“Ready to take a little ride, Mr. Lerner?” the doc asked cheerfully. Before Jeremy could answer—as if there was any response but yes—an orderly took hold of the bed and wheeled him away.
CHAPTER
7
It was well past nine by the time Jeremy returned from the hospital to his dark, eerily quiet house. Matty had driven him and Joyce back, stopping at Panera for soup and sandwiches to go. Jeremy was so beyond hungry at this point, he wondered if he could even eat. Joyce laid the food out for them on the kitchen table. That splattered egg still lay on the floor but now, congealed, looked like a rubber prank toy. Strangely, no one moved to clean it up.
“So when will you have the surgery, Dad?” Matty asked as Jeremy took a seat and began to unwrap a chicken pesto club.
“I don’t know. I don’t even know that I will,” said Jeremy, examining the neatly assembled sandwich, its heavy basil-garlic waft giving him pause.
“A torn rotator cuff doesn’t heal itself, darling,” noted Joyce as she sat across from him.
“Actually, Grandma, it can,” Matty said as he took the lid off a bowl of curry lentil soup. “A guy I know from the gym—two guys, actually—tore their rotator cuffs, did nothing about it, decided to just lay off lifting for a while.”
“How are they now?” asked Jeremy, hopeful.
“I don’t know, they don’t go to my gym anymore,” Matty said, clearly not realizing how ominous that sounded. He eyed Jeremy’s chicken club. “That looks awesome. Want to trade halves? I got the Tuscan tuna.” The kid couldn’t even commit to a sandwich.
“Gladly,” answered Jeremy, making the switch.
A battery of tests, X-rays, and scans found nothing irregular in Jeremy (busted marriages being undetectable) except for one big thing: an apparently torn rotator cuff in his right shoulder. “Apparently” because, as an orthopedist on call who swept in to read the CT results said, “They won’t know for sure till they go in there,” sounding like something someone would warn in a horror movie. The tear, it didn’t take a medical degree to surmise, was the result of that death-defying fall off the rickety stepladder, which, in reality, deserved the blame for all this. Then again, Jeremy thought, maybe it was really the fault of that unreachable bottle of scotch, the need for which would never have arisen had Cassie not packed up and left. Aha, so Cassie was to blame!
With that conclusion out of the way (for now, anyhow), and the ER-administered tramadol managing his shoulder pain (for now, anyhow), Jeremy bit into his savory sandwich, his first real food in what seemed like forever. He got it down and, after a dicey moment, felt pretty sure it would stay there.
“You should see Richard Hockstein immediately,” Joyce announced between spoonfuls of cauliflower parmesan soup, an unlikely choice that looked better than it sounded.
“Who’s Richard Hockstein?” asked Jeremy, glancing at the telltale egg mess on the floor.
“Only the best orthopedic surgeon in L.A.,” said Joyce. “All my friends have gone to him.”
“Are these the same friends who think I’m the Times’ best film reviewer?” He didn’t mean it to sound snarky but it did.
“You know they’re right,” Joyce said, focused more on her soup than his sarcasm.
“Oh, shit, Dad, that’s such a bummer,” said Matty, who’d already inhaled his half of Jeremy’s sandwich, “about you and the paper. But if it’s any consolation, I don’t know anyone who reads it anymore.”
“You’re twenty-three. Did you ever know anyone who reads it?” asked Jeremy. “And, honey, that’s ridiculously beside the point.”
“I’m just trying to make you feel better.” Matty eyed his gloomy dad. “And I can see it’s working like a charm.”
“I lost my wife, my job, and all shoulder mobility in one stinking day. Sorry if I’m not seeing the bright side of things just yet.”
“You don’t really know if you lost your wife,” said Joyce, attempting, as usual, to see the bright side of things.
Jeremy indicated around the room with his sandwich. “Do you see her anywhere, because I don’t.” He remembered he also had soup—vegetable barley—and tried a spoonful. He could feel its warmth mellowing his fraught insides. Jeremy looked up at his mother and son. “I don’t think she’s coming back, certainly not to me,” Jeremy added. “But I’m just going by what she told me.”
