This Is Where I Leave You: A Novel

by Jonathan Tropper

  When I get back to the table, Chelsea and Phillip are gone. The jukebox is playing goddamned “Sweet Home Alabama” again, and I think I’m going to be sick. The bathroom has a line, so I stumble out to the parking lot and puke behind one of the Dumpsters. I feel a little better after that, halfway to sober. The rain has finally stopped, or not really stopped, but dwindled to a fine, foggy mist that cools my burning skin. I wonder how I’m going to get home.

  Chapter 41

  11:15 p.m.

  I can’t recall if I settled the tab or not, but no one’s come running out after me, and just the thought of going back inside starts my stomach acid frothing, so I’ll just assume it’s all good. I decide to take a walk. The neon lights of Route 120 spread out ahead of me like the Vegas Strip. P.F. Chang’s, the Cheesecake Factory, the Pitch & Putt, Sushi Palace, Apple-bee’s, Rock & Bowl, Szechuan Gardens, and the digital marquee of the AMC multiplex, all flashing and blinking, burning pink and red streaks into my eyelids when I close them. Generations of broken glass twinkle like glitter in the pavement. Teenagers rove in loud packs that form and disperse as they move down the sidewalk. Cell phones ring, obscenities fly. Blow jobs are administered in throbbing cars in the darkest corners of abandoned parking lots. They’ve been laying pipe beneath the blacktop forever now, and they don’t bother taking down the barricades on the weekends anymore, so every few stoplights, traffic slows to a crawl, cars ejaculated out of the bottlenecks one by one, burning rubber just to make a point, since there’s really nowhere here worth rushing to. They whiz by like missiles, these cars crammed with kids exactly like the one I used to be. Once in a while you can make out their laughter above the hollow din of tires scorching the blacktop like fighter jets on a runway.

  There’s a fountain in front of Sushi Palace, spraying a high illuminated geyser that changes colors every few seconds. Red, yellow, green, and violet. I stop to watch it for a little bit. A couple of kids sit on the edge of the fountain, kissing with such unabashed fervor that I have to look away.

  As I walk, a silver car passes me and then quickly brakes, causing the cars behind it to swerve left and honk angrily. You don’t see many Maseratis in Elmsbrook. The car pulls onto the shoulder and Wade climbs out. He’s wearing the same suit he wore earlier and has a bandage across the bridge of his nose, a smear of purple bruising spreading out from under it. He frowns as he approaches me, picking up speed as he goes.

  “What are you doing?” I say.

  His punch arrives well before my worthless block can get there, landing squarely on my chin and lower lip, and down I go. There is a version of this fight in which a crowd of pedestrians grows around us as we grapple and trade punches, until I tackle Wade and we fall over into the sushi fountain, where I pummel him into submission, standing over him in victorious disgust, casually spitting some blood into the fountain. But I’m too drunk and tired to fight, so I curl up and close my eyes, prepared to absorb the kicks that will follow. After a few seconds I look up to see Wade standing above me, combing his hair with his fingers. “That was for my car,” he says.

  I get up on one knee and taste the salt and copper of blood on my lips. “Fair enough.” I wipe my mouth with my sleeve and get to my feet.

  “You’re drunk.”

  “And you’re an asshole. Are we going to just stand here stating the obvious?”

  He shakes his head and smiles fondly at me. “You never could hold your liquor.”

  He reaches through the shattered passenger window to his glove compartment and comes out with a white towel, which he tosses to me. We lean against the car and I press the towel against my lips. It comes away bloody.

  Rowdy, hopped-up college kids pass us in an endless, noisy blur like they’re being mass produced or squeezed out of a tube—guys skulking in their T-shirts and cargo shorts, girls in low-slung jeans and flip-flops, pimples and breasts and tattoos and lipstick and legs and bra straps, and cigarettes; a colorful, sexy mélange. I feel old and tired and I just want to be them again, want to be young and stupid, filled with angst and attitude and unbridled lust. Can I have a do-over, please? I swear to God I’ll make a real go of it this time.

