“Boner lied for you,” I say.
Mom shrugs. “Charlie knows where his bread is buttered.”
“Tracy wouldn’t have dumped me if we hadn’t come here,” Phillip says, shaking his head.
“You’re welcome, honey.”
“You ruined my life.”
“Oh, Phillip,” Mom says fondly. “I may have overmothered you and screwed you up in ways large and small, but I think it’s time you took some measure of responsibility for where you choose to put your own penis.”
“You see? Right there. Please don’t talk about my penis. It’s out of your jurisdiction. Mothers do not sit around talking about their grown sons’ penises.”
“So grow up and I’ll stop.”
“You lied to us,” Wendy says softly.
“Yes. I did.”
“But you never lie to us. That’s your thing.”
“I never made love to a woman either,” Mom says proudly. “People can change. Not often, and not often for the better, but it does happen.” Mom, it should be pointed out, is loving this. Her children are shocked and mortified and hanging on her every word. There’s our childhood in a nutshell. It’s like we never left.
Phillip rolls off the couch, wincing in pain as he does, and stands up. “Okay. I forgive you for your lying and your treachery.” He walks over to Mom and Linda and pulls them into a group hug. “I’m happy for you guys.” Then he collapses onto the chair between them. “Anyone have any codeine? I think I’m bleeding internally.”
Chapter 48
8:15 p.m.
Mom and Linda are over at Linda’s house celebrating their official coming out. Paul and Alice are in my old bedroom behind closed doors, procreating under my poster of The Cure. Good luck and Godspeed. I give Cole and Ryan baths while Wendy puts Serena to bed. This entails standing outside her bedroom door and listening to her wail. I towel off Ryan while Cole splashes around in the tub, playing wildly with rubber dolphins that squirt water when you squeeze them. “Dawphins,” he says.
“Don’t be an ass, Cole,” Ryan says.
“Hey!”
“It means ‘donkey,’” Ryan says, giggling.
“Stop being a wise-donkey,” I say.
He gives the matter some thought. “You’re a donkey-hole,” he says.
“You watch your mouth or I’ll kick your donkey.”
It takes him a second and then he laughs so hard I can see his ribs vibrating in his torso.
“Kick your donkey,” Cole repeats in the tub. He raises the dolphins up above his head and brings them crashing down into the water, splashing us. “Fucker!”
“Cole!” Wendy hisses from the doorway. She offers me a pained smile. “We’re working on that,” she says to me.
“It sounds like he’s got the hang of it.”
“Fucker dawphin!” Cole says happily.
I am going to be a father, I think to myself.
8:45 p.m.
“IT FEELS LIKE the last day of camp,” Wendy says. She is sitting on the edge of Cole’s bed and I am sitting on the edge of Ryan’s in what used to be Wendy’s bedroom. “Tomorrow we all go our separate ways.”
“You going to be okay on the plane alone with these three?” I say. Deflect emotions with logistics. It’s what we do. Dad lives on in all of us. Our parents can continue to screw us up even after they die, and in this way, they’re never really gone. My siblings and I will always struggle trying to confront an honest emotion. We’ll succeed, to varying degrees, with outsiders, but fail consistently, sometimes spectacularly, with each other. The hardwiring simply runs too deep, like behind the walls of this house; circuit breakers on hair triggers.
“I’ll be fine.”
“And what about Barry?”
“What about him?”
“Nothing. Never mind.”
Wendy sighs and looks down at her sleeping boy, her face a complex amalgam of love and pain and fear. I don’t know that feeling yet, but I will soon enough.
“I have a very nice life, with a good man,” Wendy says. “I love him for who he is. Sometimes who he is isn’t enough for me, but most of the time, it is. There are women who would leave to find something better. I envy them, but I also know I’m not one of them. And how many of those women truly end up with a better man?” She shrugs. “No studies have been done.”
“And Horry?”
“There is no Horry. Horry is a fantasy. And that’s all I am to him. Time travel. We slept together as a favor to the kids we once were, not because there’s really anything there besides history and some completely useless love.”
She gets off the bed and onto her knees to kiss the forehead of each sleeping boy. Wendy taught me to curse, matched my clothing, brushed my hair before school, and let me sleep in bed with her when bad dreams woke me up. She fell in love often, and with great fanfare, throwing herself into each romance with the focus of an Olympic athlete. Now she’s a mother and a wife, who tries to get her screaming baby to sleep through the night, tries to stop her boys from learning curse words, and calls romantic love useless. Sometimes it’s heartbreaking to see your siblings as the people they’ve become. Maybe that’s why we all stay away from each other as a matter of course.
8:55 p.m.
I COME DOWN the basement stairs to find Phillip sitting on my bed, holding my duffel bag full of cash. “This is a lot of money,” he says.
“Yeah.”
“Can I have some?”
“Define ‘some.’”
Phillip thinks about it for a moment. “A grand?”
“Are you going to gamble it?”
“No.”
“Are you going to buy drugs?”
“Jesus, Judd.” He tosses the bag onto the floor and heads for the stairs. “Forget I asked.”
