A Brilliant Novel in the Works

by Yuvi Zalkow

  When my father squatted, when he touched his finger to the water, he saw things. “Look out there,” he once said to me. “An ant has fallen off the tree.” It took some time, but I saw the thing struggling on the surface of the water as the water sent him downstream. “The fish will get to him in no time,” my father said.

  #

  I stepped into the water, not thinking that I was wearing my best pair of shoes until it was too late.

  Julia stood on the bank of the river, right on the root of a tree, her hand against it like she didn’t know how to stand up otherwise. This wasn’t her part of the world. “I’ll be right here, honey,” she said, her voice a touch too quiet.

  Shmen, on other the hand, fell into the water right beside me as if he had been pushed. The water at this point was still fairly shallow, only two feet deep, but deep enough so that his whole body went under.

  I didn’t try to save him from the fall. I was focused on the box in my hands.

  He let out a yell from all the coldness in his bones. And after shaking off, he said, “I’m good. I’m cool. I’m fine. We’re cool.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said to him, as if responsible for his fall. “I should do this last thing alone.”

  “Yeah, brother,” he said, “perhaps you should.” He reached out a wet hand and put it on my shoulder. His hand was cold from the water and hot underneath the cold.

  I looked back at Julia and smiled.

  The box in my hands was just a small pine box no bigger than a loaf of bread. But I felt that I would drop it at any moment if I didn’t direct all my attention to keeping it secure. I knew where I wanted to go.

  I walked to that same bend in the river where he once apologized for hitting me with a belt. It wasn’t long before I saw that rock. The one that looked like a grand piano. The one that stood above what he called Piano Pond. He once told me that the trout in Piano Pond loved one of his homemade flies. “I call it a Shmendrick bug,” he said to me. “You should see it sometime. It’s a beauty.”

  I climbed up on the rock. It was higher than I’d imagined it would be, and when I stood on it, I could see Julia and Shmen in the distance. They waved at me, but I didn’t want to drop the box.

  The water was muddy from all the construction upstream. A hard rain wasn’t supposed to do this. That is what my dad taught me. “Nature wouldn’t do it this way.”

  I squinted through the muddiness, watching closely for movement. I could make out two trout swimming down there.

  I knew I would miss the old man who took me out to this river and showed me about ants and wooly buggers and Shmendrick bugs, but I didn’t realize that I would miss the man with the belt and the angry eyes just as much. And I didn’t realize that holding my father’s ashes would somehow feel like a favor for my mother as well—a woman who didn’t believe in cremation and wrote poetry from the grave.

  There was a noise in the distance, someone calling out. Maybe Julia and Shmen, but I didn’t look at them.

  #

  Afterward, on the flight home, I paid more attention to them. I was extra aware of how they each behaved. How Julia squeezed my hand, how she let us be so quiet together, how in her eyes were the thoughts of her own mother and father. And how Shmen handled the situation differently.

  “It was the right way,” Shmen said to me. He said it with a lightness in his voice. He could’ve been talking about a turn we had taken on the freeway.

  I didn’t say anything. I wasn’t in the mood for social etiquette.

  “The only way to die,” he said, “is the way you live. At least the way you live at your best. None of this hospital horseshit.”

  Shmen had good intentions but I still didn’t like how lightly he was talking about it. I knew he had been through some tricky times with all his surgeries and sickness but I wasn’t ready to take in any life-and-death wisdom. I wanted him to talk about the hot stewardess or the number of peanuts in the complementary snack pack, not about my father dead in a river.

  “And you did good,” he said. “With his ashes there. He would’ve been proud.”

  I noticed on Shmen’s cocktail napkin he had written something.

  “What are you writing?” I asked.

  “Oh, nothing,” he said to me. He tried to cover it up, but I still saw what he’d written. He was always good with words, much quicker than I was.

  ODE TO FATHER / EARTH FED TOO

  #

  Back at the river, back on that piano-shaped rock, the box was hot in my hands. I opened it carefully. When I pulled the top off, I heard the sound of air being sucked into the box. Everything my father had been was now just a few pounds of dust in a box. My eyes burned from trying so hard to look. I took the box and sprinkled the ashes into the water. One pinch at a time until all of my father was gone. The dust glistened as it fell.

  It took a long time for the ashes to reach the water. And when they did, those trout came up to the surface. They inspected the ashes carefully, and then they began to nibble.

  Chapter Forty-two

  Peek Soul

  Shmen tells us that the reason he brought us leek soup is because it’s the anagram for “peek soul.” He also tells us it’s healthy. It’s a popular recipe. It’s all the rage. I’d never imagined raging leeks before. But he doesn’t eat a thing. His eyes are bloodshot and his face almost seems yellow. Like the raging leek soup had already leaked into his face.

  “Why aren’t you eating?” Julia says, which is a secret code for saying, Why are you drinking?

