Power Play
“Ready?” Bob asks. He is beside me in the driver’s seat. It takes my brain an extra split second to register the unfamiliar face. Just before we left home, he’d shaved off the long, grey, pandemic beard that made him look like a member of ZZ Top. He looks younger now, more innocent with his fresh face—a new version of my husband. I wonder briefly if his inner evolution has sparked this physical transformation. He has parked the Subaru at the end of a line of nine or ten vehicles—all SUVs and trucks—that snake down the driveway and out onto the roadside.
“Almost.” I tighten my lips and clasp my hands. “Who does that gargantuan Cadillac Escalade belong to?”
“Has to be James,” Bob replies drily. “My cousin. You know, the one who made a killing in real estate. I don’t think you’ve met him. He doesn’t live here except in the summer.”
“The one you called a slimeball?”
“Yup,” he replies curtly.
“Can’t wait.” I return to the view. Beside the car, an ancient apple tree clings to a few dull, browned leaves, providing a screen between us and the house, filled with Bob’s relatives by now. The old bungalow, rolling fields, forested mountains, and lake in the valley below are all gilded with October sun. Gorgeous weather for a Thanksgiving family get-together.
I straighten my spine, huff out my breath, and tighten my grip on the pie dish I’m holding. “Okay, let’s do this.”
As we tread along the drive beside the glinting vehicles, I think back to the unsettling experience with our neighbours and shudder. “I hope no one in there has any murderous intentions.”
“Or secrets.” Bob’s eyes, filled with apprehension, flick to mine.
We pass through a rose arbour with dried blooms hanging like brown, wizened heads, and step up three creaking wood stairs to the porch. My legs tremble. A hum invades my mind, like the sound of televisions or radios nearby. Bob gives me a worried look. I send him reassuring thoughts: Remember, calm, deep breathing. Focus on your breath. This is how we had learned to control our mutual mind access, keeping our thoughts private until we wanted to send them. But our range of reception has expanded, and we haven’t fully developed the ability to block others’ ruminations, and the more emotional those thoughts, the louder they are. I clutch the pie dish in front of me like a life preserver. Bob shifts the wine bottle to his left hand and grasps the doorknob.
When the door opens, we are enveloped in a whoosh of warm air infused with the rich aroma of roast turkey, mingling with the clatter of dishes, rolling waves of chatter and laughter, and a background babble that sounds like some weird modern choral piece. Random solo vocalizations pop up and sink back into the stream of thoughts: Will she ever shut up? So hungry. Luscious lips. Put your eyes back in. Goddamn conspiracy theorists; put on the foil hat, you weirdo. What can I do? COVID circulating, ready to crawl up my nose.
Bob’s sister, Angela, looms up in front of us, rosy-cheeked, a half-empty wine glass in her hand. With her wavy silver hair, and Bob’s clean-shaven, pink face, their resemblance is obvious. Her mind thinks Thank God, they’re finally here, so we can eat, but she says with a wide smile, “Bob, Jan! How good to see you in person instead of on a screen. Come in. Here, let me take that pie. Apple? How lovely!” God. Not another apple pie. Is that the only dessert for Thanksgiving? “And wine, too. Just add it to the other bottles there on the counter and get yourself a glass. We’re almost ready to eat.”
She whisks away with the pie as we shuck off our shoes, adding them to the flotsam of footwear in the entryway. A child of about ten, a grand-niece whose name I can’t recall, rushes through the door, toes off her runners, and bounds past us. Her only thought is her desperate need to pee. The choir continues its strange noise in my head. We enter the room, heading for the wine counter.
The place has been renovated to open up the kitchen, dining, and living areas into one large room with an island bar around a brick chimney between the kitchen and dining table. Every square foot is occupied: aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews, cousins, and in-laws fill the two easy chairs and sofas, even perching on the armrests; some sit on the ten chairs around the dining table, and some stand in clusters of twos or threes in the kitchen. The choir of voices swells into a roar, filling both my ears and mind. As Bob hands me a glass of Riesling, he sends me a thought: Try to focus on just one person at a time.
