This Is Where I Leave You: A Novel

by Jonathan Tropper

  “Poor impulse control,” she said, proud of her daring.

  “Jen.” I exhaled slowly, running my tongue along the inside of my lips, savoring the waxy residue of her lip gloss.

  “Judd.”

  “I think I’m going to call you Bike Girl until we have sex.”

  She laughed again, and that was three, for those keeping score at home, and I didn’t stand a chance. Later on, Jen would swear that was the moment she knew she was going to marry me. That’s the problem with college kids. I blame Hollywood for skewing their perspective. Life is just a big romantic comedy to them, and if you meet cute, happily-ever-after is a foregone conclusion. So there we were, the pretty blond girl milking her very slight congenital limp in order to seem damaged and more interesting, and the nervous boy with the ridiculous hair trying so hard to be clever, the two of us hypnotized by the syncopated rhythms of our furiously beating hearts and throbbing loins. That stupid, desperate, horny kid I was, standing obliviously on the fault line of his embryonic love, when really, what he should have been doing was running for his life.

  Chapter 7

  3:43 p.m.

  Boner comes by with three volunteers from the Hebrew Burial Society to deliver the mourning supplies. They rearrange furniture and set things up with a hushed military precision, after which Boner gathers the four Foxman siblings in the living room. Five low folding chairs with thick wooden frames and faded vinyl upholstery are lined up in front of the fireplace. The mirror above the mantel has been clouded over with some kind of soapy white spray. The furniture has all been pushed to the perimeter of the room, and thirty or so white plastic catering chairs have been unfolded and placed in three rows facing the five low chairs. There are two silver collection plates placed on the piano. People paying their respects to the family can make dollar contributions to the burial society or to a local children’s cancer society. A few lonely bills have been placed on each plate like tips. In the front hall, a thick candle formed in a tall glass is lit and placed on the table, next to Wendy’s baby monitor. This is the shiva candle, and there is enough wax in the glass for the candle to burn for seven days.

  Phillip nudges one of the low chairs with his toe. “It was nice of Yoda to lend us his chairs.”

  “They’re shiva chairs,” Boner says. “You sit low to the ground as a sign of mourning. Originally, the bereaved sat on the floor. Over time, the concept has evolved.”

  “It still has a ways to go,” Phillip grumbles.

  “What’s with the mirror?” Wendy wants to know.

  “It’s customary to remove or cover all the mirrors in a house of mourning,” Boner says. “We’ve fogged up all the bathroom mirrors as well. This is a time to avoid any and all impulses toward personal vanity and simply reflect on your father’s life.”

  We all nod, the way you would at a self-indulgent museum tour guide, taking the path of least resistance to get to the snack bar.

  “A little while ago, your father called me to the hospital,” Boner says. He was a tense, chubby kid, and now he’s a tense, beefy man, with rosy cheeks that make him look perpetually angry or embarrassed. I don’t know exactly when Boner found God; I lost track of him after high school. Boner, not God. I lost track of God when I joined Little League and could no longer attend Hebrew school classes at Temple Israel, the synagogue we went to once a year for Rosh Hashanah services.

  “Your father wasn’t a religious man. But toward the end, he regretted the absence of tradition in his life, in the way he raised his children.”

  “That doesn’t really sound like Dad,” I say.

  “It’s actually somewhat common for people facing death to reach out to God,” Boner says, in the exact same self-important, didactic tone he employed as a kid when explaining to us what a blow job was.

  “Dad didn’t believe in God,” Phillip says. “Why would he reach out to something he didn’t believe in?”

  “I guess he changed his mind,” Boner says, and I can tell he’s still pissed at Phillip for the earlier nickname slip.

  “Dad never changed his mind,” I say.

  “Your father’s dying request was that his family sit shiva to mark his passing.”

  “He was on a lot of drugs,” Wendy points out.

  “He was perfectly lucid.” Boner’s face is starting to turn red.

  “Did anyone else hear him say it?” Phillip.

  “Phillip.” Paul.

  “What? I’m just saying. Maybe Bone—Charlie misunderstood.”

