Most Sundays, either Cerise sleeps over at my house in Great Falls, Virginia, or we spend Saturday night at her place and go out for brunch somewhere swanky in the morning. But this week, she’s away on vacation, traveling with friends to Chincoteague Island for the annual pony roundup festival. Chincoteague is, of course, the place made famous by Marguerite Henry’s 1947 Misty of Chincoteague. They’re not really ponies as such, however, being instead the descendants of a small herd of feral horses. Some say that they came ashore after a Spanish galleon wrecked during a storm in the Atlantic Ocean off neighboring Assateague Island back in the 16th century. The Department of the Interior, on the other hand, maintains that the “ponies’” progenitors were brought to Assateague during the 17th century by English settlers, who did so in order to avoid paying taxes and flaunt laws requiring that they spend money for the construction of fences to keep their livestock under control. So if the United States government’s version is correct, it seems that Virginians have always been a bunch of tax-dodging scoff-laws from the very beginning. Certainly, any Marylander on the Chesapeake Bay or the Eastern Shore will readily vouch that Virginians, their constant nemesis for centuries of crab battles, oyster wars, sundry other fishing fights and territorial tiffs, are definitely some sort of highly uncomplimentary combination of adjectives, adverbs and nouns which pretty much add up to that, if not considerably worse.
The fact that the feral horses of Assateague are the size of Shetland ponies is attributable to the remarkably poor soil to be found there, and, indeed, on any of the barrier islands which lie along the Atlantic coast from New Jersey to Florida. They are, after all, essentially just very large sand bars, and the plant life which can survive on them tends to be fairly tough and not exactly chock full of surplus carbohydrates and minerals. Eating such forage for generations has resulted not only in horses stunted to a decidedly Lilliputian size, but also to a population of deer, the adults which are no larger than an Asian musk deer. They are, however, the descendants of native North American white tail deer, and their normally sized relatives, who grow quite well on a diet of suburban greenery here around Washington, stand 40 inches at the shoulder; the bucks can weigh as much as 300 pounds. So if you’re going to hit a white tail deer with your car, you will be much better off doing so on Assateague Island.
But small things do have an undeniable charm, and my voice mail box now contains over a dozen excited messages from Cerise. In all of them, she enthuses about cute little ponies, cute little deer, tiny, tiny, cute little black squirrels, and miniature versions of nearly every other Eastern American forest animal one can imagine – except the birds, of course. Being able to fly, they routinely go inland for a decent meal. There are greater black-backed seagulls (Larus marinus) the size of Thanksgiving turkeys on Assateague, a testament to the extremely good eats available just a short flight north to the french-fry strewn beaches of Ocean City. Some of her messages also mentioned the locals, who, it seems, might, when encountered in the flesh, perhaps lack the high degree of charm possessed by the characters in Ms. Henry’s book. “It’s amazing, Tom,” one of her messages relates, “how many fat people there are out here. Everyone is just, like huge, and they all smoke – constantly – and their teeth, my God, Tom, it’s nightmarish. I have to struggle to keep from being rude and looking away from the townspeople when I talk to them because their teeth are so… well, they’re just totally disgusting, Tom, that’s the only word for it. What in the world do you suppose that’s all about, anyway? And this afternoon, I met this heartbreakingly sweet nine-year-old girl who’s obviously above normal intelligence, but she’s completely illiterate! And this is America in the twenty-first century I’m talking about, Tom!”
Well, yes, Cerise, Chincoteague Island is in the United States of America, and maybe it’s the twenty-first century here in Washington DC. But bear in mind that Chincoteague is also in Virginia, and, as the venerable old Southern proverb assures us, ’Y’all cain’t get no fu’ther south than Virginia.’ Because, for the last hundred years or so, America has been trying, on a number of fronts, to drag that great Commonwealth, kicking and screaming, into the early 19th century; and by no means with any degree of ease, or, in many cases, success.
On other Sunday mornings, I attend Mass with my dear sister Rose and her family. My brother Rob Roy and his wife don’t go to church much, since he’s a Catholic and she was raised a Lutheran, but on special Sundays, like Easter, Rose and I manage to get them out of bed, hangovers and all, to join us. So, given that Cerise is out of town this weekend, I was considering going to Mass with Rose, and actually suggested that to her when we spoke on the telephone last Thursday. Quite uncharacteristically, however, (because she is usually quite pious – annoyingly pious, really) Rose demurred.
“I’m coming over with the new baby to visit you,” she proclaimed in her best this-is-not-a-negotiable-point voice (which older sisters and school teachers, both of which Rose happens to be, by the way, all seem to know how to deliver with aplomb). “You can fix us something nice and we’ll talk.”