I take a sip and search the kitchen for a likely victim. Angela and her husband, Lorenzo, are busy near the stove—she is organizing pots and casserole dishes, he is carving the turkey beside her. A pair of nieces, both fit and fortyish, are deep in a whispered conversation, their heads bent to each other. I catch the drift of it from their minds: their children’s middle school is a cesspool of misbehaviour, and they don’t understand why the lazy teachers don’t discipline the children. Not theirs, of course. Then I notice Cara, Lorenzo’s daughter, standing alone near the hallway to the bathroom, arms across her stomach, hands clutching her elbows. She is staring out the window.
I sidle up to her, focussing on her lovely, dark-eyed face. The roar quiets down to a buzz. “Hi, Cara. Nice to see you,” I say with a smile.
She starts, turns to me, her eyebrows pinching.
She doesn’t remember my name. “I’m Jan. Your Uncle Bob’s wife.”
“Of course. Sorry, my mind was elsewhere.”
It sure was. Overwhelmed with worry about something that happened recently. “How are you doing? Still teaching at the middle school?” Perhaps the anxiety is connected to her job. As a retired teacher, I know something of the landmines in that profession.
“Oh, yeah. English, mostly. Harder and harder to get them to pay attention, but I keep trying.”
The stress isn’t from her job, but she’s holding down a secret. My mind receives an image of her sitting in her car, at night, the windshield wipers frantically flopping back and forth in the rain. I try to keep the conversation going, to block her incoming thoughts. “That age has always been difficult to teach, but it must be worse now, what with social media and the internet.”
“Oh yeah, they’ve all got phones. I have to collect them at the beginning of class, or we’d never get anything done. And then some of the parents complain if they can’t get a hold of them instantly. But at least we’re not trying to teach online anymore.”
Half my attention is on her words, but the other half is hijacked by her subterranean thoughts. The image returns, this time with the car in motion: the rain-streaked window, the flapping wipers, the blurry illuminated arc of the headlights leading the way down a deserted street. Then, in the headlights, a hooded figure pushing a grocery cart. A stomp on the brakes, swerve, a loud thump. Sitting in the stopped car, icy fingers wrapped around the steering wheel, eyes darting back and forth, seeking the cart, the person, witnesses. All is still, except for the drilling rain and the swishing wipers. Then a whimper, a crank of the wheel. Engine roaring and tires hissing, she speeds away.
I blink, peer into her eyes, notice they are puffy and red, and probe her mind. She has told no one.
“Cara, can you put this on the table?” It is Lorenzo’s voice.
“Of course, Dad.” She rushes to take a platter of turkey from her father, thankful for the distraction from the guilt burning within her. “Nice to see you, Jan,” she says over her shoulder.
I bite my lip, mulling over Cara’s secret, and peruse the crowd in the living room area. Bob is standing in a corner, conversing with a large man, tattooed up his arms and neck, hair shaved on the sides with a center mane tied back in a ponytail. A musician? Yes, I recall going to hear his band play in a local bar a few years ago. A cousin of some sort. I let my gaze roll over a trio of plump chatting women on one of the sofas, the thought chorus growing louder in my head again. I spot a tanned, balding man with grizzly grey stubble on his face, sitting slightly apart in an easy chair, staring into space. He reminds me of one of those old action movie stars in the flicks that Bob watches. As he raises a glass of whiskey to his lips, a flash of gold peeks out from under the cuff of his crisp, beige shirt. I focus, move toward him, and the babble of thoughts subsides. Closer now, I spot the logo on his left breast: can that be Dolce & Gabbana?
“Hi. You must be James. I don’t think we’ve met. I’m Jan, Bob’s wife.”
I’ve startled him, and I realize he was staring at Cara leaning over the table. As he raises his eyes to me, he sweeps a lurid thought about her from his mind. He cracks a stiff smile, flashing blindingly white teeth. “Well, I finally get to meet you. I always wondered who would marry Bob.” He pauses. His voice is slick, smooth, and deep. “Just kidding. He’s a great guy, and it looks like he’s done well snaring you.” His eyebrows almost rise. “Another teacher, I think? A noble profession.”
But what he thinks is: Not bad for an old bat, probably still good for a roll in the hay once in a while. But couldn’t he have got a younger one? Nothing like a tight, young piece of ass. But what can you expect of a teacher? No money in that. If you can’t do, then teach.
Wow. Bob was sure right: slimeball. Sixty-five if he’s a day, he’s been botoxed into facial paralysis. I try to get out of the cesspool of his mind. “I hear you’re retired,” I say. “Only come up here for the summers. Are you alone or do you have a partner?”
