My mother was the caretaker of the Moybridge family’s idiot son, George, for most of my life. I believe she would have gladly died in service to this cause—the constant looking after, the chauffeuring of his bent body around town, the perpetual soothing of him—if she hadn’t shattered her pelvis tumbling down the front steps of her own home one sunny afternoon.
I’m aware, of course, that using the word idiot to describe someone with a neurological condition comes across as mean-spirited. His exact issue was kept a secret from the public by his family and my mother. To her, it was a mystery she lorded over, this denial of information giving her role a certain added weight in the eyes of the people who might otherwise, she feared, see her as nothing more than a “babysitter.”
There were many theories about what had gone wrong within the oddly shaped confines of George’s skull. Some were sophisticated, some were juvenile. The perpetual joke, anyway, was that George suffered from “affluenza.” It was reasoned that because he grew up surrounded by such immense wealth, he simply couldn’t understand reality in the way others did. Of course, his little sister, Clara, grew up in the same environment, and she, as anyone could tell, was perfectly normal.
Aging has made me more aware of what my mother went through in her job, but it’s still hard to imagine the exhaustion she faced—as a widow who had to look after two of us boys. There were a handful of other clients before George came along, but once the Moybridges recognized that their troubled son was magically subdued by my mother’s presence, her services were retained indefinitely by a salary well beyond what anyone else could hope to pay. The tacit understanding of this arrangement meant that George was to be her sole obsession. I grew up coming home to an empty house, dawning quickly to the realization that my mother was now raising someone else’s child.
I wasn’t completely separate from this arrangement either.
My own interactions with George were limited, but each possessed an intense air of yearning. The Moybridge family held out hope that we might become friends, perhaps secretly viewing me like George’s half-brother, since we both depended on the same overworked and overwhelmed woman. There were several attempts during my adolescence to kick-start this relationship: poorly attended birthday parties at their sprawling home, a ski trip to Colorado via their private jet, and, perhaps the most vivid of my childhood memories, an emotionally devastating afternoon at the Barnum & Bailey circus when the star tiger (a much-publicized white Siberian snowcat) failed to appear before the coliseum crowd. On the ride home, George sat between Clara and me, wailing inconsolably. On impulse, I handed him the stuffed animal replica of the Siberian tiger that I had purchased during intermission, and his hysterics eased as he ran his fingers across the faux fur. “What do we say, George? Isn’t that kind of him to share?” Mr. Moybridge said from the driver’s seat. His eyes quivered in the rearview mirror like two gelatinous things cut out and set down on a silver platter. “Can you say, ‘Thank you?’ ” he asked, before giving me a wink.
Watching George up close through the years made me realize that despite the Moybridge family’s best efforts, he would never be able to make a friend in the true sense of the word. The main problem was that if you showed him any kindness at all, he would latch onto you like a tick. You’d be stuck with him for hours if you simply said, “Hi, George. How are you?” Immediately, you grew to resent him for the feelings of guilt he inspired coupled with the twisting sense of unease he sent creeping up your back—the deeply rooted evolutionary knowledge that something about him was “off.” His curdled posture and limp arms spoke to something fundamentally wrong within his body and blood. Most noticeably, though, the muscles in George’s face only seemed strong enough to emote a singular expression of imbecilic befuddlement. Whenever he was about to lock you into a conversation about his few odd interests, his expression was like a wax mask in the process of melting. On some level, George must have understood the reaction he induced in others, because every day he made my mother take him to places across the city where the employees couldn’t otherwise flee from him: the diner, the public library, even the local YMCA, where the Moybridges had funneled millions of dollars into various construction projects.
Despite his many needs, George was mostly benign. It was only some time following my mother’s accident, in the early days of her physical therapy process when she couldn’t do a thing for herself and I temporarily moved back into the single-story home I thought I’d escaped, that I was given a glimpse of what she had dealt with all those years. This happened after the Moybridges invited us over for dinner.
Our invitation came in the mail with the details neatly and compactly written. The evening was to be a kind of retirement party for my mother—it was understood that with the long recovery ahead of her, my mother wouldn’t be able to continue in her role. The Moybridges no doubt wanted to express their gratitude for her decades of service. But I think the family also wanted to issue a soft declaration of sorts, a capstone to help ease George’s transition into a new era while they searched for my mother’s replacement. The word change was poisonous to him and was avoided at all costs.
