by Alan Shapiro
She knew he was right. She couldn’t deny it. When it came to Ethan and show business, Curly was always right. There’d be other opportunities. This offer was just a sign of bigger things to come. As Stuart liked to say, the sky’s the limit. Curly was right, and as he went on about what would be best for all of them, they were family, after all, a voice inside her head was singing: it had to be you, it fucking had to be you.
ETHAN WANTED TO go to his friend Finny’s house for a sleepover birthday party. Because of the bed-wetting, he’d never slept over at anyone’s house before and none of his friends had ever slept over at his house. He had gotten good at coming up with excuses—he had a voice lesson, he was performing out of town that night, he wasn’t feeling well—but he was almost fourteen now, and he knew his friends were beginning to wonder. He wanted to give it a try. He wanted to spend the night at Finny’s.
“But Ethan,” Miriam said at dinner a week before the party. “Don’t you think it’s a little risky?”
Curly added, “Jeez, kid, imagine what happens if you have an accident.”
“I won’t have an accident,” Ethan insisted. “I just won’t sleep.”
“Famous last words,” Curly said. “You’d be taking a big chance.”
“Darling,” Miriam said, stroking his cheek, “we just don’t want you to embarrass yourself.”
“It’ll embarrass me if I don’t go. I just want to be normal for a change.”
“You normal, that’s a good one,” Sam said.
“Quiet, Sam,” Miriam said. “This is none of your business.”
“What do you mean none of my business,” he said. “I have a reputation, too, you know. How would it look if everybody knew my big brother wet the bed? My friends will wonder about me, if they don’t already.”
“Sam,” Miriam barked, “not one more word.”
Curly made a fist and waved it, saying, “Bang. Zoom. Straight to the moon.”
“I don’t care who knows,” Ethan said, throwing his napkin down. “I’m sick of this whole thing. I’m sick of singing. I’m sick of Stuart. I’m sick of all of you. I want to go to this party like everybody else.” He pushed away from the table and ran from the room.
Curly thought they ought to let him go. Maybe something like a sleepover with all his friends would be just the thing he needed to get over this problem. Maybe protecting him had only made it worse. Miriam was not so sure. Nothing scared her more than shame and embarrassment. She still hadn’t gotten over last year’s fiasco with Dr. Abdul, the tall turban-headed Brockton hypnotist who, in his ads on television, claimed to be able to cure anyone of any bad habit, or your money back. Satisfaction guaranteed. Ethan hadn’t been in his office more than ten minutes when Abdul came running out to the waiting room in a rage.
“You will pay!” he said. “You will pay me now!”
“Pay you for what?” Miriam asked, standing up. “Is Ethan cured?”
“Cured?” he scoffed. “Look at him!”
Ethan stood in the doorway, yawning, a dark stain in the crotch of his chinos.
“What happened?” Miriam asked.
“I hypnotize your son, he fall asleep and wet my couch, my new couch. And now you will pay for cleaning.”
“Hell I will,” Miriam said. “You knew what the risk was when you put him to sleep.”
“You pay for cleaning or I sue.”
“So sue me!” she said. “I’m not paying one penny for the couch or the cure. Some cure. Ethan, come!”
The laughter of the other patients in the waiting room still burned in her ears.
“I don’t know, Curly,” she said. “I’m so afraid he’ll have an accident, and you know how cruel kids can be.”
“He’s got to face the music sometime. Better now than later.”
So they let him go. And bravely Ethan went.
And it was sometime close to four a.m. when the doorbell rang. Ethan, out of breath, sweaty, in sneakers and damp pajamas, was holding a bundle of wet sheets.
“Oh, Jesus, Ethan,” Miriam said. “Did you run here? Finny lives at least a mile away.”
“I tried to stay awake,” he said.
“Did anybody see you leave?” Miriam asked.
“I don’t think so.”
“Okay,” she said, “let’s wash the sheets and get you cleaned up.”
The sun was just coming up by the time everything was done. Miriam wanted to drive him back to Finny’s but Ethan wouldn’t let her. He was afraid the sound of the engine would wake the kids.
