A Stranger on the Planet

by Adam Schwartz

  I lay on top of her and she guided me in. Just as I was registering the divine sensation of being inside her, I felt a sudden spurt from the center of my body.

  “Did you come?” she asked.

  “I think so.”

  “See,” she said, “it’s really not that big of a deal.”

  Still, for the next couple of days, I let myself feel hopeful. If Jane became my girlfriend for real, if I could look forward to having sex with her all the time, I wouldn’t care about what happened with my father or with school. I’d support myself through my job at a Hyde Park bookstore. I’d rent a small room, become a famous writer by twenty-one, and marry Jane. I wouldn’t need my father or anyone. But reality set in after a week. Not only was the sex not that big of a deal, I realized, per our agreement, that it really was a one-time thing, and that, before I became famous and married Jane, I would have to tell my mother that I might not be returning to school in the fall. I had put it off because I knew she would try to emotionally leverage this falling-out with my father. So I called up Sarah in her dorm room at Rutgers and asked her if she would tell Ruth for me.

  “Not a chance,” she replied.

  “Sarah, I’ll do anything for you if you call her for me. I’ll write every one of your English papers until you graduate.”

  “Seth, don’t you think it would be easier just to apologize to Hortense?”

  “I know, I know, but I can’t do it. It’s difficult to explain.”

  “You’d prefer to live at home with Mom than apologize to Hortense?”

  “SOS,” I said, using our secret code: “Save our Shapiro.” Sarah and I would say it to each other when our problems became too overwhelming, when one or both of us felt we were going under emotionally.

  “I’m not calling Mom for you, but I’ll call Dad and see what I can do.”

  Sarah called me back the next day.

  “Dad said he’s happy to pay your tuition after you apologize to Hortense.”

  “What did you say?”

  “I told him that Mom would probably get a lawyer to enforce the divorce agreement, that he would have to pay your tuition eventually, and that the only thing all this would accomplish would be to cause you to miss a semester or two of school.”

  “You told him Mom was going to get a lawyer? What did he say to that?”

  “He said that if you’re so concerned about missing any school, you can transfer to Rutgers and pay your own tuition.”

  “Do you think that’s why he’s doing this? To get me to transfer to Rutgers?”

  “No, I think he really believes you owe Hortense an apology.”

  When Sarah and I had been applying to colleges, our father had tried every means of persuasion and pressure to get us to go to Rutgers, where the tuition was so much lower than anywhere else because we were residents of New Jersey. Sarah was admitted to a couple of small liberal arts colleges—Macalester in Minnesota and Union in upstate New York. Our father had pointed out that Rutgers was just as good academically as either of these schools and half the cost. Sarah had told him that she preferred a small liberal arts college and that she really wanted to get out of New Jersey.

  “What’s so bad about going to college in New Jersey?” our father had said. “I went to college in New Jersey. In fact I had to live at home when I went to college because money was tight.”

  “But aren’t you happy that I have more options?” Sarah had asked. Then he offered Sarah a deal: If she went to Rutgers, he would give her five thousand dollars when she graduated. She could use it for anything she wanted—graduate school, a trip to Europe.

  “But wouldn’t you pay for graduate school anyway?” she replied.

  “That remains to be seen,” he said.

  WHEN I CALLED MY MOTHER to explain my situation, she crowed with delight after I told her what I had said to Hortense. “I tell you, Seth, I surely did something right with you children!”

  My mother had said the same thing—“I surely did something right!”—when I received all As my first quarter at the University of Chicago. I had asked Sarah, “Do you think it would be too cruel to remind Mom that I had to get one thousand miles away from her before I finally did well in school?”

  “What about that dean of admissions?” my mother asked now. “Maybe he can do something for you?”

  “No, Mom, he can’t do anything.”

  “Why not? I’m sure you’re quite a feather in his cap.”

  “He just can’t. I know.”

  “What about Saul Bellow? Can he do anything for you?”

  “Mom, I’ve told you a hundred times: I don’t know Saul Bellow.”