“Okay, but, honey, did she say those words exactly?” Joyce asked. “Because you know, people say a lot of things they don’t mean when they’re angry or upset.”
“I don’t know, Ma,” said Jeremy. “It’s what she implied. It’s what I inferred.”
“Wait, which one is which again?” Matty wondered aloud. “I always get them confused.” He was now making quick work of his Tuscan tuna. “And Grandma, I gotta say, Mom sounded pretty harsh when we talked.”
“She called you? When?” Jeremy put down his soupspoon. Cassie had said she would talk to their son, so why was Jeremy so surprised? Still, after all this, why wouldn’t he be?
“This morning, at work,” Matty answered. “And don’t ask me what she said, because I don’t really know.”
“Matty, darling, did you talk to her or not?” Joyce asked gently, confused.
“She was weird and intense,” said Matty. “And kinda vague. So I just listened. She told me she loved me, and that I shouldn’t worry, and that whatever happened was for the best. Then I had to jump into a meeting, so.” He dipped a spoon into Jeremy’s soup, made a face. “Celery, eek.” Then: “Anyway, Dad, I wouldn’t wait up for her, if you know what I mean.”
“I wasn’t planning to, kiddo.” Jeremy lost what little appetite he’d had, and left the table to sop up the splotched egg from the floor.
“I can do that, honey,” Joyce offered, getting up to help him.
“No, Mom, I need to clean up my own mess,” said Jeremy as he grabbed a sponge and some paper towels. In its way, it felt like the first moment of the rest of his life.
After dinner, Jeremy and Joyce hugged Matty goodbye, and he left to meet up with Sven, mumbling something that sounded like “booty call” and probably was. Jeremy went to clear the table of the remains of their meal, but Joyce bumped him aside. “I’ll do this,” she said. “You go sit down, you look terrible.”
“Gee, thanks, Ma,” Jeremy shot back, knowing she was absolutely right. He plopped back into a kitchen chair as his mom scurried about, tidying up. For a moment, he was a kid again, his father lounging in the den recliner after dinner with a Montecristo like the grand pooh-bah that he was while Joyce efficiently washed and stacked the dishes, never asking for Larry’s help (like he’d ever have given it) or even his company (c’mon, he had a cigar to smoke), while Jeremy did his homework at the now spotless (Joyce, again) kitchen table. Back then, it just seemed like that was the drill—women do this, men do that—but Jeremy, watchful and inquisitive boy that he was, sensed at some level there was an imbalance that needed fixing, even if his parents didn’t. That’s why, from day one of their marriage, when Cassie cooked, he cleaned; when he cooked, they cleaned together, mostly because he made much more of a mess of things than she did. Still, they practiced teamwork, in raising Matty as well, everything shared right down the middle. They were good together, so happy together—me for you and you for me, isn’t that how the old song went?—for such a long time. Then Matty left for San Diego State and something slow and steady and unnamable started creeping into their relationship—imperceptible at first, like a drop or two of drizzle. But even drizzle, if it continues long enough, can add up to something murky and slick and precarious.
“Promise me you’ll call this Dr. Hockstein first thing tomorrow, would you, dear?” Joyce called from the sink, startling Jeremy out of his reverie. He glanced at the wall clock: 10:17. He was tired. So tired. How did she still have so much energy? “He’s in one of those office towers at Cedars, I think,” sa
id Joyce. “What is that, Beverly? Third?”
“I’ll find him. I’ll call him, promise,” Jeremy said, wondering how much health insurance would cover, wondering what he was going to do for income in general without the regular Times gig. And it wasn’t just the reviews, he realized, it meant no entertainment features either; Geneva ran the whole shebang and he was, for the first time in his work life, persona non grata. Oh, how the nowhere-near-mighty have fallen! He still had his other jobs: he occasionally reviewed for some decent websites (though not in a while), taught writing classes and one-off seminars (but those had dried up the last few years), moderated post-screening Q and As with actors or filmmakers (mostly during awards season, which this wasn’t), and wrote publicity kits and bios (which were fewer and farther between). Maybe he would dust off that screenplay.