“Phillip.”
He turns around. “I have nothing, Judd. No home, no job, nothing. I’ve been waiting tables and sponging off Tracy for the last year. I’m just looking for a fresh start here. The plan was to work with Paul, but he’s being a real dick about it.”
“Well, maybe you have to work for him for a while, before you work with him.”
He thinks about it for a moment and then hoists himself up to sit on the Ping-Pong table. “I could probably be persuaded to do that.”
“I’ll talk to Paul,” I say.
“Yeah, because you guys are tight like that.”
“People can change.”
Phillip laughs and sits back down on the bed. “It’s been nice here, this last week, being brothers again.”
“We never stopped being brothers.”
“It felt like we did.”
“Yeah. I guess it did.”
“Well, I’ll have to stay more local to see my new nephew, huh?”
“Niece. It’s a girl.”
Phillip smiles. “A baby girl. That’s nice.”
“Yeah.”
“I’m making a concerted effort to be considerably less fucked-up.”
“I know.”
He pulls himself off the Ping-Pong table and heads for the stairs. “Well, I’ll let you get some sleep.”
“Phillip.”
“Yeah.”
“Take a grand.” Sixteen grand in a shopping bag feels like much more than sixteen grand in the bank.
“Thanks, man.” He starts up the stairs.
“I’m serious. Come take it.”
Phillip grins and pats the back pocket of his jeans, which I now see has a slight rectangular bulge. “Way ahead of you, big brother.”
Chapter 49
9:25 p.m.
Penny opens the door brushing her teeth, dressed in leggings and a tank top.
“Hey,” I say.
“Hey.”
“I hope it’s not too late.”
“Too late for what?”
“Right. Good question. Well, for an apology, first of all.”
Penny looks at me like she’s peering through fog. I catch a glimpse of her lonely, cluttered apartment
behind her. It feels like my fault.
“It’s not too late,” she says.
“I’m glad.”
“Was that it?”
“What do you mean?”
“Was that your apology? I wasn’t sure. Sometimes people say ‘I want to apologize,’ and then that’s supposed to be their apology, when in fact, by saying they want to apologize, they manage to avoid the actual apology.”
“Oh.”
She shrugs. “I’ve been apologized to a lot.”
“Penny.”
“Is there something you want to say to me, Judd? Then just say it. You’ll never have a less threatening audience.”
“I didn’t really think it out,” I say. “I just came.”
“Well, there’s no danger of sounding too rehearsed then.”
There’s a small chunk of white toothpaste lodged in the corner of her mouth. I consider reaching forward to rub it off and decide against it.
“I’m really very sorry for leaving you at Wonderland.”
She shakes her head. “That’s not what you’re sorry for.”
“It’s not?”
“You’re sorry for not telling me that Jen was pregnant. That you were horrifically conflicted about it, that you’re still in love with her, and that you were probably the worst possible guy for me to climb into bed with.”
“Yes. I’m very sorry about that. Ashamed, really. It took me ten minutes to work up the nerve to ring your buzzer.”
“I know. I was watching from the window.”
“I really am sorry. You deserved better.”
“I forgive you.”
“Really? Just like that?”
“Yes, just like that.”
“You still sound angry.”
“I sound distant. Because I am. Because as much as I appreciate your coming over here, I have spent the last day building a big old wall between you and me, and I’m going to stay back here on my side of it.”
“I guess I understand that.”
“It’s nothing personal.”
We stand there in silence for a moment. I don’t know what I expected.
“So, the shiva is over?”
“Yeah. I guess. Tomorrow morning.”
“Then what?”
I shake my head. “I don’t really know.”
“Well, there’s no law against taking your time to figure it out.”
“I guess not.”
“Baby steps,” she says, and then grins joylessly. “Sorry. Bad choice of words.”
“It’s okay.”
“Well,” Penny says. “We’re back to awkward again, and you know I don’t do awkward. So I’m going to give you a hug . . .” She steps forward and hugs me. She is warm and light in my arms, and I am filled with a deep sense of regret as her hair tickles my fingers. “And now you should get going.”
“Good-bye, Penny. I hope I see you again.”
Her smile is at half strength but somehow genuine. “Take care, Judd Foxman.”
9:35 p.m.
I’M WALKING TO my car when I hear footsteps behind me. “Judd.”
I turn around and she launches herself into my arms, becoming airborne just before impact, squeezing the breath out of me. Her legs wrap around me, and I hold her there while she hugs me. When she pulls back, she is smiling brightly through her tears. “I was never good at walls,” she says.
“No you weren’t.”
“I want you to know that I’m still going to hold you to our pact.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. We’ve each got five years to come up with a better plan. If not, it’s you and me, babe.”
I nod. “You and me.”
“You good with that?”
“I’m good with that.”
And then, because we are lit like a movie in the glow of the streetlight above us, and because at that moment I love her as much as I’ve ever loved anyone, I pull her into me and I kiss her lips. When she opens her mouth, I can taste the toothpaste on her tongue.
“Minty fresh,” I say.
