Episode 5

Previously on the Paul is released from jail. The great leader cracks down on journalists and wins a Eight its bottom and the Weeks family is divided into Warring Camp. The other side of the family was blinded. Pieces, with Uncle Paul and Aunt Ruth split up. gone and Kate a drug addict. David was the only one doing okay, and he had to escape to New York to have a chance. My dad said, what can you expect from left-wing radicals who never discipline their kids? Then it all came spelling out.

How I'd ruined his life, and somehow I was responsible for his mom. And then it came at me. That's the only time my dad ever hugged me. All it took was me trying to kill him. Terence, the misfit, the black sheep, the loser, was giving handouts to me, the undisputed star of the family, who at the moment happened to be an emaciated drug addict with a rapidly diminishing life expectancy. What I do know is that. During those years we needed each other more than ever.

I'd like to think what Garrett did came out of love. And maybe it did. So, Great Uncle Paul and Grandpa Garrett nearly beat each other up because Garrett kept it a secret about putting Aunt Kate in rehab.

Now, Aunt Kate and this guy Neil are driving across the country to fight wildfires in California. Angelica is about to leave Aunt Ruth because they found her husband, Dr. Morales, in Canada. And the guy who was giving everyone hope hit hard times. Terence, you had this big success with the Franklin Cafe, and then you lost it.

Was it a relief that the struggle to keep it going was over? Maybe at first. We'd worked our asses off at the Franklin, bitching and moaning and dreaming of a day off. But once it was gone, we missed it like crazy. The one I really missed was Nandita. So one day I went over to her apartment to make lunch.

I tried to tell her how lost I felt not having a place to go every day and how seeing her always made me feel better and because she was so easy to talk to, I blurted out that I couldn't imagine my life without her. I've never been good at saying how I feel, so it came out like a borderline psycho marriage proposal. I always say too much or not enough. And that day was no different. Like I'd crossed some invisible line everyone else knew about.

She finally said Terence, I have to leave. I said because of me? She said, No, you idiot, they're repatriating me to India. I can't even say back to India because I've never been. She was born in the USA, but because her parents weren't citizens, she was now an anchor baby, and they were cracking down. I started to say they can't do that, but of course they could do any fucking thing they want. I hugged her and we went to the living room and sat on the sofa and kissed for the first time.

When we heard Chandi coming up the stairs, I said, Nandita, I'm going to India with you. She shook her head like it would take too long to explain how ridiculous I was, then she kissed me again before Chandy got to the top of the stairs. It was The best afternoon of my life, and also the worst. Either God can't make up his mind or he has a really whacked sense of humor.

Finding all those bodies in Florida was a blight on our souls, and waiting for us in California were the fires of hell. Is it any wonder we took our time? Neil must have sensed I was yearning for home because he drove to town without a word and parked near Lakeview Lutheran Cemetery. It was a brisk fall day ripped from my childhood.

We got to Isaac's gravestone and realized it was his birthday, so we sang him a silly happy birthday. I knew Neil wanted to talk to Isaac alone, so I went to Anne Hadley's grave and told her how much I missed her. When we were leaving, I looked back and someone was standing where we'd been. Ella was visiting her brother on his birthday.

My first thought on entering the R. J. Manning Rehabilitation Center was that if you weren't on drugs when you got here, this place would make them mighty tempting. The combination of long hauls to nowhere, institutional lighting, constant garbled announcements on the PAA, and a robotic red jumpsuited staff obliterated any hint of humanity. I reached the reception booth where I was greeted by a receptionist, her skin too small for her body, glaring at me with pure menace.

Can I help you? She said, the unmistakable subtext being that she'd like to strip me naked, hang me upside down in the torture chamber, and attach electrodes to my genitals. I asked if I could visit Kate Weeks. She's on assignment. What does that mean? Where is she? What have you done to my daughter? The glass door slid shut, and I was alone in hell. It was a ten minute walk from the cemetery to our house.

These were the streets where I'd gone trick or treating and learned to ride a bike and walked with Mickey to the bus stop on cold winter mornings. My entire childhood played out right here, but it felt different now. The houses were run down, and strangers on the street looked away when they saw me. Where'd everyone gone? I almost walked past her house. It looked so faded and forlorn. How could they have let it go?

It had been such a long time since I'd communicated with my family, I had no idea if they'd even want to see me. I rang the bell and waited. I was about to leave when I heard footsteps in the A skinny man in a threadbare green bay packer sweatshirt was standing there, unsure. Ghostly. I knew I should know him, but the years of drugs had rattled my brain. And by the way he was staring at me, I could tell he was trying to place me too.

I said, I'm Kate Weeks, I used to live here. He said, Oh, Kate, I'm Howard Groom, your old guidance counselor. I told him he didn't do such a bang up job guiding me, and we both managed to laugh. I could tell he was trying to locate that confident, pretty, optimistic high school senior in the gray, shivering apparition standing at his door. I was trying to find the genial upstanding family man and the sad, shriveled creature staring at me.

How long have you lived here, Mr Groom? I asked. He looked away and told me he'd been placed here after he got out of prison. This is where they put us. They say we're sex offenders. Those of us who stood up to them. There were no words. We just stood on the steps, two broken souls. Our university town had been such a glorious hotbed of activism. Angelica decided they'd leave when Gabriel's school year ended. I couldn't bear to count the days. I just wanted to live in the time we had.

Pam asked why we didn't both go to Canada. I told her Angelica's husband was waiting for her. I was already the past. We were sitting in the van in silence. I told Neil I wasn't going to California to fight wildfires, and I wasn't going back to R.J. Manning. They were stealing my life. My so-called rehab for three long years was just state-mandated incarceration. They used me to clean up the messes they created.

Mr Groom had given me guidance after all. That's what they did to good people who stood up. I wasn't going to be enslaved by them any longer, and I wasn't going to stick around and fight. I was going rogue, and Neil would have to decide for himself what to do. He was quiet for a bit.