When we arrived that Friday evening, Mrs. Moybridge, thin and as tightly drawn as I had ever seen, told us that George was “in a mood” as I pushed my mother’s new wheelchair haltingly across the fine gravel drive and up the makeshift ramp that had been set out in anticipation. Mrs. Moybridge watched sorrowfully while clenching her hands against the front door’s frame as if a gale-force wind was imminent. “He’s in the house somewhere,” she sighed, “but he doesn’t really feel like showing himself right now.”
“Well, I just know he’ll pop out when he hears how much fun we’re having,” my mother purred, rubbing Mrs. Moybridge’s back as she leaned down for a hug. “You know how he is.”
Forty minutes were spent making small talk that revolved around the proposed infrastructural needs of their niece’s upcoming debutante party, the varicose veins expert that Mrs. Moybridge was seeing to eradicate the bluish tendrils spreading like ivy across the back of her legs, and finally the ups and downs of my mother’s physical therapy sessions. A flushed Mr. Moybridge peeled me away from the women and eagerly plied me with samples of the bourbon he had acquired in various distilleries in Kentucky, where he went annually to view the Keeneland yearlings with a group of old friends and their bloodstock agent.
“We passed on the first three they brought out,” he told me. “That’s not to say they weren’t impressive, but if you’ve got the eye for it like Terrence does, you can spot the little things that absolutely muck it up.”
“Muck it up?” I took a small sip of my drink. “How so?”
“Oh, you name it,” he said. “The lifespan of their sires, issues they had. Terrence says it’s like dropping a marble into the engine of an Aston Martin. It might not be a problem now, but someday it’ll break down, and I certainly don’t go to Kentucky just to invest in vet bills.”
Mr. Moybridge laughed at his own little joke, and the conversation shifted to dinner. He began to go into detail about the evening’s menu, being prepared by an unseen chef and staff. I excused myself, however, before he could pour me another tumbler.
As I wandered the hallways trying to remember where the bathrooms were on the first floor, I passed by an amber-hued study and was startled to see George standing near an unlit fireplace. He was running one hand with tactile pleasure across a globe while he whispered to himself. When I tentatively called his name, George turned his head and stared at me, blinking like an owl. He looked sunburned and dirty, and I remembered the horrific little “therapy garden,” tucked far away on the estate, where he was sometimes sent to spend afternoons piddling around in the flowers and among the spindly plants—a subtle means of tiring him out when he became agitated by life.
Later, after he made the effort to come and sit with us at the dining table, George got into an argument with his mother during the soup course. “Not so loud, please,” she begged as George slurped, while Mr. Moybridge and my mother smiled weakly in support. George stopped, glaring icily at us in betrayal, and then abruptly smashed his fist through a salad plate. Mrs. Moybridge screamed in horror from the table’s head while fragments of heirloom china rattled across the floor.
George only sobbed and cradled his bleeding hand against his chest as if he were holding a wounded dove.
One night, not long after this disastrous dinner, my mother’s muffled voice called to me through the bathroom door. It was a shrill, startling sound and one that deeply concerned me because it meant she had somehow willed herself from bed, the very bed that took me so long to help ease her down into as the fog of prescribed painkillers overtook her body. “Hello? Can’t you hear me?” she asked cuttingly and then cleared some pollen from her throat.
I was smoking a cigarette in the tub with a window open, watching as ash fell from the tip and collected in the water above my wavering genitals. I didn’t have a tub at the rental house where I usually lived, so I found this old basin to be something of a luxury. It was the only good thing about temporarily being back home. I sat up, sloshing a wave over the tub’s edge. “You’re supposed to be in bed. Tell me you’re not using the walker?”
“I’m in the chair.”
I let the cigarette drop into the water and die. I collected myself and asked, “What’s the matter?”
“I’ve been yelling. Mr. Moybridge called.”
I relaxed. “About?”
“He needs your help. At the house.”
“My help? They employ a tiny army.”
“Yes, he needs your help, and I told him you’d be coming.”
“It’s late.”
“It’s something to do with George. It’s important. He said he needs someone he can trust.” There was a still moment, and then she added, “If you’re not going to go, can you call him back at least and tell him yourself?”
Since she had resigned from her position, my mother’s mood shifted constantly between relief at her newfound freedom and an intense guilt about her lack of relevance in the daily events of the Moybridge family’s life. In my eyes, it was a kind of Stockholm syndrome, one that showed no sign of abating anytime soon. I knew arguing was pointless, so I toweled off, dressed, and began the drive.
The journey was something of an ordeal despite the shortcut through downtown. As I passed the old industrial buildings where tobacco was once cured, buildings that had now been converted to retail and housing, I couldn’t help but look on with jealousy at the silhouettes of people dining late inside the ground-floor restaurants and those of the young professionals moving about in the apartments above. Soon enough, though, this all fell away behind me like a dream as I wound the car clockwise at the roundabout’s fountain, and broke off toward the East Wold neighborhood.