She laughs in musical peals, like small tolling bells, the kind of laugh that can make a man feel just a little more whole.
Tuesday
Chapter 50
8:15 a.m.
Boner comes over to officially end the shiva. His left temple is still fairly swollen where Paul’s pitch hit him, and he doesn’t look terribly happy to be seeing any of us again. In the week we’ve been here, we’ve trashed his temple, resurrected his embarrassing nickname, and inflicted bodily harm. He asks all of the immediate mourners to sit down in our low chairs one last time. Once he has us all seated, he sits down on one of the folding chairs and speaks as if he’s reading from a script.
“For the last week, this has been a house of mourning,” he says. “You’ve taken solace from each other, and from the community. Of course, your grief doesn’t end with the shiva. In fact, the harder part is ahead: going back to your regular lives, to a world without your husband and father. And just as you have comforted each other here this week, you must continue to look in on each other, especially your mother, to talk about Mort, to keep his memory alive, to know you’re not alone.”
Boner stands. “The following two passages are from the book of Isaiah: ‘No more will your sun set, nor your moon be darkened, for God will be an eternal light for you and your days of mourning shall end. Like a man whose mother consoles him, so shall I console you, and you shall be consoled in Jerusalem.’ ”
“It would be so nice to believe in God,” Phillip murmurs to no one in particular.
We all look at Boner expectantly, like graduates waiting to throw their caps.
“Now,” he says, grinning away the formality. “Please stand up.”
We all stand up, and the shiva is over. We are glad that it’s over but sorry to see it go. We love each other but can’t handle being around each other for very long. It’s a small miracle we made it through these seven days intact. And even now, we smile at each other, but our smiles are awkward and eye contact is fleeting. Already, we are coming apart again.
“It’s now customary for all of the immediate family to leave the house together,” Boner says.
“And go where?” Paul.
“Just take a walk around the block.”
“What for?” Me.
“For the last seven days, you have been apart from the world, focusing on death. Taking a walk outside reestablishes your connection to the living.”
“So, just walk around the block?”
“Yes,” Boner says, annoyed. “That would be great.”
It’s cooler than expected outside, bright and blustery, the first winds of autumn whispering through the leaves. Mom walks between Phillip and Wendy, lacing her arms through theirs, adding a procession-like quality to our stroll. Paul and I fall awkwardly into step behind them, our hands jammed into our pockets for warmth.
“So,” Paul says. “What’s next for you?”
“I don’t really know.”
“Well, if there’s anything I can do . . .” His voice trails off.
I keep my eyes straight ahead. “What about Phillip?”
“What about him?”
“He needs a job.”
“You need a job.”
“I’ll sign over my share if you hire him.”
Paul looks sharply at me and then sighs. “I’m pretty sure Phillip hasn’t screwed up his life for the last time.”
“You’re probably right.”
We walk in silence for a bit. I kick a small stone ahead of us. When we reach it, Paul kicks it, keeping it in play. “Dad always had a soft spot for him, didn’t he?”
I nod. “He was everything Dad wasn’t.”
“Crazy, you mean.”
“Loud. Warm. Emotional. Dad liked us because we were kind of like him, and he liked Phillip because he wasn’t anything like him.”
Paul sighs. “So what are we talking about here?”
“Dad’s gone,” I say. “A
nd along with the business, we inherit the business of bailing out Phillip.”
He kicks the rock a little too hard, and it clatters off the sidewalk and into the street. “Okay. Here’s the deal. You keep your share. I’ll bring Phillip into the business on a trial basis. But when it comes to him screwing up, you and I are partners. Fifty-fifty. Deal?”
“Deal,” I say. It feels good to be talking like this, like brothers. We turn the corner onto Lansing, a short, crescent-shaped street that jug-handles back around to Knob’s End.
Paul stops walking and clears his throat. “I want to say something else.”
“Yeah?”
“What happened the other night. I said some things.”
“We both did.”
“Yeah, well, the point is, I’ve been pissed at you for a very long time and that didn’t do either of us any good. I wasted a lot of time being angry, time I can’t get back. And now I see you, so angry about what happened to your marriage, and I just want to tell you, at some point it doesn’t matter who was right and who was wrong. At some point, being angry is just another bad habit, like smoking, and you keep poisoning yourself without thinking about it.”
“I hear you. Thanks.”
Paul slaps my back. “Do as I say, and not as I do, right?”
“Right. Thanks, Paul.”
He starts walking again, a step ahead of me. “Don’t mention it, little brother.”
As far as rapprochements go, it’s awkward and vague, but the advantage to being as emotionally inarticulate as we are is that it will do the trick. So we walk on, lighter than when we left, the staccato click of Mom’s stiletto heels beating out a Morse code on the pavement as she leads us back home.
9:10 a.m.
MOM CRIES WHEN she kisses Wendy good-bye. She can be so over the top as a matter of routine that when normal emotions come into play, it almost feels unreal. But we are her children, and we’re all leaving her again. I kiss my two nephews good-bye and strap them into their car seats. “You guys have fun on the plane. Be good.”
This Is Where I Leave You: A Novel Page 28