have made me fearless.”
“Good. They shouldn’t.”
1 4 6
C h r i s t o p h e r B r a m
Zack was not feeling as easy and empathetic this week as he liked to be
with his patients, not even with Fay Dawson, his favorite. But Fay was doing
better. She was off of Xanax, although she still carried a single emergency pill
in a vial attached to her key chain like a lucky charm. She was still a Southern
good girl, but not as nervously polite as she’d been six weeks ago. She still
asked good questions about herself and the world.
“But everybody is afraid,” said Fay.
“Of the same thing?”
“I don’t know.”
“Do you have any theories?”
She shook her head. “But I wonder if their being afraid is what makes me
afraid. And that’s why I don’t love my children. Because I’m too busy being
afraid.”
Zack was surprised by how annoyed he felt. “Fay. I thought we were fin-
ished with that. You do love your children.”
“I don’t love them enough.”
“What’s enough?” he snapped. He paused and swallowed his irritation.
“You love them enough to worry. You even love them enough to get angry.
You can lose your temper and a few hours later feel full of affection again.”
Fay noticed nothing odd about his temper today. “Which is easy to do
with Melissa but much harder with Malvern.”
“Oh? And what did Malvern do this week?”
Malvern was her sullen ox of a teenager, an angry boy who tried to burn
off his hormones in bodybuilding and Bible study. The Rock Church did not
allow dancing or dating, but their adolescent males behaved no better than
secular boys did.
“I was so petty,” said Fay. “So silly. He got home from football all upset.
His coach was putting him back on second string after the last game. I tried
to comfort him, telling him there were worse things in the world. And he
turned on me and said, ‘Yeah, like being a nut job, like being a psycho.’ And
I wanted to strangle him. ” She quietly emphasized each word as if to prove her
crime.
“You weren’t being petty,” said Zack. “That was an awful thing for him to
say. You were right to be angry.”
E x i l e s i n A m e r i c a
1 4 7
“I wasn’t just angry. I hated him for it. I still hate him.”
“Let yourself hate him,” said Zack. “A little. But don’t forget. He’s a
teenager. He doesn’t always know what he’s saying.” The kid was a complete
asshole, but with his own sexual and Oedipal issues, which they didn’t need
to get into. “He’s much too self-conscious and self-absorbed right now to re-
member that anyone else exists.”
Fay was studying Zack, frowning. Before he could ask what she was think-
ing, she said, “You expect very little of people, don’t you? Is that because
you’re always seeing the worst in them?”
Zack was taken completely by surprise.
“What a curious statement, Fay. Would you prefer me to say your son is
hateful and you should get rid of him?” He tried to deflect the remark back
to her emotions. But it was true, wasn’t it? He saw so many terrible things in
people, so much hate and meanness, that he looked at everyone with lowered
expectations. He cut the human race a lot of slack. Did he cut them too
much?
“I didn’t mean Malvern,” she insisted. “I was thinking about me. You
judge me far more gently than I judge myself.”
“Fay. I repeat: I’m not here to judge. You already judge yourself plenty.
You don’t need my judgments on top of your own.”
What would Fay say if she knew what was going on in his life? Two weeks
had passed since Daniel declared that he and Abbas were not just fuck bud-
dies but lovers. They were going to New York this weekend, with Zack’s
blessing, to visit galleries and museums and hump each other like dogs. That
would shock her, wouldn’t it? But it didn’t shock Zack. Should it?
“With Melissa it’s different,” Fay was saying. “I can want to kill Melissa,
but I always love her again five minutes later. But with Malvern, and Yancy
too, once I’m angry, I stay angry for days . . .”
Was he cutting Daniel too much slack? Did he expect too little from him?
Zack had been telling himself all week that Abbas was not a threat, that they
were all being adults about adultery. And yet, it must be eating at Zack if the
subject could pop into his head at such an inappropriate time as now.
“I’m not the tolerant, understanding wife that I should always be with
him.”