Charles had been fresh out of journalism school when he was hired by Jake three years ago. His dad had gotten Charles the interview without asking him if he wanted it—Finn, a colleague at the investment firm, had a wife who was high up at Fischer, and if Charles wanted a job as an editor, he could have one. At first, Charles blurted that it didn’t sound like type of job he was looking for; it seemed an awful lot like advertising. His dad’s face had clouded. “Finn didn’t have to talk to his wife, you know,” he said. “Not every job can be the New York Times.”
Realizing his mistake, Charles had backpedaled and thanked his dad for thinking of him. The night before the interview he had dinner with his parents and his father asked him when the interview was and spoke about how it was a decent company, how Charles would probably get farther working for a company like Fischer than slaving as a beat reporter at a fledgling local newspaper. “You and your dad could meet up for lunch!” His mother added wistfully, because Charles’s office would only be four blocks from his father’s. Charles had nodded along, simply trying to keep the peace. Scott had sat at the table, too, snickering. No one asked him what was funny. All their father did was glance benignly at Scott, a hopeful smile on his face, desperate to amend whatever he’d done wrong. Eventually, Scott laid down his fork and scraped back his chair and left the table, as if he’d suddenly realized they all thought he was willingly participating in a family event.
After the interview, Charles drove back to his parents’ house and triumphantly told them that he got the job. His father looked at him blankly, and then guffawed. “Well of course you got it. Finn promised me you would. That interview was just a formality.” And then he went back to his newspaper.
That was three years ago. Charles always thought he’d be at a different point in his career by this age. Traveling the world, reporting on famines, bombings, and assassinations. Sneaking into trials and interviewing the wrongfully accused. Possibly ghostwriting a book about a senator with secrets. His mother had told him that by the time his great-grandfather was thirty-one, he’d had a private meeting with Nelson Rockefeller. The most influential person Charles had ever met was a hostess of a television quiz show whose program was being converted into a game that a certain cell phone provider’s customers could play on their BlackBerries. And though Jake promised that Charles would get a lot of opportunities to write, usually he passed Charles over for assignments, giving them to his freelancer friends instead.
Every so often Charles would glance through the paper for entrylevel newspaper jobs, but they didn’t seem to exist. Newspapers were disappearing across the country and with all the bloggers, Twitterers, and iReporters, journalists were becoming extinct as well. Though starting over seemed exhausting, and he had to stand on his own two feet. It was bad enough that he’d had to draw from his trust fund for the house’s down payment. His mother had always told him not to feel bad from using money from the trust. It was his, there was no use feeling ashamed. But Charles couldn’t help it—everything made him feel ashamed. Every choice seemed incorrect. What w ould his life have been like if he’d gone to law school? Where would he be now if he’d taken that job at the local newspaper in that little town in Montana? The one he’d applied for on a whim and been hired at sight unseen?
And there were other choices, ones that quietly dogged him. Where would he be now if he and Scott hadn’t gotten into that fight the day of his graduation? What would be happening now if he could take back what he had said? Would he still be with his high-school girlfriend, Bronwyn? Would she still be speaking to him at least? And would this business with Scott and the wrestlers have even happened?
Maybe it was foolish to think like that. One episode couldn’t have altered Scott’s entire trajectory. Scott was who he was before Charles had said what he said. The past was the past, and the best thing Charles could do was put it out of his mind.
By the time the meeting ended, the editorial team had decided the story lineup for the Back to the Land promotional feature. There would be a short piece about the land the organization had annexed for the community in central Pennsylvania, a valley rife with deer and rabbits for shooting, streams for drinking, and hearty trees for log cabins. Charles had no idea how a plot of land in the middle of Pennsylvania could be desolate and remote enough to trick people into thinking they were truly alone. Sure, parts of the state were quieter than others, but evidence of modern civilization was everywhere. It was in the smell of a factory, the roar of a truck, the itchy tag on the back of a T-shirt. Or would the people of Back to the Land make their own T-shirts? Would they mix up their own medication, resort to Native American-style poultices and inhalants?
And yet, the literature said people thrived living this way, even chronically sick people with cancer and diabetes and autoimmune diseases. That was another story for the lineup: an interview with a doctor who had treated several people before they moved to Back to the Land and then tested them again once they’d been living there for a year. The improvements were amazing. Allegedly the lifestyle’s simplicity and lack of commercial pollutants had remarkable healing powers. But it had to be a placebo effect, Charles thought. They got better because they wanted to. He didn’t believe in any of that New Age nonsense. The power of positive thought couldn’t save you. Circumstance was circumstance, and you had to make due with what you were dealt.
