Nathan Hill - The Nix

“It doesn’t sound like my mother to be drawn to something like that.”

“It was a seriously influential newspaper. Really. You can read every edition at the Chicago History Museum. They’ll make you wear these tiny white gloves to touch it. Or you can access it on microfiche. They’ve all been archived and microfiched.”

“My mother is not exactly a people person. Why did she get involved with a protest movement?”

“She didn’t intend to. She was more like dropped into the middle of it, so to speak. Do you even know what microfiche is? Or are you too young for that? Little black-and-white coils that you spool into this machine that blows hot air and goes ka-chunk when you turn the page. Very analog.”

“She was dropped into the middle of it because of you?”

“Me and Alice and this cop who got involved, this guy with some serious jealousy-management issues.”

“Judge Brown.”

“Yes. That was unexpected, encountering him again. Back in ’68 he was a cop who, I think, really wanted to kill your mother.”

“Because he thought she was having an affair with Alice, whom he loved.”

“That’s right! That’s right all the way down to the correct usage of ‘whom.’ Congratulations. Now keep going. Tell me what you know. Tell me about 1988. It’s twenty years later and your mother finally leaves your father, leaves you. Where does she go? Tell me.”

“I have no idea. She goes to live in Chicago? In her tiny apartment?”

“Think harder,” Periwinkle says. He leans forward in his chair, his hands clasped and resting on his desk. “One moment your mother’s in college, in the beating heart of the protest movement, the next she’s married to your dad, the frozen-foods salesman, living his safe suburban life. Imagine how that must have felt for her after all the thrills and drugs and sex of which I’m not going to give you any details. How long could she last being Henry’s housewife before it started burning her up, the decision she didn’t make, the life she could have had?”

“She went to you ?”

“She went to me, Guy Periwinkle, counterculture hero.” He spreads his arms like he wants a hug.

“She left my dad for you ?”

“Your mother is the kind of person who never feels at home no matter where she is. She didn’t leave your dad for me, per se. She left your dad because leaving is what she does.”

“So she left you too.”

“Not as dramatically, but yes. There was some yelling, some disgust on her part. She said I was abandoning my principles. It was the eighties. I was getting rich. Everyone was getting rich. She wanted a life of books and poetry, but that wasn’t my, shall we say, career trajectory. She wanted another chance to live like a radical, since she blew it the first time. I told her to grow up. I suppose this is what she meant by telling you everything?”

“I think I need to sit down.”

“Here,” Periwinkle says, getting up from his chair. He withdraws to the window and stares out.

Samuel sits and rubs his temples at what feels suddenly like a migraine or hangover or concussion.

“The drumming down there sounds like it’s improvised and chaotic,” Periwinkle says, “but it’s actually on a loop. You just have to wait long enough for the repeats.”

Samuel’s feeling about all this new information is simply to be numb to it for now. He suspects he will be feeling something very powerful, very soon. But right now all he can really do is imagine his mother working up the courage to go to New York, only to be utterly disillusioned once she got here. He imagines her doing this and he feels sad for her. They are exactly alike.

“I suppose my big book contract wasn’t some huge coincidence.”

“Your mother was snooping on the internet,” Periwinkle says. “She found out you were a writer. Or trying to be one. She called me and asked for a favor. I figured I owed her at least that much.”

“Good lord.”

“Bursts your bubble, doesn’t it?”

“I actually thought I’d gotten famous on my own.”

“The only people who get famous on their own are serial killers. Everyone else needs people like me.”

“Governor Packer, for example. He needs someone like you.”

“Which brings us to the present.”

“I saw you on TV defending him.”

“I’m on his campaign. I’m a consultant.”

“Isn’t that a conflict of interest? Working on his campaign while you’re publishing a book about him?”

“I think you’re confusing your role here with some kind of journalism. What you call conflict of interest, I call synergy.”

“So the day my mother attacked the governor, you were in Chicago, weren’t you. You were with him. At his fund-raiser. His grub-down.”

“That is his delightfully folksy name for it, yes.”

“And while you’re there,” Samuel says, “you also schedule a meeting with me. At the airport. To tell me you’re suing.”

“For totally failing to write your book. For completely fucking up the giant contract we gave you. A contract you didn’t deserve in the first place, I should add now, since we’re putting all our cards on the table and everything.”

“And you told my mother about this, this meeting with me, this lawsuit.”

“As you can imagine, she was pretty upset that she’d screwed up your life for a second time. She asked to speak with me, before I met with you. She wanted to talk me out of it, I’m guessing. I said okay, let’s meet in the park. She asked to meet at the exact spot where, many years ago, police fired tear gas at us. Your mother is a nostalgic sap sometimes.”

“And then you showed up with Governor Packer.”

“That’s correct.”

“She must have truly despised that you were working for someone like Governor Packer.”

“Well, let’s see. She threw away her marriage for some vague liberal antiestablishment idealism. And Packer is the most pro-establishment authoritarian candidate, like, ever. So it’s fair to say she was not pleased. She had the same reflexive hatred of him that most die-hard liberals do, comparing him to Hitler and so on, calling him a fascist. She just doesn’t understand what I understand.”

“And what is that?”

“Packer has the same stuff inside him as anyone else who runs for president. Left or right, they’re all made of the same material. It’s just that he’s shaped like a missile instead of a chip.”

The drumming outside slows for a moment and falls apart. Everything goes silent for a few seconds and then begins again with that familiar driving thumpa-thumpa-thumpa-thumpa. Periwinkle raises a finger. “There’s the repeat,” he says.

“You wanted all this to happen,” says Samuel. “You wanted my mother to react the way she did.”

“Some might call it a crime of passion, but I say I presented your mother with an opportunity.”

“You set her up.”

“In one moment, she had the chance to give you a story that would fulfill your contract, get herself off the hook for screwing up your life again, and give my candidate a much-needed visibility bump. Win win win win win. You’ll only be angry with me if you fail to see the big picture.”

“I cannot believe this.”

“Plus remember that I only masterminded it. Your mother was the one who actually picked up the stones and threw them.”

“She wasn’t aiming at Governor Packer. She was aiming at you. ”

“I was in his entourage, yes.”

“And the photograph in the news? The one from ’68, where she’s leaning on you, at the protest. You had a copy of that.”

“A nice present from a great poet.”

“You cropped yourself out of it and gave it to the news. You leaked the photo and you leaked my mother’s arrest record, which you also knew about.”