And then he told me to get out of In my paranoid state I thought he was going to drive off and leave me to fend for myself, but he got out too and came around to my side, dropped down on one knee, and asked me to marry him. I couldn't breathe. My last marriage proposal had turned tragic. But seeing the way Neil was smiling at me, I felt this rush of hope and love and everything I'd been living without for so long. Maybe just maybe life could be worth living again.

We had an end of summer party for Gabriel and his friends. I had to stop handing out chili dogs to go inside and cry. Angelica joined me, and we watched out the window at all the fun. Then Pam came in and announced she was going to drive Angelica and Gabriel to Canada. Even though they'd probably be fine on their own, this was a better way to go. She didn't have to spell it out. They'd be safer crossing the border in a Tesla with a rich American woman.

Pam had always been the queen of false equivalencies, believing both sides had a point, but she'd never met anyone like Angelica. Now she understood you were on one side or the other. The last thing I wrote in Daniel's class was the news we'd heard about Kate getting married. He asked if I'd rewrite it with more detail. When the awful morning came, I was all cried out. I hugged Angelica and Gabriel, and they got in the Tesla, and off they went.

I watched until they were out of sight, then went back to the guest house, which felt empty even with all my stuff still there. I tried to come up with one thing to look forward to. Then I thought about Kate. Maybe happiness was still possible. I know the great leader made it practically impossible for people to come into the country because he hated immigrants. Was it easy for you to leave, Mom? It was getting harder and harder because so many people wanted out.

He had some kind of a quota system. There were tons of paperwork, but it was easier going to Canada than other places, and we were just going for a few days for Kate's wedding. Sitting with Paul before the ceremony, I started to cry. He whispered, When did you become such a muling infant? You could at least wait for the bride.

I explained that it wasn't just the wedding, it was seeing the family together. It brought back all those Sundays at the general's house, which I used to dread and now missed like crazy. Here we all were. Well, most of us. The hardest thing was telling my dad we were going to the wedding. He got that look that's terrified us since childhood. I asked Terrence if he was still planning to go, and he said, fuck yeah.

And I wouldn't have missed it, so there we were, squeezed into this tiny little church, which was a surprise, because we figured they'd just go to a justice of the peace. The doors in the back of the church opened, and Louise, the flower girl, came down the aisle, the most beautiful child who ever lived. Then I saw someone dart into the church as if he couldn't be seen. When Garrett showed up, I lost it. We were all there. I buried my head against Paul, making a sniffling, snorting sound.

He put his arm around me and whispered, You're an embarrassment, Ruth. If we weren't separated, I would leave you so fast. My dad never explained why he came to the wedding. After mom died, his hard ass thing didn't work anymore. He'd scare people away, and without her to smooth things over, he'd find himself alone in an empty house, getting old. Maybe it was too much for him, knowing all of us were there.

Just before the ceremony, David comes over and says, She changed her mind. She wants you to walk her down the aisle. I told him it wasn't fair, we hadn't practiced. David said, You have to practice. Talking dad? My dad had been acting like a normal dad, all polite and appropriate, and I wasn't gonna stand for it. So I made him walk me down the aisle. I offered him my arm. He took it and snarled, This is bullshit. I said, that's my daddy. And off we went down the aisle to where Neil was waiting.

At the reception, and they were all doing this weirdly precise line dance, smiling and happy, and where the hell did they learn it? Did they all sign up for a class and forget to tell me? Garrett asked why I wasn't out there with the rest of the family. I might spill my drink, I said. Why aren't you? I might kill the groom, he said, moving on to the bar.

I watched Kate dancing between Neil, whom my brother would like to kill, and David, who was as deeply focused as if he was landing a jumbo jet full of orphans in the middle of a tornado with one engine out. At the end of the line, more graceful than all the others combined, was the one person who could have gotten me out on the dance floor.

Ruth caught me lurking in the shadows and gave me an encouraging little nod of her head, eloquently communicating, Christ, Paul, would it kill you to have some fun for a change? I responded with a smile that said, If we love each other then why are we apart? We do better without words. If we didn't talk, we'd still be married.

The band went on a break, and Neil got up on the bandstand and the room got quiet. He knew that some of us blamed him for what happened to Isaac, and here he was becoming a member of our family. He said he wanted to make a toast, so the waiters handed out champagne, and he plunged right in, saying the only reason Kate was with us today was because Garrett had saved her life, a debt he could never repay.

Then he talked about how Isaac was the one who brought him and Kate together, and he could feel that Isaac was with us in that moment. He paused, and in the silence three notes came from the piano on the bandstand, one after the other. No one was anywhere near the thing. I got this chill. I think we all did. And Neil smiled as if he was plugged into a different frequency. He said, I wasn't able to do what Garrett did. Save a life.

And the only way I can live with that is by taking care of Kate. I sneaked a look at Garrett, who was staring hard at Neil, not giving anything away. When Kate jumped up on the bandstand, things got quiet again, but not a good quiet. She had this secret smile, which, ever since she was a baby, means she's going to do something she shouldn't.

It's the look she had just before she jumped off the garage roof when she was seven and broke her collarbone. She obviously learned nothing from the experience. She sang a cappella, which was terrifying. When she was twenty, she sounded like Joan Baez, pure and beautiful, but now her voice was shot. Ghastly reporting from some war zone only she had ever seen. Nobody could breathe. We were willing her through the song, which finally revealed itself to be both sides now.

At the end there was silence. Then we all started madly cheering because she beat it. This was her fuck you to the universe that tried to kill her. She was with us for another day. and that was enough. That's when I felt a hand on my shoulder belonging to a crew cut hydrant in a high end suit. Excuse me, sir. Mr. Flint from the main office, could you come with me?

