Dana Spiotta - Eat the Document

“Henry?” he said. “Can I come in?”

“Yep.”

Nash entered the dark house. It took a moment for his eyes to adjust. Henry lay on the couch in his flannel bathrobe. A throw with a Seahawks insignia covered his lower body. His feet poked out from under the blanket. The toenails were thick and yellow colored. His crosshatched skin at his ankles looked dry and tired. In the end, feet and hands don’t lie. They’re the oldest parts of a body.

“I brought some beer,” Nash said. Henry waved his all-knuckle hand at him to bring it over. Henry had lost so much weight since Nash last saw him. His head looked oversized. Gray stubble covered his chin and neck. Nash popped open two bottles, then sat opposite Henry, in a rocking chair, sipping.

“I look like I’m dying, huh?” Henry said.

“What did your doctor say?”

Henry shrugged. “We can try this or that, but what it comes down to is it is in my bones. How much deeper can it get than the marrow of your bones?”

“I can’t believe it.”

“Death by hubris.”

“What do you mean, death by hubris?”

“Dioxin. Defoliant. We thought we could kill everything that grows and there wouldn’t be human consequences.”

Nash cocked his head, started to speak, stopped. Henry watched a sports channel with the mute on. Kids jumped off cliffs with parachutes and snowboards. The editing was very chopped up and fast. Henry finished his beer and lit a cigarette.

“So what now?” Nash said. Henry pressed the TV remote control. The channels flicked by in silence.

“Should I go?” Nash said.

“No, no. I like your company.”

Nash looked around. He started to pick up newspapers and empty glasses. He emptied one full ashtray into another.

“Don’t do that either.”

Nash sighed and put the stuff down on the kitchen counter. He dumped the ashes into the garbage and brought the clean ashtray to Henry.

“I thought you said the billboard stuff was making you better,” Nash said.

“It did. It got rid of the dreams. But the cancer was in my bones a long time ago. I just didn’t realize.”

Nash stared at the TV.

“What?” Henry said.

“Maybe it’s just a coincidence, you know?”

“That I got non-Hodgkin’s? That’s what people exposed to dioxin get.”

“But.”

“I got sick due to dioxin exposure from Agent Orange. This is the truth, Nash, and you will have to work your mind around it. This is how my life makes sense. This is how my life signifies something.”

“Okay.”

“I want you to think about it the way I’m telling you to. It’s important for you, trust me.”

Henry leaned back into his pillows.

“The dreams, in fact, have returned. But they are no longer violent and chaotic. They are peaceful and chaotic. Sometimes I see the faces of dead children. Sometimes I see soldiers. But I don’t resist it like I used to. It doesn’t frighten me.”

Henry closed his eyes. He seemed about to drift off. Nash watched him breathe. He could hear the trouble in the exhalations. Henry’s eyes opened with a start. He found Nash and looked relieved.

“I understand everything now. Even you.”

“Oh yeah?”

Nash watched the papery skin on Henry’s eyelids. The eyes twitched slightly. There were dark purple shadows in the creases. The whites of his eyes were not bright. A very fragile affair, an eye.

“I know you tried to take a full swing at it. That’s not shameful. I’m glad for you,” Henry said. Then he seemed to fall asleep. Nash pressed his fingers over his own eyelids and rested his head in his palms. He listened to Henry’s noisy sleep sounds. Henry slept, his face placid and calm, arm over head, in what looked like a repose of surrender. The room did not smell of roses or incense. Or even of ethereal apple blossoms. It smelled of sweat and urine and beer. This almost surprised Nash. And then he got up and walked to the door.

“Nash?” Henry called out.

“Yeah?” Nash said.

“It’s back up, you know.”

“I didn’t want to say anything.” Nash had walked by the billboard earlier in the week. For months nothing was there, and then a Nepenthex ad appeared overnight.

“Bigger than fucking ever,” Henry said.

My mother is not only, not merely, my mother. She’s a revolutionary. She’s a fugitive. She’s a liar. She’s a killer.

Henry woke to damp sheets. He felt his sweat, and he felt icy cold. He took a deep breath and let himself slip back into sleep.

Phosgene gas smells of newly mown hay.

Lewisite gas smells of geraniums.

JASON SLAMMED doors and locked them. He shot Louise intense, searching looks that he quickly covered with blank mid-distance stares.

This wasn’t the usual indifference, but then what was usual? She resisted her impulse to push his hair back from his forehead. He was in an awkward stage, slightly pudgy and spotty. She didn’t mind if he shrugged her off when she put an arm around him. She couldn’t comfort him through his adolescence, but she could stay out of his way. She believed that if she didn’t interfere, her talented, brilliant son would get everything he needed from the world. She also knew that the day would come when he would find her out, but she refused to think about it. Two weeks of his schizoid scrutiny unnerved her. When he finally confronted her, it shouldn’t have been a surprise.

Jason sat down to dinner. He did not watch the TV or read his book. In fact, he didn’t eat. He just stared at her, and suddenly she knew what was coming. She caught her breath — after all this time, she was astonished it was finally upon her.

“I watched America’s Most Wanted yesterday,” he said.

It was really happening, wasn’t it?

“The show was all about this woman who was a terrorist in the ’70s. She is still at large.”

Louise felt it physically creeping up on her, making her hands shake. There is an unreality to a moment you have been anticipating your whole life. And then the moment happens and you’re still there, breathing. She felt such relief. An amazing calm overtook her.

“There wasn’t any show,” she said, quietly.

“Her name was Mary Whittaker, and they showed a picture of her.”

“There wasn’t a show,” she said.

“She was part of a collective that blew up three summer houses of corporate board members — munitions producers, I suppose, I don’t remember. In any case, there was the last bombing when something went wrong — or did it go wrong?”

“You know about that?”

“On America’s Most Wanted they showed a picture of Martha Malcolm—”

Louise shook her head. To hear that name come out of her son’s mouth.

“How did you find out?”

“I’m telling you about the TV show,” Jason.

“There wasn’t a TV show, stop saying that,” she said.

“There was,” he said.

“You’re lying,” she said.

Jason started to laugh.

“I’m lying, huh? That’s fucking rich,” he said. “Why don’t you look at me, Mom?” He glared at her, his face red and angry.

“You shouldn’t judge something you don’t know about,” she said.

Jason put his hand under his plate and flipped it off the table. It crashed on the floor. Jason squeezed his hands into tight fists. Louise stared at the plate. And then something happened. He started to cry. Louise hadn’t seen her son cry since he was a toddler.

“I was going to tell you one day. I can tell you about it now. If you want to hear about it, I will tell you,” she said.