Without a Paddle

Wayne is always trying to impress his ladies. Never works. He tells his wife, then he runs and tells his girlfriend. Then the ladies get together and tell each other he’s a madman.

Here he is, arriving home from the station, once again full of something he read on the subway. Melissa is out in the yard pruning a tiny apple tree she bought years ago, against his better judgment. He calls it the Japple because it looks bonsaied.

He ambles up to her, trying to sound casual, and blurts out, “I just read something you won’t believe.” He doesn’t give her time to reply; he knows better. He goes on. “The sewer systems are all clogging with this stuff people are using instead of toilet paper. Moist towelettes… you ever hear of them?” Again, he gives her no chance to reply. “Ever hear of one-wipe-charlies?” He guffaws obscenely. “Supposedly eco-friendly. But they aren’t friendly at all, and they’re installing traps so they can trace the stuff back up to your toilet, and catch you at it.”

He leans over her pruning shears. A dangerous move, but she’s used to quelling her first response when he comes up with these things. “You know why they won’t go down? This is the best part. Because Al Gore shrank the size of toilet tanks, and gave us the practically-no-flush toilet. Well…” he laughs, anticipating, “all the pipes in the country count on a certain amount of water flowing through them to work. And now they’re all stopped up. The nation’s sewer systems are constipated. But don’t worry about it. Gore made millions on all his eco-friendly junk. Now everybody’s running around trying to buy up old toilets. Maybe he’s got a stash, and he’s selling them back to the poor assholes whose water he took away.”

Melissa has contained herself. She’s swallowing the gall, and has not moved a muscle. “That’s the trouble with you Republicans. You aren’t willing to risk a thing for progress. If we’re going to get anywhere, we have to make mistakes. So maybe the no-flush, and the towelettes are mistakes. So fucking what?”

“I am not a Republican. They’re second tier sycophants. They want the same thing the Dems do. To be in charge of the money. To spend. Spend, spend, spend. Because that’s what they think their job is. The more they spend, the more votes they think they’ll get. Jerks.”

Melissa goes back to her pruning. He just called the Republicans jerks. It’s a good time to needle him. “Meanwhile, Obama is making peace with the Arabs. The UN is going to set Syria straight, and we’re going to talk to Iran instead of bomb them.”

“Oh, right,” he says. “Talks. We’ll give and they’ll get, and meanwhile they’ll finish their bomb, and we’ll never have the upper hand with these murderers again. Plus, your boyfriend has cleared Assad to murder his people any way he can, as long as he doesn’t use poison gas. And that’s what he’s doing, while the UN sits around ‘resolving’.”

“You are not a peaceful person,” says his wife, and stabs her pruning shears into the ground.

“Yes I am,” he says. “I was even going to make peace with Obama, when he wanted to hit Syria. But he chickened out. He doesn’t want to be on the outs with the dictators of the world, and they’re all for Assad.”

Melissa picks up the shears, and he backs away, but he keeps talking. “He loves dictators. Remember how he hugged Chavez when they first met? He couldn’t wait to get his arms around him. And he bows to them, and calls them by their divine names. They’re all in it together…”

Let’s get out of here. He’s only going to get worse.

Let’s see what the young folks are up to.

It’s late, but Steve’s still at school. He likes it there. In school, he’s a kid. At home, somehow, he’s got to be a man. They’re making such a big deal out of not treating him like a kid, he’s more comfortable here, because nothing magic has happened just because he’s in college. He’s a kid, in college with other kids.

We’re back in civilization, in the student lounge, a popular place, a home away from home for the students, who are all commuters. It’s lined with vending machines, and Steve is drinking coffee, his drug of choice. It’s convenient; it’s legal, and you can get it anywhere, even if you’re a kid.

He’s taking in the scene, when all of a sudden, who does he see, walking side by side, but Brittany Brown, and their government professor, Dr. Monroe. Dr. Monroe, as he says at the beginning of each term, not Doctrine Monroe. Steve’s head isn’t the only one turning. It always happens when Monroe enters a room, because Monroe is bigger than life, and looks like golden-haired Gilderoy Lockhart, Professor of Defense Against the Dark Arts at Hogwarts.