  At the beginning of winter quarter, I had landed a job at the most popular bookstore in Hyde Park. One day my prince came in to buy some books. As I was ringing up Bellow’s purchases, the great man asked me if I was a student at the university. Then he asked me what I was studying and where I was from. A zillion things were going on in my mind. Bellow could tell I was star-struck, and I appreciated the kindness and the attention. I badly wanted to tell Bellow that I had written my college application essay about The Adventures of Augie March, but I didn’t want to frighten him off. Would his mood suddenly curdle if I mentioned one of his novels? I wanted to tell him that if I had not read Augie March and Herzog, I would probably be at some third-rate college, not at the University of Chicago. Actually, seeing Bellow I was reminded that I owed him a much more direct debt for my admission to Chicago, but it was a connection I felt extremely self-conscious about. My prize-winning story, if not exactly plagiarized from, was deeply influenced by a Bellow story titled “The Old System.” “Two by Two” was based on an incident from my own life—when I was ten, my grandfather had used me as a go-between to let my mother and aunt know that he had decided to be buried next to his second wife, Rose, not next to his first wife, Esther, the mother of his two daughters, and a huge family uproar had ensued, a drama of poisoned feelings and betrayal—but the style and most of the premise was directly borrowed from “The Old System.” In Bellow’s story, as in mine, the Jewish soap opera is filtered through the memory of a geneticist named Isaac, a relative of the feuding parties. I had been vaguely aware of being under the spell of “The Old System” when I was writing my story, but seeing Bellow in person, I became conscious of how directly I had appropriated it. I felt as if I had something belonging to Bellow in my pocket, something he didn’t even know he was missing.

  Then I noticed a small, delicate, iridescent feather pleated into the band of Bellow’s fedora. A feather in his cap. I finally understood that dumb expression my mother always used. It was a vanity, a sign of pride, the famous author in all his splendid plumage. As I was handing him his change, knowing it was now or never, I readied myself to tell Bellow that his novels had literally changed the course of my life. “Mr. Bellow, I like your hat,” I said. Bellow put his head back and laughed. “Thank you very much. So do I.”

  I was so excited about the encounter that I told everyone I knew, including my mother. By the time Ruth had finished telling everyone she knew, I had become Bellow’s protégé.

  “Seth darling,” my mother continued on the phone, “I just want you to know that everything’s going to be all right. Maybe we can get a loan from the bank, and I know Abe Zelman will be happy to help with legal advice. I’ll do anything I can to help you.”

  “Thanks, Mom.”

  “I love you, darling. We’ll get that bastard.”

  When he decided not to pay my tuition, my father didn’t really anticipate how much my mother would welcome the chance to nettle him, to impose herself in his life—and he couldn’t have known about Abe Zelman. My mother had met him when she needed a lawyer to handle her divorce from Eddie. She was a second-grade teacher and deeply in debt from all the loans she had co-signed for Eddie. Abe had offered her a summer job in his law office at a surprisingly generous salary, and she had worked there every summer since. As part of his campaign to get her into bed, Abe g
ave her bonuses and bought her expensive gifts. She accepted the money and gifts, though she had no intention of sleeping with him. She had an on-and-off-again lover, Jimmy Conroy, the married principal of the school where she taught. Besides, she found Abe physically repulsive—he had a pug nose, elephantine ears, and fingers like sausages. When Ruth told Abe about my father defaulting on the divorce agreement, he immediately drafted a letter, threatening my father’s with various legal actions, including charging fourteen percent interest on the unpaid tuition. He also said that he had reviewed the thirteen-year-old divorce agreement, and its terms were thoroughly unacceptable to his client.

  My mother was so thrilled with the letter she read it to me over the phone.

  “Mom, don’t you think this is a little excessive? Suing to change the terms of the original divorce agreement? Charging interest on the unpaid tuition?”

  “Look, thirteen years ago your father played hardball with me. Now it’s my turn. Besides, Abe’s not charging me for his services.”

  “Don’t you think he’s going to expect something in return?”