  “Oh,” Shmen says. He waves his hand in the air, does some odd spiraling gesture. “I ate back at the office.”

  This line is so broken that Julia doesn’t even begin to dissect it. She closes her eyes and breathes. I wish I could down a few drinks to tolerate the meal. Instead of drinking alcohol, I stand up, kiss my wife on the head. And then I go to the bathroom.

  I don’t even crave cutting myself, I just want to sit on the toilet and wait for all of this to pass. But I know it won’t. I’ll have to do something to make it better. So I flush the toilet to make it seem like something has happened here.

  When I come back out, Julia’s full bowl of soup is sitting in the kitchen sink and she is back at her seat.

  “How many times have we talked about this?” she says to Shmen. She is gripping her spoon and shaking it at her brother. It’s the kind of thing they probably tell you not to do when counseling someone with a problem.

  “You’ve said it quite a lot,” he says as if he isn’t being threatened by a spoon. “But life,” he says, “is a lot like a horse with a big uncontrollable dick.”

  To laugh was not the right thing to do. I know I shouldn’t have laughed.

  Julia puts her hand on her belly at this moment. And then she says, “I’m sorry.” And she walks right out of the kitchen.

  #

  Shmen and I sit there in the kitchen for a few minutes. I spend the time trying to come up with an angle. Some approach to the situation. Some graceful entry. I think of all the techniques Julia has told me about when she talks to her patients. But I come up with nothing. I use the approach of having no approach.

  “So is it as bad as it looks?” I ask him.

  “Yeah,” he says. He nods, but his head doesn’t move as much as a proper nod requires. “Probably worse than it looks. Did you know that I’m blind in one eye? Can you tell that I can barely turn my body? Can you see that it is hard to breathe because my ribs won’t expand?”

  “Holy fuck,” I say.

  “It’s okay,” he says. “The alcohol makes it hurt less.”

  “What about a doctor? There must be a treatment.”

  “I’m done with those guys,” he tells me. “I’m off the grid and going further.”

  I turn this over a few times. I don’t get the grid metaphor but what I get is that my brother-in-law is done with trying to find remedies for his esoteric diseases.

  And then something happens that I don’t expect. He asks me
a question. He lets me in further. “Brother,” he says, “will you skidoo me a favor?”

  “Yes,” I say, almost before he finishes asking.

  “I don’t want to go with a fused spine or pulmonary fibrosis or lung disease or by drinking myself stupid. I want to go with a wooly bugger in my fist.”

  Chapter Forty-three

  Save Me, Julia

  It’s late. Julia and I are lying in bed. We’ve spent an hour talking about Shmen. She’s been crying. “I should be better at this,” she says. “I see this kind of thing every day. But it’s like I’ve learned nothing that helps with my own brother.”

  “It’s always different with family,” I say. And I know it’s a dumb thing to say, but it’s a true dumb thing.

  I put my hand on Julia’s belly. She flinches when I touch her. Usually, she’s not into me touching her like that. But after the initial jump, she lets my hand rest there.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” I say.

  She doesn’t answer for long enough that I wonder if she heard me. And then: “It’s too soon,” she says. “Seven weeks in. Anything can happen from here.” She breathes a few times and her belly goes up and down. “And I was scared to tell you. I don’t know if you’re ready. I don’t know if we’re re ady.”

  “I don’t know either,” I say. “But I think it’s a bad idea to wait until a man like me is ready.”

  I wouldn’t have noticed the laugh without my hand on her diaphragm.

  “In any case,” I say, “I’m glad to not be ready with you.”

  “Thank you,” she says.

  I sit up and look down at my wife.

  “What is it?” she says.

  “Do you buy into this crazy shtuyot that we should look out for the people we love? Even if it’s heartbreaking for us to do what we think is right?” I make it sound like a trick question, which it obviously is. It’s actually such a dumb trick question that it might even be tricky.

  I reach down to her belly. I rub her belly around in a circle like I’m looking for answers in there.

  “Yes,” my wife says. “I buy it.”

  She’s getting concerned. I can tell. Even in the dark I see her eyebrows go all wiggly.

  I kiss my wife on the lips. It’s a good, arrogant, passionate kiss. I taste the leek soup and the toothpaste and some mysterious strawberry flavor.

  And then I get up. I leave that warm, maybe-with-a-baby body of hers.

  “I’ll be right back,” I say.

  “Where you going?”

  “To close off some loose ends,” I say, and walk out of the room like I know what I’m doing. I step into the living room and look at the mess of papers on the clotheslines and on the floor. But I don’t scrutinize the pages. I grab a napkin and a pen from a drawer in my desk and stick them in my pocket. I also grab the pack of cigarettes and the lighter, both stashed in the back of another drawer.

  I light a cigarette and then walk outside, careful to open and close the door quietly.

  Chapter Forty-four

  A Banished Typo

  “Thanks for sticking around,” I say to Shmen. He is waiting on the sidewalk by our house.

