The Social Dynamic
by Bruce Petronio
“Anyone showing any symptoms?” the Father asked. “Irrational…”
#1 Son, masked and goggled, talked over the Father. “Why no mask and goggles for our Dear Leader?”
The Father bristled. But strategically the timing was poor, so he ignored the provocation. He looked down upon the three Sons and the Mother lined up on the entertainment room sectional. They stared wide-eyed up at him from behind N-98Z masks and suctional air-tight goggles, awaiting his response to 1’s goading. “You can ditch the gear soon,” he bestowed, in the manner of a benevolent despot, “after the booster gummies are delivered. So, once again, anyone showing symptoms? Irrational anxiety? Hallucinations? Delusions?”
“1’s showing delusions of grandeur,” #3 broke in, compelled to elicit cheap laughs, his role akin to the family’s young intellectual jester in a long-running sitcom, but one who desperately wanted off the show before he got inextricably typecast.
#2 was the only one to let slip a laugh, more a bark, really, that he quickly smothered with a freakishly large and hairy-knuckled hand clamped to his mask.
Even through goggled eyes, 1 cowed 2 with a dismissive, big-to-middle Brother look. Then turned to the Father. “Symptoms?” he croaked with aggrieved incredulity. “None of us has been out of the house in a week!”
“Right on!” 2 seconded, but a stern look from the Father and 2 hastily retracted, like a turtle. The Father looked from 1 to 2, and back again. Any alliance between the two would be easily headed off: assure 2 his priorities—food and head-butting sports—and he’d toe the line. Confident now, the Father drew himself up to full height and announced, “I’ve made an executive decision.”
“Ex is the operative syllable,” #1 added.
Even this the Father chose not to hear. He spread his hands palm up, like a guru. “Behold the timeless social dynamic of the Family,” he intoned. “I, the Father, decree we ride out this virus at the cabin.”
The deflated Sons looked to the Mother. All three had new interests in town—from Female to football to chess club—so had outgrown the cabin lake property that was an island, literally. But the Mother sat straight-backed on the sectional, hands in her lap, and offered only a noncommittal humph. The Father, ever wary even paranoid of the Sons’ attachment to the Mother, felt relieved by her seeming neutrality. He lifted his wrist, spoke to his watch, and stepped aside. On the wall behind him, the 72” inlaid screen came to life. White lettering scrolled on black background, introducing A senior PanD official… and gave way to a lab-coated man in black-framed glasses who looked into the camera and droned, “NeuroSARS-23 is suspected, in isolated cases, of causing cellular anomalies, or hallucinations of such.” The Father murmured to his watch and the PanD official was vacuumed to black. The Father turned to his Family arrayed on the sectional.
#1 did the hands palms up thing, in blatant mimicry. “Cellular anomalies?”
“Hallucinations of such,” 3 clarified, compelled to process and parse others’ statements like some sci-fi android character.
The Father looked from 3 to 1 and back to 3, processing, calculating the potential of an insurgent eldest-youngest cabal, then decided: “Tomorrow, after a hearty breakfast, we load the EVan with the cellar cache and seek refuge on our island!”
Divide and Rule
In the morning, when the Father and Sons single-filed hierarchically into the kitchen for breakfast, the table was bare. There was a lengthy disconnect of gawping Male bafflement, before #1 spied the note on the whiteboard. He read it aloud, voice rising with delight, “I’ll Q-tine with…wait for it...Uncle Sal!” The Sons turned to catch the Father’s face tighten. It was common Family knowledge that the Father’s younger, unmarried Brother, Salvatore, lived to challenge the Father. The Sons pondered the Father pondering the whiteboard. They didn’t seek an explanation for the Mother’s behavior—they’d surveilled the Mother surveilling the Father sniffing around the neighborhood’s young divorcee—only a clue to how he would uphold what they, among themselves, called the divine right, biological and societal, enforced with threats of physicality, by which he ruled. When the Father hesitated, nodded to himself, resignedly waved a hand and said, “Forage what’s here,” then mumbled that they’d have a good meal when they got to the cabin…ah, well, that was slippage, a sign of weakness; to any potential upstart, if not a green light, a blinking yellow.