  “Honey, I appreciate your concern, but I can handle Abe. I’ve been doing it for years.”

  The year before, my mother had told me about Abe’s most ludicrous attempt to seduce her. She and Abe had been the last two people in the office at the end of the day. Abe had gone into the bathroom and come out completely naked. He had opened his arms and said, “Please, doll, just one kiss.” Ruth had burst out laughing. She told me his penis looked like a snail, barely visible beneath his huge belly. I was scandalized when my mother told me this, but she said that Abe was harmless.

  After my mother told me about Abe’s letter, I received another letter from the bursar’s office informing me that my tuition had been paid in full. I knew I would have to call my mother and share the news with her, but she beat me to it.

  “I tell you,” she said, “that Abe Zelman is some lawyer. Honey, you really ought to write him a letter to thank him.”

  “Sure,” I said.

  “You know, sweetie, Abe would like very much to see you. He’s so proud of your success, and he hasn’t seen you in years.”

  “All right,” I said.

  “Abe’s invited us all to his summerhouse for the Fourth of July. I told him I didn’t know if you could come, but it would mean a lot to him if you did.”

  “Sure, I’ll come.”

  “Oh, sweetheart, that’s wonderful! Absolutely wonderful. I’ll send you the money for the plane fare tomorrow.”

  “Thanks, Mom.”

  “You won’t forget to send him a thank-you note?”

  “No, Mom.”

  I was more thankful for the plane ticket home than I would have ever admitted to Ruth. Ten days before, Jane and I had gone to a party together, and she had left with another boy. A boy with an earring! The next morning I knocked on Jane’s dorm door. I decided to pretend that everything was normal, that Jane and I would go to breakfast in the dining hall as usual. She didn’t answer the door, but I knew—I just knew!—she was in there with the boy from the night before. I went back to my room, waited an hour, and then knocked on Jane’s door again. No answer. I went to the dining hall and saw the two of them at a table together. When we finally talked that evening, Jane told me that I was too needy, that she wasn’t attracted to me, and that she didn’t think of me as her boyfriend. I began crying and told Jane how much I loved her. She looked at me sadly and apologized for hurting me.

  “Just tell me one thing,” I said.

  “All right.”

  “Did you have oral sex with him?”

  For the next two weeks I barely slept. Lying in bed at night, I couldn’t stop myself from imaging Jane having sex with the boy from the party. Oral sex. I tried everything to dull my thoughts. I masturbated five times a day. I drank from a bottle of vodka until my bed was whirling around the room like Dorothy’s in The Wizard of Oz. But nothing helped. My mind was deteriorating. I couldn’t read, couldn’t write my papers, couldn’t think. My 4.0 GPA was in the toilet. My brain was emptied of everything but the image of Jane going down on the boy with the earring.

  ON JULY 1, SARAH, RUTH, and Seamus met me at Newark Airport. I surmised that Seamus had come at my mother’s request so that she could foster the illusion of a close, happy family. Sarah had come because I phoned her the night before and pleaded with her, claiming that I was in no condition to ride alone with our mother in the car for thirty minutes. Then I asked her if she could get me a job at the telemarketing company where she was working for the summer. “Sure,” she said. “You want to spend the summer at home, though?” I told her I needed to get out of Chicago for the summer. “You love Chicago, Seth. Is everything all right?” I said I was fine. Just fine.

  Sarah drove home from the airport. I sat next to her in the front. Ruth was in the back, the hand holding her lit cigarette in the vague vicinity of the window. Seamus was sitting next to her, a knitted kippah bobby-pinned to his head. Since his bar mitzvah, Seamus had become more and more observant. Our mother began keeping a kosher house to accommodate him, but my indifference to the rules of kashrut created tension between us. On my last visit home, he had discovered me eating a slice of pepperoni pizza on a dairy plate and had stood over me like a yeshiva-boy version of the Grand Inquisitor, his arms folded tightly across his chest, his eyes welling up with tears but still blazing with condemnation. Later he had removed the plate from the drainboard and dropped it in the garbage.