Let’s leave Steve, and listen in on their conversation.

Scrawny Ms Brown is stretching up to the height of her five foot four, taking advantage of the ear she’s got, to continue a conversation that must have started somewhere else, because Monroe is giving her half his attention, and with the other half is scouting the room. Monroe is a bon vivant, and visits the lounge often. He wants to be friendly with the students.

And they, especially the girls, want to be friendly with him. Brittany Brown isn’t making any friends among them, taking advantage of her position as his grader, to walk around whispering in his ear.

Actually, it’s noisy, and she’s shouting, “Everything government does is too big! Look at Obamacare. They don’t have the Spanish translation ready. Not that it matters. The software gives wrong answers about who owes what.

“But my dear,” Monroe says, smiling not at her, but at the room, “that will be ironed out and then every American will have insurance.”

“But that’s not true.” Don’t whine, Brittany. “When everything is all fixed, 30 million people won’t be insured. Before Obamacare, there were only 22 million uninsured. It’s going to be worse than it was before.”

“But only for a while, my dear, and then everyone will have the same.” He smiles broadly at a group of girls at a table. They titter. Yes. That’s what they do. Titter, not Twitter. It’s a word. Look it up.

“But what kind of health care will it be? We’ll be like Britain where my uncle was left to rot and die in a hospital bed with no care, no one to feed him when he could no longer eat, no one to help him drink when he could no longer hold a glass. When he died no one was decent enough to make him ready for the family. His belongings were left for them to pack up, right next to the corpse.”

“Now that’s quite a morbid story, my dear, and I’m not sure I believe it.” For the first time, he flashes his smile at her. “But why don’t you write down all your feelings about Affordable Care. It will relieve you, and then we’ll see if we can put your mind at rest.” With that, he nods his head once, and takes off for a vending machine next to the table of girls.

Brittany is left standing there. She spots Steve, plunks herself down beside him, and continues the conversation as if she were still talking to Monroe.

“Why should we have to buy Obamacare when congress says it’s too expensive for them, and they’ve got six-figure salaries? Why should they make rules for us and exempt themselves?”

Go to it Steve. Take Mom’s part. “They’re not exempted,” he says.

“Because that didn’t work. Instead, the government is paying for them. They’re being subsidized. That means we’re paying for them. They’ve been issued a memo that says don’t buy it until we can get you the best deal. Really, Steve, you disgust me. You don’t know anything.”

She stands and walks off, having dealt Steve the blow she wanted to deal Monroe.

To close our snooping for today, let’s look in on Billy, the youngest member of our cast, who is in his room, making up his pot pamphlet for Saturday. Here is a quote: “Marijuana is a plant. All animals, including humans, are entitled to the products of the earth. It has more medicinal uses than any other plant. It requires no preparation, and the effects are instant. It’s our sacred right as human beings to partake in this miracle plant.” He’s already cued up a bunch of testimonials, from an ancient Chinese emperor to Queen Victoria. And you thought marijuana dulls the brain and induces sloth!

Summer's-end-Saturday Summary

We left Steve holding the New York Times with Putin’s put-down of Obama. Since then John McCain has sent his little missile over to Russia via the Internet, to remind the Russian people that their leader is a doody-head who doesn’t give a damn about them, and that they shouldn’t listen to him.

It’s a week since the Russians hit America with the Times. Steve is up in his room listening to Mom and Dad fight downstairs. This is a comforting sound for Steve. He grew up on it. During the recent phase of his parents’ agreement about who should do what to Syria’s Assad, he felt rootless, as if he had no solid ground to stand on.

Now things are back to normal.

What he hears from below is:

Mom: “Your precious Republicans are shutting down the government just to go against Obama.”

And the welcome refrain, always slightly different: “They’re not my Republicans. I hate them as much as you do. They’re political pussies with a Boner and no balls.”

Mom: “Racist bigots.”

