishness. Concern for other people is just a ribbon tied around it. I wish it were otherwise, Maggie, but at the core I’m this piece of petrified shit. It’s a fact that has kept me alive, at least, and it never goes away. It’ll stick around longer than this place.”

“What do you know about it? You don’t even come to meetings. You’re always playing cards. If you paid more attention, you’d know we’re going to be here for years and years.”

Wale shakes his head. “People have been setting up communes for decades. They all think they’ll work twenty hours a week and live like kings. It never happens. Brook Farm, New Harmony, the Oneida Community—all gone. You know why?”

“Because people have hearts made of shit?”

He chuckles and nods. “But it’s nice you think otherwise.” Then he adds, “In some ways you’re a lot like your father.”

Maggie scowls at him. “How would you know? You’ve never even met him.”

“I met him in Laos.”

At first Maggie assumes it’s a joke, but he isn’t laughing.

“It was in May,” he tells her. “While I was on the lam.”

“You were in Laos?” She doesn’t understand. It’s impossible. He must be lying.

“Hardly any white people over there,” he says. “They tend to run into each other. It’s like in Africa with Livingstone and what’s his name. Your dad and I, we met at Long Chieng, the big CIA airbase. The reds were on the offensive, so half of Laos had hunkered down there. I was on my way back here, and your dad was heading to some refugee camp.”

As he speaks, Maggie feels a growing anger. “Why didn’t you tell me before?”

“You broke off contact with him, didn’t you? I figured you weren’t interested.”

But she knows that’s bullshit too. He’s been playing with her, waiting for the right moment to spring the news, a time late at night with no one else to interrupt.

“You really talked to him?” She can’t help asking it. “How was he?”

“We only spent a couple of hours over beers, but he seemed happy enough.” Then Wale’s brow knits as if he’s rethinking it. “No, not just happy. Maggie, he was radiant. It freaked me out. I mean, Long Chieng isn’t Disneyland. I figured your dad had to be working an angle.”

“Angle? What angle?” The question carries an energy with it, as though if Wale could give her the answer, it would let her feel better about the situation. But he only shrugs.

“I asked him that, flat out, and he said he was there to make something of his life.”

Her chest tightens. It couldn’t be so simple and piteous. “He went to Laos because he was broke, and because he didn’t have me at home to look after him anymore.”

Wale raises an eyebrow.

“Did he tell you about the things he said to me before he left?” she asks. “Did you even tell him you knew me?”

“Sure I did. Then you were all he wanted to talk about. Whatever happened between you two, he was feeling bad about it.”

“What did he say?”

“He said he had a hard time when you left for college.”

A pain of remembrance shoots through her.

“Hey, I sympathized,” says Wale. “If I had you all to myself and you split, I’d have a hard time too.”

She remembers Wale in Boston, the intensity of his gaze at the bar, the way he seemed to be mapping her inch by inch. He’s looking at her like that now, and it’s no less alarming than it was then. What did she do to merit such attention? He reaches out to clasp her by the elbows. “Don’t,” she says.