The Middlesteins

by Jami Attenberg

  Her roommates were all the same as Robin, more or less. Their names were Jennifer and Julie and Jordan; they were all Jewish, they all had gone to midwestern colleges, and they had all individual secret joint bank accounts with their mothers, who would put a little extra in there every once in a while, so that they could treat themselves to something nice. There was a fifth roommate, who slept in the living room on the couch when she wasn’t sleeping at her girlfriend’s house. She was a brisk girl from Alaska, Teresa, who had grown up in a town of drunks, fighting her way to the middle class while the rest of the roommates did nothing but hover there.

  They all had been brought together by the Teach for America program, and then spread out in terrible high schools across Brooklyn. Not quaint Park Slope Brooklyn, where the pretty people with babies lived, but east of there, on the way to racetracks and airports; on the way, it sometimes felt, to nowhere at all. Robin had not been prepared for any of it. Not even after a lifetime of consuming mass culture that told her how messed up schools in impoverished urban areas could be. Not a film or a song or an episode of Law & Order or a class in college or an orientation program had prepared her for how much one year teaching in a school full of at-risk kids was going to suck. If she was seeking hope and inspiration, or if she was thinking she was going to provide it, she was in the wrong place. She was way out of her league. Everyone knew it. She had no poker face. All day long she flinched.

  She would wake up every morning and wonder if she was doing more harm than good. She spent money out of her own pocket on paper and markers. She tried to innovate: She covered a large empty tin can (last night’s diced tomatoes for the pasta sauce) with paper and named it the “Hear Me Can” and placed it in the front of the classroom. “When you feel like yelling or you’re upset about something, just write it down and put it in there,” she instructed the children. “And I promise you will be heard.”

  After class, she would read the notes. Sometimes it was easy-to-take information.

  Someone stole my pencil.

  I don’t like tests.

  They should have chicken nuggets every day at lunch.

  But more often, the missives were hateful or sad.

  My father called me a faggot last night.

  It’s too loud to sleep in my house.

  I hate you I hate these words I hate everyone.

  But that wasn’t why she left town, at least not in her memory. There had been an actual, concrete turning point, which had happened near the end of the school year. For a week she and her roommates had woken up covered in bites, at first just a few, but then days later, their bodies, their bellies, their legs, their arms, were covered in red, stinging marks. There was no denying it. They had bedbugs. Teresa was the one who had finally recognized what the bites were and what would have to be done about it. They would have to wash all their clothes in hot water. An exterminator would have to be called. “And you can’t do anything but trash those mattresses,” she said. Who had suggested they burn them first? Was it Robin? Would her mind have gone to destruction so quickly? If she wasn’t the one who said it, she was definitely the one who agreed to it right away.

  In an instant, they were all up. They could not live with the bug-infested objects in their lives a moment longer. They kicked their mattresses down the steps. Teresa single-handedly carried the couch herself. They dragged each item through the empty lot, across the gravel, and then to the filthy alley behind their house. Robin ran to the corner deli and bought some lighter fluid. One of the girls had some matches. The other girls picked through the alley for more flammable items: old newspapers, a lampshade, a half dozen dirty pizza-delivery boxes. They all stood there and watched the flames burn the mattresses. Burn those fuckers right up. They all stood there, scratching themselves. Was this what they deserved? They had taught for America.

  Robin examined her mottled arm and said, “Screw this. I’m moving home.”

  “Me too,” said Julie.

  “Me too,” said Jennifer.

  “Me too,” said Jordan.

  “Not me,” said Teresa. “I’m moving in with my girlfriend. New York is awesome.”

  Now Robin lived with just two roommates (one who was never there because she stayed with her boyfriend most of the time in some sort of undercover, “let’s not offend our Catholic parents even though we’re in our late twenties and are clearly not virgins any longer” gesture, and the other who was always there because she had nowhere better to be, much like Robin) in a spacious apartment in Andersonville, just three train stops away from the private school where she had taught history for the last seven years. Her life in Chicago was better in all the ways she had wanted it to be at the time she moved, although she wondered sometimes if she had left too soon, because she knew that she would never go back. This was it, Chicago. The end of the line.

  Because she had a heartsick mother to take care of now.