After Father and Sons foraged, squabbling over the last of the bread (sandwiches their gastronomic limit), it was well into the afternoon before the sullen Sons finished loading supplies into the EVan. And another delay while the Father stuffed his duffel (the Mother packed). Finally, they were on their way. But to exit the gated community they had to pass by the Uncle’s place. The Sons rubbernecked as they drew even. The Mother and the Uncle sat front porch rocking chairs. The Mother looked off, as if distracted by something; the Uncle pushed up out of his still-rocking chair and stomped to the edge of the porch, chasing Older Brother with his eyes, until well after the EVan had passed.
The first hour’s drive went by in a Familial tinnitus agitation that settled in each inner ear like a continuous high-pitched e-e-e-e-e, a decibel only animals should be able to hear, until the Father pulled the EVan over and parked on the side of the county road, by a Colonial-era stone wall and gnarled sugar maples in their October orange and red finery (finery wasted on the sullen Sons and strategizing Father). “Alternate driver needed,” the Father said. Only #1 had even a permit. Still, the Father turned to the backseat, bestowed a beneficent smile on 2, and asked would he please (!) take the wheel. Though the Sons were as well-practiced as professional poker players not to reveal any tells when the Father raised the action, all three (even 3) lost control of their faces. #1 was #1. He had the Father’s name (a III appended, which 1 considered a right of ascendancy, and 2 and 3 mocked with snooty English accents). But while 1 went rigid and silently vowed to defend his rightful shotgun seat, up to and including threat of physicality, the Father got out, opened the rear door, chauffeur-like, and asked 2 to switch seats. If that weren’t aberrant enough, once they were all situated 2 donned his mirrored sunglasses, chunked it into drive, and stomped the gas, the EVan spitting sand and pine needles, fishtailing as tires hit pavement, the Father and 3 flung side to side, bumping shoulders, the passengers’ unspoken question loud as a shout: Who is 2 trying to piss off? And for what purpose?
The final 42 miles passed in silence. 1 and 3 feigned sleep, the Father read an article on his phone about team building, until 2 slowed, eased around a curve, and then simultaneously all sat up and turned their gaze to the Adirondack glacier lake—becalmed, the autumn tableau indefensibly nostalgic. When they were kids, the Sons raucously and happily competed to claim first view of the lake. A family tradition that celebrated their arrival. Now only silence. 2 turned in and bumped down their potholed private dirt road and braked to a sudden stop at the end of a peninsula: a pontoon boat secured to a dock; beyond, a quarter mile off, their private 21-acre island. And visible on a rise through towering white pines, their Lincoln-log cabin, where the Sons had spent every summer of their lives.
The Father jumped onto the pier before the boat was tied up and went ahead to open the cabin, leaving the Sons to unload the boat. As the October sun sank behind the dense black spruce treeline, the sudden chill settled upon the Sons like an attitude. They were hefting the third and last load when 1 power-lifted the Father’s duffel above his head, and let it drop. Then put two fingers to his mouth and let out a wolf whistle. 2 and 3 followed his smiling eyes: the kayak was some hundred yards off. For long moments in the failing nostalgic light, the Sons stood aft, watching the expert synchronous rise and dip of the paddle. 2 broke the silence: “How’d she know we’re here?” 3 thought to himself, “This girl is like Chekhov’s gun, she’ll have to go off.” 1 cupped his hands around his mouth and hailed, “Ahoy, matey!” 3 muttered sidelong to 2, “Oh Brother!” But as the Sons watched, the kayaker sweep-paddled away from their island and did a slow fade into the gloaming.
Suddenly it’s their first-ever evening in the cabin without the Mother. The downstairs is open space: kitchen, dining, and living room with large Swedish woodstove. The Sons are like cows milling about, impatient to be fed. So now the Father’s dilemma: how to metamorphose food from package to plate? (The Mother does that!) Cooking is as arcane to him as alchemy. And the Sons have taken after the Father. Thus, in the grand scheme of things, the Father considers the meal a leadership challenge. He barks an order for 1 to get a jar of Ragu from the cache stacked on the screened-in porch, then notes that 1 must be hungry because he simply complies. Robustly singing lines from his favorite opera, the Father sets out a pot of water to boil. Crescendoing, Don Gio-vann-i! chest inflated, the Father jolt-stiffens at a hard fingertip poke to his spine. Right hand fisted, he wheels to the affront. “Alas and alack, my lord,” 1 drolly reports, “our underlings forsook said Rag-ooo.” The Father’s cheek spasms. #1 notices, smirks. The Father’s impulse is for physicality: Strike! Rule! But the sound of roiling water diverts him. He turns a bunch-muscled back on the affront. Must feed Sons! And when 1 retreats without pressing his boldness, the Father, relieved, files it away, and just then he is struck—he recognizes it as a Leader’s instinct—by a solution.
