THE BIG HOUSE

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All Rights Reserved

BEFORE

We had foreseen how The Big House might deconstruct in a mad crackling dash down unto the sea—we had been told as much by seers and engineers—but on this Fourth of July we still believed the smashing, spectacular demise of our mansion (and the concomitant crash of our family) has far more to do with coastal erosion and the groans of gravity than the notion of a punishing force heretofore unknown.

We four O’Kells, heirs to the throne, joined at the hip if not the heart, are far too obsessed with our own scissoring, intersecting orbits to acknowledge the gaze of God or the dustbin of history. Challenge enough for us to dissemble under one roof under any circumstances, but if such a gathering is preordained we have no place to go but down O’Kell Lane to The Big House in Southampton. And so it has always been. Like those fairy-tale’d houses ready to spring ominously to life—with arms and legs akimbo to nefarious purpose—The Big House embodies memory, morality, and mortality stopping just this side of speech and spite.

Confess. You know the power of objects in your lives. That trinket. A ring. This car. Your house. Visible, viable matter resonating with memory, yet the best instruments of detection can find no trace of any such thing. No matter. Close your eyes and behold the object to see how easily you can invest your heart and soul in hard goods.

We O’Kells know of such things. As The Big House leans against the weight of our fate, whistling-whining-whimpering, the universe ipso facto exists to satisfy our whims and whimsy. And why not? Our Milky Way is self-regulating and self-contained. We are self-referential, as if force applied to one orbit pulls the other three in lockstep. As the last meaningful generation of a misbegotten family, we are sui generis, concentric circles compressed by a unified theory of the cosmic-microscopic not even an Einstein could glean. We own the playing field. We have whatever we need and many, many things we do not. We have Waterford crystal and silverware buffed to a fare-thee-well, banquets and beach parties and bouquets, servants in white gloves and white tie and tails. Cocktails on command. In The Big House, we find six head-high fireplaces to crash our drinks into—and an obsequious staff seen but almost never heard. We never drive anywhere ourselves—we never have—and with enough chauffeurs on staff we never expect to ride with each other ever again.

When one lives in luxury unabated, as we do, contamination by the real world is not a real possibility.

We can easily establish our ascendance. No matter who you are, no matter what you and yours may have managed, we have more than you do. Much more. Before the software barons emerged with the whoosh of globalization late in the last century, we had more than almost anyone in the world. For that we have to blame our grandfather, Jake O’Kell, bastard son of Thomas Edison—and his adopted son, our uncle, known to the world as Atomic Tom O’Kell, but to us as the son of the devil.

Jake O’Kell, our patriarch, had genius in the rearview mirror: a wunderkind of widgets, he became a wizened sage able to produce more than 1,100 inventions at the nexus of the Industrial Age. In the next generation, Atomic Tom had a dastardly brilliance geared more to the manipulation of men than the raw production of power. Our ancestors saw the future under their noses—Jake O’Kell in pistons and pumps, Atomic Tom in the explosive nature of nuclear energy in a global marketplace. That explains Atomic Tom selling off grandfather’s patents and discoveries at the top of the market, even as he whispered into President Kennedy’s ear about splitting the atom for the greater good. Blessed by bureaucrats populating the New Frontier, Atomic Tom drop-shipped the family fortune into weaponry and wealth beyond measure—and, inevitably, into genetics, with the unlimited promise of playing God.

Despite our riches, we always scratch for traction, our scuttling claws scooping out skin and sinew from those less inclined to blood sport. Our embrace of natural selection seems in the natural order of things, with mortal combat the default position. To fight is to live if not to love, but to fight within our family is to combust from distrust. We O’Kells know our fights are preposterous—the height of perversity—but our purpose in life is to disagree in the most contentious manner possible, with vitriol obscuring any relationship to cause or effect.

Life and death are the least of it. We are out for bigger things.

