Happy Family

by Tracy Barone

  Archaeologists were known hoarders of information, so Cheri was grateful to have an ally in Peter. He had been a mentor to Cheri ever since her time in London conducting research for her graduate thesis. He was seventy now but had the enthusiasm of a twelve-year-old boy exploring a pond, pulling out tadpoles. He told her that his counterpart in Iraq, Dr. Irene Benaz, was far behind them in the painstaking first step of identifying and cataloging which tablet fragments among the tens of thousands in the basement of her museum belonged to Tell Muqayyar. Dr. Benaz was short-staffed and sure to be under government scrutiny. Despite the news online, Cheri has not lost all hope that there’s been some progress. In fact, she had gotten a call from Samuelson’s secretary that morning, requesting that Cheri come in to speak to Samuelson later that afternoon. The meeting is in three hours and forty-two minutes—not that she’s counting.

  Summer meant that Cheri had to make arrangements with her mother. A trip with Cici was not what she had in mind. Cici hadn’t left the tristate area since Sol died; she always had excuses, like the annual meeting of the co-op board she’d never once attended or that she has to light the shivah candles. Cheri informed her that she was confusing shivah with Shabbat and neither custom applied to Sol, who was nominally Catholic and had actually started going to church with Cici in his last few years. But Cici insisted she needed to light the shivah candles every Friday and said, “We must remember,” as if Sol’s death should be commemorated like the Holocaust. Cici’s memory had somehow reconstructed Sol as the perfect husband and father. “He worked so hard his whole life for us. He leaves money for the hospital. He leaves money for you to buy a nicer house, not with so many cold drafts to give you the pneumonia. Why you no want this?” Talking to Cici forced Cheri to bite her tongue until it was numb. The irony of Sol having made a considerable fortune, not as a radiologist but as the inventor of an easy-to-swallow coating for pills, called Entercap, may have been lost on Cici, but it certainly wasn’t on Cheri. Sol was honored as a humanitarian for making the world’s medicine go down, but Cheri well knew the price it paid to do so in her family. She had borne the ugly secret she shared with Sol for so long it was a part of her, like a deformed toe she forgot she had until she went to try on someone else’s shoes.

  Unsurprisingly, Cici picks up after the first ring and immediately launches into a play-by-play of a recent trip to Cartier in which a rude saleslady dared to imply that Cici didn’t know the difference between the scintillation and brilliance of a diamond. Cheri gets hit with a wave of guilt. “You need to get out of the apartment to do more than shop,” she says to her mother while she’s refreshing the American Federation of Scientists webpage for the tenth time, seeking further confirmation that Saddam’s WMDs don’t exist to bolster her argument that war can be averted. “What about going to the opera?”

  “There is no opera in the summer, are you thinking I go in the park to hear opera? I am no sitting on the ground.”

  “Then go see Zia Genny for Ferragosto and go to the opera in Milan. You love that. I’ll deal with the tickets—you don’t have to call Rosa; nobody uses travel agents anymore.”

  “How can I be in Lago di Como when I am giving you a birthday party? We can do it at Le Cirque or we open the house in Montclair but I have no redone the gardens and will need to start right now.”

  “Who do you think would come to this party? All the old high school friends I don’t have? You’ll be throwing it for yourself.”

  “Oooffff. You pretend you no care about this birthday, cara, but this is a turning stone and you should have family and friends at your side. Put on a dress and wear some of the jewelry I give you. Would that be so bad?” Even after forty years of failure, her mother still thinks she can mold Cheri in her own glamorous image. “You are smoking still?” Cici accused, clearly picking up on Cheri’s nearly inaudible exhalation. “It bad for making a baby!”

  Cheri is reminded of the birthday parties her mother had given her when she was too young to protest. Cici handed out invitations at the park and the market—wherever she saw a bella ragazza with a bella mamma. All of these strangers would descend on their backyard—which Cici transformed into a fairyland with ponies and ducks and bunnies where the little girls could be festooned in princess costumes. Cheri didn’t want to be a princess; she wanted to be a pirate and wear an eye patch. “Girls can no be the pirate,” her mother insisted, forcing her into a poofy costume. Cheri ran and hid in her room and came out and dressed up only because Cici was so desperately sad, so worried about social failure. Cheri remembers patting her mother’s hair, and how heavy Cici’s head felt against her small chest.