He slides the spaghetti from package into half a pot of boiling water. Pictures the Mother using some kitchen thing to drain the pasta. When he finally finds the damn thing, deep in the back of a low cupboard, he then has to choose between several pans to heat the sauce he found in the cache, and then is exasperated that the Mother hadn’t kept the lids with the pans. After a while, obstacles hurdled, he realizes he didn’t read the package to see what time the pasta would be done. But he recalls his Granny: Throw pasta at the wall; if it sticks it’s done! The spaghetti was stiff as pick-up-sticks when slid into the pot, so he figures it takes time to soften. He takes a breather, checks his phone. Several texts. When he returns to the roiling pot, he counts to sixty. And sixty again, to be sure. Finally fork-stabs a thick strand from the now-shallow water and fork catapaults it against the wall…Voila! He dumps pasta from pot to the drain thing and bears it triumphantly to the Sons, who eye their Mother’s dripping kitchen thing from where they sit on the Sons’ side of the long farmhouse table. The Father uses salad tongs to fill the Sons’ plates. It’s a bit tricky, as the spaghetti strands are three- and four-ply. “Doesn’t look like Mom’s,” 1 says. “Sauce loosens it up,” the Father counters over his shoulder, as he goes to the stove and returns with the saucepan, ladles sauce onto each bowl, puts the hot saucepan directly on the table, and sits in his chair opposite the Sons. 1 and 3 bend low to the plate, sniff at the meal like finicky cats. They look at each other and make scrunch faces. Then look to 2, though his Xtreme-athlete’s shaved-bald head and nutritional need for fuel, whatever is put before him, they liken to a turkey vulture’s eye for roadkill. 2 harrumphs disdain at his Brothers. He stirs sauce and pasta, but fails at the twirling thing, so forklifts mouth-level, inserts, bites off the stiffly overhanging strands. His jaws work. And work. As if he’s got twenty sticks of bubble gum in there. A peristaltic gulp. Another, eyes wide, panicky now, but head-pumping desperate gulps…and it’s down. After a series of rapid eyeblinks, as if uncertain what just happened, he nods. Which could mean either it’s edible or I did it, now you! 1 and 3 exchange skeptical looks. “Enjoy!” the Father cries, an edge to it. 1 sneers, asserts the middle finger to the tip of his nose. 3, unnerved by 1’s belligerence, picks up his fork, steamshovels a dangling load, inserts, gags, gags, and spews over and beyond his own plate. The Father fist-pounds the table, 3 dry heaves, again the Father raises his fist like a judge’s gavel but freezes at a double knuckle-knock at the door. For a united-front moment Father and Sons react alike: Who boated to the island after dark? Why?
Challenge
Knock, knock.
The Father starts to rise from his chair but 1 calls out, “Who-o-o’s thay-air?”
No reply, perhaps the visitor is nonplussed by 1’s playfulness. Then: “Madeline Bouchard.”
2 and 3 catch 1 and the Father cutting eyes at one another and quickly looking away. 3 wipes his fouled mouth, mutters sidelong to 2, “Here we go,” and 2 calls out, “Enter at your own risk, Mad.” The pine plank door tight on its hinges creaks open and into the Males’ sightline steps Madeline Bouchard. Mad, as friends have bestowed, the ultra-fit, Quebecois-born Adirondack guide whom, this summer season past, 1 booked for a personal two-day kayak trip—upon his return bemoan/strutting to friends that he was smitten! Thus, soon thereafter the Father booked her for a three-day Raquette River canoe fishing trip. Local wags had a field day: how gratifying to witness that when it came to women, wealthy males could take leave of their senses like any old Northcountry woodchuck.