“But I can stop a block away,” she said.
“No,” he said. “Too risky. Better if I just run there.”
“So now it’s too risky?” she said.
He started to cry. “Please, Ma . . .”
“Okay,” she said. “Okay. Run if you want.”
Curly said. “Stop crying, kid. Some day you’ll laugh about this.”
As Ethan ran off carrying the sheets, Miriam said, “He should only live so long.”
He came home later that morning, tired and demoralized. He said he’d gotten back without anyone waking up. He made the bed and got into it, and lay there terrified he’d fall asleep. But he’d run so fast he was drenched in sweat, and the sweat dampened the sheets through his pajamas. When the others woke and saw how wet he was, he said he must have had a fever in the night, but they of course refused to believe him, he must have wet the bed, and so they teased him after all, as if he had. He didn’t want to talk about it anymore. He was too embarrassed.
Miriam hated to see him sad like this; she hated when anything bad happened to her kids. There was nothing she wouldn’t do to spare them pain. And because of that, it really ticked her off that the whole sorry business could have been avoided if he’d only let her drive him back. “So maybe now you’ll listen to us,” she couldn’t keep from saying.
“Lay off, Miriam,” Curly said. “The kid feels bad enough.”
That he did. That he did. If he had only listened to her.
Scene XII
Miriam and Curly were lying in bed, watching a news special on the missile crisis. The State Department spokesman was saying that under no circumstances would America permit offensive weapons to be delivered to Cuba. America demanded that the Soviets cease construction immediately and remove all warheads from Cuban soil. There was talk of a blockade and a quarantine. There were old clips of Khrushchev banging his shoe on his desk at the United Nations. There were clips of the young president in consultation with his aides at the White House. There were clips of mushroom clouds out at sea or over deserts, and experts of all kinds describing in graphic detail which cities would be targeted and what the short- and long-term effects of such a holocaust would be. The doomsday clock would soon be moved closer to midnight, if it wasn’t there already.
Miriam couldn’t bear to watch. She looked at her night table to the right of the television. She looked at the photograph of Miss Julie from Show Boat above the night table mirror, and in the mirror she could see the South Pacific poster on the wall above her bed. And there beside the mirror was her red jewelry box inside of which were some of Bubbie’s old bracelets, a diamond engagement ring that belonged to Bubbie’s mother, which Bubbie had given Miriam when she and Curly had gotten engaged, which Miriam would give to Julie when the right man came along. And there were rings inside the box and pendants that signified some special place or person from her past. There was even a brooch among them that Frankie Kaufman had given her on the occasion of their one-month anniversary of going steady. She looked at her neatly arranged cosmetics—the eyeliner case, the jar of vanishing cream, the little tubes of lipstick—the pictures of her children on the chest of drawers beside the table. She looked at her open, walk-in closet to the left of the bedroom door—the boxes of shoes stacked on the floor beneath the two rows of hanging blouses, sweaters, dresses for any season, some in the far back from her mother’s old shop, some dating back to high school. Oh, she could tell you which store each
dress, each outfit came from, and which ones were gifts, from whom, and on what occasions, so many of them gifts from Curly for her birthday or anniversary, many of them gifts he bought her after some fight or argument as a way of saying sorry, making up. Each one was a reminder, so it seemed just then, of how much he loved her, of how much she meant to him. What was the bedroom, or the house itself, but the story of her life, their life, their day-to-day existence, rooted in a history, for good or ill, unique to her and to her family, defining them all, keeping them all safely who they were—until tonight. Tonight, that history offered no more safety than a piece of tissue, a scrap of gossamer, a dustball to be vaporized to nothing in the first flash of the horrible bomb.
She could hear footsteps overhead and a door close, she could hear water running, the children upstairs getting ready for bed, in the middle of their nightly rituals. There was great comfort in the sound. And there always had been. Some nights, when all the lights were out, she’d sneak upstairs to check on the children, to listen to the slow and steady rhythm of their breathing as they slept. Sometimes she’d hear the boys whispering to each other, giggling over who knew what. Sometimes she’d hear Ethan singing a lullaby softly to himself or to Sam in the darkness. He’d be singing one of the lullabies she used to sing to them when they were little. Why didn’t she still do that? Why the hurry to grow up? Wasn’t it her job to keep them all safe, to help them think, as long as possible, that their lives would just go on like this forever, that nothing could imperil the world they made together?