  “I’ll look into a ticket to Italy for you,” she says again, checking her e-mails and finding one from Peter. Given the standoff in Iraq, he says he is going to start photocopying the tablet fragments that he’s cataloged and promises to send a set of copies to Cheri. They both know it’s virtually impossible to assemble this ancient puzzle without having all the pieces, but perhaps they’ll get lucky, stumble across one or two contiguous fragments. “I’ve got to go now, Mother,” Cheri says, cutting off Cici’s birthday blather. “I’ve got a meeting.”

  The nape of Cheri’s neck is damp from her walk across the quad to Samuelson’s office. She thinks that whatever he has to say may be based on Peter’s mentioning that they were scanning their fragments. If this is the case, maybe Samuelson will send her to London this summer to see what Peter has identified so far. While scholars often started transliterating cuneiform texts from photocopies, there was no substitute for spending time with the real thing. Even given the divided and unconquered state of the Tell Muqayyar find, Cheri feels a frisson of excitement picturing herself finally getting her hands on the tablets and actively engaging with Peter. And, although Samuelson’s fifteen minutes late, she has a genuine smile when Dolores says, “Please go on in.”

  “Nice to see you,” Cheri says as he motions for her to sit across from him. “Thank you for reaching out.” She will let him lead; she won’t mention anything about communicating with Peter Martins.

  “I’ve had a complaint,” Samuelson says, peering at her over his reading glasses, then leaning back in his chair and crossing his arms.

  “A complaint. About?”

  “Discrimination. One of your students says that you were biased and it was reflected in his grade.” Cheri’s stomach drops.

  “Biased? Against what? Who is this student?”

  “He claims that your presentation of material and your manner of leading the discussion conflicted with his religious beliefs and when he expressed this, you gave him a lower grade. Apparently he came to you to discuss this several times.”

  “This is the first I’m hearing of it. Nobody came to me. Does this student have a name?”

  “Anthony Richards.”

  It takes Cheri a moment to place Anthony Richards as the kid who insisted prostitution was wrong because the Bible said so. “If I remember correctly, he got a C in the class. If he has an issue with my grading, he should have discussed it with me.”

  “He said he tried to do just that. And according to him it was a C minus.”

  “I can check the grade. He never came to me or tried to discuss anything outside of class. The criteria for grading is clearly laid out in my syllabus, and his work was evaluated in exactly the same way as all the other students’ in the class. Biased about his religion in a course that deals with polytheism? I’d like to speak to him face-to-face. Where does he live? Can he return to campus?”

  “Not appropriate,” Samuelson says, leaning back even farther in his chair and tapping his fat fingertips together like he’s able to gain power from his own superhuman touch.

  “Why not?”

  “We have to tread lightly. Mr. Richards’s father is an alumnus and a significant donor to the university. Any contact at this point would not be advisable. Did you tell him that he should leave your class because he’s Catholic or because he doesn’t share your views on
prostitution?”

  “You can’t be taking this seriously.”

  Samuelson exhales and picks a nonexistent piece of lint off his jacket.

  “The entire point of the class is to look at texts without any contemporary or personal religious points of view—Catholic, Muslim, Jewish. I state that to all students and it’s also in the course description. I would never tell a student to leave my class based on religion or race or gender.”

  “Mr. Richards has stated that he intends to file a written complaint. Given that his family is important to the university, I’m trying to resolve this. Informally.”

  “And that means?”

  “The Richards family is upset. I want to find a solution that will avoid embarrassment for everyone, most of all for you, Professor Matzner. In the event of an official complaint, per university regulations, I will have to appoint an independent review board. Who will then give you a copy of his written complaint and outline the process and materials they need from you.”

  “Fine. I welcome that; anything they need from me, they’ll have.”

  “I’m glad to see you being so cooperative.”

  Samuelson stands up as if to dismiss her but Cheri refuses to go gently: “I hope you realize that this sets a very dangerous precedent, especially where religious studies are concerned. If professors have to walk on eggshells and answer to any student who is dissatisfied with his grade and makes up bogus charges of discrimination, we’ll be unable to teach. I take it this is all you wanted to talk to me about, not further developments with the British?”

