Compromising Position

 

“Oh, shit,” Janine muttered as we pulled up in front of her parents’ house.

She was staring at the two gigantic political signs on their lawn, and I had to stare too. They were for the upcoming congressional election. One was for the most liberal candidate on the ballot, and the other was for what The New York Times called “perhaps the most right-wing congressional candidate in our history.”

“Your mom and dad must have some lively political discussions,” I ventured.

“No, they don’t,” she said, and sighed. “Both of those signs were put up there by my father.”

We’d been together for six months now. It had been great from the start, and nothing had changed. I knew Janine was my soul mate and that she felt the same about me.

But it’s always a big deal when you meet the parents. She’d told me very little about them, almost seeming to avoid the subject. We were here right now only because of what she described as her mother’s insistent invitation.

“I don’t understand,” I said. “How can your father be on both sides?”

She looked at me with an intensity I’d never seen before.

“I love you, Ken,” she whispered. “And I hope you’ll remember that, no matter what happens in there.”

“I love you too, Janine, but, gee…”

It was all I could manage because she was already getting out of the car. I got out on my side and scrambled after her.

Her parents greeted us at the door with smiles. Her mother was a smallish woman with blonde, close-cropped hair. Her father was a large man who obviously lifted weights. He had muscular arms, and his Yankee T-shirt was tight against his torso. I noticed he was also wearing a Red Sox cap.

They both gave Janine big hugs and then turned their attention to me.

“Glad to finally meet you, Ken,” her father said, shaking my hand with a grip that stopped just short of viselike.

“Glad to finally meet you, Mr. Wilkerson,” I replied and was immediately told to, please, call him Mel.

“And please call me Holly,” Janine’s mother said, shaking my hand a bit more gently. “We’re very informal here, as you can tell.” She laughingly indicated the track suit she was wearing, to go along with her husband’s T-shirt and baseball cap. “Come in, come in!”

Janine gave me a look that I couldn’t decipher as they showed us into the living room, whose walls were filled with prints by a dizzyingly eclectic set of artists.

There were paintings you wouldn’t see together in the same museum, let alone the same room. A massive John Sargent portrait hung next to a Jackson Pollock pattern of drippings. Van Gogh’s Starry Night shared a wall with a somber Rembrandt that seemed to be staring across the room at Magritte’s painting of a man with an apple in front of his face.

“Would you like a glass of wine?” Mel offered as Janine and I sat down on the couch. “We have red and white for guests, but Holly and I, well, we prefer rosé.”

“Rosé is fine,” I said. Janine shrugged.

“Sure,” she muttered, studying her fingernails.

As her father moved over to the liquor cabinet, I remarked on his T-shirt and cap.

“Are you a Yankee fan and a Red Sox fan?”

“That’s right,” he said, reaching into the cabinet.

“What do you do when they play each other?”

He paused. “I don’t watch,” he said, removing a bottle of Cotes des Roses.

That’s when I suddenly realized who he was. He was Melvin Thomas Wilkerson. I’d seen him on Meet the Pressas a teenager, learned about him in college economics. He’d been a national figure, famous for his skills as a mediator. In 2004, he’d settled a brutal, months-long strike by the Teamsters Union against Coca-Cola. Both sides later claimed it was everything they could have hoped for.

“Here you go,” he said, placing two glasses of rosé in front of us.

I was about to tell him I’d recognized him, but something told me I shouldn’t.

He poured out two more glasses, gave one to Holly, and sat down in the easy chair next to hers.

“Prosit!” he toasted, holding up his glass as Janine’s mother and I did the same. Janine stayed still.

“Since when did you and Mom stop drinking red and white and start drinking only rosé?” she said, eyeing him over the rim of her glass.

He leaned back in his chair. “For quite a while now, I guess. You haven’t been around here lately.”

“And I notice you’ve changed the décor. What’s with these paintings? And those embarrassing signs on the lawn?”

“Honey, now please,” her mother said. “Don’t start in. I’ve already told you…”

“And that T-shirt and baseball cap. Really? Are you trying to prove, in some strange way, that you can still please everyone?”

“So, Ken,” said her mother, “we hear you’re in advertising. Is it exciting?”

I took a sip of rosé, resisting the urge to down the whole thing.

