“No.”
“Good. He’s a writer best discovered when you’re old. Give yourself his essays on your sixty-fifth birthday, or your seventieth, and you’ll see what I mean. Anyway, Montaigne said that there is no man so good that if he placed all his thoughts and actions under the scrutiny of the laws he wouldn’t deserve hanging ten times over. Jefferson — even Jefferson — deserved to hang. Every president we’ve ever had deserved to hang.”
“Some more than others.”
“True, but when you judge this president, remember Jefferson. I believe this war we’re fighting is a just war, a necessary war, but just like in every other war we’ve made mistakes, some of ’em terrible ones. We’re only human. The president’s only human. Even on the most exalted throne in the world, we’re only sitting on our own bottom.”
“Montaigne again?”
“You got it.”
“But your war still seems so disproportionate to me. I mean, America against who, exactly? All I see is a bunch of mad criminals who obviously ought to be in jail for life without parole — and heaven knows we’ve lived with criminals long enough without trying to fight a world war against them.”
“Yeah, well, in 1941 you’d have been with Lindbergh, a fascist fellow traveler. Millions were. It was Lindbergh who sneered at FDR for trying to spread freedom and democracy by force of arms throughout the world. Sound familiar? Most everything I read in The New York Times these days sounds a helluva lot like goddamn Lucky Lindy. That’s something else that’s wrong with liberals — they’ve lost their memories.”
“You think Roosevelt would’ve backed the war on terror?” She meant it as a sarcasm, but Augie took it as a straight question.
“Sure he would. No doubt about it. We’re fighting the vilest movement on the face of the planet and the greatest threat to western civilization since the Nazis and the Soviets. They’re not ‘criminals’—they’re soldiers in an international army without a uniform, and they’re uniquely dangerous. I’ll tell you what Roosevelt would’ve said — exactly what he did say in a Fireside Chat in ’42…” He peered at the sky, apparently searching for inspiration, then shrugged and began to recite. “‘Those Americans who believed that we could live under the illusion of isolationism wanted the American eagle to imitate the tactics of the ostrich. Now, many of those same people, afraid that we may be sticking our necks out, want our national bird to be turned into a turtle. But we prefer to retain the eagle as it is — flying high and striking hard.’ Sorry about the eagle: there’s usually one up there, but we seem to be out of luck tonight. Care for another martini, or shall we go on to wine?”
The sea had disappeared completely. No wonder they’d called the place Useless Bay — low tide revealed it as all sand. The magnified sun stood right over the jagged, deckle-edged Olympics; it was going to be one of those butcher-shop sunsets.
“Wine would be nice — red, if you have it.”
Getting up from his chair to take her empty martini glass, Augie said, “There’s no conversation more boring than the one where everyone agrees.”
Emboldened by gin, Lucy said, “Montaigne.”
“Oh, smart-ass,” Augie said and walked chuckling into the house.
RATHER TOO MUCH deliberation had gone into the choice of books that filled the small bookshelf on the dresser in Lucy’s room: Emerson’s Self-Reliance and Other Essays, Mencken’s Prejudices, The Devil’s Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce. Looking over the titles, Lucy thought they looked less like bedtime reading than a bedtime reading list. Augie’s politics were signaled by George F. Will, the only living author on the shelf.
Everyone except Lucy had gone to bed early. At ten, as they parted company on the landing, Augie had said to her, “‘Good night, America…and to all the ships at sea’”—another of his compulsive quotations, though she couldn’t fathom why Walter Winchell had to be dragged into it.
She considered going downstairs to fetch herself another glass of wine, but even in this millionaire mansion, the walls were thin and every sound carried; she’d heard the murmur of voices from Minna and Augie’s room, and didn’t want to be fingered as a solitary late-night drinker.
Thinking of Augie’s quotes made her remember that one of her dad’s favorites was from Ambrose Bierce: “War is God’s way of teaching Americans geography.” She pulled out The Devil’s Dictionary and looked it up. Disappointingly, the long entry under “War” didn’t have those words or any that remotely resembled them, nor did “Geography.” She was certain that he’d attributed them to Bierce, so he must have written them someplace else.
In the pink armchair by the window, she scribbled a few lines into her ring-bound notebook, memory prompts like “Hudson Hornet,” “Good with his hands,” “Lindbergh,” “FDR eagle.” The sea had come back and filled the bay to the brim; a hazed three-quarter moon silvered the tarry water, which lay as still and silent as a mountain lake, not the smallest ripple breaking on the sand. Distracted by the view, Lucy abandoned her note-taking and turned out the lamp to better enjoy the play of moonshine on the sea. Quietly as a burglar, she released the window catch and raised the sash to freshen the air of the room, which was rank with the smell of lavender Febreze.
From behind the Sheetrock wall, she heard a yip-yip-yip-yipping sound like the muffled barking of a puppy, becoming less muffled by the moment, then a sobbing cry: “Au-gie!”
Strange. Minna’s apron, from which she was rarely separated, said that kissing don’t last, cooking do. Not true for Minna, apparently: lucky her. Pushing seventy, she was still coming like a twenty-year-old, which was a very great deal more than Lucy could say of herself.
Maybe it was the stimulus of having strangers in the house. Or maybe — but the idea of Augie being turned on by Alida in her Lolita sunglasses did not bear thinking about. She switched on the lamp and forced herself to plow through Ambrose Bierce, beginning at the beginning.
ABASEMENT, n., A decent and customary attitude in the presence of wealth or power…
AUGIE BROKE OFF his excruciating piano-playing to say, “Would you like to take another shot at kayaking later on this morning?”
“Well,” Alida said, “I’d really like to, but I’ve got this really big load of homework.”
She’d slept badly, haunted by the image of the enormous brown dogfish stealing beneath her, triangular fins outspread, a predator on the hunt for warm flesh. She’d read, she’d listened to music, then she’d dozed, only to be woken by what she thought was a scream in the unfamiliar country darkness outside. Body tensed, she’d dared herself to listen to murder, but heard nothing more. She told herself that the scream must have happened in a nightmare already forgotten, and reached for her iPod again, drowning her racing thoughts with the sound of Good Charlotte singing “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous,” “Emotionless,” and “My Bloody Valentine.” It had been nearly two A.M. before she’d finally dropped off.