Rose has acted in a similar manner before. Her reasons vary, but I have noticed that, generally speaking, such spates of imperious attitude tend to follow her parturitions, and the child who was little more than a blue stripe on a pregnancy test last November is now seven weeks along in its sojourn through this vale of tears. Furthermore, when my sister arrived, about eleven-forty-five this morning, she brought her latest triumph of Vatican reproductive doctrine along. While Rose and I dined on an appetizer of steamed artichokes dipped in a water buffalo yogurt, mint, cucumber and garlic sauce, followed by grilled rosemary-marinated medallions of snapping turtle with chanterelles and fingerling potatoes sautéed in white truffle goat butter and a salad of mache, radicchio, arugula, shredded daikon, julienned jicama and sliced tomatillos in a dressing blended from thirty-year-old balsamic vinegar of Modena, grey Breton sea salt and organic Tuscan olive oil, then finished off our meal with layers of my homemade champagne, Seville orange and ginger sorbets served in parfait glasses – accompanied by a hearty Bordeaux and, with dessert, a smoky-sweet late harvest Chardonnay – the little tyke, snug in a Pabulex fair-trade Peruvian natural-color cotton Maya wrap nursing sling, joined us by partaking of Rose’s maternal lactations with a truly unabashed gusto. Who can say, really, which repast gave whom the greatest pleasure? Perhaps Rose, who participated in both, enjoyed lunch the most today – she certainly had a heavenly glow about her by the time she and I settled back with our cappuccinos.
Now, Rose has maintained a fetchingly svelte body profile throughout her life, despite bearing a large number of little Palikowskis for my brother-in-law Hank, and, perhaps even more incredibly, despite her ability and, I might add, distinct proclivity, to eat like Dagwood Bumstead on sinsemilla. Maybe it’s simply a miracle, the result of all those Hail Marys and Rosaries she so dutifully performs. But in addition to her usual healthy appetite, I could tell that, after nearly complete abstention from alcohol for nine months, particularly during the last six, Rose was tucking into the grape with a clearly obvious gusto of her own.
“Got another one of those?” Rose inquired, pointing at the empty bottle of Bordeaux about halfway through the entrée.
“Sure,” I replied, stepping over to the wine rack and retrieving a bottle. “Didn’t I read somewhere,” I mused as I drove home the corkscrew, “that drinking puts alcohol into the breast milk, though?”
“Drinking makes nursing more… comfortable,” she declared with an air of someone who knows what they are talking about from personal experience. “And besides,” she continued as I popped the cork and, in the name of expediency, dispensed with the breathing period, immediately pouring the lady another well-earned glass of that old demon Spodiodie, “she’s half Italian, and just like the French, the Italians all get their first drink at their mother’s breast.”
“Well, then, in that case,” I concurred, raising my own wine glass high, “here’s to Mom!”
So, the kid was fast asleep in a portable, folding, director-chair style, environmentally sustainable radiata wood bassinet with Pabluex’ patented Swiss-cradle automatic rocking feature when Rose requested a shot of Frangelico in her cappuccino, and, after providing that, I followed suit by pouring half shots of Chambord and Grappi in mine. Raspberries, chocolate, grappa and coffee – now there’s a combination. By my conservative estimate, that’s over two thousand flavor constituents. By way of comparison, a baked potato has around fifty, buttered corn on the cob has about a hundred, and a properly aged, freshly grilled prime steak has about four hundred.
“Tom,” she said, looking at me with those magnificent eyes I have also seen in so many pictures of my paternal grandmother taken when she was young, “we need to discuss something… serious.”
“No time like the present,” I assured her, “to take care of serious business. What is it?”
“Hank,” she whispered, peering down disconsolately into her coffee.
“What about him?” I was not, by any means, just being polite, either. There was no way I could imagine him doing anything sufficiently messed up to get Rose in a state like this. Henry Palikowski may be many things, but “complicated,” “passionate,” “adventurous” and “inscrutable” are not on the list. “Well, if it’s Hank we’re talking about, how, ah, challenging could it be for you and me to figure out a solution?”
Rose took a long sip of her well-spiked cappuccino, put the cup down on the dining room table and slowly raised her eyes to meet mine. “Tom,” she confided, “for the last three weeks, Hank has been unemployed. But I just found out about it last Wednesday, when I took my class on a field trip to the zoo.”
“Hank?” I responded, incredulous. “You saw Hank, by himself, visiting the National Zoo?”