Dad: “Oh, for God’s sake. They aren’t racists. It’s not Obama’s brown they don’t like. It’s his red. The man’s a Communist. They don’t like Communists. Obamacare is their trick to take over the country. Nobody wants Obamacare. It’s hurting everyone. People are getting fired, put on part-time, losing their health-care, while the corporations, and the unions and even Congress are asking for exemptions from the damn thing, and getting them, because it would make them poor. Everybody but the individual gets exempted. Commies hate the individual. They want the individual to be on the dole and in their pocket – dependent on them.”

“Republicans hate everybody but the rich bastards who don’t give a shit about anybody else.”

“That’s a lie the Liberals have been handing out forever. The people who don’t like big government want a system where anybody can get rich. America’s got a million millionaires, who were poor kids of poor parents. And they come in all colors and religions, and all four genders. Individual -freedom lovers don’t have to go around separating out every group to either elevate or demote them. The individual is what counts, whatever group he belongs to, and they want every individual to have a fair shot at making it big. Conservatives are color- blind. It’s the Liberals who are racists.”

Whoa! Never say that to a Liberal. Mom’s voice goes up an octave. “That is a LIE. And you can get out of here, you obnoxious, arrogant, self-righteous know-it-all! You’re too annoying to put up with. You’re the Tea Party, Hitler and the Unabomber all in one. Spare me. Please. Go visit Doreen. Let Doreen put up with you.”

Ah, now Steve is fully relaxed, stretched out on his bed, listening to the storm rage under him. Now that Doreen has been invoked, he’s as calm as a kid in a rocking cradle.

But the invocation has enraged Wayne, as his wife knew it would. “Oh. Right. Send me to Doreen. I’m the only man whose wife and mistress are in love with another man - the same man - and it isn’t me.”

(Steve knows all about it. Kids know everything.)

“Oh, yes,” Wayne says, “The pee-ons still believe in Mr. O and everything he says. I do not get how they look at that mean, hatchet-face with such love and lust in their eyes, like he’s the most beautiful man who ever lived. It’s almost like they hear, Fuck me Fuck me Fuck me, when he’s really saying Fuck You!”

And with that, Wayne slams the door, and almost simultaneously, Melissa’s voice, now sweet and melodic, wafts up the stairs to a euphoric Steve. “Time for breakfast, Stevie.” He bounds off the bed - he’s already dressed - and goes downstairs, determined not to be like either of his parents; to be what he is: in between, lullingly strung in a hammock.

His parents don’t talk politics to him. It wouldn’t be fair, so peace descends upon the bacon and eggs, a retro-breakfast if there ever was one.

But there is no peace where Wayne is going. Doreen is home alone. Billy the Kid’s gone out to raise the consciousness of America about marijuana. He’s taken a bong to the roadside, where he has set up shop for occasional neighbors passing by. There’s nothing in the bong. He’s just displaying. It’s clean. He got high up in his room, and he’s hoping to distribute his little home-made pamphlet on one of the oldest medicines known to mankind without actually getting arrested. His mother wouldn’t like that, and he likes his mother.

Doreen is home crying about the latest murder of innocents, this time at an unarmed navy base. Wayne walks right into the puddle of tears. The dining room table is again covered with the Times, and she’s making posters again. This is where Billy gets his journalistic inclinations.

Here’s how the fight goes in this house: In red paint, the posters say, NO MORE GUNS. Doreen isn’t fancy. She gets right to the point.

Wayne laughs. “Shouldn’t that say, ‘More Guns’? They’re the Armed Forces of America. Is there anything dumber than an armed forces without arms? Wouldn’t even you expect soldiers to have guns? Schools and army bases; No-Gun zones. Schools and army bases: where unarmed people get shot up. Use your head, Doreen. Use logic.”

“Logic! That’s the trouble with you. All you have is logic. You have no heart. You can’t respond to people in pain. Think of the families. Every time someone gets shot, think of all the other people whose lives are ruined - their wives, their husbands, their little children, their parents! You and your god dam logic!”

Wayne shakes his head. “You have no idea what’s going on, do you? No idea how our country is being taken over and turned into a dictatorship. You don’t even know what’s happening. Do you know they’re trying to pass off this killer as Buddhist? The man’s a Muslim! Yet again. But you don’t know that. You don’t know nothin’.”

