Homeland Elegies(8)

“Exactly.”

“What’s the message?”

“The system is broken.”

The maddening thing about this sludge of self-involved sophistry was that it all made perfect sense to him.

“I have no idea what you’re saying, Dad.”

“I’m saying he won’t win. So you should calm down.”

“And how do you know that?”

“Nate Silver.”

“What if he does?”

“He won’t.”

“What if he does?! I mean, you’re still saying he’s the better choice.”

“He is.”

“Better how?”

“Lower taxes.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me—”

“If you made more money, you would understand.”

“I made more than you did last year.”

“It’s about time.”

“It sounds like you’re gonna vote for him.”

He paused. “No.”

“Sounds like you are. And I gotta say, I still don’t understand what your problem is with Hillary.”

“No problem. We need a change—”

“Is it that she’s a woman? I mean, she can’t get pregnant anymore, so that shouldn’t be a problem for you—”

“I don’t like your tone.”

“What would Mom say? If she was here?”

“About what?”

“How do you think she’d feel about having her pussy grabbed, too?”

“Out-of-bounds!”

“Is that how Caroline liked it? Did she love it when you grabbed her pussy?!”

“You are not talking to me like that, goddammit! Do you hear me!? I am still your father!!”

My heart was pounding. He was right. I’d crossed a line. I was in pain. I was trying to hurt him. I hated what was happening. To him. To the country. To me. I wanted to tell him I was sorry. That it hadn’t been me speaking. Not really. That this was what Trump was doing to all of us. But I didn’t. I knew he wouldn’t understand.

*



On Election Day, I was in Chicago. I’d been invited to teach a class at Northwestern, so I voted a week early, at the church in Harlem where I’d cast my vote for a Democrat four out of the last five presidential elections. I remember the almost ebullient buzz on campus that day, the thrill of knowing the madness with Trump would finally be over. I didn’t admit to anyone my lingering fears that he might not lose. I’d observed a change in myself in those last few weeks before the election, a new, narcotic dependence on my phone, an aching that wasn’t even for the phone itself but for the daily clatter of outrage about Trump it delivered. I remember feeling—through that last fortnight before Election Day—a hunger to be haunted. Night after night, I dreamed of the man. I’d ejaculated in a nightmare about the Trump wives and daughters, a cabal of buxom blondes who took turns putting lipstick on my penis. Every morning I awoke and reached for my phone. I’d never experienced such pervasion. I felt Trump as closely as I felt myself, medium and message all in one. I worried it wasn’t only me. If others were feeling as I did, I worried that boded ill. The improbable saga of this campaign, its whiplash reversals, its perverse pleasures—didn’t a story this insane require an ending commensurate with the madness? The writer in me knew that stories are made of movement, not morality; demand conclusion, not consonance; and often conjure into being the very terrors they are written to wish away. As a writer, I knew this. But there was the needle at the Times, and the winding-path ribbon at FiveThirtyEight. Both assured me I was wrong.

Until they didn’t.

As I watched the returns, Wisconsin alarmed me. I knew it well and knew that the already reported precincts were where most of Hillary’s support would come from. I couldn’t understand why the commentators continued to pretend that the swelling numbers for Trump in Wisconsin were anything other than decisive. It would be another hour before that Times needle swung in the opposite direction and Nate Silver’s ribbon turned bright red.

I called home at 10:30, once it was clear to me Trump was going to win my home state and likely the election. Father picked up. He’d been drinking. I couldn’t gauge his mood.

“Are you watching?” I asked.

“Looks like he’s gonna win,” he said, slurring. On the television, John King was showing the tally from Sheboygan County, where Father had a clinic. “Sheboygan, too?” I heard him ask, confused.

“Did you vote?”

“What?”

“Did you vote, Dad?”

“What business of yours?”

“I don’t know. We’ve talked about it enough.”

“Goddamn right we talked about it enough.”

“You sound upset.”

“Huh?”

“You sound upset.”

“He’s winning. Don’t you see?”

“Didn’t you vote for him?”

“I told you, goddammit, I’m not talking about this.”

And then he hung up on me.

He never would tell me how he voted, but the shame I heard in his voice was unmistakable. I think he was admitting to me, that night—in the only way he could—that he’d done it. Despite knowing better, he’d voted for Trump.