It was the posters that caught her eye that time, the ones that hung and still hang all around town, in grocery-store windows and on community bulletin boards and sometimes even in the windows of houses, reminding everyone to be patriotic, to watch over each other, to report the merest sign of trouble. Each designed by a famous artist to be eye-catching and collectible. A red-white-and-blue dam over a huge yellow-brown river, with a hairline fracture: Even small cracks widen. A blond woman peeking through curtains, cell phone at her ear: Better safe than sorry. Two houses, side by side, a pie passing hand to hand over a white picket fence: Watch over your neighbor. At the bottom of each, four bold capitals: PACT.
That afternoon, Sadie had paused by a row of posters pasted to a bus shelter, ran her fingers over the glue. It flaked away under her fingers like chalk.
That evening, a pair of policemen arrived at their apartment.
We were told, said one, that your son was part of a group defacing public-safety posters earlier this afternoon.
Sadie, pulling a Sharpie from her jeans pocket. Scribbling out the slogans of watchfulness and unity.
A group, his father said. What group?
Naturally we’re very concerned, the officer said, about why he might have felt the need to do this. What kind of messages he’s getting at home that make him feel this kind of unpatriotic and, frankly, dangerous behavior is appropriate.
It was that Sadie, wasn’t it? his father said, to Bird this time, and Bird swallowed.
Mr. Gardner, the officer said, we’ve looked into your file, and given your wife’s history—
His father cut them off.
That woman is no longer part of this family, he said brusquely. We have nothing to do with her. We have had nothing to do with her since she left.
It was as if his father had struck his mother, right there in front of him.
And we have absolutely no sympathies for the radical stances she supported, his father went on. Absolutely none.
He gave Bird a look, and Bird stiffened his spine into an iron bar and nodded.
Noah and I both know PACT protects our country, he went on. If you doubt my sincerity, just take a look. I’ve made steady donations to security and unity groups for the past two and a half years. And Noah is a straight-A student. There are no unpatriotic influences in this house.
Be that as it may, the officer began, your son did deface a sign advocating for PACT.
His gaze rested on Bird’s father, as if waiting for a reply, and then Bird spotted it: the quick flick of his father’s eyes to the kitchen drawer, where they kept their checkbook. The pay at the library wasn’t much, he knew; at the end of each month his father spent a good hour hunched at the table over the check register, painstakingly tabulating the balance. How much, he could see his father calculating, would it take to make them go away? Already he knew it was more than they had.
It’s the influence of that girl, his father said. The replaced one. Sadie Greenstein. I understand she’s a tough case.
Shock sizzled through Bird.
We’ve encountered her before, the officer admitted.
That’s where it’s coming from. You know how boys start to get around this age. Girls can get them to do anything.
He put a hand on Bird’s shoulder, firm and heavy.
I’ll make sure it comes to an end. There are no questions about loyalty in this household, officer.
The officer hesitated, and Bird’s father sensed it.
We’re very grateful to folks like you who are protecting our security, he said. After all, if it weren’t for you, who knows where we’d be.
Not anywhere good, the police officer said, nodding. Not anywhere good, that’s for sure. Well. I think we’re all set here, sir. Just a misunderstanding, obviously. But you keep out of trouble, son, okay?
When the police had gone, Bird’s father put his fingers to his temples, as if he had a migraine.
Noah, he said, after a long, long pause. Don’t ever do that again.
He opened his mouth, as if he wanted to say more, but all the air seemed to have gone out of him, like a tent whose poles had collapsed. Bird wasn’t sure what that was: Destroy posters? Talk to the police? Get in trouble? At last his father opened his eyes again.
Stay away from that Sadie, he said, as he headed into the other room. Please.
So Bird didn’t sit with Sadie the next day, and he didn’t have lunch with her the next day, and a week later he still wasn’t speaking to her when she stopped coming to school and didn’t come back, and no one seemed to know where she’d gone.
* * *
? ? ?
Today his father doesn’t say anything all the way down the steps of the library, all the way out of the college yard to the street. Bird follows him home in silence, though it’s the middle of the afternoon and his father would usually be at work for another two hours at least. Even from behind he knows his father is furious from the rigid rectangle of his back. His father only walks like that—stiff, angular, as if his joints are rusted—when he’s too angry to speak. Bird lags behind, letting the distance between them stretch out to a few yards, then half a block. More. If he slows down enough, maybe they’ll never reach home, they’ll never have to talk about this, he’ll never have to face his father again.