  “Took you long enough,” he says. “I worried that you were waiting for the messiah to arrive.”

  I point the pack of cigarettes in his direction and he shakes his head.

  “No thanks,” he says. “Those things will kill you.”

  “I know.”

  “You’ll be a fabulous father,” he says. He gives me a thumbs-up and a wink. It’s an odd gesture that would look insincere coming from anyone else, and maybe it’s because of the odd state he is in, but it’s so sweet that it momentarily alleviates my terror of parenting.

  “How did you know?”

  “I know things,” he says. He looks past me, as if he expected me to bring a group of people. “So how does this go exactly?”

  I sit down on the curb, spit out the disgusting cigarette, and put my face in my hands. “This is wrong,” I say.

  “It’s the right way.” Shmen pats me on the head. “You know it.”

  I stand up and grab my brother-in-law. I hug him. He is thicker and more muscular than I expected. I don’t think I’ve ever felt closer to anyone. He grabs me so tightly that it makes it hard to breathe.

  When he pulls out of the hug, he says, “Do you have all the details worked out for Maddy and Ally?”

  “Yes,” I say, giving myself a moment of peace while thinking about Maddy. “They’ll be millionaires from this.”

  “Good,” he says. “So what did you bring with you? A gun? A knife? An axe? A rectal probe? A bomb?”

  I reach into my pockets and grab the napkin and the pen and hand them to him. “Make it good,” I say.

  My brother-in-law smiles with even his ears rising from the way it pleases him. I’ll never forget that look. “Brilliant,” he says.

  He sits on the curb and writes something on the napkin and hands it back to me. It says: a banished typo.

  “What the hell does this mean?”

  “You’ll figure it out,” he says. And he kisses me on the lips. His lips are warm and taste like vodka and tangerines.

  The ground starts to shake. A rumbling builds in the distance.

  Shmen runs out into the street. He runs so easily, his joints as limber as ever, all of his diseases momentarily gone. He stands in the middle of the street. He shakes both his hands quickly as he prepares himself. I hear him repeating the phrase “A banished typo” over and over again.

  He gives me one last look.

  Winks, even.

  I say, “Stop!” But it’s only a whisper. And of course my one powerless little word can’t save him.

  A dozen pianos—Steinway grands, this time—race down the street. Shmen looks them straight on, without a hint of fear. The brass wheels of the pianos squeal against the asphalt as they get close to him, like they are trying to stop. But it’s too late.

  And then a dozen 750-pound pianos hit my brother, one after another, each exploding into its 12,000 pieces as it hits him. He stands there, solid, like a stone wall. And the piano pieces, the thick mahogany legs, the flailing steel strings, the felt-covered hammers, the brass pedals, the enormous lids, the drizzle of black and white keys, the whole musical disaster flies up in the air and hangs up there with a kind of silence, until all the pieces crash to the ground with a beautiful, horrible noise. When the last of the pieces falls to the earth, my brother falls too. He falls like all the bones inside of him have been sucked out.

  Piles of piano pieces all around. Not a drop of blood coming from his body. He never was a bleeder.

  #

  I sit next to my brother amidst the mess of pianos in the middle of the street, holding his hand, which has grown cold by the time the ambulance arrives.

  I honestly don’t know how any of us will make it through a world without Shmen. He was the strongest one.

  But also, all my terrors seem a bit pointless now. They’re still there. But they just don’t have the same power. I have to take care of more serious matters. For Maddy, and Ally, and for Julia, and that maybe kid that I’m maybe going to have.

  I let go of Shmen’s hand and stand up to greet the man who has just jumped from the ambulance. I lick my lips and taste the vodka tangerine flavor of Shmen’s kiss.

  The emergency men don’t ask me much. They know what’s happened here. It’s the same old story. So they focus on Shmen and his body. And I watch them carefully: even after they know it’s hopeless, they do everything in their power to save him.

  #

  When I finally climb into bed, it’s almost morning, and Julia is asleep, curled up in the opposite direction. I don’t bother taking off my clothes. I pull the napkin message out of my pocket and look at it for a few more seconds. I miss Shmen terribly but I also know it’s too soon to feel the real ache. The earth is still shaking. I place the napkin on the nightstand and then curl up around my wife. I put my arm around her.

>   And that’s when I realize that she is crying so hard that the entire bed is bouncing from her sobs. I squeeze her tight and she keeps crying and we grieve together in the dark.

  #

  When I wake up the next morning, the sun is shockingly bright and my wife is no longer in the bed. I get this sudden relief that maybe it was all a dream.

  But then I see that fucking napkin on the nightstand.

  The napkin is marked up, covered in my wife’s notes. She has scribbled all over the thing and it takes me a while to realize that she has solved Shmendrick’s anagram.

  A BANISHED TYPO — DEATH BY PIANOS

  I stand up quickly. There’s so much that needs to be done.

  Good thing I kept my pants on.