We four O’Kells are Becca’s children. By his own choice, Atomic Tom, belly up in the ocean, met his Maker within sight of The Big House. Will O’Kell, our poor uncle, found solace in drink—and peace at the bottom of a river. Eleanor had been a nun before she became a radical eugenicist: no legitimate offspring ensued in either case. Once her husband tasted of the fruit and died of AIDS, Diana O’Kell Campobello had only G to call her own.

(Of whom more later.)

We have no reason to doubt the natural order of things: upon the imminent death of our Becca, we expect the bulk of the family fortune, based on the financial aggressiveness of our forebears, to descend upon us like a visitation. Centuries beckon and saints be praised: we consider the future to be no different than the past, for no O’Kell has ever been heir to diminishing returns.

Thus are we fools raised to be more foolish than ever. Even so we should know better than to go back to The Big House for one last stand.

Allow us to seduce ourselves:

We are Terry the musician, man; and Matthew the serious one; and Sam the seriously funny man; and the only girl Gennifer, our own Gen, the one and homeliest.

We are man, woman, but most of all child, the Becca-Rocco offspring of Rebecca O’Kell and Rocco McCarthy, the swing musician swinging from the Stork Club into high society on the arm of our mother and her copiously copacetic O’Kell money. Her second, his first. Our mother’s first, blacklisted, jumping off the Brooklyn Bridge because of the television quiz show scandals, the story broom-cleaned by O’Kell operatives dispatched by Atomic Tom.

The O’Kells see the truth and raise it like a bet—but we only play with house money.

Or so we think.

How else to explain the four of us in the four limousines slip-sliding down Montauk Highway on the Fourth like the hated Joe Kennedy’s rum runners ditching a tail? Here we are: passing on the right, cutting sideways from the left, slashing into the shoulder, the four of us astride our limos like so many jockeys who can’t make weight, the chase transpiring in a small world where our transcendental mass matters most of all.

Here is Terry, too cool for six high schools, his ponytail wisping gray, his Walkman blasting his brains out. His command—Faster, you fat fuck!—that much louder with Terry tripping to Purple Haze, so high for this ride even haze clarifies matters. Terry taking reefer from his smelly camouflage vest, his potbelly framed by pockets full of pharmacopeia. The fat man, sweating like a beast, stomping lard on the accelerator—66-76-96—the numbers swelling past 100, past 120—the world flying by even faster than the usual blur for Terry behind aviators and limo windows tinted black.

Fucking right!

Terry stoned, Terry buzzed, Terry tripping down Montauk Highway in a cloud of toke—and the fat man driving this weird rich hippie dude calling the shots through the in-between window muffling words before they make it up front. Faster? Sure: the fat man going faster for this weird collection of weirdos haul-assing down Montauk Highway as if they are the only boys and girl in the world. Thinking of his tip—off the books—gauging how much jack the sky-high hippie will hand out: a bill, a grand, whatever the rich bastard finds in his pocket.

Terry and his pot-bellied Gumby body in the limo, Purple Haze up in his brain, the music transposing past and future, the drugs delivering sustenance, shape, meaning, a cosmic you got that right. Terry the musician pocketing a downpayment’s worth of product evolution, maybe more, maybe a lot more. Uppers, downers, in-betweeners, hash, pot, coke, angel dust in his druggie vest with all the pockets memorized by Terry without taking a quiz. His buzz becoming the open-ended bliss he manages, maximizes, maintains no matter what it takes. His life all about the buzz—Faster, you fat bastard!—life is a vibe, a vibration you feel in your gut, a tine dinged in the distance of time.

Ba-ba-BA-BUMP—the limo slipping onto the half-assed shoulder of the Montauk Highway, going over the side until the fat man finally pulls hard left—

You fat bastard! Put down the fucking window you fat-assed bastard!

The fat man puts down the fucking in-between window and coughs Sorry sir through the smoke from the toke.

Terry with a big smile on his face now, becoming the buzz, the world back on its axis bold as love—the happiest man on the face of the earth, saying: Cool, man. Whatever floats your boat, whatever wets your whistle, whatever gets you through the night, it’s all right, it’s all right—and none of it meaning anything. He can land on you like a ton of bricks and act like he would never crush you because he is too damn cool.