Oh, but she won’t take that! “I’ll have you know I read the Times every day, listen to NPR and BBC about two hours a day, and read the Economist for about six hours every week, so I consider myself well-informed. All you’ve got is your own brain, while I have the smartest people in the world giving me the news.”

He could give in now. She’s standing up from the table, her glorious globes swathed in a scoop-neck sweater. He’s been watching her cleavage as she painted and they argued. He could have some of the good stuff. He passed Billy at his station in the nearby development, and he knows he won’t be back for awhile.

But he doesn’t take the good stuff. He’s too mad. He says, “Don’t you know those are now all branches of the federal government? Obama met with Times editors and reporters to decide on the strategy for Syria. Yes, your brain is nice and clean. It’s called brain-washing, my dear. And you are what used to be called a dupe of the Communist party.”

Later, Melissa tried to get the red paint off his nice new shirt, but it wouldn’t come out.

Putin Put Out

We’ve spent a lot of time with the grown-ups; some of you would rather have been out there with the kids, inhaling hot air instead of drinking blackberry wine, watching Obama on the 4-inch screen instead of under the 72-inch spectacle.

When last seen, Steve Wright was having the best of both worlds, glass in hand and Mary Jane in mind. Steve is a man now, free of his family, even though living at home. He’s a college man. Nobody messes with a college man, especially if he’s living at home. Nobody gives him a curfew, nobody expects him home for dinner, nobody asks him where he‘s going, or where he’s been.

Nobody mentions that he smokes marijuana in his room. (A lot of kids’ parents smoked the dreaded weed. By now a lot of kids’ grandparents have been on the cool end of a joint.)

Steve is an agreeable young man – always has been. No reason not to be, is what he figured. Which didn’t mean that he let people push him around. He didn’t hide his opinions, but he didn’t shout them out, either. His father did enough of that. Wayne Wright. Poor Dad, saddled with a name like that. Steve was grateful that he wasn’t named Cart, or Wheel. And he wondered what a Wayne was, but had never asked, or looked it up.

You don’t know what any of our people look like. You know what they think, which of course, is the only thing that matters.

The hell you say. You know better than that. Looks are important. They’re the first impression the outside world has of you.

Let’s take a look at Steve – get an outsider’s prospective. An upstanding young man. Even now, in the student lounge, Steve stands out among his slouchy contemporaries. No baggy pants, no shapeless T; khakis that fit his little ass, and a starched white shirt. Steve is efficient; he doesn’t want to waste time picking out his clothes. He has a drawer of identical pants and another of identical shirts. The shirts are the real thing; he’s been watching Mad Men since he was twelve and admired Don Draper’s drawer full of folded shirts. He drops his off to be laundered and pays the tab himself; he’s always had some job or other. He leaves his loosely waved brown hair longish – well, longish for now – it curls around his ears. And it looks damn good. He’s attractive in a wholesome, harmless way. 

Other people think so too. Here comes one of them. Steve is taking a course in, of all things, government, and Brittany Becker is the adjunct grader. She’s a straggly blonde, thin, a starving graduate student at NYU where she didn’t get a teaching assistantship, so she’s working here.

“Hi. You’re Steve, right?” she says, and rattles a newspaper in front of him. “Have you seen this?”

No, he hasn‘t seen anything. He got up, got dressed, and came right here. “It’s an Op Ed. Guess who wrote it.” She playfully hides the paper behind her back. She wants him to guess.

“Obama,” he says. She shakes her smiling head.

He takes a few more obvious guesses, making her happier each time, until she says, “Putin.”

Putin? He tries to see around her back, and catches enough of a sight to know it’s the New York Times. She whips it out, and shoves the folded page under his nose

“Yeah,” she says. “The leader of the unfree world telling off the leader of the free world for telling Americans they’re exceptional people. But that’s not what American exceptionalism is. The people are free. That is exceptional, and because of that, America does exceptional things, like free people in other countries from tyrants.”

Steve takes a page from his mother’s playbook. “Then we move in and take over. Like in Iraq.”