As I drew closer to my destination, the distance between properties grew and the lawns became increasingly lush. Families that lived along these spacious tracts of land typically held some connection to those industries that had brought the region wealth: cotton and cigarettes, banking and furniture. Across the span of several generations, the Moybridges had their hands in all of it. The true genesis of their fortune, however, derived from a conglomerate of textile factories bearing their name. These had dotted nearly every state of the Southeast for decades before the various divisions had been acquired by competitors who, intending to move things overseas, had stripped the local plants of equipment and let the workers go.
The great estate the family currently occupied and the vast acreage it sat on—formerly farmland and orchards—had been a part of Mr. Moybridge’s inheritance. When I arrived, the gate was wide open in welcome, and I drove slowly toward the imposing stone structure in apprehension. I parked beside one of the Bentleys, and let myself in through a side door that connected the expansive garage to a mudroom, which in turn led to a scullery. Inside, I found Mrs. Moybridge standing with her hands pressed down on the countertop, staring venomously into a martini glass. She clicked her fingernails against the surface, only stopping when she realized I was in the tiny room. “I suppose you heard what he did?”
“Is he here?” a voice called.
The rubbery squeak of duck boots announced Mr. Moybridge’s entrance. His deathly pallor contrasted with his khaki hunting vest, its front pockets sagging with the weight of two flashlights. In his right hand was a souvenir cup taken from a college football game. “Hello,” he said grimly. “I’m glad you could make it.”
“We should just tell the police,” Mrs. Moybridge lamented. “Let them look.”
He staunchly shook his head. “He’s already agitated enough as it is. They won’t know how to deal with him. I don’t want George getting tased or something like that.”
Mrs. Moybridge threw her hands up in the air in exasperation.
“Just keep your phone on!” he barked.
She left the room, and I kept quiet as the man huffed and went about the business of making another drink. He sniffed contemptuously as he emptied a bottle, proceeded to pour a cheap soda on top of it, and then spat phlegm into the metal sink. “I’m in no state,” he said, walking toward me. “You’ll have to drive. We’re going back the way you came.”
We headed out into the humid night air and got into my car. The taste of an impending storm settled in my mouth. After a pause, I asked, “What’s wrong?”
“What isn’t?” he asked sarcastically to his reflection in the passenger mirror and then softened as I turned the car on and navigated the car down the driveway, pausing only to let some swans cross. “Sorry,” he murmured, as he watched the creatures. “George was attacked.”
“Attacked? By who?”
“Your mother”—he shook his head with dim fondness as if he hadn’t heard me—“I’m just thinking how different tonight would be if she was still around.” He raked a hand across his face before continuing. “You know, we haven’t been able to find any help that George can stomach since your mother’s accident. It’s ping-ponged between us at the house and whoever the staffing company’s been able to send. He started wanting to spend more time swimming at the YMCA, and we said, ‘Fine.’ Never mind that we have our own pool here. Getting out and about seemed to help his mood.”
“That’s positive,” I said.
There was a snort. “A few days ago, we got a call from Jim Thorton, the man who runs the place, do you know him?”
“I don’t,” I said.
“Doesn’t matter. All he called to say was that George was bothering the staff and that we should have a talk with him. I said, ‘Bothering? What’s he been doing?’ This jackass tells me the lifeguards in the afternoons are all girls, college-age types. George … he … he must have learned their schedules because that’s when he wanted to go. We didn’t have a clue.” Mr. Moybridge’s spine seemed to give out as he sank low in his seat. “I mean, hell, part of me is glad his brain can at least function like that, that he likes women … I mean, I know he likes women, but I’m talking about real women. Sorry, I’m digressing. He wasn’t really swimming. I mean, maybe he was, but it’s just hard to say. Thorton said that George was spending hours just standing in the shallow end and talking to the lifeguards.” Mr. Moybridge waved his hand to the left, indicating I should turn at the next stop. “So I think George developed some feelings for this one girl in particular. Amanda something. She doesn’t matter either. It could have been anyone. Wait, sorry, turn to the right here. It’s quicker.” He pointed a finger toward a dark street. I turned the car and hit a pothole almost immediately. Some of Mr. Moybridge’s drink spilled out onto the crotch of his pants. “God bless it,” he hissed and patted at his groin.
“So George was …” I tried to connect the dots delicately. “He’s been flirting with her?”