  And where would she have gone anyway, these past few years? No matter where, she would be living the same life as she had in Chicago. Robin would get up in the morning, sip coffee, do a few stretches, run five miles, shower, moisturize, pluck a stray hair from her chin, put on too much eyeliner, and then, before she left, water some plants she cared little for but kept alive out of habit. Then she would take a train or a bus to a school near enough where she wouldn’t spend her whole life commuting, but far enough that she felt grown up—real adults left their homes and went somewhere to work; this was a problem she had with Daniel and his life and taking him seriously—and while she traveled, she would read whatever post-seventies novel she had secured from the library, and she would smirk at the funny parts but never laugh out loud. At school she would teach a class about the Vietnam War and she would get a little political but nothing too outrageous (she was clearly sympathetic with the protesters, but still, We should always support our troops), then have lunch with the one good friend she had made there—whoever the other caustic young single woman was—and they would sit alone together in the cafeteria and make fun of everyone else, students and teachers alike, while always finding something nice to say about them all in the end. Later she would take the train home, perhaps go grocery shopping, buying environmentally sound and mostly vegetarian food items, which she would cook for herself, eat peacefully, reading her book as she ate, using her index finger to follow along, then greet her roommate with a bright smile as she came into the room but then look down again quickly as if she could not be distracted from that exact emotional moment in the book, which was not really a lie, but was also an excuse to be quiet a little longer, to enjoy one more moment in the day that was hers alone. Because later she would go to a bar, with a man or maybe she would meet a man there, and she would practice being a woman, feel some sort of power, suck just enough energy from the man sitting across from her that she would still feel whole and relevant and sexual, without actually having to do anything, simply show up and be there. No one got hurt. She had no interest in getting hurt ever again, or hurting anyone else ever again. It was only a little conversation. Innocent flirtation. Then she would drink what she needed to knock herself out for the night.

  Robin could live in Denver or San Francisco or Atlanta or Austin, and it wouldn’t matter. She would be doing the same thing wherever she lived. She would never set furniture on fire in an alley again.

  She thought about what it felt like right at the end of her morning run. She always sprinted, and by the time she made it home she was out of breath, and she would hunch over, her hands on her knees, her skin stung with heat. That was her favorite part of the day. That minute she sprinted.

  She bent over on her barstool. Her hair hung down the sides of her face. She waited for the blood to rush to her head. Daniel put his hand on the back of her neck. He did not ask her if she was okay. She liked Daniel. He knew when to keep quiet.

  Finally she raised her head. It wasn’t the same feeling as when she sprinted. There was no faking that feeling.

  Daniel and Ro
bin toasted once again, this time to her parents’ marriage.

  “Truly an inspiration to us all,” said Daniel.

  “That’s mean,” she said.

  “Oh, the surgeries are fine, but the divorce is off-limits? I see you for who you really are now, Robin. A sentimental old fool.”

  She was not sentimental. But she had excess love in her heart now; she knew that was true. She had taken it back from her father. It had not disappeared. But it needed redirection. Robin looked at Daniel and had the meanest thought of her entire life. He’ll do.

  She leaned over the corner of the bar, the edge of it pressing against her gut, and gave Daniel an awkward but not entirely terrible kiss. She sat back down in her seat.

  Daniel said nothing for a minute. His eyes were glassy, and he rubbed his lips together. “We should talk about this first,” said Daniel.

  “This is absolutely the thing we should not talk about,” said Robin. “Do not talk, and do not think. Just do.”

  Together, silently, they left.

  Edie, 202 Pounds

  Everybody was obsessed with Golda Meir in Edie Herzen’s house. Her father, and all his buddies, some from the synagogue, some from the university, a few fresh from Russia whom Edie’s father had adopted into his life because he was always adopting people, spent weekends hunched over the kitchen table talking about her, smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee, picking at the food in front of them, the plates of whitefish and herring, the bagels, the lox, the various spreads of sometimes indeterminate meat. Bright green pickles bursting with vinegar and salt. The cherry pastries covered with half-melted squiggles of frosting.

  Her mother would be slicing tomatoes and onions near the kitchen sink, a cigarette in her mouth, too. She wore her hair high and fluffy and dyed black, and there was always a new gold bracelet dangling around her wrist. She cared less than Edie’s father did about all this, and she almost never went to the synagogue except on High Holidays. When they moved to Skokie ten years before from Hyde Park, they left behind the synagogue that Edie’s mother had grown up with, and suddenly practicing her faith became irrelevant without a personal sense of history attached to it. But she supported her husband and his friends—they could do all the praying on her behalf. She’d make sure they got fed. No one would leave her house hungry. Those poor, wifeless, childless, lonely men.

  The men went from the table to the synagogue and back again, some of them sprawling at night on their living-room couch. Israel was about to get bombed from all sides, and everyone was convinced that if Golda were running the show, and not that weak, stuttering excuse for a man, Eshkol, this would have been taken care of months ago. Edie thought about that T. S. Eliot poem she had been studying in English class: In the room the women come and go, talking of Michelangelo. In her house, it was the men coming and going, and they were always talking about Meir.

  Sometimes her parents argued about how much money they were donating to Israel.

  Edie ate everything the men ate, more than the men ate. They smoked, she ate. They drank coffee, she drank Coca-Cola. At night she ate the leftovers. It didn’t matter, there was always new food coming through the door. She ate on behalf of Golda, recovering from cancer. She ate in tribute to Israel. She ate because she loved to eat. She knew she loved to eat, that her heart and soul felt full when she felt full, and also because she had heard one of her father’s older friends, Abraham, speaking about her to Naumann, blue-eyed, watery-skinned, a drinker, only a few years older than she was, a young man in her house to look at and talk to up close and personal if she chose, which she had not.

  “Big-boned, my ass. That girl just loves to eat,” is what Abraham said.

  So what? That’s what she had to say about that. Even if it had hurt a little bit to hear him say those words, it meant that they were still looking at her.