“We don’t take over. We try to get the country back on its feet. We didn’t take anything from Iraq. Just body bags and bills.”

She squints at him. “You’re not anti-American, are you?” she asks. Now who’s going to say “Yes” to that?

“Of course not,” he says.

“You want to hear a big joke? ‘American Exceptionalism’ is a Communist phrase, and all this has happened before. Stalin – you’re heard of him? Stalin dressed down the American Communist party leader for thinking that America was an exception to Marxist philosophy, because it had so much going for it that it could actually leave its people free. And now just like Stalin, Putin is laying into Obama for the same thing. He’s treating Obama like his underling, telling him it’s dangerous to encourage people to see themselves as exceptional.

“You’re not calling Obama a Communist, are you?” Steve asks.

“Oh, not me,” she says, “not me. Here’s who’s calling him a Communist.” She thrusts the paper into his hands, Putin side up, and leaves Steve holding the rag.

Speaking Syriasly

It’s fall, the summer rush is over, and the Harris’s, who are used to having a party every night, albeit commercial, invited what they are now calling “the gang” over for dessert, and to watch Obama’s Syria speech on the winery’s 72-inch screen.

Well, you all saw it, and if you didn’t, you should. It was Obama at his best. He talked right to you.

He talked right to Wayne. Wayne had been dreading it. He usually watched Obama by himself, so he could rant and rave and not upset his personal universe. Tonight he was watching with liberals. Melissa was on his side, but it was only for this single issue. She’d be back in bed with Obama when it was resolved, one way or the other.

OK, here comes “the ‘Bama.” Wayne is tense, as he watches this suddenly-young-again man swagger jauntily up to the podium. He looks like a boy whose head is too big for his short, slim body. He begins to speak. Holy Shit! He’s saying everything Wayne says. Only better. So, so, much better. Wayne relaxes. He’s ecstatic. He is experiencing something he never has before: the orator-in-chief speaking for him, speaking his words, speaking his thoughts. Obama smiles, that disarming ear-to-ear grin – a dental ad with the mouth exaggerated to show how perfect it is.

Everybody else in the big room is frowning. Except Melissa, whose grin is as broad as Barack’s. Ann and Donny Harris are holding hands as if it’s the end of the world. Wayne takes a sip of his blackberry wine, and a bite of his apple cobbler. He’s happy. The president is with him. He feels the security of the power behind him. Doreen is looking at Melissa as if she’d like to kick the smile off her face. She refuses to look at Wayne, because Barack is making his case: It’s too atrocious, too dangerous, too immoral, too chicken-shit ball-less (well, maybe O. didn’t say that, exactly, but he meant it) not to go in. Period. Fini.

Oh, but wait! What’s he saying now? Why that two-faced…yeah…that’s just what he thought would happen. He gave all the reasons why we have to hit Syria, and now he’s gonna tell us why he’s not gonna to do it.

Suddenly Wayne knows what he should have known, and maybe did all along. He’s been weak, weak. He fell into the trap. He wanted to believe, so he did, but the prologue he loved was just the introduction to the big “but”: But here’s why I’m not going to do it.

He’s been tricked. Obama isn’t on his side at all. He’s on the side of the UN, the global tyrants. They’re going to give Assad time to hide every last weapon. Hey! Maybe he can send them back to Iraq, where they came from. Nobody’s watching Iraq now! Yes! American presidents are nothing but moving men. Time to pack up your nukes, your germs, and your poison gas; America’s on the move.

He looks around the room. Now Melissa is frowning, and the Harris’s and Doreen are swilling down the blackberry wine.

Look how that bastard weasled out of having to lose face before Congress and the whole goddam fucking world. Everybody was against him, both the Dems and the Reps, so he cancelled the vote he was sure to lose.

Through his anger, he hears Obama reach out for him once more, with the words, “American exceptionalism.” America is a good place, not a bad place. America should, and has to, lead the world. Is this the same guy who said America’s place in the world should be diminished? Could he really have changed? No, no, it’s for one purpose only. He’s saved the world to save his ass.

