The Book of Joe

says sourly.
    I look at my nephew thoughtfully. “What’s the problem between you two?”
    “This week, it’s the earrings.”
    I start to say something, stop myself since it’s none of my business, and then, typically, say it anyway. “You do realize that you’re going through a stage right now, don’t you. That in a few years you’ll have outgrown all this rebellion bullshit and none of it will matter.”
    “Maybe so,” he concedes, keeping his eyes glued to the
    road. “But I still have to fight the good fight while it’s mine to fight.” He grins lightly. “You might say it’s my job.”
    “Well, you certainly throw yourself into your work.”
    “Whatever,” Jared says. “What’s the problem between you and him?”
    “Nothing that a few years of intense family therapy couldn’t fix.”
    “Well, I think the boat’s pretty much sailed on that one.
    What with Grandma gone and Gramps ... you know.”
    I’ve never heard my mother referred to as Grandma before. It’s never occurred to me that the title could be acquired posthumously, and hearing Jared say it is momentarily disorienting. I feel a chill in my belly, a pang of mourning so intense it renders further conversation impossible. We sit in silence for a few minutes until I see that we’re headed out of town on Porter’s Boulevard. “Where are we going?” I say.
    “The only thing out here is Porter’s.”
    “Bingo.”
    “What the hell are we doing at Porter’s?”
    “You’ll see.”
    P.J. Porter’s corporate headquarters is a massive, sprawling five-story building whose exterior is comprised primarily of forbidding dark glass panels and burnished fieldstone, a monument to capitalism. The building is surrounded by acres of rolling, immaculate lawns and strategically placed ponds and fountains, as if it had been plunked down in the middle of a championship golf course. Adding to the overall sense of deliberate seclusion is a perimeter of forestry, roughly one acre deep, that has been deliberately left intact to surround the campus. This expansive, idyllic setting is either a grand testament to modern ergonomics or a corporeal manifestation of the grotesquely inflated collective ego of the Porter family in their financial heyday.
    Jared drives past the main entrance, which is gated and locked, and we ride for another few minutes on a narrow road that winds its way through the trees until he suddenly pulls onto a dirt lane that runs into the woods. The lane ends at a gated section of the eight-foot chain-link fence that surrounds the perimeter of the Porter’s campus. A group of kids suddenly materialize like ghosts in the narrow glow of the Mercedes’ low beams, smoking, leaning against trees, and throwing rocks into the woods, looking like the Lost Boys waiting for Peter Pan’s return. They disappear from view as Jared cuts the lights and parks in the forest between a Jeep and a Honda Accord. We step out of the car to join the kids, who all look to be about Jared’s age. “What’s up, boys?” Jared says, performing a number of multifaceted handshakes with a few of them as they eye me, the aging interloper, with unmasked suspicion. I count six of them, not including Jared and myself.
    “Who’s this?” a tall, beefy kid with dyed black hair and a blond goatee asks him.
    “This is my controversial uncle Joe,” Jared says, indicating me with a wave. “He’s going to take Gordy’s spot tonight.”
    “You the author?” another of the kids pipes up.
    “I am,” I say, feeling expressly older and suddenly self-conscious in my merino sweater and Brooks Brothers chinos.
    They are all dressed pretty much alike, in black T-shirts or sweatshirts, dark, baggy cargo pants, and sneakers. All of their faces are cluttered with the shrapnel of rebellion, as if a grenade of alienation has exploded in their midst, piercing every possible soft point of flesh - from earlobes and nostrils to eyebrows, lips, and tongues - with metal studs and rings.
    “The author of what?” someone else wants to know, and a brief discussion of my credentials ensues.
    “He wrote that movie about the Falls, man. Where that kid fucks his mother.”
    “He wrote the book, dipshit. Then they made it into a movie.”
    “Whatever, man.”
    “He fucks his mother?”
    “It’s the friend’s mother, you tool. And they don’t fuck. He just has a hard-on for her.”
    “Oh. That’s okay. I have a hard-on for Jared’s mother.”
    “Shut the fuck up,