That’s Terry, man. That’s the nature of the beast.

It’s all right. It’s all right.

So the fat man so cooooool flying past 120 MPH, a blur crunching past the second limo with Matthew O’Kell McCarthy in the back seat. Matthew always striving, striving, striving, always the second of the litter, never managing to be first. Matthew serious, analytical, never letting you see, always betwixt, trying to see between things. No drink, no drugs, no therapy for Matthew, nothing but the puke perception he is just not good enough, a richer-than-thou fraud with the right to fail in business because O’Kells have a pot of gold. That’s the genius of it for Matthew in the endless search for his own genius. Circumstances conspiring against the waves of inspiration he feels inside. Matthew always just this far ahead of the curve, too far, the difference between billions and bust, so sick of being almost exactly right about so many things it kills him. So tired of being able to afford to be so wrong every single time. He has the gift for God’s sake—his grandfather Jake O’Kell’s genius—he can feel the genes moving up and down his DNA ladder like a snake hanging on for dear life. Hard to explain but he knows things: Matthew knowing online is going to be everything way before the Web, with the Defense Department using the internet to blow things up. Knowing how big it’s going to get before anyone knows it’s even there—Matthew knowing search engines and domain names cold—investing in one company after another sure to crash of its own weight. Matthew with the opportunity to miss and then to miss again without any real consequences, torturing himself with failures of timing unforeseen by anyone but him. He is the one O’Kell left over with something burning him up inside, maybe the same thing driving all O’Kells crazy.

Wanton wantingness for wont of a better. The never-being-enoughness of things.

We O’Kells always wanting something yet to be captured then consumed in one swallow.

Matthew cursing the trace elements left over from the genius of Jake O’Kell, the boy lamplighter, the bastard son of Thomas Edison making cities rage with the power he produces. In the limo Matthew carrying everything O’Kell in his head for no good reason, with no match to strike, no fire to stoke. No catch-basin, no cache for Matthew, just as much cash as a man might waste in multiple lifetimes. No reason to get rich because he is already rich beyond reason. His drive with no genetic purpose under heaven, with nowhere to go except to The Big House for the going-away party. Matthew a genius-seeking missile: his genius seeing what is to come with no need to do a damn thing about it. He can be wrong because he can afford to be wrong. Matthew—detached, analytical Matthew—never gets there from here because (duh!) he’s already there. He already has everything there is to have so how come Matthew has nothing?

Matthew’s madness a furnace blasting ideas too quickly for words.

Matthew in his own world on Montauk Highway with glazed Terry giving him the finger through the window. The fat man cutting by hard right with Sam hot on his trail. Matthew lost in the gnaw about the next big thing as Sam sneaks by on the shoulder, window-tapping as he blurs by, his fingers wiggling into donkey ears.

Sam the comedian a different man after rehab dispatched him to the desert to repent. Sam grokking his Higher Power but never finding Him again until we O’Kells go begging in the moments to come. Sam a saint in rehab, the one drunk never judging anyone, accepting everything as a given except our wealth. That Sam-I-am neither knowing nor caring who knows he is an O’Kell, putting Sam O’Kell McCarthy—the three names on his back—behind him in the desert. Now Sam is O’K McCarthy, sober as all getout, losing the O’Kell when he stops drinking. Sam never A-OK again funnywise without the booze but in rehab still funnier than anyone else around: his new not-drinking peeps a laugh track if only because Sam is supposed to be so funny. A last gasp. Sober Sam, shutting down faster than you can twist a faucet, letting laughs happen at a distance because the joke is on him.

“We’re almost home,” Sam says out loud in the limo. “What a joke.”

He laughs without smiling because it’s not funny and never was.

Then Gennifer going nowhere with no clue about anything up to and including this mad dash on burnt rubber down Montauk tarmac. Pregnant Gen with demons only she can see, real devils, alive and dead, existing only in the pus and corpuscles of her soul. Memory? Hers and not ours. Our Gen remembering, imagining, seeing things she can’t be sure of. Her memory marred, imperfect, occluded, a curtain unseen obscuring events uncertain. The hypnosis helping, her trance positing the past as might-have-beens more real than anything could be.

