by Sam Lipsyte
“Thanks,” said the attendant.
“Goodbye, Daddy,” said Mandy.
* * *
The tall man was not in cardio ballet the next week. Mandy did not think of him. She kept to her steps and turns, the ones whose flawless demonstration maybe merely mocked the panting people before her. Though she had known some of the women in the class for years, they all seemed a blur now, a slick, jiggling blob. Even as she glided into her Funky Pirouette, she thought, I need a fucking meeting. She’d been skipping them to avoid Craig. But now she decided to forgo her post-class musing-on-the-mats routine, head straight for the Serenity Posse II meeting on Amsterdam.
She shooed all that spandex and sadness out of the studio, switched off the lights, stepped into the corridor.
The tall man stood by the water fountain.
“I just came by to apologize for being a yammering idiot last week.”
“No problem,” said Mandy, “but I really have to go.”
“Oh, okay, sure. My name is Cal, by the way.”
“Mandy. I thought maybe you’d signed up for class.”
“I’m afraid I’m not Jewish.”
“You don’t have to be Jewish to take an aerobics class.”
“Are you sure?”
Mandy thought about it.
“I think anybody can join the JCC.”
“Really?” said the man.
“Why not?” said Mandy. “But what do I know?”
“I guess it would be weird if you weren’t Jewish, though,” the man said.
He wore a scent, something for high school boys.
“Well, then,” said Mandy. “I guess we better sneak you out of here.”
“I thought you were going somewhere.”
“I am.”
* * *
It was just a nice neighborhood bistro and it was just a glass of chardonnay. She wasn’t groping under a baseboard heater for a phantom rock. She wasn’t sucking on a glass stem. Instead, she sipped from a stemmed glass. A slip, sure, her life was an endless slip, but this was civilized. This was civilization. Fuck crack. Fuck everything but chardonnay and Cal’s teeth, his azure—which meant blue, but more intense, according to Tovah—eyes.
Cal lifted his glass.
“Mazel tov,” he said.
“You mean l’chaim.”
“No, mazel tov to you sneaking me out of there.”
“Cheers,” said Mandy.
“Are you Jewish on both sides?” Cal asked.
For a moment she thought he meant both sides of her body.
“Yes,” she said.
“When did they come here?”
“Who?”
“Your people.”
“I don’t know. I think my mother’s grandfather came from Holland or something. My father grew up in Europe. He came here and rode his motorcycle to the county fair. That’s where my parents met. What about you?”
“Did your dad come after the war? Did he … was he part of the Holocaust? I mean, not in a bad way, I mean…”
“Yes, he was.”
“Unbelievable.”
“What?”
“No, just, it’s so amazing he survived.”
“It is.”
“Because—I should just get this out there—I’m absolutely convinced all of that stuff really happened.”
“I’m glad to hear it,” said Mandy. This Cal was an odd bird. “What’s your background?”
“I’m pure American,” said Cal.
“So am I.”
“No, of course you are,” said Cal, studied the label on their wine bottle. Soon, Mandy knew, he would peel it.
“So, you’re, like, a Jewish American.”
“Hey,” said Mandy. “What’s going on?”
“I just like to get to know people.”
“I see. Okay. Where are you from?”
“Oregon, originally.”
“What brought you to New York?”
“A job. Computer stuff. I wanted to relocate. Change my life.”
“I hear you.”
“You don’t like your life?”
“I take it one day at a time.”
“Sounds reasonable,” Cal said. The sopped wine label curled around his thumb. “You want to see a movie?”
“It’s pretty late.”
“Nah, it’s early.”
“I think the show times are over. I go to the movies a lot.”
“We could go to my place,” Cal said. “I have movies. I have a bottle of wine there. You like pinot blanc?”
“I don’t know.”
“Find out,” said Cal.
“Next time,” said Mandy. “I do have to go somewhere now.”
* * *
Mandy ducked into the church basement, found a seat. There was something seriously off about Cal. She could picture him a king in the Middle Ages: Cal the Seriously Off. What a waste of a slip. She didn’t want to be here at the meeting, either, really, but some inner instrument had guided her. She would never call it a higher power. Nor would she ever share with booze in her system. You had to honor the honor code.
Adelaide waved, pointed to a free seat beside her. Mandy shook her off. They all sat in the dark, dilapidated theater built by the church during more enlightened years, when some priest thought a sanitized production of Hair might lead bohemian strays to Christ. Some nights it felt as though the meeting were, in fact, an off-off-Broadway show, feverish, vital, undisciplined. Now the addict audience nodded along with the speaker, and when he’d finished, they took turns from the seats with their woes. Newcomers bemoaned their cravings for powders, begged for release. Old-timers droned on about their sex addictions, their divorces, how fat they’d gotten on red velvet cake.
A familiar voice boomed from the back rows.
“I’m Craig, and I’ve got five weeks clean!”
“Hello, Craig!” answered the room.