All the lefties in the room are talking it up – “the UN,” “civilized nations,” “no mo wo,” are phrases that come to him through his let-down and disappointment. Obama was so right, for the first half of his speech, and so wrong for the second.

Give the problem to the UN, Assad goes back to shelling instead of gassing, the US can’t do anything because now it’s the whole world’s business, and we’re back where we started before Assad showed his stuff.

Nobody is looking at him; he’s all alone. Even Melissa is recovering from her bout of doubt. Her boy has pulled it out. He’s golden again. Without firing a shot, he’s going to get rid of the poison gas, put it into the hands of the UN, which she loves, and children the world over will be safe. He hears pieces of what she’s saying, and knows that their political honeymoon is over. There’ll be no more “yessing” from her.

A gust of hot air comes into the room, bringing with it, their children., laughing and happy, not a care in the world. “Did you watch the big O?” Natalie asks, as they troop down the long, stone floor.

“We sure did,” says her mother. “You should have seen him.”

“We did,” Natalie said, picking up a cheese pastry.

“Weren’t you kids outside? I thought you said you liked the heat.”

“We do. We were. We watched it on my phone.”

“Well, what did you think?”

“Think? I think he’s smooth. He says two things at once and you believe them both. We should do it. We shouldn’t do it. We still would, but we won’t.”

Wayne’s interested now. He moves closer. “He’s a hawk! He’s dove! He’s Superman!”

Steve pours some blackberry wine into a glass. (He’s in college now – Community.) He says from his professorial stance, “I don’t know what’s going on, and neither do you. Everybody believes the last thing they hear. Nine-tenths of the time, what you hear is a lie. Statistically, you’d be stupid to believe anything.”

Steve has spoken up. Would Billy? Doreen turns to him. “And you?”

“I think he must have got high with Putin, and they set the whole thing up.”

Steve raises his glass (on high) to Billy and nods.

Whining and Dining

Billy the Kid came home from his first day of school to find the dining room table protected with fat sections of the New York Times, and his mother making posters with magic markers. She had a strangely happy look on her face, considering that the sign in front of her said, “No More Killing.”

At first, he thought it was about abortions, but that didn’t make sense. His mother volunteered at Planned Parenthood, and “No More Killing” was what her “Right to Life” opponents said.

Once again, Uncle Wayne’s car had been pulling out of the driveway when he got there. Wayne wasn’t his real Uncle; he just called him that. He was a very good friend of the family.

“How come Wayne’s always going when I’m coming?” he asked.

“Uncle Wayne. And I never noticed that.”

“He’s not my uncle.” He was sick of calling him that.

“If you want to know,” (he didn’t really) “Uncle Wayne is crazy. He’s gone way over to the other side. He used to have tendencies, but now he’s a full-fledged…” She stopped.

“Full-fledged what?”

She thought for a minute. “Nut-case,” she said.

Billy was already opening the refrigerator door. “Don’t eat too much,” his mother told him. “We’re having dinner at the Harris’s They always have a lot of food.”

“And a lot of wine,” he added.

“They have a winery.  If they had a bakery, they’d have a lot of bread and cake.”

 
It was going to be a cozy dinner with the Harris family – just she and Billy, and Donny, Ann, and Natalie.

The main building of the winery was a huge, old stone castle, built single-handed by a stubborn artist in the middle of the last century. Its floor and walls were stone, its beams and rafters covered with carvings, accumulated over decades of decadent parties below. The Harris’s had bedrooms on the grounds, but they had no private living room or kitchen. Dinner was served, and the family relaxed, in the main hall, when patrons weren’t there.

Doreen knew something was wrong the minute she walked in the door. Way down in the center of the immense room, she detected a surfeit of silver at the table.

Sure enough, Ann Harris came breezing into the big room, her caftan flowing behind, her voice belting out in front: “I hope you don’t mind, but at the last minute, Melissa called. Practically invited herself over tonight. Begged. So…” she indicated the table with a wave of her hand, “she and Wayne, are joining us.”

“Shit,” Doreen thought. “Lovely,” she said.

No matter how formal or informal the evening, two things were sure – Ann’s caftan, and the biggest, roundest, wine glasses anyone had ever seen anywhere.