Terry has his Haze, Matthew his visions, Sam his jokes—but our Gen with something far better, imaginary worlds coming to life in her mind like the pages in a book.

Her limo banging up and down Montauk Highway to stay with the chase but our Gen in a world of her own making. Gen at that moment co-habiting with her truth in a place of peace, with everything she knows to be true taking hold inside of her own head. Our Gen learning not to be afraid of her memories, of hypnosis, of the past, of anything real or not she might find buried within her own brain. (Or not.) The circle of life—like what happens when your thumb and forefinger make a space never there before.

Gen in the limo starting to gag and then to puke out what little is still left inside of her, the bulimic drool dribbling from one side of the limo to the other—her dry heaves the only thing left when the limo burns to a stop in front of The Big House.

Who won? Who cares?

For the four of us this will be something new to fight over, like everything else—fuel and fodder, combustible matter, kindling for kin. In our race against time puking Gen is first, then Terry, Matthew, and Sam, our grand slam. The winner still on her knees, dry-heaving at our feet in front of The Big House, leaving nothing to the imagination, leaving everything behind.

“Her third trimester is always like this,” Sam says. “It’s a sickness, you know.”

Sam laughing out loud at our sister without smiling because nothing funny about our Gen dying to have a baby for so long. Gen picking the pictures out of a book, feeling for the nudge from the nurse who knows the names behind the genes staring Gen in the face. Picky, picky Gen always picking well in the end, pinpointing the perfect father with a soft #2 pencil, his perfectly swirling sperm going for a swim in the private petri pool with her wonderfully imperfect egg. Consummation always followed by hope, implantation, the imminence of infatuation concocted in a cocktail. Gen looking at the dish in the moment of consummation, conjuring the miracle of child-into-man. Gen calling her first baby Blotto for how lucky such a baby would be: born to billions, like winning the lottery a thousand times over.

And why not?

Someone has to win. Someone has to be rich.

That’s the story of history if history requires the O’Kells to have all the money.

“The Big House doesn’t look so big,” Terry says to no one, to everyone, to us.

“We’re still big,” Sam says. “It’s the houses that got small.”

“You’re not funny,” Matthew says. “You never were.”

“Far fucking out,” Terry says in his blur. “Comedy is so fucking funny, man.”

Through the fog Terry seeing the fat man waiting for something—what do you want from me, man?—then dopey Terry pawing through the pockets of his personal pharmacopeia and finding no money to tip the fat man, because being rich means never having money on your persona, a notion Terry takes to the bank. Some things much better than money: Terry throwing the fat man enough coke in a baggie to feed a halfway house for a month.

“Are we cool, man?” Terry says.

“Very cool,” the fat man says.

The fat man looks up at The Big House knowing the hippie dude could keep him in coke forever. Wing upon wing spreading out and down to the sea 100 feet below. Bleached wood slats pressing into sand leading down to dunes everywhere you look. This is The Hamptons the fat man only hears about in New York City tabloids. Maybe he should find a public beach—but no, Southampton is not for the general public or their families. The people here in front of The Big House not pretending to be the public. The public not wearing perfect white trousers with pleats. The public not including women this thin, dressing in this much lemon-lime, psychedelic and preppy both, without missing a beat. The public not for these people unless they run short on servants and slaves.

The fat man seeing faces without really seeing them; the same faces look through him like he could not possibly exist. No place for him at this table, no there there for the fat man to begin with. The fat man thus going, going, gonzo into the crapper of Terry’s history, a survivor of one of our bro’s classic highs, the story already taking shape in the fat man’s mind about the time he drove this rich asshole toking all the way to The Hamptons but it was worth the trip because of the coke.

The fat man wondering who the hell do these people think they are?

“The fuck are these people?” Terry says through his fog.

Flashes go off. Flash. A moment immortalized. Flash. Gen down on all fours. Flash. The four of us oblivious to what is at hand with our fate handed over to us like four heads on a platter.