She realized that she had taken Curly’s hand, or had he taken hers, as aerial photographs of Cuba flashed across the screen. She squeezed it tighter as if to keep herself, the house, and everyone she loved from vanishing before her very eyes.
ONE NIGHT AT bedtime a few weeks later, she found Sam sitting on the porch. It was a chilly clear November night. In only pajamas and slippers, Sam was sitting on the edge of a lounge chair, looking up at the sky.
“Sam,” she said, “what in the world are you doing out here? You want to make yourself sick?”
“Ma,” he said, “do you feel the earth move?”
“Earth move?” she asked, “like when you fall in love?”
“What, are you nuts?” he said. “No, like just move, like around the sun.”
“No, of course not,” she said, laughing. “You can’t feel that.”
“Yeah,” he said, and shivered. “Gravity, right? That’s what Mr. Pincus told us today in Hebrew school. We’re spinning at something like forty thousand miles per hour, but we don’t feel a thing because of gravity.”
She sat down and put her arm around him.
“But what the heck is gravity?” he continued.
“It’s what holds us to the ground,” she said. “But we need to go inside now, honey. You’re shivering.”
“Yeah, yeah, okay, in a second, but, Ma, listen, how could we be moving that fast and not know it. I mean that’s faster than the fastest roller coaster. Why aren’t we screaming?”
“Why is Mr. Pincus talking about gravity in Hebrew school?”
“I don’t know,” Sam said. “We were talking about Adam and Eve and the apple, and he just started talking about outer space.”
“But what does outer space have to do with anything?”
“He just looked really sad,” Sam said. “Well, not sad exactly, or just sad, but also angry too.”
“Angry?” Miriam asked. “At who?”
“God,” Sam said. “He said he didn’t understand what God had in mind with all the suffering he brings us, all the wars and nuclear bombs and death camps. Or why he’d put us in an empty universe surrounded by a vacuum.”
“He shouldn’t be talking to you kids about stuff like that.”
“And you know what?” Sam asked.
“What?”
“He said you were angry, too.”
“Me? What you do mean, me? I’ve never said two words to Mr. Pincus.”
“He said everyone your age is angry and if you weren’t angry, you were stupid.”
“Well,” Miriam said, “I’m not stupid, am I?”
“No,” Sam said, yawning, “but you get angry a lot. At Ethan when he doesn’t practice. At Julie when she doesn’t listen. At me when I wet the bed or cry or ask too many questions.”
“Well, um, sometimes, maybe,” she stammered. “Not a lot. And anyway it’s different.”
“Why?” Sam asked.
“I’m just busy, Sam, I’m not really angry.” And as she said this, she did get angry. She wanted to justify herself, to explain herself. She wanted Sam and everyone, even Curly, even her mother, to understand her, to know how much she loved them, how much she wanted only what was best for them, but it was really hard sometimes, more often than she cared to think, not to get frustrated, especially given how short life was. And, yes, how much suffering there was everywhere. She wasn’t stupid. She knew how bad things could be.
She hugged Sam, who by then was leaning against her. She said, “Darling, don’t forget how much I love you. If I lose my temper, it’s only cause I want you—I want everyone—to be happy. It’s so important to be happy.”
“Like in the song?” he asked.
“What song?”
“ ‘Put on a Happy Face.’ ”
“Yeah, darling, just like in the song.”
“Okay, Ma,” he said as he yawned again. “But who the heck is Mrs. Murphy?”
“Mrs. Murphy?” she asked. She really had to get this child to bed.
“The lady in the psalm,” he said. “You know, Mrs Murphy. Mr. Pincus was talking about her today, too. How in such a crazy world she’s all we really have.”
“What psalm?”
“The twenty-third one,” he said, yawning and stretching.