“I got a beautiful young wife back in Cuba, but she didn’t come with me this time. Finds it a bit boring here.”
From his mind, I receive an image of a raven-haired curvy young woman staring out a window at a muscular man in a sweaty t-shirt digging in a flower bed. He is Ernesto, the gardener. I feel a wave of jealousy surge from James. He’s worried about leaving them alone together.
“Must be difficult to be apart. Do you have any relatives here?”
“My son,” he says with no attempt at a smile. “Over there.” He indicates with his chin. “Talking to Bob.”
He looks ashamed, and I can’t help hearing what’s in his mind: I’ll never understand why he turned down his chance to go into real estate with me. He wasted his life on that stupid, awful music of his. And then he went and married that useless slut and had all those brats. Well, he made his bed. He and that brood won’t be getting anything from me.
“Time to eat, everyone!” Angela’s voice rings out, momentarily stopping the chatter. “Come fill your plates and find a place to sit.”
James pushes himself out of the easy chair and heads to the kitchen, making sure to pass closely behind Cara so he can squeeze her waist and whisper into her ear as he glides by. Her head jerks up, her cheeks red.
I glance at Bob, who has seen it too. He shakes his head, and I walk over to him. As we stand and wait for the children to eat first, we silently share what we have learned. He frowns in disbelief and concern at Cara’s hit-and-run but rolls his eyes at his cousin James’ thoughts. Then he fills me in on what he and Jamie Jr. were discussing: His new band has a chance at a tour and a recording opportunity, but they need money, a financial backer. What he didn’t say, but Bob learned from his thoughts, is that not only is he broke, but he is in fact deep in debt to several credit card companies, what with his sporadic construction work and family expenses. He wants to ask his father to help him, but they have been estranged for years. He knows he’d get a lecture, not money, from ‘the bastard’.
“Oh,” I mutter into my wineglass. “I don’t like knowing this stuff in people’s minds. It makes me feel complicit, and somehow obligated to act.”
Bob bends his head to whisper, “Me too. But what can we do without letting them know about our telepathy?”
“Not sure. Let’s go eat.”
I find a spot at the table beside the girl who streaked past us on the way to the bathroom. Her plate is occupied by a half-eaten buttered bun and a few slices of cucumber and red pepper. Her mother comes up behind her, stroking the girl’s long hair away from the food and back over her shoulders. “Emma, you really need to eat something else, or no dessert for you.”
“But there’s nothing else I like,” Emma wails. I sense the bolt of fright that runs through her at the thought of losing out on pie and ice cream.
“Well, look around for something healthy. I’ll check back in a few minutes.”
Emma’s shoulders slump as her mother lifts her hands and walks away. Her mind is awash in misery.
“Don’t like turkey?” I ask.
“No. I don’t eat meat, or any of the other stuff over there.” She turns her eyes toward the counter and stove that hold platters of turkey and ham, pots of gravy, mashed potatoes, and other cooked vegetables.
“Not even the candied yams?”
She shakes her head, lips curling in disgust.
Wow. I wonder how she got so picky. Looking at her plate again, I see the carbs and veggies, but no protein. In the middle of the table is a plate of appetizers: crudites, crackers, and a hummus dip. “What about some of this hummus with your veggies?”
She looks at me like I’m crazy. But from her mind, I get the idea that she has never tasted hummus, that she is afraid of trying it, or other foods, that she would rather just stick to what she knows.
I decide to experiment. From the appetizer plate, I pick up a cracker, scoop up some hummus, and take a bite. Mmmm. I try to connect with her mind, sending the thought of the tasty chickpeas to her.
She looks at me, then the hummus, her eyebrows pinching.
I take another bite, savour the rich flavour, and direct the pleasing sensation to her.
She picks up a slice of red pepper and, reaching out, barely dips it into the hummus. I can feel her trepidation and send her more thoughts of the good taste. With her eyes closed, she places it between her lips and licks. I sense her surprise at the unfamiliar taste. But also, appreciation. She bites, chews, swallows, and dips another piece of pepper in the hummus.
My mouth falls open slightly as I realize what I have done.
After finishing my meal, I meet up with Bob in the kitchen. We stack our dinner plates and scoop up pie and ice cream (“small servings,” I remind Bob, whose triglycerides are still high). I lead him to a sofa where we can sit and exchange thoughts while eating.