Flash. Flash. Flash. Flash.

Pretenders and posers crushing us in front of The Big House—those who know us, those who know of us, and those who don’t know a goddamn thing. Glad-handing now: the flashcards of Southampton society crashing in waves slapping us in the kisser and leaving us slap-happy: eyes lips cheeks noses and too much hair everywhere—or not enough here and there. Who knows who these people might be? In the crush, recombinant chunks re-combining: this nose dripping against those lips, eyes wide open and then shut, mops of brown red gray white black hair blown by the warm Fourth of July breeze like so many comb-overs feeling the tsunami first.

We live in thrall to what Hurricane Catherine will bring without even knowing her name.

We don’t know squat or diddly. We never do. We don’t know shit from Shinola.

We hear the tiny tinny sound of a combo inside The Big House against the lap-dance of the ocean, the wash of saltwater once washing us clean, the expectation of sand kicked up from flip-flops, the hot showers and brine every time we inhale, the liquid somehow like the breath of life inside of us at night. On the lawn money-changers and windbags sucking up our personal space with air kisses and don’t-touch-me hugs, as if we can kick open the door to Paradise locked shut against buggers and beggars. Friendship with an O’Kell so powerful we are sure to open up the moat by saying open sesame so they too can be pulverized into the pulp of celebrity, the cult of the known. Bestowing blessings upon commoners is what we do without even knowing it. The bulging pop-pop of paparazzi so clear in the light you can put your hand right through it, with each click meaning food and shelter: actual careers manufactured from our craven, unshaven images.

We have only this. Only us. McCarthys born of O’Kells, born of the Cushing evil seed, our Golden Clan’s Original Sin. That’s our state secret, our secret state.

We, myself, and I. Now and at the hour of our death. Amen, brother.

God help our Becca. God help us, every one.

“Hello, Mother,” Sam says.

“Hello, Sam,” our Becca says. “Hello Gen, Terry, Matthew. You came!”

Our mother, our Becca, taking Gen by the elbow in front of The Big House, lifting her up onto her feet. Becca wiping Gen’s drool with the palm of her hand and looking at her daughter’s ungodly goo, the residue of faith, like Holy Water piddled upon the altar. Becca cooing, rubbing Gen’s belly with the other hand. A ghost (or a saint) can do, must do these things—a ghost moving among her genetic strands across the sands of time. Becca moving lightly, in her ghostly way, as ghosts most likely do, gliding by in a sheer white gown like a plastic see-through sheet reflecting and deflecting the light. A ghost can redeem a life, so we are told: in her ghostliness a God unseen deems us worthy of one last chance.

“What’s that smell?” Becca sniffs at Terry.

“I’ve been working in my garden,” Terry says.

“It smells so…rich,” Becca says. “It’s the smell I think of when I think of you, Terry.”

“Far fucking out,” Matthew says.

“Go fuck yourself,” Terry says to Matthew.

“We’re not going to fight, are we?” Becca says. “This is too important to fight about.”

“What’s so important, Mother?” Gen says.

“Everything,” Becca says.

“What are we here for?” Terry says. “Whatever it was we could have done it in the city.”

“The party first!” Becca claps her hands. “Then we’ll have time for everything. Some fun couldn’t hurt, couldn’t it? I need some fun, too, like all of you. A party on the Fourth of July. Fa-la-la. Fun, fun, fun.”

“Party then pow-wow?” Sam saying it with a snicker.

“What are we pow-wowing about?” Gen says.

“Everything,” Becca says, “but nothing that matters in the end.”

“I’ve got to get back like yesterday, man,” Terry says. “I’ve got a session.”

“Far out!” Matthew exhales like he’s toking.

“Motherfucker!” Terry says to Matthew.

“Don’t fight, boys,” Becca says. “You don’t have to fight. There’s nothing to fight about any more.”

“We’re not boys,” Matthew says. “We never were.”

“What do you mean by ‘nothing,’ Mother?” Gen says.

“Everything,” our Becca says.

We belong to our Becca. We are hers. She will live forever within us to the end of days.