Everyone was crowding around Kate, so they didn't see me follow mister Flint down the stairs. He stopped at an exit door and said this way. I've known too many people who disappeared over the past 15 years. This is how it happens. You're in your life, and then you're not. Mr. Flint pushed open the door and I followed him into the parking lot. Through a dense fog, I could barely make out the soft red glow of taillights.

It had come to this as I knew it would. My turn to disappear. Let me say goodbye. Everyone I love is inside. Not everyone, he said. Get in the fucking car. We crossed the parking lot, he opened the door, grabbed my shoulder, spun me into the back seat. I sat in the dark, just me and the driver. At least that's what I thought. Until I heard a voice right next to me.

I saw this goon take Paul downstairs while everyone else is watching Katie fighting it out with a folk song. By the time I made it through the crowd, Paul and the goon were gone. I ran to the window in time to see Paul get slammed into the back seat of a station wagon. It was tough to see the license plate in the fog, but I was pretty sure I got it.

By the time the party ended, I was exhausted from dancing, fired up by the excitement of the night, drunker than I had been in years, and ready to throw myself at Paul as if it was prom night. Our separation had been a dismal failure, and now, in the exuberance of our daughter surviving her addiction and getting married, we would find each other again. Nobody would ever know me or love me or make me laugh or annoy me or excite me like Paul. But where the hell was he?

I tried calling, but he had a tense, unresolved relationship with his phone and I had to leave a message. I went to Paul's room at the hotel and knocked. Nothing. I told David how panicked I was, and we got the hotel clerk to let us into the room. There was Paul's phone on the nightstand. I wanted to call the police, but David said he'd only been missing for an hour, and was probably off in a lounge someplace explaining gerrymandering to a defenseless bartender aching for last call.

I didn't sleep, and early the next morning I banged on Paul's door again, but he hadn't come back. Our party was traveling into the breakfast room, happy and hungover. Me and my dog Jarvis had our own table, which suited me fine. We'd made it through two days with no news, which was another reason we were feeling pretty good.

But they had the TV on, and there it all was. News broke about the mass migration at the southern border. These people were not after freedom and opportunity because those days were gone. They were starving. And if they got shot by troops at the border, well, it was better than quietly dying because there was nothing to eat. You'd look up From your omelet at the TV to see families walking straight into bullets that would kill them, and the waiters asking if you want more OJ.

I was sitting with David and Sophie when she gasped. Coverage had switched to the breakwater in Lower Manhattan, which was swamped by the storm, and the city was gradually disappearing. Their life was going on. under when Aunt Ruth came into the breakfast room she looked so freaked I figured she'd been watching all this messed up news. I heard her say David I can't find your father. That's when my dad called me.

Poor David was trying to deal with Sophie and what was happening in New York, and he had to drive me to the police station. I kept trying to call Paul, and David finally said, You know his phone is in his hotel room, right? And he's not there? I didn't know what else to do. In the darkness of the back seat, I heard Mickey say, Hey Dad. As if he'd been away for the weekend instead of thirteen years. I grabbed him and we hugged. I asked him what the hell was happening,

And he said there were too many wild cards if he'd gone to Kate's reception, which he very nearly did. Instead, he had mister Flint, his associate, get me into the car. I asked where we were going, and he just said It's good to see you, Dad. All that time apart, and he wouldn't talk. We got to the police station and told the detective the situation. He asked why Kate got married in Canada and Mom said, Don't you know what's happening in the USA? The good times are over, sir.

She forgot to mention that Kate and Neal had bolted on a government mandated rehab program and were fugitives. He said, so your family has no connection with Canada? We told him about the cottage where we used to spend summers. It had belonged to the general, but he passed it on to my dad and Uncle Garrett. Their family never took to it, so it was pretty much ours growing up. We hadn't been there for years.

When my dad said he needed me, it pissed me off how grateful I was. It looked like I was doomed to spend my entire life trying to win his approval. He'd fired me from his company, undermined me at every turn, and that morning when he called me away from the breakfast room, I was still trying to measure up to whatever he expected of me. Then he started asking my advice. I couldn't even count on him to not trust me.

We were bouncing down a twisty road in the woods. I couldn't get a fix on anything until we lurched to a stop. Mickey got out, so I did too, and followed him into our old cottage. We were in the kitchen when he turned on the lights, and I saw him for the first time. Full beard, hair to his shoulders with a slash of gray, and he'd lost weight. It was hard to see the football star in this gaunt, serious man. But the eyes gave him away. You look good, I lied. He smiled. You look old.

He asked if I still drank, and I told him I'd stopped last night, but was ready to pick it up again. He got a couple of Molsons from the refrigerator, and we sat in the living room I asked if he was living there, and he said, I can't tell you what I've been doing. There are too many people involved. I hope you understand.

I said, I don't see you for thirteen years. You kidnap me from your sister's wedding reception. You won't answer a single question and you hope I understand? I haven't understood one thing since november fifth, twenty twenty four. He told me he was trying to save the family. We'd lost our jobs and careers and our relationships, and we were dealing with addiction and jail and the endless soul crushing trauma of life in the great leader's America.

And there was no way we'd survive because it was only going to get worse. I'd almost forgotten what Mickey was like when he got wound up. Exhaustion set in. It had been the longest day of my life, and I fell asleep while he was still talking. I woke up the next day and he was gone. There I was, in our beloved old cottage, for an entire day, so out of it I felt like I'd been drugged. That night he came back. Didn't even tell me where he'd been. Everything was a mystery.

He cooked dinner and we drank beer, and I tried to find out what had happened to my son. Even at night, the road was awesomely familiar. My earliest memories are driving on this road, with mom, dad, Mickey, and Kate in a frenzy of excitement. The summer never really began until we got to the cottage. I'm driving too fast. We're scared we won't find dad, and maybe a little scared that we will.