You know what this means. I take a bite of pie and ice cream and glance around. We can do more than receive thoughts. We can transmit to other’s minds and influence their thoughts and behaviour.
That’s kind of creepy. I mean, do we want that power? Bob can’t hide the concern in his eyes.
I think for a moment. Maybe not, but we seem to have it. And I think there are a couple of places we should try to use it.
So, we make a plan.
First, we split up to go one-on-one with James and Jamie. While Bob reluctantly goes over to talk to James, I search out Jamie Jr. Bob’s task is to implant in James’ mind both a feeling of affection for his only child, as well as the idea that his young wife, who married him for his money, is in fact spending that money on the gardener, and is not just sleeping with him. My job is to encourage Jamie to think more positively of his father so that he will feel he can ask him for financial help.
I find Jamie outside, near the woodshed. He is sharing a joint with Angela’s son, Brandon, who is equally big but not as tattooed. They stand up straight, waving away smoke when I approach them. Through the thick, skunky odour, I can feel their apprehension, nervous they are about to get a lecture, so I decide to disarm them. “It’s been a long time since I’ve smoked that. Can I give it a try?”
Wide-eyed, Jamie brings the smouldering spliff out from behind his back, offering it to me. I gingerly put it to my lips and take a little draw. Immediately, I cough but manage to croak out, “It’s okay. Just not used to it,” and hand it back. The tension from them dissipates, and I suddenly feel light, so I smile and jump in. “I hear your band is doing well, Jamie, that you have a chance at a tour and recording contract.”
He nods. “Yeah. Just don’t know if we can make it happen. We need a backer with money.”
Brandon takes a long suck on the joint and then squeaks out while exhaling smoke, “What about your dad? He’s loaded. Why don’t you ask him?”
Jamie sighs, shakes his head. “Naw, not going to happen.”
Here’s my chance. I direct my thoughts to his mind. You’re his only son. He may appear gruff and distant, but underneath it, he loves you. Who does he have in this world, other than you? His trophy wife who is just waiting for her chance to divorce him and take half his estate? Really, asking him for cash would help to repair your relationship and maybe save him from losing all his money to the grasping clutches of his gold-digger wife.
He tilts his head, and I know he’s considering the ideas I’ve planted. He scratches his whiskered chin. “Well, maybe.”
Brandon helps me out. “Yeah, man. You should ask him. For sure, he’ll back you. You’re his son. He’s got money to burn. Why wouldn’t he?”
Jamie’s face lightens with a weak smile. My work is done here.
When I re-enter the house, Bob joins me in the kitchen. Quickly, we share our experiences. He has managed to plant the seeds in James’ mind and left him standing alone, gazing thoughtfully out the glass patio door. Now, we join forces, two-on-one, for Operation Cara.
With her back to everyone, she has her hands deep in hot, sudsy water, washing the heaps of dishes, cutlery, glassware, pots, and pans that could not fit in the dishwasher. I grab two dish towels, hand one to Bob, and come up beside her. Guilt is radiating from her, and I can feel the tightness in her chest. “We’ll dry,” I say, cheerfully.
“Thanks,” she mumbles without looking up.
Bob catches my eye, and I nod. We both conjure up soothing thoughts that we send toward Cara: Confession is good for the soul. Everyone makes mistakes, but hiding your sins only makes you feel worse. Admitting your misdeeds honestly is therapeutic and will make you feel better. Coming clean will help you, and you will be able to find out what happened to the person you hit. Maybe even help him or her.
Cara sniffs, catching a sob in her throat. I put my hand on her shoulder. “Why don’t you let me wash for a while?” I say, and Bob sends her the suggestion to go find her father to whom she can divulge her secret.
Bob and I finish the dishes in silence, while the guests gradually gather up their children, dishes, and shoes, pile into their vehicles and depart. Through the window above the sink, daylight fades into night. We watch James and Jamie Jr. walk out to the Escalade together. No hug, but a handshake.
When we say our goodbyes to Angela, she looks around and remarks that she doesn’t know where Cara and Lorenzo have gotten to.
In the twilight, we make our way slowly back over the dry, crunching gravel of the driveway and climb into the Subaru. My shoulders relax—we have survived the assemblage of minds—but a question simmers inside me. “Do you think it was right, Bob, what we did?”
“I don’t know.” He shakes his shaggy grey head. “But it scares me that we could.”