Dinner was, as always, a great success – kidding and small talk, the comforting sound of the continual pouring of wine, leaning back in the big, heavy chairs, almost like thrones, to stare up at the carven gargoyles. Wayne was seated between Doreen and Melissa, and across the table from them were the three kids. Ann was at the head, and Donny at the foot. The vegetables came from The Orchards, a town or two away. Corn on the cob, a pyramid of sliced tomatoes and onions, sprinkled with shredded basil and smelling sublime, sautéed rainbow chard with raisins and feta cheese, the cut up stems the colors of confetti, and fat cowboy steaks (no vegetarians here) grilled by Donny at the far end of the room, on a grill set directly in the fireplace itself.

No heavy talk during dinner. The children are present. Never mind that the children know more than the adults do – witness the latest phenomenon, thanks to Hannah Montana, kids having to explain to their parents what twerking is because they’re too embarrassed to ask the Internet.

Doreen marveled that Natalie was so grown-up! And yet not at all snobby about being so much older than Billy. After apple pie and ice cream, (dessert wine for the grown-ups), she and Stevie took Billy along as if they were all the same age.

At last, the parents were alone. And plenty drunk. Happy and loose, and friendly-feeling, so Doreen leaned over Wayne, to say to Melissa, “You don’t really want to go to war, do you?” She pointed at Wayne, with not too steady a finger. “He talked you into it, didn’t he? He’s a mean, mean, man. Wants to fight.”

“You know he never talked me into anything, Doreen.”

“Not till now,” Doreen replied, looking Wayne square in the eyes, as her head passed by his on the way back from glaring at Melissa.

At the ends of the table, the host and hostess watched as though it were television.

Doreen addressed the company at large. “No more killing. Not of anybody. Not for any reason. It’s so simple. Thou Shalt Not Kill. What’s wrong with that?”

Wayne came half out of his chair. “What’s wrong with that? I’ll tell you what’s wrong with that. It’s stupid and short-sighted. And coming from you, the queen of the baby-butchers, it’s goddam hypocritical.”

“How dare you!” Doreen picked up her goblet of amber liquid and hurled its contents in Wayne’s face. Then she put her head down on his shoulder and started to cry.

Melissa leaned past him, and patted the head on the shoulder, than said to her husband, “You brute! You male chauvinist pig! Let’s see you lug around nine pounds of life-ruining potential.”

“Nice way to talk about a baby,” he said.

“Well face it, big boy, that’s sometimes what a baby is.” Her gaze drifted toward the door. Wouldn’t want Stevie to hear that. His life had been up for grabs for two months while she decided what to do about her pregnancy. She married Wayne.

Donny decided to take charge. “Why should we go to war over something that has nothing to do with us? There are so many bad things happening in the world, we can’t possibly stop them all. We’re not the world’s policeman.”

“Then who the hell is?” Wayne asked. “The UN? A bunch of criminals playing cop? When have they ever done anything but wait till it’s too late, and then come up with the wrong answer anyway? A club of dictators who don‘t give a shit about their people or anybody else’s?”

From the other end of the table, Ann Harris, who can hold her liquor better than any man she knows, shouted at Wayne, “You’re the one who’s being short-sighted. And unrealistic. It’s too dangerous. Russia’s involved. Russia could say, “You hit my kid so I’ll hit yours. Russia could bomb Israel. It could start World War III!”

The door opened and the kids popped back inside. Doreen quickly removed her head from Wayne’s shoulder. Melissa caught Steve’s eye and nodded, signaling “Time to go.”

“It’s been delightful,” Melissa said, pushing back her chair and forcing herself to stand straight. Mustn’t set a bad example for the children. Everything in moderation. Including drunkenness.

Wayne led the way to the door. “I’m driving everybody home,” he said.

“Don’t be shilly,” Doreen said. “I can drive.”

“I’m driving everybody home,” Wayne repeated, and they trooped out – the two boys, the two mothers, and the one dad.

On the ride home, the boys’ silently shared opinion of the evening was that Natalie Harris had good weed, and they were glad she wasn’t going away to college.

