“It was a sugary little slice of heaven,” she’ll tell Flora when she stops by to check on her.
She’ll sit there for thirty minutes (although it will seem to her more like thirty seconds), until the clock reads 7:55, before digging into her purse to pay the bill. She’ll count out her dollars and cents several times, making sure to leave Flora a full twenty percent instead of the usual fifteen, as Flora has wrapped her bagel and herring to go so nicely.
And off Estelle Melman will go—purse and doggie bag in one hand, car keys in the other, holding her head, the script will set forth, like a woman who, despite her age, feels for the first time like an independent woman of the world.
As the glass door to the Bagel Bar slams behind her, the camera will fade from Estelle and open on the doors of the rental car slamming shut in the parking garage as Slip and Rachel emerge, having had no luck finding Estelle.
Slip will swear as he walks his straight-backed walk, with Rachel running to keep up with him, to the elevator.
“I’m sure by the time we get back upstairs, Grandma will be there,” she’ll holler in his wake.
Unfortunately, when they swing open the door to Apartment 1812, they’ll find only Marcy and me amid all the white plastic Rascal House doggie bags (forty-six to be exact) that Estelle has stashed in the freezer. The bags will be lined up from one end of the apartment to the other, as if we’re looking to head off a great flood.
“What the hell’s going on in here?” Slip will bark.
This type of mess was not the sort that would normally have gotten Slip’s goat, so I knew right away that they’d returned empty-handed.
“We were hungry,” Marcy will answer.
I will laugh, because this was the truth, as silly as it sounded. We’d been searching for breakfast, opened the freezer for a roll, a bag fell out, and an idea to defrost the bread and have a bake sale at the pool was born. To this day, I stand behind the business concept; I’m certain that the novelty of it, combined with a captive pool deck market, would have offset need. (The same goods stocked most everyone’s freezers.) We’d have turned a profit. We might even have covered the cost of the Adidas I was still hopeful I’d be getting that day.
“Your mother and father still ain’t back?” Slip will ask, throwing the rental car keys across the kitchen counter.
“It sure doesn’t look like it,” Rachel will comment, staring at the mess.
Slip will order Marcy to open a bag of rolls. “One bag,” he’ll emphasize. “And toast enough stuff for the four of us.” He’ll start poking his head around the apartment. “So, no word from your grandma?”
Having been certain that Slip would return with Estelle in tow and having never seen him off-kilter, Marcy and I will shake our heads no without daring to look at him. Without a word, I will cram the bags back into the freezer, realizing as I reload that the bread sale, the counting of inventory specifically, was a fantastic distraction from the issue at hand. As bad as I am at letting things go in one ear and out the other, I am (and apparently always was) quite good at taking my eye off the ball.
For example, since Laurel set out her three-pronged plan, all I’d done was parse out each of her less-than-ideal traits and tendencies like bags of frozen bread: her messy apartment, her habit of chewing with her mouth open, her inability to drive, her desire for a Vera Wang dress. Rachel told me I was just distracting myself from the real issue of whether I loved her enough to trade in the Cadillac for her. “Don’t worry,” I told her. “I’m aware. I’m in full recognition of my nitpicking, and I’m doing it anyway.”
“Don’t worry,” is what my grandfather will tell Marcy as she presses her face against the window of the toaster oven, waiting both for the bread to cool and for Estelle to come home. She’ll shove a fifth bagel in the toaster for Estelle. “In case she walks in while we’re eating,” she’ll explain, “it would be nice if we had one for her.”
Even Rachel, who normally would have called Marcy’s idea stupid, will nod in support of the extra bagel. We were all on guard, aware that we were alone with the man known as a loose cannon.
Slip will shake his head in frustration. “Move away from there,” he’ll tell Marcy as he pushes his way in front of the toaster oven. He’ll order Rachel to get plates and silverware. He’ll direct me to get peanut butter and jelly. “Have a seat. I’m going to tell you people something.” He’ll drop two handfuls of hot bread into the middle of the kitchen table, wait a few seconds for the bread and the kids to settle, and then say, “Are you ready?”
