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8:54 p.m.
Paul returns from the store, but instead of joining us in the shiva chairs, he makes his way purposefully through the crowded hallway and disappears up the stairs, ostensibly to check on Alice. “Why is he off the hook?” Phillip grumbles, sounding ten years old. Someone has gotten my mother started on the topic of toilet train
ing, and the room falls silent as she holds forth. She is considered to be an expert on the topic, and the children of her friends still e-mail and call her to ask for guidance as they struggle to train their children. Th ere
is a long and celebrated chapter in Cradle and All in which she basically explains the psychology of crapping. She details the way she trained each of her children, the mistakes she made, and, sparing no scatology, the funny things that happened along the way. Mom draws heavily on her own maternal experience throughout the book, and we are all men
tioned by name. There are two pages on Paul’s undescended testicle, a section on Wendy’s late-blooming breasts, and a full chapter on how Mom finally solved my bed-wetting problem when I was six years old. I used to shoplift copies from our local bookstore and toss them out in the Dumpsters behind the Getty station, in an effort to keep the books out of circulation. I was in the sixth grade when my classmates fi nally discovered the book, and I never heard the end of it. That was the year I learned how to fi ght.
As Mom warms to her topic, she becomes a lecturer again, enunci
ating, gesticulating, and inserting little canned jokes that her friends must have heard a thousand times already but still laugh at because she’s in mourning. So Mom entertains the crowd with all the wisdom she’s gleaned about children and their toilet habits, and it’s so quiet that when another sound intrudes, we all hear it. It’s indiscernible at first, a burst of static and what sounds like a child out of breath, but then Alice’s voice 168
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can be heard loud and clear through Wendy’s baby monitor in the front hall. And what Alice says is this:
Are you hard yet?
There is more panting and a low moan, and then Alice says, Put it in me already.
Then a moment of quiet, followed by Alice’s short, high-pitched moans and Paul’s grunts as they start to go at it. The visitors, all twenty or so of them, sit shell-shocked, their eyes wide, as Mom stops talking and turns toward the monitor.
Harder. Fuck me harder, Alice cries.
Quiet! Paul grunts.
Yes, baby. Come in me. Come now.
“I would not have figured Alice for a talker,” Phillip says. “Nice.”
“I put Serena in there to nap earlier,” Wendy announces to the room.
“I guess I forgot to take the monitor out. My bad.”
Phillip leans back in his chair and grins widely. “Th is probably
shouldn’t be making me as happy as it is.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, people,” Mom says sternly. “It’s just sex. You’ve all had it. A few of you might even have some tonight.”
“I know I will,” Stan says, kicking my leg again. Dirty old man. You could hear a pin drop in the living room. That is, if it weren’t for Paul’s escalating grunts and Alice urging him—Come on, come on!—
over and over again.
“Sexual stamina runs in our family,” Phillip explains to the crowd.
“This could take a while.”
Linda miraculously appears in the hall and unplugs the receiver.
“Sorry about that, everybody.” It’s unclear if she’s apologizing for what they’ve heard or what they’ll now miss.
“Alice is ovulating,” Mom explains.
Some of the women nod with understanding while their husbands grin stupidly and look up at the ceiling. The low buzz of hushed conver
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sations slowly returns, like a machine powering up, but a short while later, Paul comes downstairs to sit in his shiva chair and the visitors fall silent, trying not to stare at him. Trying and failing. He looks around the room quizzically, then down at his shirt. He checks his fly. “What?” he says, looking over at me. “What’s going on?”
Before I can answer, Uncle Stan stands up and begins to clap, his large, gnarled hands coming together with the mild clink of pinky rings, a doddering, bent standing ovation of one.
“Sit down before you fall down, old man,” Mom says. Paul looks around one more time, then shrugs and leans over to me, making a sour face.
“Who farted?” he says.
Chapter 27
9:30 p.m.
Penny shows up as the shiva is winding down for the night. “Hey,”
she says, taking the empty chair in front of my seat. She’s wearing a black sundress and sandals, her skater’s legs crossed tantalizingly at eye level. “I’ve never paid a shiva call before.”
“You’re doing great,” I say.
“Some old perv pinched my butt on the stairs as I was coming in.”
“That’s my uncle Stan. He’s harmless.”
“Tell that to my butt cheek. It’s like he wanted to take a piece with him.”
“Hello, Penny,” Mom says.
“Hi, Mrs. Foxman. I’m so sorry about Mort.”
“Thank you. He was very fond of you.”
“He was such a nice man. We all miss him down at the store.”
“Well, it was very nice of you to come see us.”
“I’m just sorry it’s taken this long. You know we keep the store open until nine in the summer.”
“Penny is the only one Dad trusted to close up and turn on the alarm,” Paul says.
“It’s not exactly rocket science,” Penny says, blushing. Th en, noticing
Wendy, “Oh my God, Wendy! I didn’t recognize you.”
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“That’s because, unlike you, I’ve actually had the decency to age. Look at you. I bet they still card you in bars.”
“Hardly,” Penny says, shifting nervously under Wendy’s unfl inching scrutiny.