  “You were right, what you said about me,” Wade says.

  “What do you mean?”

  He shakes his head and looks over his shoulder. “I’m not a decent guy. Not really.” He pulls out a cigarette and lights it. “I think I always just told myself I was, that at some point I’d grow up and start behaving.” He rubs the back of his neck as he blows smoke into the mist. “I always figured I could stop anytime I wanted to.”

  “What do you want, Wade?”

  He peers down his nose at the glowing ember of his cigarette. “I don’t know. Nothing, really. I just saw you as I was driving past, and I realized that I never actually apologized to you.”

  “So you hit me.”

  “Yeah. I didn’t actually know I was going to do that until I did it.”

  “Got it.”

  “I know it won’t change anything, but I just figured it was better said than not.” He looks across the parking lot. “You want your job back?”

  “Fuck you.”

  “I just thought I’d ask.” He tosses the cigarette into a puddle and nods at me. “I’m really very sorry for everything. You were my only real friend, and it sucks that we’re not friends anymore. I deserve it, but it still sucks. And whether you believe it or not, I really hope you guys will be able to put things back together, man. Sincerely.”

  The planet lurches beneath my feet. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  Wade takes a deep breath and shakes his head. “I was kidding myself. I’m not going to be any kid’s stepfather.”

  “You broke up with Jen?”

  He shrugs, then turns and steps off the curb, walking around to the driver’s side of the Maserati. “I think it’s what’s best for everyone.”

  I stare at him, incredulous, as the rage in me builds. “It’s what’s best for you.”

  “I know it looks that way.”

  “It is that way. You had a good thing going as long as she stayed married to me, as long as you didn’t have to take any responsibility.”

  “It wasn’t like that, Judd. I really did love her.”

  “And now you don’t.”

  “Love isn’t enough.”

  “She walked out on her marriage for you.”

  He looks at me over the scraped, dented roof of his car. His smile is sad and broken. “I’m a professional bastard, Judd. That’s why they pay me the big bucks.” He pushes a button on his key chain and opens the door.

  It would be so perfect right now if a passing eighteen-wheeler lost control on the rain-slicked road and just plowed into him, irreversibly embedding his crushed corpse into the steel and leather of his Maserati. They’d have to bury the car with him and justice would be served with poetic flair. But this is real life, and in real life Wade gets to fuck my wife, to fuck my life, bloody my mouth, and then flash me a last rueful grin before speeding away on twelve Italian cylinders. His tires spin briefly on the slick blacktop before catching and hurtling him out into the traffic, just another set of red lights disappearing into the horizon.

  If nothing else, I am now completely sober.

  I sit down on the retaining wall of a parking lot, my mind racing. Jen has been left. Jen is alone in the world for the first time in her adult life—alone and pregnant and vulnerable and contrite and probably scared out of her mind. I don’t know what it is I’m planning to do, or maybe I do, maybe I know exactly what I’m planning to do. Whichever it is, I like my chances.

  11:45 p.m.

  MY CAB DRIVER is Mr. Ruffalo, who taught English and driver’s ed when I was in high school, until he fell for one of his students, Lily Tedesco. They would set off every Tuesday in the driver’s ed car, Lily’s hands positioned firmly at ten and two, and then pull over behind the county park, where they would discuss their plans to run away together after she graduated, and wh
ere she would crouch down between his legs, balancing herself on the training break to prove her love. They must have been spotted at some point because one day Mrs. Ruffalo showed up outside the school and tried to stab her husband with a steak knife hidden in the pocket of her red velour housecoat. No charges were ever filed, but the school board voted unanimously in favor of termination. Now he’s divorced and driving the graveyard shift, and probably never gets to see the two kids who are now much older than they are in the bent and faded pictures he has taped to the sun visor of his cab. Life is huge, but it can turn on a dime.

  “You’re Foxman, right?” he says.

  “Yeah.”

  “I teach you to drive?”