  “I didn’t misunderstand,” Boner says testily. “We discussed it at length.”

  “Don’t some people sit shiva for just three days?” Me.

  “Yes!” Wendy.

  “No!” Boner shouts. “The word ‘shiva’ means ‘seven.’ It’s seven days. That’s why it’s called shiva. Your father was very specific.”

  “Well, I can’t be away from the business for seven days,” Paul says. “Believe you me, Dad would never have gone for that.”

  “Listen, Charlie,” I say, stepping forward. “You’ve delivered the message. You held up your end. We’ll discuss it amongst ourselves now and come to a consensus. We’ll call you if we have any questions.”

  “Stop it!”

  We all turn to see my mother and Linda standing under the archway to the living room. “This is what your father wanted,” Mom says sternly, stepping into the room. She has taken off her suit jacket, and her low-cut blouse reveals her infamous cleavage. “He was not a perfect man, and not a perfect father, but he was a good man, and he tried his best. And you all haven’t exactly been model children lately.”

  “It’s okay, Mom. Calm down,” Paul says, reaching out for her.

  “Stop interrupting me. Your father lay dying in his bed for the last half year or so. How many times did you visit him, any of you? Now I know, Wendy, Los Angeles isn’t exactly next door, and, Judd, you’ve been going through a rough time, I understand that. And, Phillip . . . Well, God only knows what you’ve been up to. It’s like having a son in Iraq. At least then I’d know where you were. But your father made his last wish known, and we will honor it. All of us. It’s going to be crowded, and uncomfortable, and we’ll all get on each other’s nerves, but for the next seven days, you are all my children again.” She takes a few steps into the room and smiles at us. “And you’re all grounded.”

  My mother spins on one stiletto heel and plants herself like a child into one of the low seats. “Well,” she says. “What are you waiting for?”

  We all hunker down in the seats, silent and sullen, like a group of scolded schoolchildren.

  “Um, Mrs. Foxman,” Boner says, clearing his throat. “You’re really not supposed to wear dress shoes when you’re sitting shiva.”

  “I have bad arches,” she says, flashing him a look sharp enough for a circumcision.

  The one tattered remnant of Jewish observance that my parents had maintained was having the family stay over for Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. Every year, as summer bled into fall, the call would come, more a summons than an invitation, and we would all descend upon Knob’s End, to argue over sleeping arrangements, grudgingly attend services at Temple Israel, and share an overwrought holiday meal during which, tradition had it, at least one person would theatrically storm out of the house in a huff. Usually, it would be Alice or Wendy, although a few years ago it was memorably Jen, after my father, already well into his peach schnapps, told her, apropos of nothing in particular, that our dead son wouldn’t have been technically Jewish since she was a gentile. This was just a few months after she’d delivered our dead baby, and so no one blamed her for hurling her plate at him as she stormed out. “What got into her?” he said. On the plus side, she insisted we go home immediately, which got me out of having to attend the interminable services at Temple Israel the following morning, where Cantor Rothman’s slow, operatic tenor makes you want to prostrate yourself on the spot and accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior.

  4:02 p.m. />
  ALICE AND TRACY are helping Linda in the kitchen. Horry, on Paul’s orders, has gone back to the store to finish out the day. The Elmsbrook store is the flagship, and it stays open until nine every night. Barry is upstairs, watching a video with the boys. So it’s just the four of us and Mom, sitting on low chairs, feeling sheepish and uncomfortable.

  “So,” Phillip says. “What happens now?”

  “People will come,” Mom says.

  “How do they know when to come?”

  “We are not the first people to ever sit shiva,” Paul grumbles.

  “People will come,” Mom says.

  “Oh, people will come, Ray,” Phillip intones, doing his best James Earl Jones. “People will most definitely come.” Phillip is a repository of random snatches of film dialogue and song lyrics. To make room for all of it in his brain, he apparently cleared out all the areas where things like reason and common sense are stored. When triggered, he will quote thoughtlessly, like some kind of savant.