It was Mom's idea that somehow he might have gone there. Then From the end of a long driveway, We see a strange car next to the cottage. My mom said, I think we should stop. Nobody comes here except in the summer. Some things. When Mickey talked about Ruth and me splitting up, It was clear he was plugged into what we'd all been doing for years. Who have you been talking to? I asked. He said whatever was going down.

We never missed the whiskey hour with doctor Paul Weeks. Where exactly did you get your PhD, Dad? I didn't even know what I was doing. Ask him. He was a fugitive wanted for murder, new territory for me. I said, So you can't talk about what you've been doing and you know everything we've been doing? All these years apart, and there's nothing to say. He laughed and said, Jesus, Dad, I've missed you so much.

That's when we heard a car outside. His face turned cold, and he whips out a pistol. This wasn't the sun I remembered. It was so dark, and what was this car doing at our cottage? I said, David, don't get out of the car. But of course he got out. Maybe if Paul and I had disciplined our children when they were young, they might occasionally do what we suggest.

David was making his way to the other car when a man came out of the cottage with a gun. He stared at us and said, We're drinking Molsons if you'd care to join us. I couldn't see Ruth's face. I just saw her moving toward Mickey like she was in a trance. She threw her arms around him, and they both just held each other. It was way beyond words. Me and my dad were checked into this crappy little motel outside Sault Ste Marie. He explained why he ended up coming to the wedding.

He called it a mission. I called it a lousy place to spend the night. Of course I didn't say that out loud. David said he'd be fine sleeping on a futon in the living room, and Mickey went off to his room, and Ruth and I went to the room with the double We never said a word, just fell into bed together as we had for years and years before the world blew up. I said, This is the first night we've known where all our children are in thirteen years.

She said, Are we terrible parents? And I said, No, but I don't think we're going to win any awards. She punched me and it was as sweet as a punch. Mickey and I whipped up breakfast, and it took me back to how much fun it was when we were kids, doing random stuff with my big brother. I thought, man, he hasn't changed a bit. He's still a total goofball. But when a car pulled up outside, He was in another head, calculating fight or flight. Then he saw Ella and just melted.

Louise He made Sophie feel welcome right away, and with Louise, it was love at first sight. We managed to keep things light during breakfast. Then these strange people started showing up. My dad was checking them out, so he could pick them out of a lineup.

Mickey's friends weren't top-notch in the hygiene department, and they'd obviously been thinking about something else when their parents had tried to teach them manners. They gave us these semi-hostile stares, like you would get from chimps in their cages when Din Din is late. Then they got coffee and said they were off to work.

They had this spooky Manson family look. I said to Mickey, I like your friends, as if he'd brought his little league team home for hot dogs and root beer. He said, That's my mom. Louise asked the question for all of us. Who are these people, Mickey? It's easier to do that when you're twelve. Mickey said, Oh, they work for me. Ever since he was a baby, we could never get anything out of Mickey until he was ready to talk.

Ruth, Mickey, and I took a walk on what used to be the beach, but was now choked with bushes and battered by storms. There were no summer folks around, but there was activity in the other cottages, which seemed to be under construction. We didn't recognize a soul, but they all knew Mickey. He told us the summer people had stopped coming after a flood eight years ago. There had been huge damage, the beach was ruined, and they let the property go, so Mickey bought up the cottages for back taxes.

Neil and I were sharing a fruit bowl in bed at the hotel when Sophie called and told me they found my dad, which wasn't that big a deal since I didn't know he was missing. She said he was out at the cottage with Mickey. When I dropped my phone it went straight into the fruit bowl. Mickey and Louise and I were pulling the old sunfish out of the shed when Kate and Neil showed up. She got out of the car and came over to us, all Kate cool, and said,

Hey Mickey, what's happening? He said, Going sailing, you wanna come? She said, maybe later, dude. Then she choked up, and he came over to her. I heard her say, I thought you were dead. And he said you too. She pushed him away, and then she hugged him. For days we were jammed into the cottage together. We'd be outside all day doing whatever we wanted, which for me meant staying inside.

Then it started raining, and there was no escape, no solitude, just the people you love most at close quarters, which is its own circle of hell. We'd each creep off to our own secret place to be alone, and someone else would have gotten there. One morning when the rain finally stopped and the sun burst through, Paul and I were sitting on the porch drinking coffee. We watched Mickey in the old rowboat trying to fix the leak

David untied the rowboat and gave it a hard push, so Mickey was floating away in a leaky rowboat. It was exactly the kind of thing they'd do to each other when they were kids. It was beautiful. Paul asked me how long this could go on. It was so hard to think about ending this magical interlude with our three children. One morning we heard hammering from Howell House, the biggest one on the beach, three stories old, dark, and funky. Mickey's people were renovating it.

Mickey said some of us could move in when the work got done, so we all pitched in. Mickey would get up early every morning to tend to the garden. He was always up there alone for about an hour before others would straggle in to help. David and Neil and I would go off to work on Howell House.

Mickey's strange people turned out to be hackers who'd drift off with big mugs of coffee to start their hacking in one of the other cottages. That's what our days were like. We parked under the trees at the end of the drive. Six a.m. There's Mickey working in the garden by himself.

My dad was all about preparation. We'd scouted out the situation. Then we knew what to do. We just had to do it. Me and Terrence never had problems working together. He was the kid who always volunteer and he'd keep working until the job was done. His whole life, he never found any shortcuts. That's a good thing in this line of work.

Mickey was in his own world as usual. It wasn't that hard for me and my dad to sneak around the edge of the garden. Our plan was to come at him, so if he ran he'd be running away from the cottage and into the woods. That's pretty much what happened. Except he was bent over planting something and he straightened up. And that's when he saw us. Everything was written on his face, plain as day.

and clocked what was going down. You don't survive as a fugitive for thirteen years by trusting a soul. He ran toward the woods just like we planned. I had a flash of that's Mickey, that's my cousin. But my dad had drilled it into me about Mickey being a terrorist, family or not, and we had a job to do. Without the rule of law, we've got nothing. And Mickey needed to be brought to justice.

