The Good Life

by Marian Thurm

  She missed the adventurous sex they’d had together all those years ago, missed being young. She had one small tattoo, and eight holes in her earlobes, but she was forty-two years old and wasn’t her youth way, way behind her? And yet one kiss from Professor Sarno was all she’d needed to remind her that she was still very much alive and kicking.

  She and Dave had yet to speak of that kiss in the couple of months that had passed since then, but it occurred to her now, that if he were to approach her again, at the end of a class when her fellow students were gone from the room, she might very well be tempted to caress the stubble on that bristly face of his. But of course this was pure fantasy and she knew it.

  “I’m cold!” Olivia announced. “Also, I want a snack.”

  “Me too!” Jazzmin said happily.

  Her father, Steve, came to get her hours later, after Stacy had called him twice, fed the children dinner, and put Will to bed.

  “Bet you thought I forgot about my little girl, huh?” he said as he stood in the small foyer and waited for Stacy to help Jazzmin into her down jacket.

  His eyes were still bloodshot, and he still had his flip-flops on, but at least he was wearing a warmer jacket, Stacy observed. She handed Jazzmin her Sleeping Beauty backpack and her shoebox castle, and it was only later, when she went to give Olivia the ballerina doll she’d helped herself to in the laundry room, that she realized it was gone from the bedroom closet where she’d hidden it. Though she hated to think of Jazzmin ransacking the closet and ripping off the doll—only because of what it might have reflected about the little girl’s life and her desperation to improve upon it— the truth was, Stacy was glad it was gone. And relieved that she wouldn’t have to argue with Roger over its secondhand provenance.

  Roger, who, of late, needed to be handled with what her father used to refer to as kid gloves.

  One wrong word, one mistaken look, who knew what it would take? How about a little transcendental meditation to restore clarity to his thinking, to calm his thoughts, and maybe even a little yoga to invigorate that surprisingly lean middle-aged body of his. Speaking of which, she’d have to look at a calendar to remember the last time they’d made love or had sex; frankly, at this point, either one would do just fine.

  S

  Roger and Will are in Stuff-U-Like, a convenience store just a few minutes from his mother’s condo, where they’ve been sent in search of ginger ale and also the kid version of Tums or Mylanta, all for Olivia’s upset stomach. Roger sees a young mother walking by with her small son, a first-grader in a Donald Duck bathing suit just like the one Will is wearing.

  “Are you fucking KIDDING me, Christopher? You don’t know how old you are? Ask me again and I’m going to hurt you,” the woman says to her child, who shrinks back from her and hangs his head.

  Roger puts his hands over Will’s ears.

  “I don’t want to, but I WILL hurt you,” the woman says fiercely, and Roger doesn’t doubt it

  His hands are still covering his son’s ears, though Christopher has been yanked along by his mother and they’re both out of sight now.

  What sort of monster would talk to a child—any child— like that, Roger wonders. He sees that the woman’s cruelty has actually raised a field of goose bumps across his own arms.

  Monster, he says in a whisper.

  ~ 28 ~

  Roger was not a religious man, and might, if pressed, have classified himself as a former agnostic and current atheist, but, even so, he found himself today in Cambria Heights, Queens, visiting the grave of the Rebbe Menachem Schneerson, believed by thousands of fervent followers to be the messiah. Someone who was more than willing to answer your prayers, which you simply had to write down on a sheet of paper, then tear into pieces, and toss into the open-air mausoleum where the Rebbe was buried.

  Clare was on life-support, and there was nothing left to do but pray.

  Telling Stacy that he was taking a subway and a bus to Queens to pray for his sister’s unlikely recovery wasn’t a conversation Roger felt up to having; he’d told her, instead, simply that he was going out for a walk and might not be back for a few hours. In the old days, he would have gotten into his Porsche Carrera and driven out to Queens, but there was no longer a Porsche (or any car at all, for that matter) in his life—the annual seven grand he’d paid the parking garage to keep the car in the city was no longer even a possibility. So he’d sold his $75,000 Arctic Silver Metallic 911 Carrera back to the dealer for $25,000 less than he’d paid for it only a year ago, and had already used the money to pay off some business debt. He missed the Porsche badly, and would have said that he grieved for it, but given his sister’s precarious connection to life, he had no right, he knew, to be grieving for a car, no matter how beautiful, no matter how much color it had added to his existence.