Joyce finished up at the sink and joined Jeremy back at the table. She looked at him a moment, then took his hand. “How’s my little boy?”
“Fifty and hating it. How are you?” he asked, hoping to change the subject. Fat chance.
“Worried about you, that’s how I am.”
“A parent’s work is never done, is it?”
Joyce studied her son, still so badly in need of a shower, shave, and attitude adjustment. “Honey, you can tell me. Was there someone else?”
Jeremy paused to think, really think about that. Sure, the notion had crossed his mind, as it would have anyone whose better half began to seem only half there the better part of the time. Still, he would end up dismissing the possibility, convinced he would know—just know—like a sixth sense if betrayal was in process. What Jeremy didn’t take into account, however, was that not every marital perfidy had to involve sex—or even another person, for that matter.
“I don’t think Cassie would’ve cheated on me,” Jeremy said, though it came out more like a question than a statement.
“I didn’t mean Cassie, darling, I meant you,” Joyce said softly. Jeremy stared at her, uncomprehending. She gazed back. “Do you have someone else?”
The question truly caught Jeremy off guard, not because what his mother asked was so out of the realm of life’s general possibility, but because it had never been on his own personal wish list these past years. If he had been so inclined, the opportunity to step out on Cassie had reared its sordid head more than a few times during their marriage. Jeremy was considered an attractive guy in his own increasingly bookish, distracted, lean-bodied way, made perhaps even more appealing by the fact that he didn’t seem much aware of—or driven by—his looks. (Matty once commented that if Jeremy were gay he’d know how “hot” he was; Jeremy didn’t get his son’s line of reasoning and left it there.) As a result, friends, friends’ wives, neighbors, colleagues, students, strangers at the car wash had all, at one time or another, left a door open for Jeremy that other husbands might have eagerly walked through but had left Jeremy cold. It was not that he was such a paragon of virtue, but he loved his wife and didn’t want to be “one of those guys.” Maybe it had been enough to know he’d had the opportunities.
“No, Ma, there was no one else,” Jeremy answered Joyce.
“I wouldn’t judge you if there were,” his mother said. “Either of you. Marriages are complicated—at best. And, well, shit happens.”
Jeremy couldn’t help but smile at that. And, of course, she was right. Though he got the sense she was secretly happy that he was in the clear on the infidelity thing. No mother wants her son to be a scumbag.
Jeremy awoke with a jolt the next morning with little memory of actually falling asleep, his still-lit bedside lamp a clue that he must’ve conked out before his head touched the pillow. No matter, he was glad to see that this time he’d at least taken off his clothes before getting into bed—they sat in a dingy pile on the adjacent area rug—though was less pleased to realize that he still hadn’t showered.
His shoulder smarted as he reached across the nightstand to grab his cell. He glanced at the phone: no messages. Cassie remained enigmatically O.O.T.: out of town and out of touch. True, she’d spoken to Matty yesterday morning before the hospital visit, but even if she did somehow know what happened to Jeremy, would she have checked in on him? Or was anything less than the brink of death ineligible for Cassie’s concern under her baffling new rules?
Before he rolled over and went back to sleep, Jeremy pulled himself out of bed, popped a tramadol, and took the longest, hottest, soapiest shower he could remember. It was glorious—and desperately required.
He toweled off, feeling like a new (okay, newish) man, until he wiped the steam from the mirror and his face slowly came into focus. Jeremy leaned in and gazed at his half-century-old self and, even without his glasses, was struck by the lines and crinkles and crevices that had seemingly multiplied across his face overnight. What was that about? Turn fifty and age in exponential leaps? Or had he just not noticed them until now, more mindful of his graying hair (everywhere, he might add) and retreating hairline than this insidious collagen collapse?