“Yes,” she confirmed, “I spotted him at the panda exhibit, where we took Hank Jr., when he was just a little guy. Hank was standing there, watching the pandas playing, crying his eyes out.”
“So Hank’s been hanging out at the zoo all day for the last three weeks?” I poured a bit more Chambord and Grappi in my coffee.
“Not just at the zoo,” she elaborated. “He’s been spending a lot of time at public libraries in the District and over in Maryland, too.”
“So he wouldn’t be seen by anybody from Fairfax who might recognize him,” I speculated.
“Exactly,” Rose nodded. “Then he got to thinking about how we took little Hank Jr. to the zoo, and he broke down and went there. But think of the odds, Tom. It’s only by Divine Providence that I would be there on a class field trip to find him at the panda exhibit.”
“I suppose,” I conceded, “that’s as good an explanation as any. You… um… you discussed your observations with your husband, I trust?”
“Of course,” Rose whispered. “I’ve never seen him so… humiliated. I almost felt,” she pressed on, her voice rising, “well… guilty for having caught him.”
At that, Rose turned on the old waterworks, and it was a sight to behold, no doubt about it. “The depression, Tom, it’s totally ruining the high-end market for baby and infant products. Nearly half the Pabulex customer base of dual-income professional couples in the twenty-five to forty year age demographic with combined annual incomes in excess of one hundred and thirty thousand dollars are postponing their new babies! Worse than that, the ones who have decided to go ahead anyway are buying used high-end baby and infant products on the Internet instead of going to brick-and-mortar retail outlets to get them. And not just strollers, bassinets, cribs, car seats, high chairs or carriers, either! People are buying used Pabulex breast pumps on the Web, Tom! Pabulex is going bankrupt – and I’m not talking about some wimpy Chapter 11 stuff here, either. Pabulex is going Chapter 7, Tom – full liquidation!”
“GZPZ,” I opined, “from what I remember of my cocktail conversations with Hank, the margins Pabulex was making were astronomical. Are you telling me the company couldn’t compensate for a ten or even twenty percent demand decline from their key market demographic by lowering their prices ten or fifteen percent? Hell, they’d still be making a very respectable profit…”
“You think I didn’t ask Hank the very same question?” Rose interjected. “They couldn’t!”
“Why the hell not?” I demanded, frankly puzzled.
“Because Babies R Us wouldn’t let them!”
“Huh?” I responded, dumbfounded. “What are you talking about, ‘Babies R Us wouldn’t let Pabulex sell its products for less money?’ In a free market, Pabulex has the right to sell its products for whatever prices it wants to. What kind of bone-headed, demented, half-witted, asinine…”
“Supreme Court of the United States bone-headed, demented, half-witted and asinine,” Rose interrupted. “That’s what kind. In 2007, they ruled that minimum-pricing agreements among suppliers or manufacturers and the retailers who sell their products are not ‘inherently illegal,’ as long as ‘consumer benefits’ can be identified that ‘outweigh the harm’ of paying higher prices.”
“Okay, then,” I reasoned, “if that’s been the new legal standard for a while, how long did it take Pabulex upper management to figure out that, since there aren’t any added-value service aspects to purchases performed on the Internet, they could sell identical products on the Web at a discount?”
“They tried that,” Rose sadly informed me. “Back during the 2008 holiday season. As a matter of fact, Hank got a promotion for suggesting it.”
“Hank?” My jaw dropped. “Hank suggested that?”
“Sure,” Rose confirmed with a sad smile. “The day after he told me about the problem…”
“And you thought of the solution!” I whispered excitedly, so as not to wake the baby.
“Exactly,” Rose admitted, finishing her spiked coffee. “Can I get one of those Bombay Sapphire G&T’s you make, with key limes, simple syrup, San Pellegrino mineral water and real cinchona bark extract?”
What could I say? I made two of them. While I was at it, Rose cleared the table and loaded the dishwasher. Moving to the living room, we sipped our highballs – or at least I did, while Rose continued her tale of woe.
“Anyway,” Rose sighed, “the minute Babies R Us saw discounted Pabulex products for sale on the Internet, they called a meeting and told Pabulex that Babies R Us has had a policy against discounted Internet sales of products offered in its stores since 2001. Any company that doesn’t play along with Babies R Us gets their product line dropped, and since Pabulex obtains about forty percent of its annual sales through Babies R Us, those Web pages all got taken down within four hours.”
“So,” I speculated, “Pabulex can’t be the only company getting the short end of the stick here, can they?”