  Seamus and I did have one thing in common: He wasn’t speaking to our father either. Six months before, Seamus had read in the local paper that Elliot Shapiro was scheduled to deliver a lecture at a hospital just down the road from our apartment. Seamus was sure he would call and had waited all day by the phone, but never heard from him. The day after the lecture, Seamus called our father at home and asked him why he had not bothered to visit when he was only five minutes away. Our father replied that he had come to town just to deliver the lecture. He had gone directly to the airport after he was done. Seamus told him that was no excuse and then proceeded to deliver his own lecture about what a bad parent he was.

  For about five minutes no one in the car said anything. Then Ruth said, “Seth, you’re very quiet. Is everything all right?”

  The ashtray in front of me was overflowing with lipstick-stained cigarette butts.

  “I have a deal for you, Mom. If you can go the next two months without a cigarette, I’ll answer any question you want to ask me about my life.”

  “Ha, ha, very funny,” Ruth said, and took a deep drag on her cigarette. She exhaled the smoke out the side of her mouth in the direction of the window. In the rearview mirror, I caught Seamus glaring at me. He didn’t approve of the way I treated our mother. I rolled my window all the way down, and the sudden blast of air lifted Seamus’s kippah. He clapped it down with one hand.

  “Seth, please close your window,” he said.

  “I’m being asphyxiated up here,” I replied.

  “All right, I’m putting it out,” Ruth said, dragging deeply on her cigarette one more time and then letting it jet away out the window.

  “So how’s your girlfriend Jane?” Ruth asked.

  “Fine.”

  “Why don’t you invite her out to visit this summer? You can see some Broadway shows, go to museums.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “The two of you can share a room if you want,” Ruth added. “You know I’m very open-minded about these things.”

  I was still silent.

  “What’s the matter? Did I say something wrong?”

  “No, Mom,” I said. “Besides, I’m not sure Reb Seamus would approve.”

  “I’m going away. Remember?” my brother said.

  In two days Seamus was going to Israel for a month with Young Judea.

  “So you’ll invite her to visit then?” Ruth repeated.

  “We’ll see,” I said.

  “You’re not still a virgin,
are you?”

  “Jesus Christ, Mom!” I exclaimed.

  “Your sister is still a virgin, but I think it’s different with girls.”

  Sarah turned around and looked hard at Ruth. “You just said something wrong.”

  “Look at the road, for God’s sake,” Ruth said.

  Ruth lit another cigarette. “Why? Why did I say something wrong?” she said defiantly. “You and Seth tell each other everything.”

  Actually, I hadn’t known—and didn’t particularly want to know—whether or not my sister was a virgin. I felt extremely uncomfortable, as if I had accidentally seen Sarah in the nude.

  “I think it’s wonderful that you and your brother are so close. That’s one of my proudest achievements as a mother.”

  I SPENT MOST OF THE next three days watching television and drinking my mother’s liquor. None of us were drinkers, but Ruth kept some dust-coated bottles of scotch, gin, and brandy behind the steel-wool pads in the cabinet under the kitchen sink. Sarah worked from 6:00 p.m. until midnight. On my second night home she came in at twelve thirty. I was sitting on the couch, watching an old movie, and drinking a bottle of B&B brandy. I asked her if she’d like some of it.

  “I don’t like the taste of alcohol,” she replied.

  “Neither do I,” I said, “but this is different. This bottle is over thirteen years old. Mom told me it was left over from her wedding. Try a sip.”

  I held out my glass to Sarah.

  “Oh, this is amazing!” she exclaimed. “I’ve never tasted anything like it.”

  “Go get a glass.”

  Sarah sat next to me on the couch and I poured her a drink. She asked me when I had begun drinking so much. I told her that Jane had left me.

  “Oh, Seth, I’m sorry. Did you see it coming?”

  “Yes and no. We had some problems, but she had invited me over to her house in Highland Park for Passover and her family really loved me, especially her mother.”

  “Did you ever think that might be the problem?”

  “What do you mean?”