Mickey was in good shape, running a damn sight faster than me and Terrence. The one thing we didn't figure on was that he knew these woods like the back of his hand. We're huffing and puffing, the son of a bitch is getting away. You disappear into those woods, and if you know You know what you're doing, you're gone for good. Mickey's headed for daylight, and I see that my one chance to redeem my life is ending. My dad yells, take him down. I knew I couldn't catch him, but Terence was military.

He was always working out. He should have been able to keep up with Mickey, so I yelled, Run him down! Heat of the moment. Terence heard it wrong. This was my dad's mission. He was my commanding officer. I had to obey his orders. I had a clear shot at Mickey, maybe my only one before he disappears into the woods. I stopped, pulled out my pistol.

Mickey went down hard. I froze up. What the fuck had I done? I never planned it to go down like that. It was supposed to be about justice, not a cold blooded killing. It was my fault. Terence was just trying to carry out an order. He's lying still on the ground and all I could see was Mickey as a little kid. Back then him and me were close. He'd always watch out for me and yeah, we drifted apart like people do. But he was a big part of my life when we were young. And I shot him in the back.

What had happened in my head that I could do that? I wanted to die myself. Me and Terence, we can't move. We're staring at Mickey. And then we see him trying to get up. I say, come on, Terrence, and we go running up to him. He hadn't been hit by the bullet. He tried to dodge it, landed on a rock wrong and taking a nasty fall that knocked the wind out of him. Terrence took one arm, I took the other, and we walked them back to our rental.

Once we got in the car and caught our breath, Mickey was pretty calm, considering his uncle and cousin had shot at him and grabbed him and piled him into a car and were driving him off to some place unknown. My dad had told me to keep my gun on Mickey just in case. Mickey says, Terrence, can you put that thing away? It's really annoying. He thinks having a gun aimed at him is annoying? After I tried to shoot him?

We're driving through the Sioux when Mickey asks what the plan is. But he asks it like where are we gonna have breakfast, I hop? It wasn't until we made the turn to go through customs that he understood what the plan was.

He says, Back to the USA, huh? You really think that's a good plan, Uncle Garrett? I said, Mickey, we live by the rule of law. You broke the law. You killed someone. I should have stopped it, but I didn't. It's not too late for me to do the right thing. We're getting closer to the place where you can't turn back. My heart is pounding like this is it. But Mickey stayed cool. He says, Uncle Garrett, I agree with you. What I did I'll regret for the rest of my life.

Every day I try to find ways to make up for it, which I can never do. Then he says What do you think will happen to me once we're back in the US? I told him he would finally face justice for His fate would be up to the legal system. I told him he was living in the past. The rule of law doesn't exist in the United States anymore. They're executing people.

And I would be one of them because I have no money and no connections and I oppose the great leader and the ruling party. I said, Uncle Garrett, you're not taking me to the country we both used to know and love. That country died a long time ago. If Mickey had been yelling or pleading, I wouldn't have heard him. But he was just talking to me, man to man. I told him what I did was wrong.

It had come out of a misguided attempt to stop what was being done to our country, and it wasn't so different from what Isaac did, trying to wake people up so children would stop being killed at school. We never mentioned Isaac. Ever. It hurt too much. And it stirred up stuff we never wanted to think about. That's the way our family was. My dad would probably say we honored him with our silence. I don't believe that. I think we never knew how to deal with it and move on.

When Mickey brought Isaac up, I saw my dad flinch like he'd been hit. I knew Mickey was playing the last card. It would go one way or the other. That's what Mickey figured too. I didn't plan to turn the car around. A few feet further would have been too late. Once we turned around, my dad just kept driving, staring straight ahead. Everything he'd worked for and believed in in his whole life was gone. Justice, democracy, the rule of law.

He probably knew it before, but when Mickey said it, well, it was just fucking true. It was all over. I was in the front seat, so I could see the tears. Mickey was in the back seat. I don't know if he could. My dad said. you and Isaac he couldn't finish. It was like he was making this connection for the first time. And once he did,

He couldn't drive me over the border. It'd be like he was doing it to Isaac. We drove back to the beach in silence. Talking was impossible because there was too much to say.

We got in sight of the garden. Seemed like years ago we'd hustled Mickey into the back seat. My dad stopped the car. Mickey said some morning, huh? My dad said you take care of Mickey. As soon as I opened the door I saw Ella and Louise in the garden. They were always the first ones to join me in the morning. Louise yells, There you are, we didn't know where you went. She came running up to the car. That's when she saw Terrance and Uncle Garrett. She squealed with joy. Who can resist that?

I get out of the car to give Louise a hug, and then my dad gets out, and he's a goner. He's trying so hard not to cry, and then fuck it. He rushes over and sweeps Louise up in his arms and holds her like he's never gonna put her down. Louise says, I'm really good at croquet. Uncle Garrett says, Well, you're gonna have to prove it to me, kid. And we all go trooping back down the long driveway to the cottage. Paul and I moved up to Howell House and took the master bedroom on the third floor.

Every morning we'd sit by the window and watch the sunrise. We have a long history of analyzing everything into submission. We didn't even ask each other what we were doing or how long we'd be staying. It was also fragile. Our relationship and the stolen time with our family

And the last years at home had been so hard. Mickey's people were shy around me. I asked Mickey about it and he said, Dad, you're a celebrity thanks to the whiskey hour with Dr. Paul Weeks. They think you should do more. I had a bit of free time, like all day, every day, so at dusk on the porch, Mickey set me up with Holly, a spirited wizard of technology, pierced and tatted with a dazzling smile, and I did my first podcast.