  Samuelson meets her gaze. “This is the only development you should be concerned with. Now, I did you the courtesy of informing you of this matter as soon as it came to my attention. And in return, I’d like to ask a courtesy of you.”

  “Yes?”

  “Please take this to heart,” he says. “Did it occur to you that you will be placed on academic suspension if this goes before a review committee? And you know as well as I do that if it comes to that, I’ll have to remove you from the team.”

  “Temporarily. Until I am cleared, which I will be.”

  “My point, Professor Matzner, is that pragmatism, in situations like these, cannot be overrated.”

  Back home, Cheri pulls and yanks on the lawn mower she’s dragged out of the garage, trying to get it started. She managed to still her hands while she was sitting, like a chastised child, across from Samuelson. Now they won’t stop shaking from anger and adrenaline. The lawn mower yowls like a sick cat. As soon as she pulled into the driveway and noticed the weedy, overgrown lawn (yet another task Michael was too busy or too tired to bother with), she thought, Good, a living thing I can raze. If she can get the motor to run for more than ten seconds. She might have been brusque with Richards that day, but extracting You’re a Catholic, get out of my class from that is absurd. She’s had students like Richards before, advocates of creationism who tried to hijack discussions with it’s-the-word-of-God-so-it-has-to-be-true. She steered those students to a theology class or they dropped out on their own, but this little fucker spent the entire semester with her and then had the gall to put her career in jeopardy because he got a C minus. She’d looked up his grades and recalculated his 71.2 percent just to make sure. Pissant motherfucker. Of course his father is a high-profile donor; if that weren’t the case, would Samuelson even be trying to negotiate a peace treaty? Part of her thinks if it didn’t reflect poorly on his department or him, he would have a glint in his eye that this was happening to her.

  “Enough already!” Michael storms down the stairs from his editing bay, yelling. She motions that she can’t hear him over the noise of the lawn mower. “Stop it, you’re fucking up the machine. Stop!”

  “Then call the guy, because this is ridiculous!” she shouts.

  He shuts the lawn mower off. “You’re being totally inconsiderate. If I said I’ll do it, I’ll goddamned do it. Did it occur to you that I’m getting some work done up there?”

  Did it occur to you that you will be placed on academic suspension?

  Samuelson and Michael are the same age; is this a generational style of condescension? A gender issue? She wonders if Samuelson ever employs this sneering tone with Cheri’s male colleagues. She hates dwelling on this line of thought. It taps into her prior experiences of persecution, the constant harassment she survived every day at the Ninth Precinct by pretending it didn’t hurt and humiliate her. Michael stalks off, back up the stairs to the editing bay, and she feels twice stung. Hasn’t she done enough to prove herself worthy? It’s an echo of Sol’s You’re not good enough. Even when her father didn’t say it, he said it. She’s breathing hard and sweating; she puts her trembling hands on her knees. Her body hasn’t felt like her own ever since she started trying to turn herself into a brood hen. Popping hormones instead of lifting weights has made her weak and soft in all the wrong places.

  That’s something she can change.

  Body Shots

  For the past week, since her meeting with Samuelson, Cheri has favored the proletarian gym close to the house over the university facilities where she could run into someone from her department who might have heard of Richards’s complaint. Insular environments breed buzzardlike reactions to the whiff of a comedown and while she hadn’t heard back from Samuelson, she also doesn’t want to be tempted to solicit information. Today, she’s doing intervals of incline push-ups, kettle-bell swing lunges, and two-minute sprints on the rowing machine. Her body is responding, just not as quickly as it used to. Her cardio is lagging, but she’s making progress. She pushes through her last round, panting from the effort.