“I mean, Jesus,” Wendy says, shaking her head. “What are you, a size two?”
9:50 p.m.
The visitors are all gone, and the house has fallen quiet. Penny and I sit in the dark by the pool’s edge with our feet in the water. The only light comes from two submerged pool lamps, so all we can see is a fi ne mist rising up off the heated water. “So, how are you doing?” she says.
“Fine, I guess. It’s a lot of family time. I think we’re going to need a year off from each other when this is over.”
She nods, tracing little circles in the water with her toes. “I live around the corner from my parents. My mother has macular degenera
tion; she can’t see well enough to drive anymore. So I take her grocery shopping every Tuesday and I have dinner with them every Sunday night.”
“That’s nice, isn’t it?”
She shrugs. “It can be, with the right mix of meds. God, it’s hot out here.”
“Yeah. It’s been like this all week. Muggy as hell.”
“You’d think it would get cooler at night.”
“Yeah. Not lately.”
“Oh God, Judd. Listen to us. We’re talking about the weather. Are we avoiding something, or do we simply have nothing to say to each other?”
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“Conversation was never a problem for us.”
“Well, then, let’s put a moratorium on small talk, okay?”
“Deal.”
“And for God’s sake, let’s get in the water already.” She stands up, and I can’t quite see her eyes, but I know they’re daring me. “Turn around,” she says.
I do, and a few seconds later I hear a light splash as she slides into the water. I turn around and see the dark pile of her dress on the ground. I pull off my polo shirt and
my cargo pants. I hesitate for a moment when it comes to my boxer briefs. To doff or not to doff, that is the ques
tion. How did Penny answer it? In the dim light coming up from the depths of the pool, it’s impossible to say. I slide into the pool with my underpants on. Better safe than sorry.
She holds on to a rung of the ladder while I tread water a foot or so in front of her. After a few moments, my eyes have adjusted enough that I can look into hers. I flash back to Horry and Wendy, looking at each other in this exact spot a few hours ago, this haunted pool that seems to pull dead and buried love to its surface.
“I’ve been thinking about you, Judd.”
“Me too.”
“Do you think you’d like to kiss me now?”
I glide over to her, my hand falling over hers on the ladder rung. Up close, I can make out the tantalizing outline of her breasts, wet and glis
tening, where they disappear into the water. “Listen,” I say, but then, somehow we’re already kissing, deep and slow, our tongues colliding softly, gathering speed. And her taste is exactly as I remember it, brings me back in an instant to those nights of sweaty dry-humping in my basement, and I can feel her nipples hard against my chest, her fi ngers gliding up my back to my neck, pressing against the spot where my spine becomes my skull.
I have kissed no one but Jen in over ten years, and we have not
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kissed like this in a very long time, with gaping mouths and frantic tongues, where kissing is its own kind of sex. I am kissing another woman, and the awareness of these lips opening against mine in wet surrender, these fingers snaking down my chest, these smooth, naked thighs wrapped around my hips, is both exhilarating and surreal. If one woman is willing to kiss me like this, it stands to reason that, in due time, others might be equally willing, and for the first time since I walked in on Jen and Wade, I feel something approaching optimism about my future.
After a while, Penny stops to catch her breath, gasping a little as she turns around to rest her arms against the edge of the pool. I swim up behind her and put my hands on either side of her arms, pressing my chest against her back. She leans her head back to press her cheek against mine. “That was so nice,” she says.
My body falls against hers, and when my erection, straining under
water against my soaked underpants, falls lightly against the curve of her ass, she emits a low groan.
“Listen,” I say. “There’s something I want to tell you.”
“Tell me tomorrow,” she says, pressing herself hard against me. “Just do that now.”
10:25 p.m.
Penny left a little while ago, after kissing me a few more times. Now I’m horny and throbbing and sleep is an impossibility, so, for some twisted reason, I dial Jen’s cell.
“Hello?” Wade’s voice. I should have realized he’d be there. Wade’s not the sort of guy who would pass on the opportunity for some hotel sex. I hang up, wait a minute, and dial again. “Hello?” he says with a little more emphasis, like maybe the mystery caller hadn’t understood him 174
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the first time. It’s Jen’s cell; why the hell is he picking up? I hang up and dial again. This time his voice is thin and clipped. “Judd,” he says. I listen to his breathing for a long moment and then I hang up. On my next call, Jen picks up.
“Hey, Jen.”
“Judd,” she says, probably with a sardonic, knowing nod for Wade’s benefit. I picture them lying in bed, him running his thick fingers up her naked thigh to the curve of her ass as she talks to me, his other hand fondling his thick, semi-erect cock, getting it ready for her. Wade could not get enough pancreatic cancer to satisfy me.
“So, we’re going to be parents.”
“It’s late, Judd. Can we talk tomorrow?”
“Oh, I’m sorry. Am I interrupting something, again?”
“No. I’m just exhausted.”
“Would you have left me?” I say, surprising both of us. “If you hadn’t gotten caught, do you think you would have left me or left him?”
I can hear her breath catch on the phone. “I honestly don’t know,”
she says.
It is one of those questions that can’t possibly have a right answer, but hers still hurts.