For years the great leader had deprived himself of what he wanted most, to wear a military uniform like the demagogues he had come to adore through the tiny fragments of history he'd encountered without opening a book. And now he'd earned his moment, and there he was in all his fraudulent glory, a rank blistered orange sausage with saggy flapping arms encased uniform And high boots, strutting toward a podium in the Rose Garden, where he stood with an otherworldly smile. He knew he'd won.

He'd made the entire country as empty, weak, and frightened as he'd been since the sky blackened on the day of his birth. A sorry, unloved pet, never housebroken by his emotionally incontinent parents. He was no longer alone in the endless void. He had three hundred million fellow sufferers who'd quietly succumbed the creeping contagion of his existential vacancy. He had an announcement to make. The staggering problems of social media had at last been solved.

Personal security, foreign interference, and the bullying, trolling, hatred, and shame that made every day a trial were relics of the past. The government was taking over the amoral leftist corporate social media monsters that had spiritually savaged the nation. The great leader would henceforth maintain the internet as the founding fathers had envisioned it, with respect for all white citizens with proper papers.

A love of country whose actions can only be understood by those at the top and mandatory. Abortion would be stopped once and for all. Arming. Finally, someone with the courage to clean up the pluralistic slop the country had been marinating in for far too long. If we do what we're told, we are free. Famps matched. Ghoulish smile. They knew when they joined the great leader's team of dunces, they'd pre-booked a one-way trip on a cramped middle coach seat to hell.

These shivery moments in the hot glare of fame made it all worthwhile. As soul-crushed citizens dutifully cheered on the great leader and his retinue, a gleaming machine-tooled wife, a pair of blank, empty-headed sons with a charisma of cheese? A porcelain daughter with her uncomfortably fay husband. a gaggle of aging porn star ambassadors to small African nations, and several mirthless herodons authorized to translate his psychopathic babble into official state-sanctioned lies.

Some noted that the great leader had stuffed the crotch of his too-tight uniform in one more failed attempt to impersonate a man. When me and Terrence and Mickey went into the cottage that first morning, Mickey said Look who I found. Everybody made a big deal about us, and we all had pancakes together. We didn't say what had happened, me and Terrence busting Mickey and shooting at him. Every family has to work shit out its own way, and we all got through it alive.

Maybe he told them later. I never knew. I just know the family took us in, no questions asked. One night I said to Paul, Do you think we'll ever get back to where we were? He said, No, that's gone forever. We're headed someplace new, Ruth. Falling back in love with Paul was even better than the first time. We were on top of each other in the cottage, so Louise and I moved up to Howell House with Paul and Ruth.

They had a going-away party for us at the cottage, even though we were only moving 50 yards away. A week later, David and Sophie joined us, and it was such a relief to have all that room to spread out. I'm not like my brother. He can waste a whole day sitting on his ass with a book. I have to be getting stuff done. And there was plenty to do. The cottages needed to be rebuilt and winterized and generally taken up enough.

The kind of work I like. End of the day you can see what you've accomplished. You've earned that beer. Everyone slipped into some role. Like my dad doing carpentry and Uncle Paul with his podcasts. But there I was. On my own, like usual. Me and Jarvis would take monster walks, disappear for hours, my dumb old life coming back like I'd never been a big deal chef and run two restaurants. Ella picked up on where I was at, as usual. And told me we were gonna team up and cook.

So I moved up to the Howell House and Ella and Louise and I would make a daily run into town for supplies and then we'd start cooking. There was a big living room and everyone would squeeze in for dinner, sitting wherever they found a spot. And our goal was to blow their fucking minds. Mickey's people would join us for dinner, and one night I found myself talking to a big bearded puffy guy named Perry, one of the computer geeks.

I thought we really connected, until later when Kate asked a bunch of questions about him that I couldn't answer. And that's when I realized I'd done all of the talking. No wonder it was such a good conversation. Like the hardest of the hardcore socialists I've known, Mickey and his crowd had a gift for making money. When my dad's podcast started to catch on, they charged ten bucks a month and subscriptions poured in. I found them cackling as they counted the cash. Socialists indeed.

My dad with his fake doctorate and twisted worldview. Was a star. I'd been there for the golden years of the USA. But now that our country was circling the drain, I'd jumped ship for Canada. It felt wrong. Maybe if I had a bit more character, I'd have gone back home and fought the power instead of sipping bourbon on the porch and making podcasts, safely hiding out in a commune. But it sure was fun.

My mom told me she'd heard from Angelica. There had been some kind of mix-up. She and Gabriel made it over the border to Canada, but couldn't find Dr. Morales. There was a tiny group of concerned citizens who'd march in front of the White House every day. It made the great leader seem magnanimous to allow a protest that could so easily be stopped. He called them the sad losers, so that's what they became on Fox State News. Tour groups would be shown the sad losers for photo ops and easy laughs.

A few dozen people registering their polite opposition to the great leader's autocratic USA. That's all that was left of the resistance.

Ella hadn't had a real boyfriend in years, and now she was hooking up with this computer dude named Perry, and Paul and Ruth seemed to be back together, and Kate was happier with Neil than I'd ever seen her. You couldn't spit without hitting someone in love. And yeah, how great. Everyone's so freaking happy. What it mainly did was turn up that voice in my head telling me I never fit in. I had to make a move. Even if it was a dumb one.

I got chosen to drive my mom to pick up Angelica and Gabriel. She was as giddy as a sophomore on a first date. I kept thinking. This will end badly. Either Angelica will have moved on and my mom will be devastated, or they'll rekindle their thing and my dad will be devastated. We got to the bus station, and there they were. Driving back to the beach with Angelica and Gabriel was so comfortable, we picked up right where we'd left off.

Of course there was the question of what would happen when we got back to the cottage. My dad was gracious, and we all survived dinner. Ella had moved in with Perry, so her room was free, and that's where Angelica stayed, right next to my mom and dad's room. Everyone acted like this was the most natural thing in the world. And maybe it was. I was mesmerized by the congressional hearings of the opposition party.