So it is written. By us. About her.

All of us except Sam taking the champagne in our hands, drinking it down to get drunk because our mother is growing so old overnight. Her beauty still there in the soft flesh laying like layers on skin discolored by time. Take a look if you dare: shapeless skin on bones so thin they break in a bad storm; eyes sinking so far into her skull brows become caves; white hair astray, akin to the stray straw of a good witch. Crags upon crags. Figments. Long O’Kell legs now winnowing down to the blue death of unspeakable veins better left unseen. The sheen of time on her in toto like a glaze. Her lips, our mother’s beautiful lips, like thin dusty crusts left over from the feast.

Rocco McCarthy, our father, can go to hell.

Then our Becca gone in a cloud of billow, the sheer white of her gown trailing behind her in heavenly heaven-sent folds. Our willowy angel sent by a kinder God than we will ever know. Neither angels nor ghosts in the business of raising children but she still cares about us. The crowd parting: our holy mother gliding by into The Big House with the thrash-crash of the carnal sea and gathering storm just beyond. We four coming here today but we have come to know so little. Knowing nothing of destruction and desiccation because everything we own is unsullied, unsoiled, cut fresh—Swiss watches, shiny clothes, argyle sox, white sheets, roasts, cars, the disposable razors that never nick.

Wanting for nothing because we have it all, don’t you know, but we don’t know from nothing.

These half-truths self-evident in the mass of jabber in front of The Big House.

Money is truth.

We four never talk of money—but money is the unspoken subject of every conversation in our lives that really counts. What money allows. What money requires. For money to become of the spirit you need enormous wads of it in hand. Your lucre needs to be liquid. A lovely word, implying a magical substance flowing through your fingers like snowmelt or a stretch of whitewater forever gushing downstream. A substance so close to the subject at hand. Liquid meaning as elemental as earth, sky, fire, water. Liquid washing over us to wash up with, to bless us. Liquid for cleansing, for bathing, for resting, for swaying in the waves. For dying, if need be. Liquid to drown in—Will in a river, Tom right there behind The Big House in the deep blue sea. A substance to hold you forever, to wash over you and then to return.

We four O’Kells are liquid. We are blessed and cursed.

We are cursed because we have what others want and much worse—what they think they want.

Understanding our liquidity in a languid, intellectual way that matters not at all. Knowing perfectly well we have done nothing, nada, to deserve this. We are not deaf or dumb or blind. We can’t (don’t) carry our own water: never have, never will. Our O’Kell way of life assuming everyone holds our truths dear, my dear. Food a given. Shelter taken. Fires banked on the beach. French water fizzing in heavy green bottles. Yachts cushioning our bottoms and taking us to distant realms others cannot even imagine. Money always there like water without one of us ever earning it or needing to. Need the defining factor—not the absurd presumption we could make money if we had to.

Only we don’t have to just yet. Money in quantity obliterates history, as ye shall see soon enough.

Everyone in front of The Big House staring at us in our fishbowl. Swimming in our direction like a school. Gasping, grasping for more. For liquidity. For money. Their cackles cascading regardless of their dim wit. The treacly attention our birthright from birth. The want of others with no gravitational pull, no mass on our animal planet. We have no need for their wants, no balance to our checks. Life is our money, money our life.

Money, money, money.

The first warning from Hurricane Catherine.

The wind kicks. Blows. Screeeching like birds in The Birds only louder. Hard enough to blow all the beautiful people into the beautiful sea like so many grains of sand. Drinks instantly levitating, dissipating, dissolving into rarified air. Bubbly slops. Boughs break. Invented hair uncoiling like snakes. Windbags blown every which way in front of The Big House: one knocks into the next-next-next. The dominos falling soon enough for bloodsuckers given the imminence of their demise.

And then it stops.

They all fall down. We four, joined at the hip, are still standing in front of The Big House.

“Fucking Poltergeist, man!” Terry says.

“Did you hear that?” Matthew says to Terry.

“Blowback,” Terry says.

“The worst is going to just miss us,” Gen says.

“No it won’t,” Matthew says.