  “Yes. I had you for freshman English too.”

  “Really?”

  “Romeo and Juliet. Silas Marner. The Catcher in the Rye.”

  “That’s pretty good.”

  “You made us each memorize one of the Canterbury Tales in Middle English.”

  He laughs. “I was some kind of asshole, huh? It’s funny what we remember.” He cracks his window to light a cigarette. “You mind?”

  The lights of Route 120 turn into a streak of colors in the grimy window of the cab. “Wonderful Tonight” is playing on the radio, and we stop talking to listen in silence. I have to believe it makes Ruffalo feel as sad and lost as it does me. He pulls up to the house just as the song is ending.

  “You the ball player?”

  “No, that’s my brother, Paul.”

  He nods as I hand him a twenty. “That boy had a gift. It was a real shame what happened to him.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Death from above,” he says ominously. “No one is safe.”

  “Tell me about it.” I overtip, although I suspect the extra seven bucks won’t make much of a difference in whatever it is that now passes for Mr. Ruffalo’s life.

  11:55 p.m.

  DOWN IN THE basement, I wash some of Boner’s foam spray off the mirror to better study my reflection. My bottom lip is split and swollen, my eyes bleary, my cheeks pale and puffy. I look like a corpse pulled from the river a week after the suicide. It’s time for a gut check. I mean that literally. I pull off my shirt, which is caked with just enough blood and vomit to represent a much wilder night than the one I’ve had, and step back to study my torso. The overall effect does not match the image I cling to in my head. My belly is not yet what you’d call a gut, but you can see where the inevitable expansion will happen. I have no real chest to speak of; you’d miss it altogether if it weren’t for the two hairless nipples pressed on like decals. Broader shoulders would create the illusion of fitness, but I am sorely lacking in that department as well. The overall impression is lean but soft, and getting softer. This is the package, ladies. Come and get it.

  I lie down on the floor to do some sit-ups and promptly fall asleep.

  Monday

  Chapter 42

  6:10 a.m.

  I am sitting shiva naked. The cheap vinyl of the shiva chair sticks to my ass like duct tape. Everyone I know is here, milling about, lost in conversation, but at any moment someone is going to notice. I can’t get up to leave, can’t really hide. I am utterly exposed. I turn to Phillip, but it’s not Phillip, it’s my uncle Stan sitting next to me, smacking his lips and farting a mile a minute. I ask him for his blazer. He flashes a toothless grin and tells me he can see my balls. Over the bowed heads of faceless visitors I see Penny, in the back, looking strangely at me, and it makes me feel sad and embarrassed. And then Jen arrives, looking nine months pregnant, full-faced and radiant. I cannot let her see me like this. People greet her warmly, remark on her belly, touch it with casual reverence. She moves across the back of the room and then, just in front of her, I see him. He’s seated in the back row, cradling a baby in the crook of his arm. He looks like he did when I was much younger, large and broad, with thick forearms and a barrel chest. Our eyes meet and he winks at me, then gets up to leave. Wait! Dad! But he can’t hear me. He’s heading to the door, the baby pressed to his shoulder, chewing on the seam of his shirt. I jump up to follow him, my nakedness forgotten, but only once I try to walk do I realize that I’ve only got one leg, and I’m not wearing my prosthesis. I fall down hard, my flesh hitting the oak floor with a resounding slap. Everyone turns to look at me, mouths agape, while through the crowd I see my father’s head descend down the front stairs and disappear.

  I wake up in pieces, still calling out for him to wait for me.

  Chapter 43

  6:40 a.m.

  I climb up onto the roof and find Tracy already there, smoking one of Wendy’s cigarettes. She turns around, surprised, and then offers me a weak smile. “Did I take your spot?”

  “It’s fine,” I say, crawling out to sit next to her. “Always room for one more.”

  She offers me the pack. I take one and light it with hers. Then we sit there for a little while, staring out over the rooftops.

  “What happened to your mouth?” she says.

  “Someone apologized to me.”