“He exposed himself,” Mr. Moybridge said with mock regality. “That’s what she’s alleging anyway. Right there in the pool. Just pulled it out and shook it at her. But instead of telling her boss first—like she should have done—she called her boyfriend. Naturally, he and some of his meathead friends come running over to beat George up. They cornered him in the men’s room.”
“Jesus, didn’t anyone see what was happening?”
“I’m not sure,” Mr. Moybridge said. “We always thought he was safe there. Everyone knows him. But … but when they surrounded George, he lost it. He slammed the boyfriend’s face into a hand dryer. Gave him a concussion and a broken nose. My lawyer is going to put his kids through college off of this one. They’re even going to drain the pool.”
“Are the police—”
“Yes,” Mr. Moybridge said with a dismissive wave of his hand. “He ran off before they got there. He’s got nothing on but some swim trunks and a towel and his flip-flops.”
“So where do you think he went?” I asked cautiously.
“The only place he might know to go is one of our old plants on Culver Street. You can see our name on the smokestacks from the YMCA parking lot. It’s like a beacon.” Mr. Moybridge let out a sigh. “I’m being nostalgic, but maybe it’s a lead. Sometimes when he was a kid, we’d go there to see his grandfather in his office. It’s worth a look.”
The parking lot of the once mighty Moybridge Dye and Finishing plant had become fuzzy with weeds since its closure. The primary building was shaped like a squat “T” with the cross running alongside the street. The ancillary structures that connected to its body or surrounded it all sat empty and disused, marked by occasional crude bursts of graffiti. I craned my head back to gaze at the darkened smokestack as we made our way to the entrance, thinking it looked very much like a lighthouse. The family’s name, as Mr. Moybridge had said, was written in descending fashion down its length, barely visible.
“Once we get inside, we’ll split up. I don’t want to be in here longer than I have to,” Mr. Moybridge said, fiddling with the keys to the back entrance. The moon’s glow made his face look sunken and grave. “I’ll go to the right, and you go to the left. You don’t find anything? Well, just turn around and meet me in the middle.”
“Okay,” I nodded.
“And if you see him,” he cautioned, “don’t overreact or make a fuss. Try to talk with him. He knows you. You’re practically family. Let’s see if we can get him to come with us without making it seem like a big deal. That’d be best.”
The door groaned open.
We entered what used to be a front office. There were remnants of several secretary desks and a small hallway of empty rooms that once housed rows of executives who oversaw the creation of threads and fabrics and types of denim. The hall carpet was old and dotted with the dry husks of expired cockroaches, and the walls were scarred by black scrapes left behind by careless movers. At the end of the threadbare passage, Mr. Moybridge unlocked another door, nudging it open with his shoulder to reveal the factory floor. I heard the sound of birds fluttering from somewhere inside. He took a breath of the musty air and said softly, “I haven’t been in here for at least a decade.”
We descended the stairs past moldy walls, our flashlights revealing silvery flashes on the floor: stagnant puddles of rainwater that we stepped around. We walked slowly, and when we arrived at the split, we exchanged a look of resolve before heading our separate ways.
I went down the center of the manufacturing wing, looking over and under sagging conveyor belt–like machines that had been left behind during the factory’s great plunder, twisting around stacks of junk and sucking my stomach in as I sidestepped between a few dusty crates. “Hey, George?” I called softly every so often as I moved along. “George?”
It was hard to tell how much time passed in the darkness. The detritus of a campfire near the base of an interior support column was the only sign of life my flashlight found. It was a charred circle, like a cartoon explosion, ringed by neat piles of flattened cardboard boxes along with some fast-food bags and several broken needles.
Bedding, I thought, and my heart thudded with anxiety at the thought of who else might be inside. With every pulsing beat, I thought of my father: It had been his heart that failed him so early, and I often wondered if mine was destined to do the same.
I waited for this disquieting sensation to settle before continuing forward, keeping the flashlight’s beam pointed stiffly ahead. Thick curtains of blackness fell down on either side of my path. I said George’s name more loudly, giving the word an aggressive edge. I wanted anyone else who might be in the factory to hear me. I wanted my presence to be known and fled from. From far away, like a lost echo, I heard Mr. Moybridge’s voice calling, too. It was swallowed up easily by the enormity of the space, muffled and absorbed into the very walls his family had built and abandoned.
We made it back to the Moybridge home just before the real heavy rain fell. He made another drink on his return, and while he was doing so, I heard him engage in a low rumbling argument with his wife. She went up the servants’ stairs to somewhere on the third floor, and that left just the two of us in the study.