Labor Day

Wayne had carried both bags of groceries into his girlfriend’s house, so when he got home, and his wife held out her arms to receive hers, he had nothing to put in them. All he could do was walk into the out-stretched embrace, and try make up for it with a kiss, but it didn’t work.

“Save it for Doreen,” she said, and he flashed back to the fury emerging from the tub.

“Yeah, sure.”

 “Where’s the bag? In the car?”

“Uh … no..”

That’s when the phone rang. Perfect timing. Melissa picked it up. “Uh-huh… Oh. Okay. Yeah, thanks.”

And put it down with what could only be called a wry smile. “She says they’re over there. She’s bringing them.”

She did. And she stayed to help with the party. He had two wives. Who the hell wants two wives?

Then there was the party itself. It rained the whole fucking weekend, so they were in and out of the damn tent, which it was lucky they had. They munched their celery sticks and broccoli, waiting for the main course, chicken, and the other main course, ribs. Black soul food, the staple of the White barbeque. They drank their artisanal beer and organic red and white wine, and talked about their backyard gardens, their kids, the local wineries, the racist Republicans, the cut school budget…

Out of the corner of his eye, Wayne saw Stevie (not Stevie, Steve; he was Steve now) round the corner of the house with his pack of teen-agers, and disappear into the little woods. Going to get high, he thought. Good for them. Kids don’t care about the world. Why should they? They can’t do anything about it. Neither can the grown-ups, but they have to pretend they can.

Lets follow the kids into the woods.

Natalie Winegrove is leading the pack. Natalie lives at one of those wineries. Her parents are old friends of the Harris’s, and she and Steve were an item in the fifth grade. Now they’re just friends. Steve brings up the rear, and between them are the Branson twins, and Sally Jackson, their sequential girlfriend, Tom’s ex and Tim’s current.

There’s a downed log in the little woods, and the five kids sit down along it, Sally sandwiched between the two T’s, as they’re called, Natalie and Steve on the ends.

Nat takes out a little bag of leaf and some rolling papers and prepares a neat, skinny joint, crumbling the marijuana into the white trough, licking the seam, and, her special trick, popping the whole thing, for a second, into her mouth, and drawing it out along her lips, to keep it from burning too fast.

The joint goes down the line, then Steve gets up, carries it back to Natalie, and sits down next to her. “When do you leave?” he asks.

“I don’t. Didn’t they tell you? I’m not going.”

Steve’s surprised. She was all set to go to Oneonta and become a teacher. “Why not?”

She shrugs. “I don’t want to be a teacher. I don’t want to spend a pile of money to get turned into something I don’t want to be.” She adds, “And I don’t have to go to college to learn how to drink. I was born in a winery.”

“So what are you going to do?”

“Work.”

“Work? At what?”

“Making wine.”

‘Squashing grapes with your feet?” he asks.

She laughs. “The front desk,” she says.

Tim and Tom aren’t interested. They’re starting their junior year, far from having to think about college.

Sally Jackson is very interested, but has kept mute. She knows Natalie’s got something else going - a thriving business growing weed, and passing it off as her cousin-from-Connecticut’s. Sally carries water and fertilizer up the mountain behind the winery, and gets her cut of the crop. An all-girl operation. You’d have to be crazy to trust guys. Guys are show-offs. Guys can’t keep a secret.

The kids are ready to go back to the party. Fortified, at peace with themselves, they wend their way back to the barbeque. “You see that picture of the dead kids in Syria?” Steve asks Natalie.

She nods.

“My mother’s got it nailed up on the wall over her computer,” he says. “I heard this banging, and opened the door. There she was with a hammer. I thought the wall was going to come down. She and my dad always fight about politics, but this time they’re on the same side.”

“And my parents are on the other one. None of our damn business, they say; let the bastards kill each other.”

The sun has come out, and fried chicken is in the air. “The whole thing’s too confusing,” Steve says.

“Hey, there’s Doreen with Billy the Kid,” Natalie says. Steve knows nothing about it, but 13-year-old Billy is one of her ‘clients’. “I’m going to walk him back to the log.”