“I’m sorry I disturbed you. Go back to sleep.”
“Can we talk tomorrow?”
“Yeah. Maybe. I don’t know.”
“I hope we can.”
“Bye.”
I wait about three minutes and then dial Wade’s cell phone.
“Hello?” he says.
I hang up. It’s a small victory, but you learn to take them where you can get them.
* * *
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Never marry a beautiful woman. Worship them if you must, go to bed with them if you can—by all means, everyone should have carnal knowledge of physical perfection at least once in their life—but when it comes to marriage, it’s a losing proposition. You will never stop feeling like a gatecrasher at your own party. Instead of feeling lucky, you will spend your life on edge, waiting for the other stiletto to fall and punc
ture your heart like a bullet.
11:55 p.m.
I am running through darkened halls. Behind me I hear the jingle of the rottweiler’s tags, the scrabble of his paws on the floor, the low gurgle of his breath as he gains on me. I am sweating and panting, and no mat
ter how hard I try, I can’t seem to pick up any speed. And then I round a corner and my prosthetic leg falls off, clattering woodenly to the ground. I scream as I go down, and even though the dog is not yet upon me, I lurch awake knowing he will be soon.
Chapter 28
Alice Taylor was standing against the wall at Jeremy Borson’s house party, sipping spiked punch from a plastic cup and smiling at something one of her friends was saying. We’d gotten friendly over the last few months; she had started touching my arms when we talked and walking closer to me in the halls, so that our hips occasionally bumped. Just a few days earlier, walking home from school, I had impulsively taken her hand when it grazed mine, and she had squeezed back and we’d stayed like that for the rest of the walk, never mentioning it. For the first time in my high school career, a girlfriend appeared to be within my reach. We’d be meeting tomorrow afternoon at the mall for burgers and a movie, and I fully intended to hold her hand again, maybe even try to kiss her during the movie.
And there she was, at Jeremy Borson’s party, in cutoffs that showed off her smooth, tanned legs and a white V-neck sweater, her wavy brown hair pulled up off her forehead with a headband. Even as she laughed with her friends, I saw her eyes wandering over the rim of her cup to find mine, saw the little surreptitious smiles being aimed at me, the light dancing across the surface of her lip gloss. There was something new in those smiles, something bold and promising, and I began to make my way through the crowd, marshalling my resources and chugging down my spiked punch for courage. Maybe we’d go outside for a little while and I’d kiss her tonight. I was pretty sure she wanted me to.
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The room was hot and throbbing; Tears for Fears blasting on the stereo system, girls dancing awkwardly in the square left by the prudent removal of a coffee table, kids pressed up against each other in the crowded living room, drinks held aloft at high angles to avoid spilling. Here and there couples made out against the walls, although the ones with any class went out to the yard to grope and suck in private. Th ere
were viral whispers of vomit in the powder room, of porno in the base
ment, of controlled substances in the garage. I don’t know exactly what happened. Someone bumped into some
one across the room, maybe clowning around, maybe completely by ac
cident, but we were a roomful of sweating dominoes, knocking one into another, unti
l I was thrown forward into Tony Rusco, who had a beer bottle in his mouth right at that moment. The bottle banged audibly against his teeth, and he spewed his beer all over his shirt. He turned around, wiping his face on his arm, and, with no preamble, kicked me in the balls.
If you have no balls, or have some but have somehow made it through life thus far without ever having injured them, then you’ve missed out on one of the most exquisitely nuanced variations of agony known to man. It is the piano of pain, melody, harmony, bass, and per
cussion all in the same instrument.
First there’s nothing. A surprising amount of nothing actually. No pain at all, just white noise and the shock of having been hit there, in your softest of places. And because the pain has yet to arrive, you dare to hope that it won’t come at all, that the impact was less direct than you first thought. And then it comes, like thunder on the heels of lightning, at fi rst just a faint rumble, a low, steady hum of discomfort. If it were a musical note, it would be one of those bottom bass notes they use in horror films to create an ominous sense of dread, of dark, fanged things hiding, poised to spring. It’s a loaded hum, because you know a note that low only has one direction to go. And as you feel the dull, pulsating 178
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pain emanating from the center of your being, from your core, you think to yourself, I can handle this, this is nothing, I can kick this pain’s ass, and that’s the exact instant that you find yourself suddenly on your knees, doubled over and gasping, with no memory at all of how you got there. And now the pain is everywhere—in your groin, your gut, your kidneys, the tightly flexed muscles of your lower back where you didn’t even think you had muscles. Your body is tensed too hard to breathe right so your lungs are constricted, and you’re drooling because your head is hanging, and your heart can’t pump your rushing blood fast enough, and you can feel yourself teetering, but you have no muscles left to correct with, so you end up collapsing onto your side, your nerves fusing together into knotted coils of anguish, your eyeballs turned up into your skull like you’ve grabbed hold of a live wire in the rain. There’s really nothing else like it.
Rusco didn’t belong at this party. He had graduated two years ago, a small miracle considering the record of suspensions he’d racked up for fighting, drugs, and vandalism. Now he operated a forklift in the ware
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