“So they don’t need you back in … where was it … Norfolk? You being here this long isn’t a problem?” Mr. Moybridge asked searchingly.
“I have a computer and a phone,” I said. “I check in every morning.”
“Ever thought about doing what your mother does?”
“What do you mean?” The notion was absolutely alien to me.
“Oh, I don’t know,” Mr. Moybridge pondered to himself. “You’ve been around this sort of thing as long as she has. I’m sure it’s rubbed off on you. You can’t teach that.”
I could tell he was trying to make his thoughts seem as if they were organic, but there was a staleness to his delivery, a framework of rehearsal. My whole body itched to get away. I hadn’t returned home to stay. “I like what I do,” I said after a moment. “I like it up there.”
“Of course. I didn’t mean any offense. I admire that. Making your own way in the world.” He repositioned himself in his chair, getting comfortable. “I only meant … I guess I only meant you seem like a natural. She’s lucky to have you helping out. Not everyone can do it. Not everyone has that level of patience to be a caretaker. Believe me, I know.” He gulped down the last of his drink. “But we can talk about this later,” he decided for us.
He asked me to stay while he sloppily fixed a ham sandwich, which he ate in that high-backed chair. When he finished, he blew a great gust of air from between his lips. He deflated like a balloon, the empty plate sinking low on his lap. “I don’t know why I thought he’d be there. I could have sworn we’d find him behind some of those boxes, like when he was a kid. He used to play hide-and-seek like that.”
“I’m sure we’ll find him tomorrow,” I said, without thinking.
A moment passed and then he asked, “Do you remember our old beach house in Kiawah? I know we took you and your mother with us once or twice.”
“A little bit.”
Mr. Moybridge clinked his finger against the rim of his glass. “I took George down there once in February because someone from his grade school was having a birthday party and we found out that he hadn’t been invited. We were terrified of how he’d react if he knew, so I lied and told him that there was a hurricane coming and we had to immediately stormproof the house or else the whole place would be ruined. I thought if I could make him feel like he was essential, like he was needed …” He grinned. “Can you imagine that? Thinking that there was a hurricane coming in February or that I would stormproof a house? God, I really did it up, too. For two whole days, I was putting up outside panels and moving the furniture away from the windows while George sat around messing on his Game Boy or whatever you call those things. It was terrible. I pulled my back out doing it and about had my hernia then. A few of the neighbors came by and asked what we were doing and George would tell them about the storm and they would get worried because they hadn’t heard anything about it. I’d have to hunt them down and explain what was really happening. That picture over on the bookshelf is from then.” He pointed. “Go take a look.”
There, behind various pictures of the Moybridge family on display, was the photo of George, hidden away. George looked to be about 13 in it. He wore a windbreaker and an oversize white baseball cap as he stood on a dune. His features were ugly and sharp, a face attempting to transition through puberty but getting stuck. The sky was filled with dark clouds in the background.
“Looks stormy enough,” I offered.
There was a laugh.
“Well, it kept looking like it might. George got excited about that. I really hoped that it would. You know, hammer home the illusion.” Mr. Moybridge, beginning to look sick, set the plate down on the floor and nestled deeper into his chair. Seeing the plate there reminded me of the dish George had smashed with his bare hand. “We were so young when we had him. We wanted to have lots of kids, one right after another … I can’t tell you how scared we were when we got pregnant with Clara all those years later. We were terrified she’d turn out the same way, that what was wrong with him would be wrong with her, too. But I knew we had to try again.” He looked up, swiveling his head slowly from left to right as he admired the grandeur of the large room. “I talked my wife into it, you know. Endless conversation after endless conversation until I finally just said to her, ‘What’s the point of all of this if he’s the one we’re leaving it to?’ ”
The sound of rain ticked harder.
“How old is George now?” I asked, setting the photograph down.
“Forty-three in April, I think,” he yawned. “I can’t quite remember anymore.” Outside, a security light flared into being, triggered by some motion and illuminating a fine swath of manicured lawn. Mr. Moybridge was too inebriated to stand but instead leaned forward to peer through the window as the rain fell now in sheets. After several seconds, the exterior light faded out.
“I really should get going,” I said, walking to his chair and reaching down for the empty plate, aping the motions of a servant as an excuse to leave. “Here, I’ll put this in the sink for you.”
His hand landed on my shoulder in an attempt to tether me before I could take another step, but the strength was already draining from his grip. “Oh, stay as long you’d like,” he drowsed, as his grasp fumbled weakly down the length of my arm. “You know you’re always welcome here.”
