The Boiling Season by Christopher Hebert Page A

study, and I had brought him his coffee. His first reaction was to set down the papers he had been examining.
    He removed his reading glasses and squinted at me with a pained expression. “What will you do?”
    â€œThere’s an estate.” Until now I had not realized how nervous I was. “A forest preserve. It needs to be protected.”
    He leaned back with a sigh. “It sounds wonderful.”
    â€œIt is.” And I almost told him then of my mother’s stories about the way the island once had been, before the endless turmoil. But how could I, given what had happened, given the trouble we once again found ourselves in, with Senator Marcus caught in the middle of it?
    He was silent, and I felt him regarding me with a detached kind of scrutiny, as if he were looking not at but through me. “I envy you.”
    â€œNot at all, sir,” I said, fearing I had gone too far.
    â€œThere are times I wish I had a place like that I could disappear to.” I watched his eyes flutter closed. “I don’t know what happens to us. We want to make things better, but we always make them worse.”
    â€œNo one has done as much as you,” I said, striking a more defensive tone than I had intended.
    He opened his eyes at the sound of my voice, as if he were surprised to find me still there.
    â€œBut we can’t all just escape.”
    â€œNo, sir.”
    â€œSomeone has to stay and see things through.”
    â€œOf course,” I said.
    He looked at me strangely, and I worried again that I had said the wrong thing.
    â€œI hope you don’t expect me to let you go without a fight,” he offered, not unkindly.
    â€œI’m sorry for any inconvenience this might cause you.”
    He folded shut the earpieces to his glasses and then sprang them open again. “Of course it’s a terrible time for this to happen,” he said, and in truth I found myself hoping he might try to talk me out of it. But rather than finish his thought, he propped the glasses back upon his nose and resumed reading the papers.
    By the next morning, he had forgotten all about the promised fight. He spent the next few days locked in his study with his most trusted advisers.
    I had been looking forward to telling my father. On the Sunday following my meeting with Mme Freeman, I hurried home hours before the start of mass, not wanting to wait until after church. It being Sunday, the shop was closed, but when I got there my father was dusting his shelves, already dressed in his starched shirt and pants. He looked me over cautiously as I came in, alarmed to be seeing me so early.
    â€œI brought you something,” I said, handing him a small box.
    He opened the lid and tilted the box slightly to look inside. Nestled within a paper wrapping was a pineapple cake—his favorite. I had gotten it the day before at the Marcuses’ bakery.
    â€œYou shouldn’t be wasting your money on luxuries,” he said, setting the box aside without closing the lid.
    â€œIt’s a treat,” I said. “For a special occasion.” My saying this seemed to confirm his worst suspicions.
    â€œWhat occasion?”
    His dread was so palpable I nearly changed my mind. I contemplated lying, fabricating an occasion. Where did this come from, I wondered, this need of his always to expect the worst?
    â€œI got a new job,” I said, and my father instantly lowered himself onto his stool, clutching the dust rag in his hand.
    â€œWhat new job?”
    â€œI’m not going to be working for hill people anymore. Isn’t that great news?” I said, and his demeanor was such that I honestly no longer knew if this news was good or bad or something else altogether. What would constitute great news for my father? What calamity would need to befall the National Palace for him to so much as smile? I realized as I stood there in his shop, my own excitement rapidly dissipating, that my father had