“There’s no Mrs. Murphy in the twenty-third psalm, or any other psalm. What in the world is Mr. Pincus teaching you kids?”
“Yeah, sure there is, Ma,” he said, half asleep. “You know where it says, ‘Good Mrs. Murphy shall follow me all the days of my life.’ ”
“Oh Sam, sweetheart,” she laughed, “it isn’t ‘Good Mrs. Murphy,’ it’s ‘goodness and mercy’: ‘goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life.’ ”
But Sam was gone by then. She gathered him up in her arms and carried him to bed. She tucked him in as snugly as she could, and lay down next to him and prayed, “Please, God, keep away from my children. You hear me? Keep away.”
Scene XIII
Miriam didn’t trust this Paul kid, not one bit. Oh, he was talented, sure, but there was something about him (she couldn’t put her finger on it) that was up to no good, something underhanded, shady. That eyebrow of his seemed to rise mockingly whenever he looked at her. He’d smile at her but not with any warmth; he smiled too quickly, as if to cover up a scowl or a sneer. Yes, he could really belt out a tune, and with his long frame he tap danced like a young Gene Kelly. Ethan was shorter and stockier, and while his dance technique was flawless, even Miriam could see that he lacked a certain flair or freedom that Paul possessed. Ethan admired Paul. In fact, he seemed to worship him. And Paul played him like a fiddle. In rehearsal, when Stuart wasn’t looking, he’d poke Ethan or say something under his breath that made Ethan laugh, lose his concentration, and forget his steps, while Paul, the little angel, smiling innocently, sailed through the routine. “Ethan,” Stuart would yell, “pay attention, would you—just do it like Paul, for once!” Couldn’t Stuart see that Paul was egging Ethan on? When she’d try to tell him, he would pat her on the back and say, “Now, now, stage mom, a little jealous?”
HER STEPMOTHER CALLED to tell her that her father had “passed away in his sleep.” She had anticipated this moment her whole life, it seemed—rehearsed it, mourned it in advance, composed and recomposed the obituary that described a kind and devoted father, a father who lived for nothing but his only daughter and his grandchildren, a father whom his daughter and grandchildren would never replace or for
get. She had imagined the grief, the fits of sobbing, Curly and the children gathering round her to console her, to console each other, the condolence cards and letters she’d receive from friends of his, who’d want her to know what a wonderful man he had been and how very much he had loved her. But when she heard the words “passed away in his sleep,” it was like she was a little girl again, facing him in the doorway of the old apartment—watching him fumble with some poorly wrapped trinket that he would hand her and then hurry off back into the life she knew next to nothing about. A butcher in the same shop for nearly fifty years, who married the wrong woman when she was just a girl, a child really—and then married the right one, a woman as quiet as he was, as unassuming and nondescript, and together they lived happily or unhappily or, for all she knew, anywhere in between. You could say that for sixty-five years he had passed away in a bed in a small apartment, and now for all eternity he’d pass away in a box in the ground. What surprised her now, as she thought this, was the grief she didn’t feel. She was crying now for the absence of that grief. She was mourning everything between her and her father that had never taken place.
THEN A FEW months later Bubbie died. The president was assassinated. Camelot was gone. And not long after that, her mother took a serious fall and broke her arm. It was clear to everyone she couldn’t do for herself any longer. But who would take her in? Miriam asked her cousins Charlie and Irene, but they declined. What with this and that going on, they couldn’t do it, much as they’d like to; maybe in a year or so, when things ease up, but not now, no, they couldn’t, it wouldn’t be fair to their kids. Besides, they said, your mother’s loaded; she can afford a nursing home. But Miriam wouldn’t dump her mother in a nursing home. Not in this lifetime. In that case, then, they said, being her daughter, you should take her in.
What could she do? She and Curly were barely getting by, even with both of them working; they had no time for the kids, or for each other (not that having time in that department would have made much difference). And despite her mother’s wealth—whatever wealth there was, no one really knew—Miriam was certain she herself would never see a penny of it. Tula would just be one more mouth to feed. And what about the kids, what would it be like for them to have to live with such an old, sick woman, and where would she put her?