“And I plan to make it this time, God willing, one day at a time, but I don’t feel safe right now, in the only place I can ever feel safe, here with my Serenity Posse II posse. Why don’t I feel safe? Let me tell you a little story. Really, it’s more like a fable or a folktale. Once, long ago, this farmer worked his fingers to the bone so his son could learn to be a warlock at the castle. Every day the farmer’s son walked many dangerous miles to the castle for his classes, but one day a beautiful girl stepped out onto the path holding a magic potion. ‘Drink this,’ said the girl, ‘and you will feel so fucking good.’ Now the farmer’s son, truth be told, had dabbled in this kind of potion before, but he knew it was wrong and had sworn off it. This girl, though, she was so sexy, he figured, what the hell? Well, I don’t have to tell you the rest, do I? Except to say that the beautiful girl turned out to be an evil skeezy witch who wanted to gobble up the farmer’s son alive, which made the farmer’s son act out in some emotionally hurtful sexual ways he couldn’t control. The farmer’s son did make amends to everyone involved, except the witch. He can’t talk to the witch, because she’s evil and contagious with spiritual cancer. Yet here she is tonight, the skank, testing me, testing me. You want war, bitch? Let’s do it. Your lame, underdeveloped humanism is no match for my tower of higher power!”
Mandy rose, bolted up the narrow stairs toward the street. She could hear Adelaide scrape across the stone floor in her heels, but Mandy didn’t look back.
She went home to vomit the wine.
* * *
The next night, after class, Cal stood in the corridor. He pointed his chin and she followed him out to the street. It felt like a music video.
Old movie stars stared out over the leatherette couch, the television, a rack of video cassettes, a card table with a few chairs. Mandy didn’t get the old movie thing, but the posters looked classy in their frames. Gold trophies with karate guys obscured the dozen books on a lone shelf.
“Welcome to my humble abode,” Cal said. He laughed, and Mandy decided the word “abode” made it funny.
The wine Cal brought
from the kitchen was cold and a little tart.
“Salud,” Mandy said.
“L’chaim.”
They talked about whether they were hungry and decided to order something later. Cal ripped open a bag of that intelligent popcorn.
“So,” he said. “What do you feel like watching? Something sad, something funny? A drama?”
“How about something romantic?” Mandy said, but Cal pursed his lips in a fretful way, and she regretted it. “Or a thriller!”
“I’ve got something,” he said, tucked a tape into the slot.
Mandy knew what he’d chosen from just a flicker of it. It was black and white, but it wasn’t old. She’d dragged herself to see this film after it won every award. She thought it might help her understand her father, but she’d left the theater after that sexy British actor kept shooting Jews from his balcony.
“I don’t think so, Cal.”
“What?”
“Not this. Let’s watch something else.”
“But this is the most important movie ever made. You can’t even get this at the store. I have a friend who—”
“Please turn it off,” Mandy said.
Cal paused it.
Any excuse could work. She just needed to get her jacket from the chair.
“It’s heavy, I know,” Cal said. “I’ve seen it dozens of times. I always cry.”
“Why?”
“Why? How can you ask that, you of all people?”
“No. Why have you seen it dozens of times?”
“So I can understand,” Cal said.
Now he stood, clenched and unclenched his fists. His arm veins twitched.
“So I can understand and get well,” Cal hissed.
He stared at Mandy, and she tried to get a read, as he might have put it.
Just a beating, or a bonus rape?
But then Cal relaxed, or really kind of deflated. His breathing slowed, and he kneaded his hands.
“Man, I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay.” The jacket would be easy now. But how many bolts were on the door?
“I need to tell you something.”
“No, you don’t,” Mandy said. “It’s all okay.”
“I do,” Cal said. “Because there is something good between us and I don’t want to mess it up.”
“Everything’s fine.”
“Six fucking million,” Cal said. “How can it be fine?”
“Don’t forget the Gypsies,” Mandy said. “Millions of Gypsies. And gay guys. Union guys. Retarded people. Tons were killed.”
“Six million Jews,” Cal said.
“I know all about it. Is that what you wanted to tell me?”
“No,” Cal said, and told her what he wanted to tell her. When he was done, he took off his shirt and showed her the tattoos, the swastikas and iron crosses and even an ingenious Heydrich who sieg heiled when Cal flexed his deltoid.
“But you say you had no choice in prison,” Mandy said. “It was the Brotherhood or get the skiv.”
“The shiv. But no, Mandy. I believed it all. I was hard core. Even before the Brotherhood. That’s how I got to prison. I beat a guy almost to death. I thought he was a Jew. Turned out he was something else. Probably would have hated him anyway. Do you get it?”
“Get what?”
“What I’m trying to do.”
“Not really.”
“I’m confessing my sins. To you. I want to get better.”
“Are you even attracted to me?”
“Not in a healthy sense,” Cal said. “I mean, I definitely went out of my way to find the cutest girl at the JCC.”
“I’d better go.”
“Please, Mandy. Stay.”
“No.”
“I’ve got other movies,” Cal sobbed.
* * *
Home, Mandy found a message on her machine from the nursing facility. It was garbled because every message was garbled on this crappy old machine that Craig had stolen off a homeless guy’s blanket and given to her with great ceremony on her birthday, but she thought she heard the words “mild” and “stroke.” She’d have to wait until morning for a bus.
She called Adelaide.