  Paul looks up to catch me staring at the scar on his right hand. It’s a thick, pink line that runs up the meaty edge of his palm, crossing his wrist and ending in a splotchy cluster on the inside of his forearm. There’s another, nastier one on his shoulder that radiates up toward his neck in raised tendrils the color of dead flesh, where the rottweiler missed his jugular by a few inches. Whenever I see him, I can’t help but stare at the scars, looking for the teeth marks I know are there.

  He twists his arm around self-consciously, hiding the scar, and flashes me a hard look. Paul has not addressed me directly since I arrived. He rarely addresses me if he doesn’t have to. This is due to a combination of factors, most notably the rottweiler attack that ended his college baseball career before it started and for which he blames me. He’s never come out and said that, of course. Other than Phillip, the men in my family never come out and say anything. So I don’t know for sure if that’s when Paul started hating me, or if that’s just when Paul started hating everybody.

  Another possible factor is that I lost my virginity to Alice back in high school, and she to me, which isn’t as creepy as it sounds. Alice was my year in high school, not even on Paul’s radar until many years later, when she cleaned his teeth and he picked her up with the always reliable “Didn’t you used to go out with my kid brother?” By then I was long gone from Elmsbrook, already engaged to Jen, so if anyone is to blame for that one, it’s Paul and not me. He knew going in that I’d been there first. For all I know, he may have even started sleeping with her to somehow get back at me for the dog attack, which would have been twisted and stupid and so very Paul. So now, every time Paul sees me, it’s there in the back of his mind, that I deflowered his wife, that I’ve seen Alice naked, that I’ve kissed the wine-colored birthmark in the shape of a question mark that starts below her navel and ends at the junction of her legs. It was seventeen years ago, but men don’t let go of things like that. And every time Alice and I see each other, we can’t help but flash back to those four months we spent having sex in cars, basements, shrubs, and once, late at night, in the plastic tunnel above the slide in the elementary school playground. You never forget your first time, no matter how much you’d like to.

  “How are things at the store?” I ask him.

  He looks at me, considering the question. “Same old same old.”

  “Any plans to expand to any more locations?”

  “Nope. No plans to expand. We’re in a recession, or don’t you read the paper?”

  “I was just asking.”

  “Although I guess a recession is the least of your problems, huh, Judd?”

  “What do you mean by that, Paul?” We are ending our sentences with names, which is the equivalent of fighters circling, looking to throw the first punch.

  “Paul,” Mom says.

  “It’s okay, Mom,” I say. “We’re just catching up.”

  “Forget it,” Paul says.

  “No. It’s fine,” I say. “What you meant was, between being unemployed and my wife screwing around, I have bigger things to worry about than the economic state of the country. Right?”

  “That’s certainly one way of looking at it.”

  “I was surprised I didn’t hear from you when it happened,” I say. “I moved out almost eight weeks ago. I mean, none of you called me. That’s par for the course, I guess. If you didn’t call when we lost the baby, I wouldn’t expect you to call over something as trivial as the end of my marriage. But I figured you’d have called, Paul, just to rub it in a little. It’s lucky Dad died when he did, or who knows when you may have gotten around to it?”

  “I’m not happy about it. I always liked Jen.”

  “Thanks, Paul.” I wait an extra beat for emphasis. “And I always liked Alice.”

  “What did you just say?” Paul says, clenching teeth, fists, and bowels.

  “Which part didn’t you hear?”

  “All the young girls love Alice.” Phillip sings out the Elton John lyrics, loud and off-key. “Tender young Alice they say . . .”

  “So, Phillip,” Wendy says. “How did you go about seducing your therapist?”

  “Later,” Phillip says. “It’s just getting interesting.”

  “Oh, for crying out loud!” my mother says.

  I look at the Rolex Jen bought for me with my own money that I haven’t gotten around to selling on eBay yet. We’ve been sitting shiva for exactly one half hour. The doorbell rings, and God only knows to what depths of passive-aggressive sniping we might have descended if it hadn’t. And as the room starts to fill with the first somber-faced neighbors coming to pay their respects, it becomes clear to me that the reason for filling the shiva house with visitors is most likely to prevent the mourners from tearing each other limb from limb.