There was something deeply moving about these much maligned, powerless people continuing to do their jobs day after day. pursuing democracy when it didn't exist anymore. When they started looking into the connection between the ruling party and we the people, I called Mickey. We the people was from a previous life. The activist organization I joined back at the university. Now we're hearing that it had been created by the ruling party to infiltrate the left.

Starting in 2025, they began recruiting subjects for what they claimed were studies on educational approaches to benefit the underclass, but were really techniques for breaking down an individual's belief system in the interests of extreme. One of the early breakthroughs happened at the Psych Center, where important tests to benefit the ruling party were conducted before it was bombed by radicals. I looked at Mickey, and tears were rolling down his cheeks.

All those years ago he was right. He'd been on to their evil game, tried to fight it, and it had wrecked his life. But there was no easy vindication. And the bastard's work had continued.

It was a stunning drive down through the upper peninsula, but after all the wild passion of the beach community, our university town seemed dull and dreary. The Great Leader's America was a place where you were expected to shut the fuck up and do what you're told.

I got to Nandita's apartment and there was no one home. I sat on her steps and waited through the afternoon and into the night. That gave me plenty of time to think about how I was going to feel when she showed up with her new boyfriend. One more ridiculous plan and a life jam-packed with them. Why didn't I tell her I was coming and avoid the pain? I finally saw her trudging down the street alone and exhausted.

When I stood up, she started running as fast as she could on those tired legs and threw herself into my arms. It's you, she said. It's it's really you. That poor dumb me voice in my head had not one single thing to say. We put solar panels on all the cottages and got wind power going and built a breakwater with sandbags on the beach.

Then we went after the big abandoned barn in the middle of the field. It was a huge project, insulating it and solarizing it and plumbing it, but we all pitched in and got it done. Uncle Garrett was a total workhorse. He never said much, he never had, but it seemed like he was glad to be there. I'd lie awake nights trying to figure out what we had to do to get ready for winter. There were so many people to take care of, and I felt responsible for every one of them.

One night I popped an ambient and drifted off to sleep, blissed out to be in a warm bed with the wind. the windows. My dad woke me up to tell me the water was rising. I went out into a savage rain with the water getting higher and our people piling sandbags as fast as they could to save Howell House. There was this black guy I'd never seen working next to David. He didn't stop till the job was finished.

Aunt Ruth wanted me to pick up stuff from her friend Pam Rayner, so I drove over to her house with Nandita and Chandi. Pam was super nice and had all Ruth's things packed up and wanted to know how she was. I said, oh, fine. But Pam was worried. I mean, Ruth goes off to a wedding in Canada and never comes back. I told her about the community we're building in Ontario and how Nandita and Chandi are being forced to leave the country.

She ended up giving us lunch and kind of boasting about how she was pretty good at getting people over the border. I told her we'd be okay. And then she said so quietly I could barely hear her. I haven't talked to anyone for weeks. The next night, dinner at Howell House, the room was full, and I happened to look across the room and see the black guy from last night on the beach. He smiled at me and

I got so shaky. I tried to eat but couldn't taste my food. So I went down to the beach to check out the water situation and he's suddenly next to me. Didn't say a word. Just hugged me. My whole life, there's only one person who ever hugged me like that. D. He whispers, It's me, Mickey. It's me.

I push him away, so strangled I can hardly say the words. Who are you? He comes closer, and I look in his eyes, and I know who it is. He starts to put his arms around me, and this time I push him so hard he stumbles and drops down hard on the beach. I'm half crying. This isn't happening. This isn't what it is. I dreamed about this for fifteen years, but I didn't dream it like this. He gets up and says softly, This is what the dream is, Mickey. This is who I am. It's who I've always been.

I can't breathe. Can't think, can't stay a moment longer. The world's too small. I have to get away from this thing. thing that's exploding my brain, so I get in my truck and back all the way out the long drive at fifty miles an hour, speed through town like I'm seventeen, end up in the bar it swallows and bang down a murderer's row of tequila shots and see this sad eyed woman. She's the only woman there, and what I need like never before is a woman.

I sit next door. Twenty minutes later, we're out in my pickup, clothes in a tangle at our feet, and she says he's in prison and he isn't getting out, but I can't do this. We put our clothes back on and I drive her home. We sit in the truck and I try to tell her what happened to me down by the water when my past came roaring back with a different face and a different body. Just then a light goes on in a dark house, and a little girl is staring out at us.

I'm overcome by love for this woman I just met. Tell her we can save each other, we can love each other till the end of time. This is our moment and will never come around again. I kiss her gently on the lips and she says You'll be okay, just give it time. And goes into the dark house where the little girl is waiting on.

As a teenager, Mickey went through a phase when he'd sulk in his room and only come out for school and football. Now there was no school and no football, and he won't come out of his room, so I asked Kate to talk to him. She has a gift for making things either much better or much worse, so I kept my fingers crossed. I've always gotten a lot of pleasure from disappointing my mother. But Mickey had been holed up for days and everyone was concerned, so I did what she said, knocked on his door.

I've never seen my brother like this. Depressed, suicidal, whatever. I told him I loved him, which I'd never done before, and he winced at the word love. I got David to talk to him, figuring this was a job better suited to a doctor than a folk singer. Afterwards I asked what his diagnosis was, and he said Mickey's really fucked up. I suggested he put it in layman's terms. Mickey accused me of playing doctor. That pissed me off.

My family doesn't think I'm an actual doctor, apparently because I'm still nine years old. So I got up to leave and he asked about the black guy who worked so hard on the breakwater. I told him his name was Daniel. He was Terrence's writing teacher at the U, and he left when he found out Terrence wasn't here. Mickey said, Terrence is coming back, isn't he? How's he supposed to get in touch with this Daniel person?