  Clare Clare Clare. She was supposed to be well enough to leave the hospital a couple of weeks after the surgery, a surgery that had lasted a horrifying fifteen hours and change, and was meant to remove the fucking tumor that, as it turned out, no chemo or surgery could possibly kill off. She had been doing well, or so it seemed that first week post-op, but then, just like that, she’d been hit with a cerebral hemorrhage caused by a metastasis to the brain. It was Stacy who’d been the last person to talk to her, Stacy who’d been so pleased to hear how Clare was enjoying those cherry tomatoes and that bottle of Orangina in its pebbled glass that she loved, both of which Nathaniel, sweet kid, had brought her from home for dinner. Then Nathaniel had left because he had a midterm to study for, and so it was Stacy who kept her company over the phone as Clare ate and drank, waiting for Marshall to finish up with his last patients of the day before he came for his nightly visit. But by the time Marshall arrived, Clare, who’d suddenly been stricken with a horrific headache, had already hung up on Stacy. And then, a short while later, slipped into a coma, from which she had not awakened these eight long, long days.

  Staring idly at Stacy’s diamond ring—something he couldn’t bear to sell though certainly he needed to—glittering in the fluorescent light of their elevator the other day, Roger had remembered the jewelry store on Forty-Seventh Street where he’d bought it, and the photograph of the blue-eyed Rebbe taped to the wall. And the jeweler’s promise: He vill help you even from beyond the grave.

  Fine: why not give it a shot? It couldn’t hurt, could it?

  The Rebbe’s twenty-four-hour visitors’ center was a mundane little saltbox of a house just outside the grounds of the cemetery where he was buried. Making his way up the walk that led to it, his prayer for his sister folded into the back pocket of his jeans, Roger saw Orthodox families arriving and departing and hanging around out front, the unsmiling women and little girls in their long skirts, the earnest-looking men and older boys in their black hats and suits, white tzitzits, the knotted ritual fringes, drooping from the waistline of their pants. No one looked particularly happy, not even the smallest of the children, some of whom were as young as Roger’s. No texting on Shabbos, not ever, he heard one teenager say to another. He was astounded to see a pair of tiny, mixed-race boys wearing yarmulkes and speaking Yiddish to their Japanese mother, the father nowhere in sight.

  Inside in the small lobby, there were signs posted in English, Hebrew, and Yiddish that said, “Please turn off your cellular phones,” and a Sony Panasonic flat-screen TV—its frame inexplicably draped in plastic ivy—that played, in a continuous loop, a DVD of the Rebbe giving a speech in Yiddish. On the wall hung a large photograph of the man, one that appeared to be an official portrait; what you saw was an elderly Jewish guy sporting a long white beard and a black felt hat, but you just couldn’t ignore those blue eyes. Roger noticed, as well, the Rebbe’s long fingernails, clearly in need of a trim. He picked up a brochure that reported some impressive stats: seven thousand e-mails and four hundred faxes arrived here daily from people all around the world asking for the Rebbe’s help. With all that competition, Roger wondered gloomily, what were the chances of the Rebbe answeri
ng his particular prayer?