After the meeting, Charles went outside to get some air. He took the elevator eleven flights down and walked through the marble lobby, exiting onto Market Street. There was a traffic jam outside the building; the cars wedged at odd angles, honking. Suburban Station loomed across the avenue. A hot dog and a pretzel cart lined the sidewalk. Two cleaning women in pink smocks and white athletic shoes paused at the corner, talking animatedly with their hands.
The meeting had been especially difficult to sit through and not just because he found the concept ridiculous; his mind couldn’t stay focused on work. He kept returning to what was happening, what might be happening, what his brother might have done. All he could think of were the worst case scenarios: a secret society of sorts, a band of boys abusing one another for kicks, for power, with Scott at the helm. Not that he had any proof that this was happening—he hadn’t been able to get any details out of his mother, and it was possible that even she didn’t know. It was unclear whether Scott even understood the magnitude of the situation. It only took a few bad decisions to ruin everything. But reputation meant nothing to Scott. Neither did history nor tradition. Or, well, family. Charles recalled how, long ago, he’d been ordered to look after Scott at one of their parents’ Fourth of July parties. Scott, then about six, grabbed a pack of matches teetering on the side of the grill and struck one. He waved it near the old trellises, threatening to set them on fire. “You can’t do that to the house,” Charles hissed, appalled. It was the equivalent of harming an old relative.
Scott struck the match anyway, a cruel smile on his face. The trellises rotted; their brittle timber just waiting for an excuse to burn. Their father blamed Charles for not watching his brother more carefully, and Charles, frustrated and confused, said, “I tried to stop him, but he didn’t care.” And then, after a moment, “It’s because he’s adopted, right? Because he’s not one of us?”
His father flinched. Even today, at thirty-one years old, Charles could still conjure up his dad’s red, looming face in his mind. “Don’t you ever say that again,” his father growled.
And now, almost certainly because of the conversation he’d had with his mother last night, Charles’s old girlfriend, Bronwyn, was on his mind, too. Various images of her had been flashing through his mind all morning—Bronwyn on the living room couch, outlining the type of cummerbund Charles must wear with his tux so it would match her prom dress. Bronwyn standing on the patio next to the grill, trying to make small talk with Scott when his brother had unwittingly arrived home when Charles was entertaining a group of friends. Diplomatic and eager for everyone to get along, Bronwyn always tried to invite Scott into the conversation. It’s not going to get you anywhere, Charles tried to tell her. He chooses to be an outcast.
And, of course, Charles envisioned Bronwyn in the mud room, standing behind Charles as he held Scott by the throat, all those hideous things spewing from his mouth. He would hear her gasp until the end of his days.
“Charles?” He raised his head now. “Charles?” the voice said again. Caroline Silver was striding across the courtyard. She worked in the marketing department for Jefferson Hospital, and Charles edited their promotional magazine for donors. The magazine only came out biannually, so Charles hadn’t seen her or talked to her in a while.
He watched as Caroline crossed the square, trying to smile. “I’m here to see Jake,” she explained, shaking his hand. “For a late lunch meeting. Goodness, it’s been a while, huh?”
“It has,” he answered. And then she cocked her head, her expression shifting. Charles could tell she was reaching back to recall just how long it had been since she’d seen him, remembering what had happened between then and now. And then, as though Charles really did have an inside view of her head, Caroline shifted her weight and covered her eyes. “Oh, Charles. Your father. Oh my goodness. I’m so, so sorry.”
“It’s all right,” Charles said automatically.
“We read about it in the paper. How awful.”
“Yeah.”
“I meant to call. I didn’t know what was appropriate, though.” “It’s fine. Really.” He smiled at her. “Thank you.”
“What a shame.” She clucked her tongue. “He wasn’t even very old, was he?” He shook his head. “Healthy every day of his life before it happened.”
“You must miss him.”
The vendor on the corner slammed the metal lid that housed the hot dogs unnecessarily hard. Charles stared across the street at a budding dogwood tree. Further down that block was the Italian restaurant his father sometimes visited for lunch. Once, when Charles had walked down this block to a lunch place on Walnut, he’d glanced into the Italian restaurant’s front window and seen James alone at the bar, with his tie flung over his shoulder and a glass of amber liquid in his hand. There was a ball game on TV, and the waiter was leaning on the bar, watching. Charles’s dad had looked so comfortable being alone, a posture Charles had never mastered himself. Charles had panicked, crossing furtively to the other side of the street so his father wouldn’t see him. He had no idea what James would have done if he’d noticed Charles walking by. Ignore him? Grow furious that Charles was walking down his block, invading his space? One thing was certain, his father certainly wouldn’t have invited Charles into the bar—despite his mother’s Pollyannaish suggestion the day before his interview, Charles and his father never met for lunch. What would they have talked about?