  Cheri showers quickly and is getting dressed when she glimpses her naked body in the mirror. She catches herself thinking like a cop, noting her distinguishing marks, the things Michael would use to identify her body at the morgue: the mole above her right breast, her tattoos—cherry bomb on her left shoulder, handgun on her hip, tiger crouching his way up her back toward the ouroboros between her wings. For a long time she was “that girl with the tattoos.” Back up and give her room, people. Now her stomach has a slight middle-aged pooch and recently she’d detected a few threads of gray at her temples. But her legs are still long and straight, her face is what a boyfriend in college described as jolie laide, to which she responded, “Fuck you and fuck the French.” But on any given Sunday, depending on the light, the angle, or her mood, her face does veer between ugly and striking. Her features are at odds with one another; near-black hair and white skin, mismatched eyes, small nose that leads to a full, heart-shaped mouth. One benefit of getting older, she thinks, is that she now takes “beautiful-ugly” as a compliment.

  Cheri makes her way out of the locker room. As she’s crossing the main floor of the gym to the front exit, she hears, “Matzner? Cheri Matzner?” A muscle-head guy standing beside a girl running on a treadmill is waving at her. He combs his hand through his hair and checks himself out in a mirror before trotting over. It’s so out of context that it takes a minute for it to click. “It is you!” he says with a smile, then points to his chest. “Bobby Godino, you remember?” Godino, who begged to be in a mounted unit because chicks loved guys on horseback. “Pussy” Godino from the NYPD Sixth Precinct was now a personal trainer? “Yeah, can you believe,” he says, reading her mind. Bobby flexes. “Bod’s looking sweet, right? No shit, Cheri Matzner. I wondered what happened to you; you just disappeared. And bam, all these years later, here you are.”

  “Small world,” Cheri says.

  “So how you doing? I figured you went back to school and stuff.”

  “You called it, Bobby. I’m teaching at the university…and stuff.”

  “Cool. You married? You know, if it weren’t for Eddie I’d have gone for you myself. You always seemed different, and I like a little flavor.” Cheri holds up her left hand; her ring finger sports a gold band.

  “And you?” she asks.

  “Divorced. She got custody of the kid, moved out here—I fol
lowed so I could see my boy. You know, it’s wild running into you like this. It’s like people dying in threes, you know, because I heard from Eddie, out of the blue, what, it had to be before Christmas.”

  “Really,” Cheri says, eyeing the girl on the treadmill eyeing her. “I think someone needs you.”

  “You’re doing great, Sharon. Two more minutes,” he says, checking his watch. “Sheila was friends with my ex, Angela, and when we busted up it was a kind of choose-your-side thing. Eddie checked in on me now and then, but, you know, we were never tight. Sheila’s cooking on their fourth kid. And she’s still on the Job. You knew he married Sheila?” Cheri didn’t. “Eddie’s Secret Service to some muckety-muck at the Pentagon—he’s high up. No shocker there; we all knew Eddie Norris was going places.”

  “Well, I’m glad to hear he’s doing well, and you too…”

  “Yeah, I’m not usually here—it’s only because my client is redoing her home gym—so let me give you my card. In case you want to work out or whatever.”

  Cheri sips a Jameson and Coke at the neighborhood bar where she often grades papers. She hadn’t felt ready to go home to Michael, especially after that random encounter with her past. Cheri hasn’t heard anything about Eddie Norris in years. Of course he married Sheila the cop, a good Catholic bunny, and they have a litter of kids now. He was a cop of the Irish lead-with-your-fists breed, the type who believed real men don’t cry. They retreat under the hoods of cars, speak softly, carry through on wicked practical jokes, drink only Coors, and kill any son of a bitch who tries to mess with their sisters or mothers. Eddie Norris standing in her apartment on East Ninth and Avenue A, naked, his head covered by a dish towel, leaning over a pot of boiling water and Vicks VapoRub. “Id it working yet?” Eddie Norris presenting her with his grandpa’s cocobolo police baton, noting it had met plenty of flesh in its time. She carried it with her every day, out in the war zone and rubble of Alphabet City with its skinheads and squatters, crackheads and dealers with sawed-off shotguns underneath their coats. Venturing into the burned-out labyrinth of booby-trapped tunnels, the shooting galleries with Clean up your blood spray-painted on the walls, knowing anything could come at you at any time, Eddie Norris was the eyes in the back of her head. What fueled them wasn’t the danger of being shot at; it was the heightened sense of being alive that came with hyperawareness. Their world was ultravivid and the high was better than any drug.