I told him I'd find out if he left contact info for Terence. It struck me as a bit bizarre that Mickey was suddenly so concerned about Terence getting together with his old writing teacher. But Mickey was never easy to figure. The next morning, Mickey's truck was gone. There was so much work to do. It was hard to believe he would just abandon us.

Parking at the Omni Hotel was stupidly expensive, so I circled the block and found a space back at the U and head for the hotel. I'm standing in the lobby debating my next move when I feel a familiar pull to the hotel bar where so many great life decisions are made. Middle of the afternoon, a few married guys are slumped at the bar, staring vacantly into their vodka tonics, wondering why they were so excited about a solo trip to a nice hotel, and there, in the back by the room.

Daniel is staring straight at me. The son of a bitch doesn't even have the decency to look surprised. I asked how he found me in Ontario, and he said Terrence had written about Kate's wedding in his writing class, and he figured it out from that. He asked how I found them at the hotel and I told him I knew the breadcrumbs he left for Terrence were meant for it.

Then the two of us started drinking beer for real, and spiraling back through the years to when we were at university together, working at the library and falling in love. Louise and I were walking back from the garden late in the afternoon when a car comes rumbling down the dusty drive to the cottages. It stopped next to us, and there's Terrence with the biggest smile I have ever seen on a human face. He says,

get in. So Louise and I pile into the back seat next to Jarvis, and there's Nandita and Chandi and Pam Rayner, and we all started squealing. We squealed all the way to the cottage. Of course it ended for us back at the university after the bombing when I went underground. But Daniel claimed the change happened before that, when we both volunteered as research subjects at the Psych Center. For me it was a mission. I was gathering intel behind enemy lines.

Daniel had been coming from a different place. There were flyers for the Psych Center research study around campus that said. Do you have the courage to face the real you? He had been struggling with that question his whole life, and was desperate to finally deal with it in a safe situation, which this wasn't. It was about mind control. For the smart, brave, vulnerable, young African American woman Daniel had been back then, the relentless psychic assault resulted in what the Flyer promised.

Facing the real you who was now sitting across from me in the hotel bar, drinking beer. Ruth was flirting with Angelica, while Terence and Nandita were all over each other, and Ella and Perry were laughing at a private joke, and Kate and Neil and David and Sophie were engaged in a riotous philosophical conversation, and Pam Rainer was circulating in her gracious way. There was no time to let things take their natural course.

If we wanted something, anything, we had to make it happen now. Smalltalk was one more endangered species, and I was rooting for total extinction. Later, Ruth apologized for lavishing so much attention on Angelica, and I said, there isn't enough happiness in the world, so she should grab it wherever she finds it. And she said, that's very noble, Paul, but could you be just a little bit jealous? I said I'd work on it.

Back at the university, I'd been involved in nonviolent protests through We the People. But after that weekend at the Psych Center, I got swept up in a subterranean radical cell and what felt like an inevitable march toward the bombing. Just as the psychological assault in the research study ultimately served to reveal Daniel's true nature, maybe the violence I embraced was also triggered by what happened that weekend.

The only other person I knew who'd volunteered for the study was Kate's old boyfriend Glenn. After that weekend, he abandoned progressive politics and went back home to run his family's furniture business. I was kissing Angelica and then kissing Paul and then Paul was kissing Angelica and I said. Even if Mickey never comes back, look what he's created. This room was crackling with life and love and laughter and sex, and what else do we need?

Paul said, I think we need more wine. The hotel bar was buzzing with the nighttime hookup crowd, and I was debating yet another round when Daniel said, let's go to my room. The moment had arrived. This is where I'd tell him that while I'd always love him, I could go no further. I'd bumped up against the edge of my comfort zone. Same-sex dream. The tragedy was that we couldn't change who we were.

From a passionate young couple in those heady revolutionary days at the university, we'd morphed into a pair of random dudes slamming down pints in a hotel bar in Ottawa, and that was the end of our story. Except we'd been talking for hours. And it was like when he was D and we'd talk all night.

I didn't want it to end. It was her mind and her heart and her spirit I'd fallen in love with, and here it all was again, except deeper and freer and funnier and tougher. I was terrified of losing it, and even more terrified of pursuing it. It was an impossible situation, and I needed more beer, but my glass was empty and my mouth was dry, and there was something I wanted to say, but I couldn't find the words, so I heard myself say, this is a huge adjustment for me.

Daniel stared soulfully into my eyes and said, For both of us, you think I like that beard?

I got back from a food run and looked out on the porch of Howell House. and slumped together on this ancient sofa were Mickey and Daniel, What was weird was how unweird it was. Like they'd always been together, which I guess they kind of had. Daniel gave me a hug, and I said, Now I know why you wanted me to write about my family. He laughed, and Mickey said, Hey Terrence. But it sounded friendlier than anything he'd ever said to me. Our community was never the same after that.

Next time on It Happened Here twenty twenty. family stays on in Canada after Kate's wedding and finds a way forward. Changes everything. They kept coming. Survivors who'd managed to crawl out of the quicksand of America 2039 parched for what they couldn't find in the United States. Tapes to be used against them at a later date. I'd love to take credit for saving Kate, but it wasn't me.

It was a greater force in the universe, the one people worship in all kinds of ways, and I never have, but I know it's there. There were our children, laughing about something, and Kate stuck out her tongue to catch the snowflakes. I turned to Paul and he answered the question I didn't ask. We did okay. Truth is, everybody always loved Paul. He was the life of the party. I was the one outside, standing guard, trying to keep everyone safe. And let's face it, nobody gives a damn about that guy.

Dresser and directed by Joe Kakacci. The cast includes Molly Babos, Molly Cardin, Edie Falco, Santino Fontana, Luke Kurt. Marianne Rendone, Tony Shaloub, and John Torturo. Our senior producer is Jess Hackle. Our composer produced produced product. Engineering and Mixing by Justin Calvin. Town. Our script supervisor is Producers Elliot Forest. This episode was