  She grins. “Does it hurt?”

  “Only when I smile.”

  “I don’t think I’ve ever actually seen you smile.”

  “You’re not really catching me at my best.”

  “I know.” She turns to look at me. “Phillip has been sleeping with that girl, Chelsea, hasn’t he?” There’s no anger in her voice, just sad resignation.

  “I don’t know.”

  “But if you had to guess.”

  “He’s my brother, Tracy.”

  “I understand.” She takes a slow, tentative drag on the cigarette. Smoking doesn’t come naturally to her. “I’m all alone here, Judd. I need a friend, someone to tell me if I’m crazy or not. Between you and me and the sunrise.” She leans forward and pulls the cigarette from my mouth. She holds it up with hers, watching the wisps of smoke float off of them and mingle, and then crushes them both out on the slate. She is dangerously close to tears. “We’re neither of us smokers,” she says.

  “No.”

  I look at her for a long time. She is older than me, but there’s something of a frightened child in her, some ancient, lingering pain that has never been soothed. “Between you, me, and the sunrise,” I say.

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t know for a fact that he slept with her. But my guess is that he did. And if he didn’t, he will. And if it’s not her, it will be, or has been, someone like her. The Chelseas of the world are drawn to him.”

  The tears slide quietly down her cheeks and she wraps her arms around her knees. “Thank you.”

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “I know how badly it hurts.”

  She wipes her eyes and exhales slowly. “It’s my own damn fault, really. Whatever lies he’s told me, they pale in comparison to the lies I’ve been telling myself.”

  “You deserve better than him. I love him, but that’s the truth.”

  “You know what’s sad?”

  “What?”

  She smiles a little and turns her face up to the sky. “He really does love me. In his heart, he wants to be the man I need. It’s just not in him.”

  “So, what are you going to do?”

  She thinks about it for a moment and then shrugs. “I’ll wait until the shiva ends. That seems only right. Then I’ll gather up the tattered remnants of my dignity and say good-bye.”

  “He’ll be crushed. You know that, right?”

  “I’ll let him keep the Porsche.”

  “Wow,” I say. “Parting gifts.”

  “He meant well. I’m forty-four years old. I don’t have time for anger anymore.”

  “You may be the best person I’ve ever known.”

  She smiles and pats my knee. “I talk a big game.”

  “Where were you when my life was going to shit?”

  “I’m always available.” She fumbles around in her pockets and comes up with an embossed business card. It says her name, followed by a slew of acronyms. Below that it says BOARD-C
ERTIFIED PSYCHOTHERAPIST, and below that it says LIFE COACH. And right below that, in boldfaced type, it says this: HAVE A PLAN.

  “Have a plan,” I say.

  “Do you?”

  “Whatever the opposite of a plan is, that’s what I’ve got.”

  “Can I offer you a piece of unsolicited advice?”

  “Sure.”

  Tracy turns to face me. “You got married right out of college. You’re terrified of being alone. Anything you do now will be motivated by that fear. You have to stop worrying about finding love again. It will come when it comes. Get comfortable with being alone. It will empower you.”

  “Empower me to do what?”

  “To be the father you want to be, the man you want to be. And then you’ll be ready to make a plan.”

  I nod. I’m picturing Jen, trembling in her empty bed, shredded with regret. She’s alone. I’m alone. I’ve never felt closer to her.

  “Being alone isn’t for everybody,” I say.

  6:55 a.m.

  TRACY’S GONE BACK inside. I’m still sitting on the roof, watching the town come alive, when I see a girl step out the front door of the Callens’ house. She’s wearing a little black dress and high heels, and her hair is a mess, her face smudged with last night’s makeup. It’s the girl Horry was making out with at the bar last night. She squints in the emerging sunlight and looks around, somewhat disoriented. She’s not sure where she is. But the advantage of a cul-de-sac is that there’s only one direction to go. She heads hurriedly down the street. It’s too early to be late for work. She’s rushing from something, not toward it.