For the second summer in a row, Joey was working in Washington without living at home. His spurning of their help and hospitality was irritating enough to Walter, but even worse was the identity of his summer employer: a corrupt little start-up—backed financially (though this didn’t mean much to Walter at the time) by Vin Haven’s friends at LBI—that had won the no-bid contract to privatize the bread-baking industry in newly liberated Iraq. Walter and Joey had already had their big fight about it some weeks earlier, on the Fourth of July, when Joey had come over for a picnic and very belatedly divulged his summer plans. Walter had lost his temper, Patty had run and hidden in her room, and Joey had sat smirking his Republican smirk. His Wall Street smirk. As if indulging his stupid rube father, with his old-fashioned principles; as if he himself knew better.
“So there’s a perfectly good bedroom here,” Walter said to Patty, “but that’s not good enough for him. That wouldn’t be grownup enough. That wouldn’t be cool enough. He might even have to ride a bus to work! With the little people!”
“He has to maintain his Virginia residency, Walter. And he’s going to pay it back, OK? I knew what you’d say if I asked you, so I went ahead and did it without telling you. If you don’t want me making my own decisions, you should confiscate the checkbook. Take away my bank card. I’ll come to you and beg for money every time I need it.”
“Every month! You’ve been sending money every month! To Mr. Independent!”
“I’m lending him some money. OK? His friends basically all have limitless funds. He’s very frugal, but if he’s going to make those connections, and be in that world—”
“That great frat-house world, full of the best sort of people—”
“He has a plan. He has a plan and he wants you to be impressed with him—”
“News to me!”
“It’s just for clothes and socializing,” Patty said. “He pays his own tuition, he pays his own room and board, and maybe, if you could ever forgive him for not being an identical copy of you in every way, you might see how similar you two are. You were supporting yourself the exact same way when you were his age.”
“Right, except I wore the same three pairs of corduroys for four years of college, and I wasn’t out drinking five nights a week, and I sure as hell wasn’t getting any money from my mother.”
“Well, it’s a different world now, Walter. And maybe, just maybe, he understands better than you do what a person has to do to get ahead in it.”
“Work for a defense contractor, get shitfaced every night with fratboy Republicans. That’s really the only way to get ahead? That’s the only option available?”
“You don’t understand how scared these kids are now. They’re under so much pressure. So they like to party hard—so what?”
The old mansion’s air-conditioning was no match for the humidity pressing on it from outside. The thunder was becoming continuous and omnidirectional; the ornamental pear tree outside the window heaved its branches as if somebody were climbing in it. Sweat was running on every part of Walter’s body not directly in contact with his clothes.
“It’s interesting to hear you suddenly defending young people,” he said, “since you’re normally so—”
“I’m defending your son,” she said. “Who, in case you haven’t noticed, is not one of the brainless flipflop wearers. He’s considerably more interesting than—”
“I cannot believe you’ve been sending him drinking money! You know what it’s exactly like? It’s exactly like corporate welfare. All these supposedly free-market companies sucking on the tit of the federal government. ‘We need to shrink the government, we don’t want any regulations, we don’t want any taxes, but, oh, by the way—’ ”
“This isn’t sucking on tits, Walter,” Patty said with hatred.
“I was speaking metaphorically.”
“Well, I’m saying you picked an interesting metaphor.”
“Well, and I picked it carefully. All these companies pretending to be so grownup and free-market when they’re actually just big babies devouring the federal budget while everybody else starves. Fish and Wildlife has its budget cut year after year, another five percent every year. You go to their field offices, they’re ghost offices now. There’s no staff, there’s no money for land acquisition, no—”
“Oh the precious fish. The precious wildlife.”
“I CARE ABOUT THEM. Can you not understand that? Can you not respect that? If you can’t respect that, what are you even living with me for? Why don’t