Chapter 52 Cord
Cord
Cord drank his way through his mother’s chardonnay, which took a while.
He ate all the food in her freezer, cheffing up frozen shrimp with spaghetti and scarfing pizzas and Klondike bars, then mini-muffins from the pantry.
He’d been a regimented machine for years, and damn, it felt good to eat crap and lie around.
But where was Charlotte? Her Volkswagen Jetta, freshly washed, remained in the garage.
Cord called his mom’s cell from her home phone and when she didn’t answer, Cord figured she was visiting old friends in Florida or on Hilton Head Island and would be back soon.
It was definitely odd, but the more he drank, the less he worried about his mom… and about everything.
Nobody needed him and nobody knew where to find him even if they did need him. Cord watched HGTV and the History Channel and every episode of Keeping Up with the Kardashians. Eventually, however, all good things come to an end…and so did Charlotte’s wine stash.
Cord drained the final sip in her queenly bed, his head propped up on her tasseled yellow pillows.
He sauntered into the living room, pausing to gaze at the family portrait, which had been painted sometime in the early eighties.
There he was on canvas—just a boy—just a boy.
Just a boy dressed in a tiny white polo shirt and seersucker shorts.
Cord in the painting gazed directly at the viewer of the painting (also Cord). A little Mona Lisa he’d been, his expression inscrutable. Jesus, thought Cord, I was a Pro-Level Disassociator even then.
Cord had never really felt like a child, because he lived in terror of Winston, his father.
His friend Miles had a Sit’n Spin toy in his front hallway and whenever Cord visited he would spin and spin because nobody was going to scream at him while he was at Miles’s house.
It was absolutely glorious, just twirling faster and faster.
Sometimes he even let out a “wooo-hooo!”
But he always had to go home.
What happened to that boy on the Sit’n Spin?
Cord had squashed him flat, made him into a man who was just a scam.
Cord was a helpful and smart person. He was a man everyone admired and depended on.
But he was also someone who needed booze or Instagram reels (or booze and Instagram reels) to maintain his perfect facade.
Cord the construct was as false as a Sweethearts chatbot husband, nothing more than an algorithm of trauma who just wanted to whirl around on a fucking Sit’n Spin. Did they even make Sit’n Spins anymore?
In the kitchen fridge, Cord located three St. Pauli Girl beers.
(Charlotte believed that men liked beer; she always kept a few on hand.) Cord cracked one open and traversed the carpeted staircase to his mother’s “bonus room,” still filled with baby toys and a tiny wooden kitchen from when Regan’s girls were young.
Cord sat cross-legged on the floor of the bonus room, checking out the bookshelves, which were filled with his books from high school and college: A Box of Rain: Lyrics, the lyrics of the Grateful Dead; Gorilla, My Love by Toni Cade Bambara; A Separate Peace.
The Hobbit—Christ, he had hated The Hobbit.
He had hated The Hobbit very much! (Was that a gay thing?
He’d have to ask around. Cord had certainly been the only boy at Savannah Country Day who’d preferred Pride and Prejudice to The Hobbit.)
And then there were the photo albums, bindings cracked at the edges.
He opened one, remembering peeling back the clear sheet, carefully pressing these photos to the sticky page and smoothing the film back over them.
It was a lost world—the time when they’d had to wait after taking a photo to finish the roll; bring it to Bay Camera Company for developing; pick up the photos a week later in their orange-and-white paper envelope, the shiny strips of negatives included.
They’d sprawl on their stomachs, peeking through magical images, choosing the memories to preserve.
The album Cord held now, navy blue with the Savannah Country Day School crest, was made when he was still trying desperately to present as straight.
He’d inserted photos of himself in his lacrosse uniform, mugging with girls.
He’d tried to squish in his boutonniere, but it was just a moldy biohazard now.
Cord analyzed the photos, sipping his St. Pauli Girl.
There was his dad, Winston, always a mean, lost look in his eyes.
Cord obviously knew that he was not the reason his dad killed himself, but Cord also knew he’d been a disappointment, if only because Winston seemed to require more in his life, something to keep him bound to the world.
And a son utterly lacking in athletic and social skills was not going to be that tethering cord.
For a long time, Cord’s father and Lee had had a mutual admiration society, but she had grown out of their overly close relationship.
Winston had been cruel; knew just what to say to pierce you.
He seemed to get off on causing pain. Sometimes, things would be perfectly fine and he’d just start a fight for no reason, as if peacefulness was too uncomfortable for him to bear.
Cord sighed. Everyone had their neural kinks, he supposed.
It was ironic that now he had a team of researchers exploiting people’s dopamine pathways to keep them addicted to their apps.
Back in the day, Winston had only felt sadness, and had somehow known—even if subconsciously—that inflicting pain on his family made him feel better.
What if Cord’s father had had Instagram reels to scroll through?
Might endless videos of machinery at work and adorable puppies—these two subjects dominated the content of Cord’s reels—have saved Winston?
Charlotte was young in the pictures. And there was Cord’s baby sister, Regan, so young when he was in high school. Cord noticed, unnervingly, that in every single image, Regan gazed at her big brother adoringly.
Why did this bother him? He felt, actually, kind of dizzy. Cord sprawled on the old carpet of the bonus room, the floor his nieces had crawled across, his eyes level with all the crap they’d dropped behind their play kitchen: an old sock, a juice box, some plastic toy from a McDonald’s Happy Meal.
Memories ran over him like warm water and also like a Mack truck: Snuggling with Regan and reading her books, her face pudgy and trusting.
Telling Regan about his day as she listened intently, fascinated by his every observation.
During his lacrosse games (he sucked), if he ever looked over his shoulder, he would see little Regan shouting on the sidelines…
clapping, jumping up and down—all for him.
And he’d been a great fucking brother. He sat and made collages with her, cutting up their mother’s fashion magazines. He protected her from Winston and then from Charlotte’s neediness. They were siblings and best friends; that was the reality. But then the narrative changed.
When she was in high school, Regan was preyed upon by their skeevy art teacher.
Cord hadn’t known, hadn’t seen it, and hadn’t protected her from Mr. Ragdale.
Even when she was home from the motel where he had taken her, forever changed but alive, Cord had distanced himself from Regan.
She reminded him of how badly he had let her down, their story now one that made Cord hate himself: He had failed his little sister.
Yes. He had. They all had.
But he had also made Regan happy. This was clear in the photos, undeniable.
There they were at Cord’s graduation, smiling: Regan, Lee, Charlotte.
His memories had excised any pleasure, but (and maybe it was the beer) he now remembered that he had loved being Regan’s big brother.
It was maybe the last part of himself that he had loved.