Tom Rachman - The Rise & Fall of Great Powers

In the McGrory household, there was symmetry at least in the basement confessional. For it was Duncan who later cornered Tooly by the washing machine and told her more than she wanted to know, an admission that had nothing to do with love. “He’s not down here?” Duncan asked, entering the music room, where she sat practicing her ukulele.

She stilled the vibrating strings. “Mac? Not that I’ve seen.”

“Grrr.” Duncan stood there, hands on hips, shaking his head at the electric piano. Among the causes of household tensions was Mac’s failure to practice. They paid for weekly keyboard lessons, yet, in Duncan’s view, the kid didn’t make the slightest effort.

“You don’t practice anymore, either,” she noted.

“I don’t have time. He has time.” Duncan picked off the floor her copy of Nicholas Nickleby , which she’d been dragging back and forth to Sheepshead Bay, rereading it on the lengthy train rides. “Thing weighs ten pounds,” he exclaimed. “Stop messing around and buy an e-reader. Screens won, my friend.”

“Are you at a loose end right now, so decided to come and provoke me?”

“Pretty much,” he said. “It just gets me that he has this opportunity and doesn’t use it. My old Yamaha is awesome. I got them to hook it up to the house network, too, so you can track every practice session. Which is why it’s so dumb when he pretends to practice. I can see on the computer that he hasn’t.”

“What a pain you must be.”

“I know,” he said, looking at her. “Am I a total jerk here?”

“You’re one of the good guys, as far as I’m concerned. You looked after Humph. You’re letting me stay here for nothing.”

“At the cost of making you chauffeur my kid.”

“True. You’re a horrible person after all.”

“Actually, could I tell you something? Not for repeating. I’m serious. Not to anyone. Ever.” Lowering his voice, he said that he should probably do more with his son, that Bridget pestered him to, that he ought to, and he knew it. “But …” He looked away. He exhaled. “Problem is …” He shook his head. “The thing is that I don’t like him,” Duncan blurted. “Just fundamentally do not like this person. Aargh! Makes me sick to say it out loud. But it’s true. I dis like him. Not his fault, poor kid. I feel unbelievably shitty saying this. You can never repeat this. Ever. I mean that.” He paced. “Have I shocked you?”

“I’m not shocked. You know me.”

“Isn’t his fault. Really not. I feel sorry for him. But whenever he’s in the room,” Duncan went on, gaining momentum, “I fundamentally do. Not. Like this person.” He turned his back, flipped the pages of her novel. “Never occurred to me, when Bridget and I were trying to have kids, that you might not like your own child. It’s the last taboo.”

“The last taboo? Still reasonably taboo to be a cannibal or a necrophiliac.”

“You’re not getting my point.”

“I am, Duncan. Just avoiding it a bit, I guess. I’ve never been in your position. But I don’t find it that surprising. There are so few people on earth one really clicks with. I know it’s supposed to be biological. But each kid has his own personality, which I suspect parents don’t consider beforehand. They imagine a pet. Some of them do. Not saying you did. But it’d be amazing if one just blindly adored that person. I know that’s what society says parents do. So, no, I don’t find it shocking.”

“You don’t get it,” he said. “When you have kids, you do automatically love them. It’s biological.”

“You’re the one telling me that’s not true.”

“No — I do love him. Just don’t think I like him.”

“How old is he? Eight? Can you even make that statement yet?”

“You don’t get it.”

“If you keep telling me I don’t get anything, it leaves me without much to say.”

“Will you have kids?”

“You make such an attractive case for the reproductive plunge. I don’t know, Duncan. Childhood is so exhausting.”

“As a parent?”

“I mean as the child. Not sure it’s fair to drop somebody else into life without giving them a choice in the matter.”

“You’ll find it’s kind of tough to canvass the opinion of sperm.”

“I prefer asking the eggs — they’re more articulate. Anyway, aren’t you the guy who’s always bemoaning the future of humanity? Saying how the worst jerks always have millions of babies, meaning the world gets worse every generation?”

“Exactly why decent people need to have kids.”

“What, a war of demographics?”

“Thing is, who knows what’ll happen. Maybe the world improves by the time we’re seventy and you’ll regret not having had them. You’ll have missed out forever, and they’ll never get to exist. No need to canvass any sperm and eggs on that — everybody would rather have a life than not.”

“I mean, yes, of course. I can list the things that make life worth living, now that I’ve been in it for a while. I can also think of what can make it pretty awful.”

“Like?”

“One stroke of bad luck. Think of Xavi. (Can’t stop thinking about him lately; feels hard to believe that happened.) And even simpler stuff can warp people, make life bitter.”

“Such as?”

“Well, I don’t know. Such as one’s father not liking them.”

“I never said I didn’t like anybody.”

In one regard, Duncan was wrong: Mac did come down to practice the keyboard — she heard him puttering around in the music room most days. That said, he never played for long. He pressed the keys, hummed to himself, hoping she’d appear. She poked her head in, said hello, asked if he’d like company.

Something bottomlessly sad about the young. Mac — awkward, doped, a loner already — couldn’t be enjoying the shark tank of childhood. Her urge to guard him brought Paul to mind. For years, she had refused to discuss him, tried not even to think of him. Among the names she’d searched for online, his was never one. But, spending all this time with Mac, she contemplated Paul daily.

That night, she typed his name into one of the laptops. She found her father, only a few hours’ drive away.

SUNLIGHT AND A DISTANT WHOOSH of morning traffic came through the holes in the second-story wall. Someone approached up the stairs.

It was the old chessplayer of the night before, who trudged past her in a rumpled shirt and tie, tucked into sky-blue polyester shorts. He closed himself in the bathroom, faucet gushing, a pee stream audible. Minutes later, he emerged, having brushed his wiry gray-brown locks into submission, only to scratch his head, mussing the hair back into a peppery swirl. He set up his card table and his folding chair. Once seated, he raised a book— The Conquest of Happiness by Bertrand Russell — and began to read, dabbing fingers to his lips, flinging aside each page, pointing at the text as if in heated debate, and he not necessarily getting the better of it.

“Hi,” she said.

“What do you have to say for yourself?” he asked, eyebrows scrunching together.

“I’m a bit—” She looked at her bare knees, then up at his book cover, blinking at the daylight coming through the holes in the wall. “A bit worried.”

Humphrey held still a moment, then slammed the book onto the card table. He stood, walked a lap around the room, laceless tennis shoes clunking with each step. She braced herself, believing he was about to roar. Instead, he stopped, looking at the wall. “I also am concerned.” He turned to face her. “There is something I can get for you? I can help in some way?”

“I don’t know. I’m just — I woke up a bit worried. My neck hurts. I didn’t go home yet. Do you know if Sarah is here? Did she come back?”