“I wouldn’t call it exciting. Interesting is closer to it, and then, only occasionally. I’m an assistant account executive, and it’s mostly grunt work at this point.”

“Ah,” she said.

Janine stared at her father as he returned the favor.

“Can I give you a hypothetical situation?” she said. “Suppose someone offers you a dish of peanuts and someone else offers you a dish of thumbtacks. You’re not allowed to displease either of them. Would you eat half the peanuts and half the thumbtacks?”

His hard stare softened into a grin.

“That’s an easy one. I’m allergic to peanuts, so I could refuse them. And then, to be fair, I’d have to refuse the thumbtacks.”

“I think it’s time for dinner,” her mother announced, rising from the chair.

The dinner table featured bowls of bean sprouts, mashed turnips, cauliflower, artichokes, and seaweed. It was a vegan feast, except for what was in the center of it, a large baked ham.

“It all looks wonderful,” I said as we sat down.

“I’ll give you this much, Dad,” said Janine, “you never run out of ideas.”

“Anyone can eat whatever they’d like,” her mother put in.

“Obviously,” said Janine.

I took a slice of ham and a little of everything else, aware of the fact that my appetite had greatly diminished.

“Okay, here’s another hypothetical.” Janine gazed at her father across the table as her mother shut her eyes. “Suppose someone claims that two and two are four, and someone else claims that two and two are five. What would you say to them?”

“That’s a whole different matter.” He reached out and speared a forkful of seaweed for his ham. “Those are not contradictory views or matters of taste. There’s no dispute here. One is a fact, and the other is incorrect.”

“But what if the guy who said two and two are five insists he’s right, accuses the other guy of fraud, and claims you were in on it?”

“Ken, what do you make of all this?” Her mother had, again, homed in on me.

“Um, I’m finding it a very interesting discussion.”

I felt Janine’s hand on my thigh. I turned to her.

“You don’t have to be dragged into this,” she whispered. “Remember what I said I hoped you’d remember?”

“You know I do,” I said.

And I did, in fact, have to be dragged into it. If we were in love, I’d already been dragged into it.

“Mr. Wilkerson—Mel,” I said, “I suddenly realized who you are, and I’m honored to meet you. I’m not sure why Janine never told me she had a famous dad, but I think it’s really cool.”

I looked over at her mother. “Holly, you wanted to know what I make of all this? Well, I’m totally confused.”

“Join the club,” said Mel Wilkerson. “I have no idea why my daughter is acting this way.”

“It’s called tough love, Dad,” said Janine.

“Please, honey…” her mother began.

“No, really, Mom. Someone has to finally say something. You can’t just keep on enabling him.”

“Enabling me? To do what?”

“Please,” her mother implored, “do we have to talk about this now? Can’t we just have a nice dinner?”

“Evidently not,” said her father. He looked across at Janine. “Okay, let’s hear it. What’s my problem?”

“Oh, Dad, you need help,” she said. “Mom won’t tell you, but she’s really concerned. You haven’t been the same since that United Mine Workers settlement.”

“Why, because I retired? I’d always intended to do that. The settlement had nothing to do with it. It wasn’t my fault, and it had no effect on my decision to retire.”

“But it did have an effect on your decision to behave like this,” said Janine.

“What happened?” I dared to ask him.

“Let her tell you.” He hooked a thumb at his daughter. “She seems to be the font of all knowledge.”

“It was in 2013,” Janine told me, ignoring the sarcasm. “The miners at Cantridge Coal went on strike because of what they considered to be unsafe conditions. They didn’t think the legal requirement of four inspections a year was enough; they wanted monthly inspections. The company claimed it was unreasonable, that inspections every three months were all that was required. And with the coal industry suffering, they claimed monthly inspections would put them out of business.”

Her father had closed his eyes and was slowly shaking his head.

“They finally settled on bimonthly inspections, although the union didn’t like it. They claimed they were only agreeing to it because the miners couldn’t afford to stay out any longer.

“Well, it turned out monthly inspections were not at all unreasonable. Two days before the first scheduled bimonthly inspection, there was a methane gas explosion in the mine. It killed forty-seven people.”

She looked at her father.

“You said it wasn’t your fault. Of course it wasn’t, and nobody ever said it was. But just the fact that you feel it needs defending means it’s affecting you. And why wouldn’t it?