We’ll nod our heads and stare. To the best of my ten-year-old recollection, we had never before heard a speech from Slip.
He’ll begin with, “You may not realize this, but you guys are babies. You ain’t seen nothing.” If the movie director needs a visual, he can go with mounds of peanut butter piling on top of Slip’s bagel as he spoke. Slip never bothered to slice. Instead, he tore his bagel into pieces. Condiments went on top, on a piece-by-piece basis.
“Me,” he’ll continue, “I was born before the Cadillac was even invented. And sure, I can’t do fancy dives anymore like you people can, and sometimes it seems like I don’t know my ass from my elbow, but lots of wild things have happened to me in all my years of living. Things way nuttier than an old lady taking the car without permission.” He’ll stop to hold up the jar of peanut butter, a last-call signal. When none of us budge, he’ll screw the top back in place, shove it into the middle of the table, and motion with his finger for me to pass him the jelly, which he will scoop onto his next piece of bread.
He will go on to laundry-list the highlights of his life, which were actually a series of low notes in the Melman family history that, whether from Estelle or my father, we’d all heard about before. Big-ticket items like the Depression, World War II, colon cancer, and his favorite, a brief stint behind bars for bookmaking. “Some pretty nasty stuff,” he’ll say, “and yet here I am, enjoying a fine breakfast with my three grandchildren, not much the worse for the wear.” He’ll smile and lick his knife. “Want to know the secret to survival?”
We will all nod yes.
“Two words,” he’ll tell us. “Two itty-bitty words that, if you’re smart, and I know you are, you’ll stick someplace where you won’t forget ’em.”
We’ll keep nodding.
“Two words,” he’ll announce, holding up two fingers. “Stay cool.” He’ll repeat the phrase about five times, then tell us that my mother and father don’t know this secret, they’re panickers. He’ll make a spitting noise, as if to pooh-pooh panicking. “No sense in worrying. You got no control over how things are gonna play out in life so you gotta learn to fuck it all. Kick back and wait for the situation to come to you. After you’re dealt the cards, that’s when you react. Chasing all over Miami Beach looking for your grandma like a penny in the sand—that ain’t reacting to the cards. It was a stupid goddamn idea.” He’ll pick up the lone bagel in the middle of the table. “Don’t toast the bagel ’til Estelle comes home hungry. That’s the moral of the story, the lesson for the day. You got it?”
We’ll nod, whether we got it or not.
“Well what should we do with Grandma’s bagel?” Marcy will ask.
“I don’t give a shit,” Slip will answer. He’ll toss the extra bagel onto the counter behind us. “Class dismissed.”
CHAPTER 17:
Moments of Truth
Marcy thought Laurel’s suggestion to get rid of the Cadillac was a reasonable one. From the speed of her response after I relayed my dilemma, I got a hunch that losing the car was her idea altogether.
“Trade the car for a family and then you can drive my minivan,” she said. “Somebody ought to.”
Whether the idea was hers or Laurel’s, for certain a conspiracy was afoot.
The scheming did not, however, go all the way to the top. Rachel did not seem to be involved. “Love me, love my car,” she said when I explained Laurel’s ultimatum. “The car is who you are, David. S
he shouldn’t try to change who you are.”
But Laurel was attempting to do just that, as evidenced by the manhandling I underwent in the yoga class, Candlelight Meditation and Flow, which we attended the week after Laurel presented the three-pronged plan. From the fuss that was made by Laurel’s friends, Marcy and Claire included, I concluded that everyone in the studio knew what was at stake with these classes. Tatia, the instructor, had saved two spots on the floor in front of her: one for Laurel, another for me and my new mat, which Tatia took from me and unrolled. Though everyone else, I noticed, was doing their own unrolling. After that, she helped me into the cross-legged position that I was to assume for the fifteen-minute pre-yoga meditation.
“The lights will dim, music—a great chill-out mix—will play,” Tatia explained. She was tall, lithe, and creamy. Brown skin. English accent. A one-time Broadway dancer or runway model, I speculated as she instructed me to close my eyes and shut down my mind. I did the first, but not the second. I also refused to take off my socks, as she suggested.
“You may slip,” she whispered.
