The people listening looked surprised, some laughed, some nodded in ways that suggested they had new respect for this Mr. Wald or that what he had revealed confirmed their suspicions about the operations of the American government, while others fidgeted, began checking their phones, and slipped away, making excuses.
‘So what did you say?’ Michael Ramsey asked.
‘I said I was flattered but no, that was something I could not do in good conscience while continuing to practice law.’
‘Why not?’
‘How could I possibly stand in front of the Constitutional Court and argue a case knowing I would also be informing on the people around me, on my fellow lawyers and the justices? That would be antithetical to my idea of democracy.’
‘Democracy would crumble without spies. You should’ve said yes,’ Michael Ramsey said, in a way that was far from friendly. At that moment Meredith pulled me away to speak with a friend’s daughter who had applied for early admission to NYU. My Thanksgiving morning passed in that way, ducking in and out of random fragments of conversation, watching people come and go, and then, when I thought again to look for him, I discovered Michael Ramsey had already left. Good riddance, I thought, and thank goodness he won’t be staying for dinner.
My mother arrived, and Peter’s parents, various aunts and uncles and cousins on his side of the family. We ate in the middle of the afternoon, though we had never really stopped eating. There was great amusement at my not having a smartphone; even my mother has one now, a gift to herself. ‘They’re so intuitive,’ she said, ‘I do everything with it.’
I asked her whether she realized that everything she does on her phone is recorded somewhere, stored on a database, perhaps many different databases.
‘Who cares? I’m an old woman, I have nothing to hide, I don’t break any laws, I just talk to my friends and send emails and watch funny videos of animals. Why the hell would the CIA or the NSA or whoever it is give a damn about any of that?’
‘The fact is, we can’t possibly know what will pique their interest.’
‘Don’t be so paranoid, Jeremy! This is still a free country. We have due process and the Bill of Rights and the best democracy in the world. Why should a law-abiding citizen worry? Even if they’re watching us, they’re doing it for our protection. Frankly I’m all for it.’
I wanted to lean over and whisper in her ear, ‘you have no idea what you’re talking about, you cannot imagine how quickly you could be affected by, for instance, my own activities, how this new regime of data collection does not see innocence first but assumes guilt by algorithmic association. How much do you know about all the people you claim as your friends? What do you know of their connections? We have remade the social landscape without understanding the ramifications of this remodeling.’
But of course I said nothing, smiling with what an English friend in Oxford once called my ‘shit-eating grin,’ and accepted another helping of mashed potatoes.
Peter’s parents were staying for the weekend so I agreed to take my mother back upstate on Friday morning, which meant she would be with me overnight, no great burden since we get along well despite her occasional obstreperousness, and in fact when I bought my house outside of Rhinebeck earlier this year I knew there would be a certain pleasure in locating myself close enough to my mother to be able to see her easily without ever having to stay under the same roof. Some parents and children adapt to their mutual adulthood and find ways of living together, or spending extended stretches of time in their respective homes, and this has as much to do with the children learning how not to act like children as the parents learning how not to treat their children like children in constant need of correction and advice, which is to say that both sides have to learn to respect each other and the fact of their mutual adulthood, at least until the parents, if this should chance to happen, begin that terrible descent into their second childhood, during which they may wish, quite sincerely, for their children to become parents to them, as payback for that earlier relationship of care and protection and nurture.
My mother and I have reached the stage where I can happily have her stay in my home for a few nights and stay in hers for a similar period, but more than that and we risk killing each other because my mother has never quite believed in my adulthood, and, although she was happy to accept a car service from her granddaughter for the trip to the city, is wildly independent at the age of eighty-three and so remarkably intact both physically and mentally that I have not yet been faced with the prospect of assuming a greater burden of care.
Now, I wonder, should that stage ever come, will I be at liberty to assume the responsibility, or will it fall to my daughter? More likely, I think, now more than ever, my fingers aching from the effort of this composition, moving the pen across each sheet of paper, Meredith will bear the burden for us all, her parents and grandmother, the choices we have each made throughout our lives, our chickens all coming home, at once, to roost.
‘You’re looking well, Jeremy,’ my mother said after we had finished dinner and moved to various corners of the living room for coffee and digestifs. ‘You look like you’ve lost weight.’
‘My weight is not open for discussion.’
‘It’s a compliment!’
‘It’s a backhanded compliment, mother. It’s a compliment that implies the person being complimented was once fat and has now improved himself.’
‘Don’t be so stuffy!’
‘It’s not polite to talk about people’s weight.’
‘But you’ve always struggled with your weight, Jeremy, so I thought I was giving you a compliment. You look slimmer.’
‘I have not always struggled with my weight.’
‘Well, you did yo-yo while you were in England. All that ale, I suppose, and the fish and chips.’
‘I ate fish and chips once in a decade and probably drank one pint of beer a year, if that.’
‘You don’t have to be so defensive. Why are you so defensive with your own mother? Can’t I talk about my son’s health?’
It went like that, circling round the same misunderstanding, or shifting perception of the offensive thing my mother had said. This was usually the tenor of our conversations, for as she has grown older she has, like a child, lost her filter, says whatever she thinks regardless of the feelings of the people around her, and yet, also just like a child, is so quick to take offense if she herself is criticized that we can very quickly come to grief if we spend too much time alone. There was the strong possibility that one day soon she would say something offensive over the phone — for instance threatening the life of a politician in a completely unthinking way — or write something similar in an email, which would draw the attention of whoever might be listening and recording. Is it so fanciful? I no longer think so.