The Cave Dwellers by Christina McDowell (readict books TXT) 📕

sip of his scotch, squinting at the encyclopedia collection on the shelves in front of him.

Billy pulls his chin up. “I’ve always looked up to—”

“I want you to watch something.” The general pulls a burner phone out of his pocket and presses play on a video as he places the phone on the coffee table between himself and Billy.

The sound of muffling and then a shaky camera, ethnic slurs against Middle Eastern culture being shouted into the frame. It’s Billy at Stan’s party in the Russian ambassador’s house, getting ready to be waterboarded. He snorts a line of coke, wipes his nose. Stan strapping him down—it’s the video Bunny shot of them that night to see if he could beat the record without dying. His father puts his head down as Billy is forced to watch it, Chase laughing, champagne being dumped on his head and spilling over the handkerchief, himself convulsing on-camera—privilege exploding like balloons hot with confetti. The video ends. Silence. The general cannot bring himself to look Billy in the eye. He gets up and walks over to his bookshelf, stands looking at his framed medals.

“Sir… I’m sorr—”

“I built this life for us from the ground up, oh hell, from under the ground up, and this is how you want to treat our name?” He turns around, rage brewing in his tone, points his finger at Billy. “Let me tell you something. This family might be a lot of things, but we are not entitled to behave any way we like. God did not put us on this earth for the limited amount of time we do have to be a foil, but to be a leader. You have EMBARRASSED THIS FAMILY—”

Billy retreats, feeling his father’s rage escalating with each sip of alcohol he takes. “I know, it will never hap—”

“DO NOT INTERRUPT ME WHEN I AM SPEAKING TO YOU. You have embarrassed this family. There are accusations that will be released by the press tomorrow.”

Billy runs his hand through his hair, heart pounding, mouth dry.

“Accusations about not only your entitled and disgusting behavior… but an investigation has started about my role in the military, and your acting out only compounds this very serious situation. It’s goddamn Christmas morning for the press, William.” He stares him down. “ARE YOU LISTENING TO ME?”

“Yes, sir,” Billy says, nodding, a fragile child.

“An antiwar journalist trapped in his ivory tower who can’t accept a baby’s arm getting blown off in the name of democracy is accusing our military of war crimes, and I just can’t tell you the scope of what the media might do to blow this out of proportion. But goddamn it, William, do you understand how you have compromised us? How you have embarrassed ME?”

Billy stands, shocked and confused, assuming it is a rhetorical question, but trying to calm his father.

“SIT DOWN.” The general slams his fist on the coffee table, forcing Billy’s body back into the chair. “ANSWER ME WHEN I’M SPEAKING TO YOU.”

Billy can’t help but stutter in fear: “Yes—yes, sir, I understand how it makes us look.”

“We will have a family meeting at the farm in Virginia, where we can have some privacy during this time. Security will take you to meet your mother next week. Until then you are forbidden from speaking about this with anyone—the Bartholomews, Stanley, no one. Do you understand?” The general points his finger at Billy.

“Yes, Father.”

“YES, WHO?”

“Yes, sir. Yes, sir, I understand, sir.”

The general takes one last gulp of his scotch and goes to his desk, quiet anger seething. Billy waits for some kind of closure to the conversation as his father fumbles with his papers. “Stand up,” the general says.

Billy stands, slowly. The general walks over to Billy, facing him like a drill sergeant.

Billy’s nostrils flare, his chin high, his eyes dilating from the Adderall, ready for a blow. Ready to take it like a real man. He winces.

“You are not my son. Close the door on your way out.”

The general walks casually back to his desk. Billy opens his eyes, trembling as he exits his father’s office, gently closing the door behind him.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

Betsy power-walks through the entrance of the Washington Club wrapped in a camel-colored winter coat, swinging her brown Birkin bag. This is her version of dowdy. Her new Ann Hand pin is stabbed above her heart as she makes her way across the musty carpet.

“May I help you?” asks a clean-shaven man in a dreadful suit.

“Yes, I’m meeting Mr. Theodore Yoder for tea.”

“Right this way, to the Book Room. As Thomas Jefferson once said, ‘I cannot live without books.’ And we agree!”

Betsy smiles, hiding the fact she’s never once read a book about Thomas Jefferson.

Her guide leads her into a mahogany-lined library with green velvet chairs, gold satin pillows, a roaring fire in the fireplace, and a portrait of the founding president of the “club of clubs” clad in a red-checked bow tie and standing beside a white horse, staring quizzically at his audience. “Mr. Yoder, I have—oh, pardon me, I did not catch your name. My deepest apologies.”

“Betsy Wallace,” she says, her eyes frozen from recent Botox injections.

“Mrs. Wallace is here to see you.”

Mr. Yoder stands and extends his hand. “Nice to meet you.”

Betsy is unimpressed. Theodore Yoder looks as though he has risen from the dead, a long-lost descendant of the Mayflower buried deep in the archives of the National Portrait Gallery, this upper-crust white man with his white mustache curtaining his upper lip, raw-silk bow tie, and round tortoiseshell glasses, as if Theodore Yoder has hobbled all the way from Constitution Avenue to get here. He certainly did not take an Uber.

“Please, please have a seat,” he says. There is a tower of cucumber and egg finger sandwiches before them, pink and purple macaroons for dessert at its base. A private butler scurries around with an enormous tea box. Betsy selects Earl Grey, because that is what she notices