“He hates bare feet,” Laurel volunteered.
I nailed the meditation, but from there we moved into the infamous downward dog position, which Tatia claimed was the ultimate relaxation pose. Since my association with it was the rabbi’s guest lecture at the Hampton’s retreat, even the name made me uptight.
Tatia came to my mat and guided me into the proper position. “Gaze at your feet,” she said. I didn’t know how looking at my feet was supposed to help me “let go,” as Tatia was now whispering in my ear. She yanked my torso backwards and skyward. When I got the nerve to open my eyes, I saw behind me a roomful of women’s rears high in the sky, along with one lone male’s.
It was him, I decided, my torso still manually suspended by Tatia. This guy had to be him. The reams of blond hair falling over his head from beneath a yarmulke. The special non-stick socks covering his feet. Here was the rabbi, in the flesh, connecting to God through downward dog. He was tucked into the back corner by the door. He’d obviously slipped in late. Maybe during the silent meditation. Maybe, I thought, that was why they’d done the silent meditation: to allow the rabbi to sneak into class without me noticing. Maybe Tatia was also involved in the plan to separate me from my security blanket—if a security blanket was what the Caddy was to me, than that’s what it was. For once, I’ll call a spade a spade, I decided as Tatia pushed her hands in different directions on my back to “spread the vertebrae,” she said. It felt so good, I might have moaned had I not been so preoccupied. Tatia couldn’t tell the rabbi that he couldn’t come to this class, I figured. And Laurel and Marcy knew that if I saw him already in the class when I arrived, I’d never agree to stay.
But Laurel and Marcy were wrong. They underestimated me. David Melman, grandson of Slip Melman, was not going to be shown up, even by a man of God. I began to repeat the mantra—Slip’s, not Tatia’s—to stay cool as I contorted my way through class. I forced myself to focus and to breathe, although the breathing was a distraction in and of itself. They tell you to tune out, but then they go ahead and stack the odds against you by having everyone breathe like they’re on ventilators. The studio sounded like Apartment 1812 at night. Even without the rabbi, I couldn’t concentrate. But I was determined to give it my all, to do yoga like yoga’s never been done. I played varsity basketball in high school, I was no slouch on the athletic field, I could do this. I could wrench myself into the position Tatia was now in. The Warrior, she was calling it.
She appeared to be lunging forward and leaning backward at the same time, with her arms outstretched and her head rotated behind her. She actually resembled a warrior. Me, apparently, not so much.
“You look like you have epilepsy,” Marcy murmured when my head turned around.
I pretended to ignore her while also pretending to gaze at a spot at the back of the room and not the rabbi.
Everyone else might have been flowing through the poses, but I was duking them out, one after another. Certain names held promise, like Tree and Chair. Words out of a first grade primer. How hard could they be? But names in yoga, I learned, are red herrings. The simpler the name, the more twisted the action. Bridge pose is downright dangerous.
By the end of the hour, I’d slipped a few discs, and my new mat was littered with sweat. By no means had this routine relaxed me. However, no one could say I hadn’t given yoga the old college try.
Ironically, I had the rabbi to thank. Had I not spotted him, I would not have pushed like I had. My adrenaline was on overdrive. “Duking It Out Through Downward Dog” would be the lecture I’d give at a yoga retreat, I decided as I dragged my mat to the wall along with the rest of the group, all of whom began throwing themselves up against it and into handstands. As Laurel flung herself upside down, Tatia came over and asked if I wanted her to help me into the pose.
“I’d love nothing more,” I said from my splayed out, face-down position. I winked at Laurel as I crawled toward the wall, and she couldn’t contain her surprise. She knew my feelings about being upside-down.
Generally speaking, I see no reason for my blood to flow any other way than in the direction God intended it to flow. I’m sure, had I stuck out medical school, I might now be in a professional position to discover a correlation between handstands and aneurisms. Instead, here I was, figuring out how to hold steady on my hands while the lovely Tatia tossed my ankles toward the cement wall.
“I thought you hated being upside-down,” Laurel said. I couldn’t see her, I was frightened to move my head, my entire being seemed to be so precariously balanced.