Had it never occurred to him to take even the slightest hint from Cassie’s near-religious devotion to skincare, a regimen that involved a seemingly arcane, ever-expanding and pricey collection of tubes and vials and jars? Did Jeremy think her youthful air and the lovely, unblemished skin he admired even during their more disconnected moments was luck? No, she worked at it, worked at her body, too. Still did yoga, added Pilates and power walking and planks and so many things Jeremy found boring so Cassie never forced him to join but did them anyway. Just like Jeremy never forced Cassie to sit and watch the grim documentaries and austere foreign dramas and those navel-gazing, coming-of-age-at-any-age indie comedies that he had to write about each week. (Being married to Jeremy, she’d learned to like movies more, but not that much more.)
Awhile back, Cassie had stopped reading his reviews in their entirety, if at all, once commenting that she didn’t need to read everything he writes to know he’s a good writer—but don’t take it personally, okay? He didn’t, but he did. But he also let it go because it wasn’t worth getting into with her, even though it was a given that those little articles were like mirrors into his heart and soul, but whatever. And these issues were all symptomatic of that fatal disease in which married people—some, many, too many—take each other for granted and start going through their days like zombies who share a bathroom and a refrigerator and a mortgage but not a whole lot more.
Before Jeremy depressed the complete shit out of himself he started to shave, at which point he considered growing a beard, but then realized that (a) his beard would come in really gray and might make him look older, and that (b) if he did grow it but decided, say, years later, to shave it off, it might be super-shocking to see how many hundreds of lines he’d have accumulated. In the end, he left bad enough alone and put his electric razor to work.
He was interrupted by the plunk of an arriving text. It was his mother, offering Dr. Hockstein’s phone number: “How are you feeling? Call him, honey.” Jeremy, his shoulder opioidally lulled into submission, didn’t feel any great urgency to deal with that right then—and by right then he meant ever. But he finished shaving and called for an appointment, figuring if this Hockstein was that great he’d probably be booked for months, and Jeremy could deal with it then.
“You’re in luck,” announced Hockstein’s peppy scheduler, “the doctor just had a cancellation! Can you be here at 9:15?”
It was already 8:30, but Jeremy did something spontaneous for a change and said “I’ll be there,” grabbing the Times that sat plastic-wrapped on his front stoop and tearing open the Calendar section to see how Lucien and Geneva solved the problem that got him fired.
And there it was, the simple solution that should have been the go-to fix. They ran a review of The Last Worst Day off one of the newswires, a move they sometimes made when there was no Times writer available to cover some random local release. It was an excellent review, better
than Jeremy might have given the film considering his state of mind, and it looked great next to a lengthy phone interview with the documentary’s Toronto-based director. From where Jeremy stood (in his garage now), it was all happily ever after—except, of course, for him.
Did no one believe in second chances? That was a question not only for Lucien but, Jeremy realized, for Cassie as well.
He shot Lucien an email pleading for that second chance, then drove off to see the wonderful wizard of orthopedics.
CHAPTER
8
“So what do you do, Jeremy, aside from wrecking your rotator cuff falling off a kitchen stepladder?” asked Dr. Richard Hockstein, a big, bald, jovial guy with a honking New York accent and signed pictures of pro athletes and TV stars grinning from the walls of his examining room. (Subsequent visits would reveal different celebrity photos in different examining rooms, lest anyone think Hockstein hadn’t treated an impressive enough range of the rich and famous.)
“I’m a writer,” Jeremy answered, straining to make out the actors in those photos; from afar, they all looked like John Stamos—from the first Full House, not the second. Clearly, Hockstein had been setting bones for a while.
“What do you write?” he asked loudly as he studied Jeremy’s CAT scan results on a laptop.
“I’m a journalist, mostly,” said Jeremy. “I review movies for the L.A. Times.” Who knows, maybe it could still be true … he hadn’t heard back yet from Lucien.
The doctor, eyes never leaving his computer screen, asked the inevitable question: “Seen any good movies lately?”
“Yeah, but most of what I review is kind of on the obscure side, things you probably haven’t heard of.”
“Try me.” Hockstein’s gaze shifted from the CAT scan to a paper printout.
He didn’t want to be rude so he did a quick mental scan. “Well, I really liked this Peruvian film called Dreams of Light,” said Jeremy, trying not to sound too hoity-toity but knowing he did. Hazard of the profession.
The Last Birthday Party Page 5