Michael Collins - The Death of All Things Seen

Joanne’s eyes widened again with emotion.

Norman looked down because he felt it was the decent thing.

The heart of the matter lay in a sisterly rivalry between Joanne and her sister Sheryl, a complicated and entangled story that involved Sheryl and her husband Dave, and a marriage a week out of high school, whereafter Sheryl had got busy pumping out four children in quick succession, while Dave had been hired, fired, hired and fired again, so he ended up signing with the National Guard, which apparently had increased in Sheryl an emerging patriotism that got her talking a lot about Communism and American values.

It was a hell of a lot of detail. Norman listened as best he could. He suppressed the urge to yawn. He could see there was reproach in how Joanne described it all, the venial quality of a small life and small details, and yet it mattered greatly to her. That much he was willing to acknowledge. It was complicated, as were most family relationships. Some of it didn’t make sense, what Joanne really had against Sheryl.

Then Joanne got to the heart of the matter. Her father had come down sick and nobody had called her. He was sick a long time, suffering from dementia.

Joanne hugged herself against the settling memory of it. ‘Sheryl was so cold on the phone when she called. It was right on the eve of Thanksgiving. Then she got to the reason she was calling really. Dad and Mom were selling their house and moving in with Sheryl. There were papers that needed to be signed and witnessed. There had always been an agreement that the house would be split between us, but then suddenly there wasn’t. They wouldn’t let me speak to Dad. I didn’t know what papers they were talking about. When I asked about what papers needed signing, Sheryl slammed the phone down.’

Joanne’s voice trailed off for a moment. ‘Sheryl has always had a way of making me out to be the bad guy .’ She made quotation marks with her fingers to signify the inconsequentiality and triviality of it. She was suddenly self-conscious. She looked at Norman. ‘Why is it the lives of others, or even our own, can mean nothing when we speak about them?’

Norman said softly, ‘I don’t believe that’s the case.’ In doing so, he advanced her right to continue.

Joanne nodded in a rallying sense of needing to tell it. ‘I wouldn’t have gone. I knew Sheryl, but Peter insisted. He hadn’t earned more than $12,000 a year adjunct teaching, and I could see he was seeking to find in Sheryl and Dave’s life a reason to feel more sure about his choices, when Sheryl and Dave weren’t to be messed with like that.’

Norman advanced the story by degrees. ‘So you went?’

Joanne nodded. ‘We went. Dave answered the door in a camouflage jacket. Sheryl had turned huge. She was in a church lady’s floral dress and pink slippers and busy in the kitchen. She didn’t say hi or anything. I saw Dad in a chair by the TV. He was already adrift of everything. He didn’t recognize me, and then he did recognize me, then didn’t again. He was sitting forward, watching a Bills game in a Bills sweater. Mom hardly said a word to me.

‘Dave started talking about Gulf War Syndrome. He and Sheryl were patriotic still, but in that rabidly anti-government way conservatives can get. Peter thought he saw an inroad when we had been there a half-hour and Dave hadn’t even bothered to take our coats. Peter had worked with veterans. He told Dave how he had used poetry to help with their PTSD, while Dave just wanted to talk about the NRA and protecting the Second Amendment. I could feel a disaster coming. Dave was talking to Dad and to Sheryl like we weren’t there. Then Peter said something about a constitutional democracy and the power of the ballot box, while just then Dave saw a doe and a fawn in the yard outside and pointed it out. Something about it struck Peter. I saw it then. It was a Thoreau moment he tried to write a poem about later, and then he denied it was about that Thanksgiving, when the poem, for Christ’s sake, was called “A Deer Comes to Thanksgiving”.

‘Peter asked Dave if he thought the deer had any concept of Thanksgiving. This was how Peter started his classes, asking open-ended, inane questions, while Dave just looked at Sheryl like they were sharing the funniest joke. Dave said, “First off, deer didn’t come over on the Mayflower, Professor !” That’s what they called Peter, Professor , like the Professor on Gilligan’s Island .

‘Meanwhile, Dad wanted a round of root beer floats for the kids. Sheryl said it would spoil dinner, but Dad got his way. I went down to the basement for the ice cream just to escape. Dave followed. He came up to me and said, “You know the problem with you? You need to get laid by a real man.” I had my head in the freezer. When I turned, I said, “I’d just as soon have you keep your opinions to yourself,” and he said, “You want to know something? Your sister is twice the woman you’ll ever be. What are you doing with that fruitcake ?” Then he reached into his pocket and presented me with a card. It turned out Dave was a card-carrying member of Promise Keepers . He explained it as a pact between God and men.

‘Upstairs, Sheryl’s middle daughter, Misty, was giving a command performance for Peter. I’d heard about Misty’s exploits, the phrase Junior Olympics bandied around for years, suggesting in reality nothing more than you could pay the entrance fee to a regional tournament. I hated Dave at that moment, and yet, the truth was, Sheryl and Dave deserved credit to a certain extent. I wasn’t beyond acknowledging it. Sheryl had sat through all the practices, Sheryl holding to certain family values like this was a Tea Party political battle she’d understood was always coming and had now. I might have said something, but I didn’t.

‘There was maybe a point of reconciliation. I was willing to concede to my own shortcomings, but weakness never played with Sheryl, so in just standing there, I kept thinking this was it, this was the extent of all our lives. I kept staring at Dave staring at Misty, and knowing that it didn’t get better than this for most everybody, and that what I was witnessing was the contained dream of all those tramps who lived with the ever-lasting hope that they might make it onto a Wheaties box. All you needed was one tramp to make it onto a cereal box to keep it all within reach.

‘I thought Peter must have been thinking the same. This was all grist for the mill. Dave was standing with a Genesee beer in his hand, watching me out of the corner of his eye. They had a signed autograph of Mary Lou Retton alongside Bela Karolyi. Sheryl made Misty go get it, like it was a testament to her talent. It said something like, “Keep reaching for your dreams!”— something vague and inspirational, but not specific to Misty’s actual talents, or lack thereof. It was never established if they’d met either Mary Lou or Karolyi.

‘At dinner, Peter got talking to Sheryl about an idea for a cookbook, some potential collaborative project they had been discussing while I had been downstairs with Dave, when Dave reached for Sheryl and said, “I have a marriage license that, among other things, entitles me to exclusive rights to Sheryl’s cooking, and, anyway, we’d have to ask Sheryl’s campaign manager.” And that’s how it came to light Sheryl was considering running for the State Assembly in Albany.

‘I nearly shit myself. Even Dad looked up. He had gravy all over his lips, Dad, who couldn’t stand Dave at one point, and now it was all changed. There was already talk of building an extension onto the house for the two boys that was a vague cover for anticipating the long-term care of Dad and Mom. I was a cast-out. It was like I didn’t know these people sitting around me. A trial and jury had been convened in my absence, and I was found guilty.’