“I wasn’t going to let the rabbi beat me at yoga,” I answered, moving my mouth as little as possible.
“Who?” she said.
I motioned with my chin, the only part of my body that I could afford to move, toward the inverted rabbi, propped against the opposite wall. Upside-down, I had to be better looking than he was.
“For one thing,” Laurel began, her cleavage bulging out of her top, “yoga is not a contest. You don’t beat anyone.” She paused to do a few deep, cleansing breaths. “For second, that’s not the rabbi.”
I landed with a thud that caused the music to skip and everyone to pivot their suspended heads in my direction. Tatia looked my way, said I’d done well for my first time, and asked if I’d like her to help me resume the pose. I told her no thank you. She suggested I take Child’s Pose until the rest of the class was done.
“Child’s Pose sounds appropriate,” Marcy mumbled.
I told her to be quiet or I’d tip her over. Then, to Laurel: “That’s not him?”
She shook her head, which was now the deep purple of a plum.
“But he’s wearing a yarmulke.”
“He’s a Jew, David. Obviously. But he’s not the rabbi.” Finally, she lowered herself to her knees. She formed her hands into fists, which I thought she might use to smack me; instead, she used them to demonstrate. “Where were you the day they taught Venn diagrams? Here is the circle of Jews who wear yarmulkes and here is Rabbi Eric. The two circles do not directly overlap.”
Tatia was now unable to compete with the confusion in our area. Marcy, too, had come out of her handstand to ask what the fuss was about. Tatia directed everyone to come gently out of their inversions. We were going to do a few final poses to prepare for something called Shavasana, which sounded dangerous but turned out to be right up my alley. We all lay down on our mats. The teacher turned off the lights and told us to close our eyes.
“Like kindergarten,” I whispered to Laurel, whose head was now right next to mine. She had put a towel over her eyes. She later explained it was to shut out the light, but I’m sure she was also trying to shut out me.
There I was. I had no towel. I had no desire to rest, either. If anything, I was all worked up, my mind racing as if it were late to be somewhere. A myriad of thoughts rushed around and—yes—even emotions. For starters, I realized, I was disappointed that the
guy was not the rabbi. I’d gone all-out in my attempt to prove that I could keep up with him. I wouldn’t have confronted him after class, I wouldn’t have slugged him. My battle would have been fought on the mat. Only that battle, I now saw, was in my head. I was proving something to myself. What it was, I wasn’t sure. I’d need another yoga class for that. And what this episode had to do with getting rid of the Cadillac? I couldn’t tell you that, either.
This week’s film class had been called Moving the Audience. During it, Laurel had explained to us that we should be reaching the point in our scripts at which the conflict and our audience’s emotional investment are at a peak. “It’s the point at which your protagonist confronts his enemy or faces his biggest fear. It’s the moment of truth. The most exciting part of your story. The pièce de resistance. The climax,” she hollered as if she were actually having one. “Call it what you will. Just move me, people,” she commanded. “Move me to the edge of my seat.”
A fair amount of chuckling and predictable joking went on due to the sexual innuendo. Don, for example, asked me if she was this feisty in the sack.
Judd snarled at Don as if his mind were not right next to ours in the gutter. My mind was gutter-bound from the minute I set eyes on her I HEART LA T-shirt, the same shirt she’d been wearing the first time I moved her to the edge of her seat.
To separate his intellectual self from us commoners, Judd raised his hand and ruined the mood. “Would you mind discussing the climax scene in terms of Aristotle and the classic three-act structure?” he asked. He was as obsessed with Aristotle as he was with Laurel. The evening I went with Laurel to the 3 Woos for the first time, he’d stayed after class to discuss Aristotle with her.
Laurel had told Judd then something similar to what she now told the whole class. “I don’t believe in the three-act structure.” She told us that every story has two basic parts: the act or event that causes the problem—the catalyst—and the act or event that resolves it. “In the middle,” she told us, “there are forces that influence the outcome of the story. Antagonists. Obstacles. Crises. Let your characters follow their course instead of force-fitting scenes into a three-act structure.” I’d had no idea what Laurel was talking about the first time around. I had a better idea now.
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