“Anyone would feel guilty, even if it’s unjustified. And that’s why you need to talk to someone about it, to get help.”

“I need to talk to no one,” he declared. “I feel absolutely fine about myself and need no help whatsoever.”

We heard a man’s voice coming from the street outside.

“Hey, what the hell are you doing?”

Followed by a series of splats. Followed by: “Hey, man, you’ve got no right to do that!”

“I’ve got my patriotic duty, asshole!”

Then more splats.

We all got up and went to the front door. We looked out.

There were two cars pulled up by the curb. One was a Hummer, decked out with an American flag. The other was a Prius.

A large guy in battle fatigues, who I assumed drove the Hummer, was standing on the sidewalk just at the edge of the lawn and throwing eggs at the liberal candidate’s sign. It was a big sign, so he was nailing it every time.

The guy from the Prius, a man of medium build, was getting out of the car, holding a phone in front of him.

“I’m recording this,” he said, advancing toward the Hummer guy. “You’re committing vandalism, dude.”

“Fuck you, snowflake. I’m on a public sidewalk, expressing my opinion of socialism.”

“Yeah? Well, what if I expressed my opinion of fascism by trashing that other sign?”

The Hummer guy glanced down at his holstered gun. In this state, for some reason, it’s perfectly okay.

“Why don’t you try it, and we can find out?”

The Prius guy kept walking toward him.

“Are you threatening me with a weapon? Is that what you’re doing?”

Now the Hummer guy’s hand was on the gun.

“You better back off, asshole. I’m the one that’s feeling threatened right now, and I have every right to defend myself.”

Still, the Prius guy kept coming.

“Against what, you peckerwood, an iPhone?”

Now the gun was halfway out of its holster.

“I’m warning you, asshole. Back off!”

“Can I do something for you gentlemen?”

It was Mel, who’d slipped past us and was walking down the path toward them.

The Prius guy instantly focused on him, literally and with his phone.

“Are you the owner, sir? You should call the police. This man committed vandalism, and now he’s threatening me with a firearm.”

The Hummer guy still had his hand on the gun.

“You the sumbitch that put up this sign?”

“Yes, I am,” said Mel. “I’m the one who put up both of these signs. For balance.”

He moved over to the liberal candidate’s sign.

“I see you have a problem with this one, so why don’t you pull it out of the ground and take it with you? You can do anything you want with it. You can stomp on it; you can grind it into sawdust. You can even burn it. Would that be okay?”

He turned to the Prius guy.

“And you can do the same with the other sign, if you’d like. Haul it away. Destroy it, if it makes you happy.”

They both gawked at him.

“You’re fucking crazy!” said the Hummer guy, but his hand was moving off the gun.

The Prius guy just kept staring at Mel.

“Let me see if I understand this: You actually put up a sign for an openly neo-Nazi candidate, just for balance?”

“That’s correct,” said Mel.

The Prius guy gave him a look of utter disgust.

“Then you’re worse than any of them. You have no moral compass, and you’re beneath contempt. Shame on you!”

He strode to his car and silently pulled away.

“Screw it, I don’t need this bullshit,” the Hummer guy decided. He half-heartedly lobbed his one remaining egg at the liberal candidate’s sign and climbed into his vehicle. Then, with a final “fuck you” at Mel, he drove off.

We all waited as Mel, his back to us, watched them go. Then he turned and walked up the path toward us. There was a spring in his step.

“Well, Rome wasn’t built in a day,” he said when we got inside. “At least no one got killed.”

“You shouldn’t have done that,” Holly admonished him, “taking your life in your hands. I was a nervous wreck!”

We sat back down at the table. Janine, who’d said nothing, finally spoke.

“Dad, do you understand what happened just now? They both thought you were crazy. The liberal actually thought you were evil. How does this help them, or you, or anyone?”

Her father reached out with his fork for a slice of ham.

“Sometimes you win by pleasing everyone; sometimes you win by displeasing everyone. At least I got them to agree on something.”

He piled a generous portion of bean sprouts onto his ham and then dug in.

Janine gave my thigh a little squeeze under the table.

“This is what is known as my family,” she whispered. “Remember what I hoped you’d remember?”

I gave her thigh a little squeeze of my own.

“How could I ever forget?” I whispered back.