“Oh no,” Rose shook her head with assurance, “after that, Pabulex hired some private detectives, and they found out that nearly all of Pabulex’ major competitors have been playing along with Babies R Us – Medela, BabyBjörn, Maclaren, Perego, Britax, Regal Lager, you name it – if it’s a high-end baby or infant product, Babies R Us carries it and believe me, sales there account for at least twenty percent of the manufacturer or distributor annual gross revenues. In a lot of cases, it’s more than fifty percent.”
“And if Babies R Us bullies a company like Pabulex into maintaining high prices for its products during the worst economic downturn since 1933…”
“A company like Pabulex goes broke,” Rose wailed, “and my husband loses his job!” Rose had no chance at the waterworks this time though, since that last expostulation woke the baby, who then proceeded to provide plenty of pathos with her own, inimitable sound track.
A surprisingly short time later, however, Rose returned, her practiced motherly magic spell cast in mere moments. Taking a healthy swig of gin and tonic, she composed herself, thinking. “Now – where were we?”
“Babies R Us bankrupted Pabulex and Hank lost his job,” I helpfully resumed.
“Ah, yeah…” Rose responded, as if mentally recalling the contents of a missing shopping list so as to avoid a pointless trip to the Safeway. “And now, Hank and I are down to our last ten thousand dollars.”
“And you’re still underwater on your mortgage.”
“Correct,” Rose nodded.
“And if you get foreclosed, then you, Hank, your kids, Hank’s brother, his wife, and their kids will all be homeless. And if you, Hank’s brother and his wife were to use your entire monthly incomes covering that mortgage on the house your families are sharing, you’d have to drop everything the kids do except attend Fairfax County public school – no more music lessons, no more soccer games, no more ballet classes…”
“No more trips to the cineplex,” she added, “no more cable TV, no more new clothes every semester…”
“No more orthodontia, no more summer camps, no more scouts, no more pool memberships…”
“No more middle class life for any of us,” Rose moaned, staring morosely at her gin and tonic. “We’ll have to choose between food, health care, gasoline and heat. We won’t even be able to afford the electricity for air conditioning!”
“Well,” I quipped, “at least it will be a truly uniting experience for the entire extended family – an opportunity for Hank to put all those good, old-fashioned conservative American values he’s always talked about so much into practice. I can see it now, like something from a Frank Capra movie, starring the young Ronald Reagan as Hank. First, we need the big, dramatic scene where Hank calls everybody together and tells them he’s lost his job. Then one of the smaller tykes, maybe Shannon’s five-year-old girl, for instance, says ‘But Uncle Hank, you’re so nice to everybody! You’re so kind and we all love you! How come God let something bad like this happen to you?’ And Hank kneels down and says ‘No, kitten, this isn’t a bad thing, not at all. God just gave us a chance to prove how great America really is!’ Then there’s the big montage with the racing, bouncy music, performed molto presto, with the calendar pages falling off, one by one, intercut with shots of Hank working nights at Wal-Mart; all the kids doing stuff like collecting aluminum cans, delivering newspapers, washing cars by the roadside after church on Sundays – look, there’s a shot of the girls, sewing up clothes the family used to throw away; there’s another one of you, working weekends, tutoring children with special needs, and another of Hank attending one, two, three, yes, four job interviews, each time being turned away, but still leaving with a confident smile on his face, a smile that says ‘This is the greatest nation on earth, nothing like us has ever been before’…”
“Tom!” The baby started crying again. I looked around at Rose. She was scowling. I’ve seen that scowl before. I saw it once when she caught me reading her diary, for instance. “Stop… rubbing… it… in!” I watched as about half of her gin and tonic disappeared, after which she stalwartly got up and made for the dining room; again silencing her baby and returning after only mere moments had elapsed.
“If there’s anybody who realizes now that all that conservative propaganda about the free market was a useless, evil pack of lies; if there’s anybody who knows now that supply side and neo-classical economics are nothing but vile, unprincipled justifications for greedy, criminal monopolists recycled from the age of robber barons by incompetent fools and amoral intellectual whores; if there’s anybody who has been completely disillusioned by what conservative economic theories allowed to, and even encouraged to transpire in American labor, capital, research, manufacturing, retail and real estate markets, it’s me. You win – the conservative Republicans raped the American middle class, took everything it had, stripped it naked, beat it unconscious and left it for dead in a polluted drainage ditch – just as you have been predicting for years and years. But what you said when I told you about Hank losing his job, Tom, I never expected that. I never… expected… you would… gloat.”
There went the waterworks. I have to give Rose credit, she played me today like Josh Bell stroking a Stradivarius. I left, strode into the den, and returned to the living room, pen and checkbook in hand.
“How much,” I asked, “should I make this out for?”