And Don Galvin wasn’t just a communications officer at NORAD. “Dad was in OSS,” Richard said, “which became the CIA.”
Richard would talk at length about covert missions his father took to Iceland, Ecuador, and Panama, all while using his jobs at the Academy and NORAD as covers. All this, Richard said, he’d gleaned from conversations with his mother. “She just said there were things that he could never say,” he said.
The idea that Don Galvin was a spy is unsubstantiated by any available information from any military branch or intelligence agency. And yet this romantic view of his father was helpful to Richard. At the very least, it was preferable, for instance, to the story of a father whose military career stalled out—perhaps because he’d harbored the liberal political views of an academic, not the hawkish view of a military officer—and who gritted his teeth after being demoted to service as a glorified PR man.
Rather than think of Don Galvin that way, Richard adopted a convenient self-delusion. Not the sort of delusion that fits a DSM criterion. But we all have stories we tell ourselves.
* * *
—
MARGARET HAD TOLD Lindsay that she didn’t want to spend the night at the house—that she’d rather come in for the funeral the next morning with Wylie and her two girls. Once again, Lindsay felt abandoned. She was not sure what to do with that feeling. Most of the evening, she didn’t discuss it—until, in the kitchen, John turned to Lindsay.
“So. Margaret’s not here.”
“Yeah, whatever,” Lindsay said.
“What’s the problem?”
Lindsay took a few seconds, not sure how measured to make her response.
“I think it’s Margaret’s overwhelming guilt,” she said finally, “at not having lifted a fucking finger for, like, ever.”
“Yeah, she’s into her own thing,” John said, treading lightly.
“She is into her own thing,” Lindsay said, and her smile widened. “Actually, there you go! That is the explanation.”
* * *
—
LINDSAY WALKED OUTSIDE to the patio and hugged Michael and Mark. There was talk of who had RSVP’d for the funeral and if the clear weather would hold long enough before an expected rainstorm. Then the reminiscing started—the epic road trip the family took across the country for the 1964 World’s Fair in New York; the luggage flying off the roof when Dad misjudged the clearance of an A&W restaurant drive-through; all the luggage coming into the car, jammed in with the kids and the birds.
“Didn’t he drive off the road in Kentucky in another rainstorm?” Mark asked.
“Yeah,” said John. “And in the rainstorm a rock hit the truck, the bus. And then he had to take it to New Paltz, New York, to a repairer-dealer. He dropped the screw into the rotor. The mechanic found the screw in the rotor.”
“I remember the rainstorm,” Michael said, “but I don’t remember the other stuff.”
“You don’t remember the rock hitting the van?” said Mark. They all laughed.
“Who the hell keeps falcons?” Lindsay said. “Every time I tell people, they’re like ‘What?’ ”
“I tell people stories in the cab all the time,” Mark said.
John turned to Lindsay, suddenly serious, thinking about the funeral.
“What’s plan B if it rains?”
“Umbrellas,” Lindsay said. “If it rains, John, you can play at the restaurant.”
“The keyboard’s electronic,” John said. “It’s just not the same.”
Lindsay smiled and motioned over to the piano that Mimi had still kept at the house. “I’ll try to convince them to take the piano up from the basement and out to the field.”
There was more laughter.
* * *
—
DONALD WAS ALONE in the living room, away from the others, smiling politely at anyone who smiled at him. Today happened to be his seventy-second birthday, and Lindsay had asked Debbie to get him a cake as a surprise. But he kept to himself, mostly silent, until he was asked if he’d had a chance to say goodbye to his mother.
“Yes, when she first left,” Donald said. “She said, ‘Thanks.’ I said, ‘Thanks,’ back to her. I just thanked her for being there.”
Will he miss her?
“No,” Donald said. “She’s bred. She’s out of harm. I mean, she’s at sea right now, as a triplet.”
His mother is a triplet?
“I bred her as a triplet, at sea right now.”
As a human being, or as a fish?
Donald scowled, finding the question ridiculous. “As a human.”
But she’s at sea?
“Yeah,” Donald said. “They live with an octopus.”
A human lives with an octopus?
“Yes. Octopuses have the ability to make man. To make many humans, all animals. When the flood comes, then they keep them alive in the water sometimes.”
And Mimi is there, as a triplet?
“Yeah. She’s a little one right now. A little baby. She’s out there, maybe five months old today.”
Would you like that to happen to you when you die?
“Oh, I wouldn’t mind,” Donald said.
* * *
—
JUST BEFORE IT was time for Donald to return to Point of the Pines, they brought out the cake: chocolate with cut-up chunks of a Snickers bar on top. Donald had been so quiet all evening that he was almost not there, a shadow. But he seemed pleased by the attention now, smiling softly, his lips never parting.
Debbie lit the candles and brought the cake out to the patio where everyone was sitting—the same patio where they’d once kept Frederica and Atholl, and where Matt’s head slammed to the ground in a battle with Joe. As everyone sang “Happy Birthday,” Donald—the oldest person in the room now, the paterfamilias—stood over the candles and broke out into a wider smile. Then he crossed his arms across his chest and closed his eyes, as if he were making a wish.
Part Three
DONALD
JOHN
MICHAEL
RICHARD