Friends and Strangers - J. Courtney Sullivan Page 0,10

a stutter or a twitch. Someone had posted the saddest story, about a child abused in foster care. There was a related online petition. She signed without reading the particulars. Her eyes filled with tears. Why had she logged on to this page? Elisabeth was certain she had come looking for something, but she couldn’t remember what.

She sensed Andrew’s presence outside the door.

“Hon. You okay in there?”

His polite yet passive-aggressive way of asking why the hell she had been in the bathroom so long.

She stood and flushed the toilet.

“People are monsters,” she said when she emerged.

“Hmm?”

“Something I read online. You don’t want to know.”

“Okay. We should get going, huh?”

“One time years ago, your belt was on the bed, so I hit myself with it to see how it felt, and Jesus Christ, it’s barbaric. How could anyone do that to a child? I didn’t even hit myself very hard and it hurt so much.”

“Well, you have a low pain threshold,” he said.

“I do? How do you know?”

“You think a cricket landing on you feels like getting punched in the arm.”

* * *

—

On the way to his parents’ house, he told her they didn’t have to stay for long. His mother had said it would do his father good to see the baby. She was worried about him again.

“He’s been holed up with those files for the past three nights,” Andrew said. “She says he needs a distraction.”

“Or she does,” Elisabeth said.

For some time now, her father-in-law, George, had been consumed by an idea. Months ago, he told Elisabeth how it came to him when he overheard a stranger yelling into a cell phone about how America was no longer a global superpower.

“He said, ‘This hasn’t been the greatest nation in the world for sixty years. That’s just something we tell ourselves,’ ” George recalled. “It pissed me off. For the rest of the day, I wondered why. Was it a feeling left over from grammar school, where each morning we pledged allegiance to the flag and meant it?”

After that, George started to notice a pattern. More and more, the conversations he had came back around to the sorry state of things, how life was getting worse instead of better.

“There’s no protection for the little guy anymore. No accountability from higher up,” he explained to Elisabeth. “We’re on our own. It’s like a hollow tree. That’s how I think of it. On the surface, this country looks more or less like it always did. But there’s nothing inside holding it up. No integrity, no support. Doesn’t matter if the leaves are green and the trunk is tall. A hollow tree can’t stand for long.”

In the downstairs guest room that also served as George’s home office were toppling stacks of newspaper clippings and printouts meant to back up his theory, as if someone might arrive at any moment and ask him to prove it. Dozens of handwritten notes, scrawled on Post-its, were stuck to the wall.

Her mother-in-law grimaced whenever she walked in there, like she had stumbled upon a serial killer’s lair.

“What is the point of this, George?” Elisabeth heard her say once.

“The point is people blame themselves when it’s systemic. The citizens of this country should be taking to the streets, not popping antidepressants.”

“And what exactly are you going to do about it?” Faye said.

Since Andrew was in kindergarten, George had made a good living with a small fleet of Town Cars he owned. He and a handful of employees shuttled people to and from the airport and around the valley. Three years ago, George decided to reinvest in the business. He used some of his and Faye’s retirement savings to buy three brand-new Lincolns. The timing could not have been worse. Six months later, Uber came to the area, offering cheaper fares and immediate bookings, and wiped out his company.

Eventually, George started driving for Uber himself. Faye told Elisabeth it was awful, diminishing. The pay was an insult. Half the passengers were drunk college kids. George could lug three heavy suitcases through the airport and up someone’s front stairs, and still get just a thank-you in return, if he was lucky.

“The app says customers don’t have to tip,” Faye said, disgusted. Elisabeth was astonished to hear her say the word app.

For a while, Faye reported that George was in bed by seven most nights, that he had no appetite, that he wouldn’t talk much, which wasn’t like him.

Then, instead of being depressed, George became obsessed—with the Hollow Tree, with