  When we were little kids, Dad took Paul and me fishing at a wide, shallow creek in the shadow of an overpass near some back roads a few miles north of the town limits. Paul and I pulled water-smoothed rocks from the creek bed and Dad knotted them into our fishing lines to serve as weights. Then, after slicing some inchworms with his pocket knife to bait our hooks, he taught us how to cast our lines out across the creek. For Paul and me, the casting was more fun than the fishing. We would reel our lines in, stretch the rods out behind us, and try to cast as far across the creek as we could. About an hour into this, Paul slung his rod back and managed to hook my ear just before he launched his rod forward. I felt a sudden, hot pain as my ear cartilage tore, the rock in his line flying back to slap my skull, and suddenly I was on my back in the dirt, looking up at a cloudless sky. Dad had to take off his T-shirt to stanch the flow of blood. Paul stood over me apologizing, but angrily, like it was all my fault. Flecks of my blood clung to Dad’s curly chest hairs. I didn’t feel a lot of pain, I just remember being amazed at how Dad’s crumpled T-shirt went from white to completely red in a matter of minutes. The damage to my ear turned out to be minimal, but there’s still the faint depression in the bone behind my ear where the rock hit me, like a fingerprint in hardened clay.

  Chapter 8

  7:45 p.m.

  We’ve been at it for a few hours already, and the visitors keep coming, pouring through the door in an endless stream, as if busloads are being dropped off at the front door every half hour. Knob’s End has become a parking lot, and my face is sore from smiling politely as my mother introduces and reintroduces everyone, my ass numb from the cheap foam underneath the crappy vinyl of the shiva chair. The plastic tips of the flimsy catering chairs set up around the room scrape the oak floor as the guests jockey for position, gradually working their way from the back of the room to the front, where they can ask the same questions as the guests who came before them, invoke the same platitudes, and squeeze my mother’s forearm with theatrically pursed lips. We should have a handout at the door to speed things along, a brief summary of Dad’s illness and all that transpired in the final days, maybe even a photocopy of his charts and a four-color printout of his last CAT scan, because that seems to
be what all of his and Mom’s peers want to talk about. And at the bottom of the handout a simple asterisked declaration would state that it’s of absolutely no interest to us where you were when you found out our father/husband had died, like he was John F. Kennedy or Kurt Cobain.

  Paul gets by without saying much, offering up a series of Rorschach grunts that people seem to hear as actual responses. Wendy shamelessly takes cell phone calls from her girlfriends back in L.A., and Phillip amuses himself by lying his ass off, seeing how far he can push the boundaries of credibility.

  Middle-Aged Woman: My God, Phillip! The last time I saw you, you were in high school. What do you do now?

  Phillip: I run a Middle East think tank in D.C.

  Phillip: I manage a private equity biotech fund.

  Phillip: I’ve been coordinating a freshwater project for UNICEF in Africa.

  Phillip: I’m working as a stuntman on the new Spielberg project.

  And then there are the platters. Jews don’t send flowers, they send food, in large quantities: fruit platters, assorted cookie platters, cold cuts, casseroles, cakes, wild rice salads, bagels and smoked salmon. Linda, who has effortlessly slipped back into her habitual role of supplemental caretaker for the Foxman clan, sets up the nonperishable items on the dining room table, along with a coffee samovar, which leads to an ad hoc buffet situation. The visitors work their way through the chairs, chat with the bereaved, and then gravitate into the dining room for coffee and nosh. It’s like a wake, except it’s going to last for seven days, and there’s no booze. Who knows what kind of epic party this might become if someone popped the plastic lock on the whiskey bar?

  The visitors are mostly senior citizens, friends and neighbors of my parents, coming to see and be seen, to pay their respects and contemplate their own impending mortality, their heart conditions and cancers still percolating below the surface, in livers and lungs and blood cells. Another of their number has fallen, and while they’re here to console my mother, you can see in their staunch, pale faces the morbid thrill of having been passed over by death. They have raised their kids, paid off their mortgages, and they will spend their golden years burying each other, somberly keeping track of their relentlessly dwindling numbers over coffee and crumb cake in houses just like this one.