A Good Family by Erik Fassnacht

Author:Erik Fassnacht
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781466878259
Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group

THREE DIRECTORS

Charlie reclined in bed with his trusty laptop entrenched in the folds of his stomach. Home again. He’d put on weight during the past month’s impromptu vacation—not a lot, but after thirty days of pilsner lager and gamy meat and no exercise in Eastern Europe, it could happen to anyone. He placed his hands on his cheeks and felt again the shocking thickness of his beard. It was an aesthetic that had worked for a while, giving him an imagined capacity for wisdom that he hadn’t felt as a clean-shaven soldier. But now, back in his childhood room, it felt like a nagging reminder—yet another growth that a quick shave wouldn’t wash away. And all of the country seemed covered in these growths as well, if not beards then overblown muscles or swollen bellies or ridiculous bling. A spiritual gentrification scuttling across the forty-eight states, and all the while it felt like Americans were covering up some kind of truth, something that would have been nakedly obvious if not for this self-conscious evolution and the image of progress. There was a knock at the door.

“Mom?”

“Yes, honey. Mind if I come in?”

“Sure.”

His mother sat on the side of the bed and offered a noncommittal smile. She wore black workout pants and an old Northwestern T-shirt and looked different from before. A change in posture, maybe. He didn’t know. He stayed quiet. His head had finally cleared, and he considered all the nonsense he had shoved down his esophagus in Budapest—MDMA and painkillers, mushrooms and whiskey, absinthe and acid. It was truly idiotic. He had finally seen the city, but he had not taken it in like a lover of architecture, not like someone with an eye for Gothic facades and baroque trimmings, but rather a blind man, running on a wheel.

A week into their trip, even Bobby Leeds, his best friend and travel buddy, had developed a hangdog, defeated expression that showed how exactly he understood: this vacation wasn’t going to help or cure or fix anything.

“Charlie?”

He stared at the ceiling, massaged his cheeks. His beard was tangled, snaking across his face like that kudzu he’d seen enveloping telephone poles across the highways from Illinois to Kentucky, when he and Karen had driven once to Louisville. What year had that road trip been? 2005? 2006? After college. He and Karen had borrowed a car and driven across state borders and cabled bridges, the light flickering through the trees and upon the movements of the water. All the while, Charlie had kept his eye on that swarming green plant, snaking across poles and shacks and depots, consuming everything.

“I think it’s time you and I had a talk, Charlie. A real talk.”

Had he really been in Eastern Europe for the past month? Memorized every bridge and street in Budapest? Ditched his friend? It was already mid-September, for Christ’s sake. Yet now the experience was dissolved, the memory flapping from his mind like a startled pigeon. He had always loved traveling, the thrill of departure before a new journey, the chance of some new experience or revelation.

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