  Walking farther, he entered a large, open room with long, cafeteria-style tables; dozens of people were seated here, some studying prayer books, others talking quietly, or writing notes to the Rebbe on plain white copy paper. Up front was a young receptionist in an ankle-length plaid skirt who was checking her cell phone messages. And in case the faithful were hungry or thirsty, there was a free snack bar offering cookies—chocolate chip and shortbread—and envelopes of Celestial Seasonings tea along with dispensers of milk, soup, cocoa, and decaf. Roger had done his homework, and he knew leather shoes were forbidden when visiting the mausoleum and that he wasn’t permitted to go bareheaded. He’d brought along a Yankees baseball cap and a pair of green flip-flops, the only footwear he had that wasn’t leather. He stuffed his socks in the pockets of his down coat, and left his shoes next to a disorderly pile of black oxfords and sneakers and women’s high heels. Colorful silk scarves were available for women who’d forgotten to wear a hat today.

  He had no idea why, but his hands had suddenly turned sweaty and his heart banged around in his chest as he walked outside and headed toward the mausoleum. There were two entrances, one for women and one for men, and because he hadn’t been paying attention, he nearly went in through the women’s side, but was stopped at the last moment. A young woman, her head wrapped in a woolen shawl, wagged a finger at him just in time.

  The Rebbe’s headstone faced a concrete pool filled nearly to the brim, not with water, but with bits of torn-up paper. Orthodox and Hasidic men and women swayed in prayer, along with a guy in a brimmed cap stamped with the words “Brake Masters: An Honest Brake since 1983.” Roger arranged himself among the men and slipped his prayer from his pocket. He knew the drill: he was supposed to read the prayer aloud before tearing it up, but he felt too self-conscious to utter the words he’d composed on the subway today.

  Dear Rebbe,

  Please save my sister, Clare, daughter of Beverly (my apologies, but I don’t know her Hebrew name). I cannot bear to think of my sister gone from this earth.

  I greatly appreciate your help.

  With gratitude,

  Roger, son of Beverly (who, by the way, has Alzheimer’s, and should be included in this prayer as well, if you find yourself willing and able to cure her dementia)

  p.s. Just between you and me, I’ve never felt so hopeless, so close to giving up on that small flicker of hope I’m still nurturing. And I don’t just mean my sister here, I mean all the rest of it, too . . .

  He folded the small rectangle of notepaper into quarters, and ripped it to pieces, which he flung into the pool. Leaning over the edge, he saw fragments of children’s letters drawn in crayon, adult letters written on graph paper, composition paper, and even tissue paper. He saw notes in English and French, Spanish and Italian, German, Hebrew, and Yiddish, and something that looked like Polish.

  Good luck to all of us poor shmucks, he thought, then made his way into the visitors’ center, retreating backward, one foot behind the other, the customary sign of respect here.

  Later after he rode the bus to the subway, which would soon be approaching his stop on the Upper East Side, he pulled out the brochure he’d taken with him from the visitors’ center and studied some of the frequently asked questions:

  May I pray in English rather than Hebrew?

  May I pray using an app on my iPhone?

  I prayed to lose weight, but why am I still a size 18?

  Well, the Messiah worked in mysterious ways, and, believe it or not, there actually was an app for a Hebrew prayer book. Roger would have loved to have shared this with Clare, who, he was sure, would have gotten a kick out of it. But his sister was deep in a coma and unavailable for conversation of even the lightest sort. He understood that there were people who sat by the bedsides of their comatose loved ones and chattered on and on, because, well, you never knew, did you?

  As Clare’s oncologist said just the other day, when Roger inquired about the infinitesimally small possibility that she would emerge from wherever she’d been hiding, From your lips to God’s ear, sir.

  S

  Even as she holds Olivia’s hair behind her with both hands now while her poor little girl retches over the toilet, Stacy can already envision that moment tomorrow when Olivia will, along with the rest of the family, board their JetBlue flight to JFK. A little weakened, perhaps, and still without much of an appetite, but most likely well enough to return to school on Monday or Tuesday.

  “Better, sweetie pie?” she asks Olivia, and wipes her daughter’s face with a washcloth moistened with warm water. Stacy leads her back to the big bed here in the master bedroom with the en suite bathroom conveniently close. She helps Olivia onto the bed, smoothes the summer blanket around her small shoulders, and says, “You’re going to be fine, sweetie pie, trust me. You’ve just got to get this out of your system.” She thinks it might be those turkey burgers Roger grilled just a few hours ago, though Olivia is the only one who’s sick. Maybe it’s a virus, who knows?