It's a pitch-dark and chilly Halloweenish evening. The Female kayaker wears black spandex tights and a black wetsuit top, unzipped enough for a glimpse of the neon-lime sports bra beneath. To a Man, the Males are drawn to the neon like moths to a light. “What’s for dinner?” she diverts, zipping up the wetsuit. Then spies the upchuck on the table, wrinkles her nose, deadpans, “Mom’s not here, eh?” Which is met with fraught silence. She humphs a knowing laugh. The Males captivated by that laugh (jazzed by the silent testosterone boost without understanding the biomechanics), in thrall to what the Female opts to do next. But the Female has developed a sonar-like sixth sense that blip-blips incoming Male attention, for her a standard operating procedure occupational hazard. And yet she’s committed all her resources to building a guide business, and the Father and Eldest Son are A-list. Standing tall at the head of the table, she nods to 2—they’ve worked out together, respect each other’s athleticism and routinized attention to the body—then smiles at 3. (If only I were older! 3 fantasizes.) Her eyes drop to the sauce pan. Pinkie extended aristocratically (a semi-conscious dig at this seasonal Family’s wealth), she dips into the sauce, samples, head jerks aback. A searching, can’t-quite-place-it look. Until, “Huh.” She chuckles. “Really? Barbecue sauce?” She dips, tastes. “Hickory smoke barbecue sauce?”
1 breaks the Males’ silence. “Criminal, verité?”
The Father counters, “The boys forgot to load the good sauce.”
1 snaps, “Who’s a boy, old man?”
The Father deploys a contemptuous that-all-you-got look. 1 places a middle finger to the tip of his nose. The Father spreads his arms in a proprietary way, looks at the Female, and says “My three Sons.”
Madeline, way, way too familiar with the aggressive behavior she triggers in Males—they seem to be “in heat” whenever she’s around them—rushes to defuse. “My Father. One night he insisted he’d boil the dinner’s salt potatoes. Great, right? So I guess it took too long to boil the taters, because during the process he downed a fifth Molson’s, then the last from the six so it wouldn’t be lonely. Hence, after dumping the exploded taters into a colander, he left the pot on the burner. Almost burned the freakin’ cabin down!”
At some point in the Familial past, the Males would have shared a laugh. Alas and alack, now the Sons are older, stronger, and in heat (all consistent with biological norms), and the Father (also consistent) is simply older. All are who they are. And will do what they do.
Mad, attuned to the Male tension sucking the air from the room, again diverts. “Okay, Guys, let’s see if I can supplement this meal.” She heads to the kitchen, veering widely around the Father’s chair. The Father turns, heliotropic-like, to the radiance and tang of her youth and sex; the Sons follow his eyes so that all the Males are tracking the Female’s butt, high and tight against the black spandex. When she opens the fridge and bends down for something, taut butt extended, the Father eases out of his chair, stealthily, like a hunter from his blind. As he stalks Mad, 1 stands and grasps the edge of the table and gives a low growl deep in his throat—Uhh, Uhh—2 and 3 swivel their attention from 1 to the Father to Mad, she stands peering into the fridge, unaware of the Father’s advance, but when he puts his hand on her hip she jerks around and hisses and shrieks, 1 jumps two-footed atop the table and alarm-shrieks E-E-E-E-E! beating his chest with his fists, 2 and 3 become agitated, OO-OO, E-E-E, E-E! shrieking, barking, 1 catapults off the table and charges the Father, the Father wheels, charges, both stopping just short, shrieking, spitting, stomping, bluffing, flaring their lips, baring their teeth, circling, both shooting sideways glances to 2 and 3. 2 leapt up onto the table, crouched, resting on his hairy large-knuckled hands, back muscles hunched, and with a piercing E-E-E-E-E charged, #1 skedaddled into the living room and shielded himself behind the woodstove. 2 scoffed at him, wheeled, back hunched, arms raised, hands fisted as if to strike the Father, who lowered his head and backed away.
After earning an MFA from the University of Arizona, Bruce Petronio was awarded a Distinguished Artist Fellowship, New Jersey’s top literary award. His work has appeared in Hayden's Ferry Review, Tucson Weekly, Ninth Letter, Hawaii Pacific Review, and other publications. He has been a resident artist at Ucross, Blue Mountain Center, Fundación Valparaiso (Spain) and Hawthornden Castle (Scotland).