  As a much younger man, Abraham had escaped serving in the Russian army during the war with Japan by puncturing both of his eardrums. He had worn hearing aids since. All her father’s friends respected him for his subversive behavior, because they all hated Russia (and sometimes America) (but loved Israel) but Edie thought that was the act of an insane man. For the rest of your life to be deaf? She could stop eating (maybe), but he’d never get his hearing back.

  Naumann’s father had known Edie’s father when they were children in Kiev. They had not been close, but her father had a hard time saying no to any of the pleading letters that came his way. Naumann had been staying on the living-room couch off and on for a few months. It was covered in plastic, and she had no idea how he slept on it without sliding off. Abraham would pass out upright on the recliner in the basement. Edie’s mother would cover them both with blankets that were always neatly folded in the morning when Edie would stumble downstairs on her way to school, both men gone to whatever job Edie’s father had secured for them.

  At high school Edie was significantly smarter than most of her classmates. She was going to graduate a year early, and then she was going to graduate in three years from Northwestern, which she would attend for free because her father worked there, and she would do magnificently, and then she would go to law school there, and there she would experience her first academic setback, and Edie would graduate merely in the middle of her class, maybe because her class consisted of an exceptionally bright group of people, maybe because the first year of law school her mother got sick, maybe because the second year of law school her father got sick, maybe because somewhere in the middle of that she met her someday-husband and fell in love, and maybe because there is only so much a woman can handle before she simply collapses.

  But right then she was at the top of her game, her skin plum-tinted, her eyes glittering and dark, her hair soft and dark and curly and long enough to tie in a loose knot at her neck, tiny sprays of it fluttering out around her cheeks and jaw. She felt sharp and prestigious, and she had an understanding that she could do anything she wanted in the world, and that no one truly had the power at that moment in time to oppress her except for herself.

  Big Edie Herzen.

  “But there’s something about a big girl, it’s true. Even the really big ones,” said Abraham.

  “This is what I am trying to say,” said Naumann. Edie didn’t even know his first name.

  Naumann, on the couch. Abraham in the basement. Her parents upstairs in bed.

  Edie had only begun to engage in her flirtation with eating late at night. All day long it was this and that about Meir and Israel. Her father had smoked an entire pack of Pall Malls and had forgotten to eat. He was always so skinny. There were leftovers. There was half a loaf of rye bread, and there were so many delicious things to put between two slices of rye bread. Just sitting in the refrigerator, in the kitchen, past the living room.

  She tiptoed downstairs, carpeting to tile to linoleum. The stench of cigarettes did not deter her from her goal. She would always think of cigarettes when she sat to eat. A lifetime of hating and loving a smell.

  She did not even have to look around to know that it was Naumann who had lit up behind her and was now seated at the kitchen table. Edie had his number before he even opened his mouth. She could have touched him months ago. She could have run her finger along his swollen lips. Other girls did things like that all the time, and it was no big deal. Half her class had turned into hippies overnight. Her parents still loved each other, and held hands at the dinner table, and kissed each other good morning, good evening, and good night. There was nothing wrong with wanting another person, if it was the right person. But she had sized him up and given him a failing grade.

  How could Naumann know this? He was too concerned with her size, what her ass would feel like if he squished each cheek between his hands, what her breasts would feel like if he put his face between them and pushed them up against his cheeks. What it would feel like to be with a girl he didn’t have to pay for. He was also concerned with vodka. He was barely concerned with his job.

  That spring, Edie’s mother
had hired someone to cut the bushes on the front lawn in unusual shapes, and through the side window Edie could see a dark green spiral in the moonlight. Coleslaw and roast beef between two slices of rye bread. She sat down at the table with Naumann and began to eat. He lit another cigarette. She felt fearless.

  There was something about a big girl, after all.

  “You are always so hungry,” said Naumann, bitter but hopeful, lost in America, sleeping on a plastic-covered couch, waking up every night, without fail, on the living-room floor, grateful that at least the fall was carpeted. “You always have to have some food in your mouth.”

  Don’t say it, thought Edie.

  Edie’s father had gotten Naumann a job cleaning the bathrooms at a high school in Winnetka. That meant he was a high-school janitor.

  She took another bite. The coleslaw was creamy and tart.

  Naumann inhaled deeply and drunkenly and then blew the smoke out his nose.

  She could tell that he had no self-control. Neither did she in a lot of ways. She was sympathetic. But still. Don’t say it.

  “Maybe you need something else in your mouth,” he said.

  “Like I would screw someone who cleans toilets for a living,” she said.

  “You would be so lucky,” he said. “Whore.”

  She finished her sandwich; she took her time, because she was hungry, and because it filled her up, and because she was in her house, in her kitchen, and she was a queen, and because women could rule the world with their iron fists. Then, when she was done with her sandwich, she let out a loud scream that surprised even her with its girlishness, and which woke her mother, and her father, and half the block, lights flinging on in bedrooms and living rooms, everyone stirred, everyone worried, everyone but Abraham, who slept through all the ruckus because he had taken his hearing aids out for the night. She felt not an ounce of regret. As far as she could tell, no great tragedy had occurred.