  “I hate throw-up. It’s disgusting,” Olivia says. She closes her eyes. “I mean, it tastes disgusting.”

  “Daddy will be back soon with some ginger ale and medicine for you, okay?”

  “I hate ginger ale,” Olivia says.

  “Just keep those eyes closed, sweetie, and maybe you’ll fall asleep,” Stacy says. “Then when you wake up, you’ll be much better, how does that sound?”

  Olivia doesn’t respond and is already drifting off. Stacy strokes her daughter’s hand; ornamenting her tiny wrist is an elastic bracelet of pastel-colored wooden beads. Stacy raises the little hand to her mouth and kisses it. She will not leave her daughter’s side, though she needs to go back into the bathroom and see what has to be cleaned up in there. She’ll put out fresh towels for herself and Roger for one last shower in the morning before they leave tomorrow . . . She thinks with excitement of the prospect of returning to work sometime in the near future, of making some phone calls Monday morning, sending out some feelers, shooting some e-mails in the right direction. Barbara Armstrong had been promoted to associate head of the nonprofit where they’d worked together, and she’s the first person Stacy will call next week . . . She’s surprised Roger hasn’t made a point of warning her that in this economy, the likelihood of her quickly finding a job is slim to none, especially after a five-year absence from the field. It’s not in her to harbor pessimism, to wallow in it, as she thinks Roger sometimes does. Roger who has been so dreadfully unhappy, so terribly worried about everything and anything. Business, their family’s financial well-being, his sister, his mother . . . all of these, she suspects, are on his mind all day, every day, and who can fault him for that, really?

  When they get back to New York, she hopes, he’ll start seeing Dr. Avalon again, even though he says he’s finished with the guy.

  They can’t afford it, but he can’t afford not to.

  She hears the front door opening, hears the hushed voices of her husband and little boy as they come toward the bedroom now, bearing necessary things from Stuff-U-Like. Olivia, thankfully, is asleep, and Stacy ushers Roger and Will back toward the living room, where she goes through the bag they’ve brought home with them.

  “What’s this?” she says, and pulls out a multicolored business card from the bottom of the plastic bag. Imprinted on the card, against a roiling, powder-blue sea, is Noah’s ark, inhabited by coyly smiling giraffes, pandas, walruses, and tigers. “The Lord is faithful to all his promises,” the card informs her, and when she flips it over, there’s a message on the other side that merely says, “Pass it on!”

  Laughing, Stacy says, “Hey, do you think someone at Stuff-U-Like is trying to tell us something?”

  ~ 29 ~

  Clare had been on life-support for thirteen days now, and after making Stacy promise that she wouldn’t tell Roger, Marshall had confided last week that it was time to let Clare go. He, Nathaniel, Stacy, and Roger were seated now in a short row of comfortable faux-le
ather chairs in the lobby of Sloan Kettering, not far from the gift shop, where the walls were made of glass and you could look inside and take a gander at those upbeat Get Well Soon! balloons and also the collection of stuffed animals, large and small—all of which were meant to console those patients who were recuperating nicely and would be heading home shortly, as well as those who, tragically, would never have that chance.

  The oncologist who came down to the lobby to speak with them was a young woman named Kelsey Whitacre. She had a mouthful of square white teeth lined up like Chiclets, and long, severely straight hair. As the doctor talked to them about Clare’s future, Stacy found herself deliberately ignoring what she could not bear to hear. And thinking, instead, about the oncologist standing before her and whether or not she’d had the Brazilian Blowout to straighten her hair, never mind those carcinogenic formaldehyde fumes that came along with it.

  Dr. Whitacre was telling them now to take their time in deciding whether or not to remove Clare from life-support. She understood, she said, that this was a heartrendingly difficult decision for most of the families who had to make it, and she didn’t want them to feel rushed.