“I knew you used,” said Adelaide. “I could tell. What happened, honey?”
“I just had some wine.”
“Just some wine? Who are you talking to, Mandy? Do you want to die?”
“Not tonight.”
“Good girl. I’ll have the car pick you up in the morning, take you to the soundstage. I’ve got a read-through, but after that we can hit a meeting. I have to say, I have a crazy week. You picked a fucked time to slip. But I’ve got your back.”
“Thanks, Adelaide.”
“Don’t thank me too much. It’ll go to my head and I might relapse!”
“My father had a stroke.”
“Oh, Jesus, I’m sorry, sweetie.”
“Maybe you could come out to the nursing home with me?”
“The one in New Jersey? Honey, you know I don’t go out there unless somebody has died. Is he going to die?”
“They said mild.”
“Mild is the best. Don’t worry, baby. Call me whenever. I’ll try to call back. No fucking wine, Mandy. Don’t be a victim.”
“Okay.”
“What kind of wine?”
“Chardonnay.”
“I’m not envious at all,” Adelaide said.
Her sponsor hung up before Mandy could tell her about the pinot blanc.
Tovah answered Mandy’s call on the first ring, as though waiting years for this moment.
“Of course I’ll come with you,” she said. “In fact, I have a car.”
“I don’t mean to impose.”
“I would be honored,” Tovah said.
A poem cycle.
Like what some stuck-up clown would ride.
* * *
Tovah’s Subaru had a dead battery. The garage guy offered to jump the car. He popped the hood, and they all leaned in for a better look at the massive corrosion, the split hoses, what the garage guy called a cracked block. Not that Tovah could have known. She never used her car, had loaned it out often over the years.
“I’m still going with you,” she said.
They didn’t speak much during the bus ride. Tovah scribbled in her notebook, and Mandy studied the Hudson River and hated Tovah. They got off at the town plaza and bought some calzone.
When they reached the home, they found Mandy’s father sitting up in his patio chair. Mandy had expected a weirdly folded arm, a contorted jaw, maybe some slobber, but he looked fine. He waved off the food but gestured for Tovah to join him. The attendant Mandy had tipped pulled her into a tiny dispensary to talk.
“So,” Mandy said. “He seems pretty okay. Pretty … mild.”
“The doctor was here this morning. We’re thinking now it wasn’t a stroke at all.”
“That’s great.”
“Yeah, well.”
“Well, what?”
“The doctor noticed some other things. Symptomatic things with the eyes and such. Your father described recent headaches.”
“Headaches?”
“The doctor wants to run some tests.”
“Tests for what?”
The attendant pointed to her temple, shrugged.
“What does that mean?” Mandy asked.
“Nobody knows anything. That’s why we have tests.”
Maybe if Mandy had tipped the attendant more, she would have divulged the ailment that would soon slaughter her father.
The attendant stepped out of the dispensary. Mandy paused before she followed. Craig would have known how to bang those white cabinets open, grab the goodies.
Tovah and Mandy’s father hunched together at the table. Mandy joined them, started to think of something nostalgic and uplifting to say, when she realized she couldn’t understand them at all. They spoke in what sounded like German about something very serious, but also occasionally funny, and frightening and unendurabl
e, judging by Tovah’s face, which every so often froze like the faces of women in silent movies.
“You guys are getting on like gangbusters,” Mandy interrupted. “Tovah, I had no idea you spoke German.”
“It’s Yiddish. My grandmother taught me.”
“What are you guys talking about?”
“The whatchamacallit,” Jacob said.
He stared up at his daughter with that foul gleam. She’d never had a chance, really, could never be the daughter, the destiny you claw through the blood and feces of enslavement, of death, to claim. She consoled herself with something she’d read back in the days she still read about the whatchamacallit by the man who threw himself down the stairs: the good people died. Mostly only assholes made it out. That was how she remembered the passage anyway. That was her read.
“You must know all these stories,” Tovah said.
“Yes, I’m a child of a survivor. A survivor of a survivor.”
Mandy smiled, stood. “I need to check on some things. Are you two okay here for a while?”
“Oh, yes,” said Tovah. “Your father is amazing. I had no idea.”
“Daddy?”
“How’s your mother doing?” he said.
“She’s dead, Dad. Feel free to share your pain about it.”
Jacob’s cheeks drew in.
“You can’t share pain,” he said, put his hand on Tovah’s wrist. “This girl knows that. She’s a poet.”
* * *
It took hours to cross the towns—Nearmont, Eastern Valley, Rodney Heights—that led to Mandy’s old house. All that cardio ballet, and it still wiped her out, though she got her second wind and a floaty feeling in the bargain. Her friends, the endorphins. She wanted to leap off a boat and swim with them.
Now she stood at the end of the driveway on Duffy Lane, a lost pilgrim in front of the pea-green split-level with beige trim. She ached for a certain sensation, a sudden click in the soul’s alignment. Closure, some called it in the meetings. The more churchy addicts referred to forgiveness, but she’d always known what people meant. She’d hungered for it.
Maybe if she just knocked on the door, the family inside would bid her welcome. She’d knock, and when a beautiful Sri Lankan boy answered, she’d lean down and whisper her story.