“No, no. A friend. Um. Nicole.”
“Who’s Nicole? I thought I knew all your friends. Even the lovely Justine.”
“No, she’s not really a friend. A cousin. My mother’s cousin.”
Lisa shrugged. “Let’s make it next Monday, then, okay? We need to get the labels before we reserve the trunks.”
“Sure,” Erica said.
She was operating on two planes: one here sitting on this locker room bench pulling on her jeans, one existing entirely beyond this constricted world. She could carry on friendly conversations, pick up Sophia from the gym’s childcare, and buy matzoh at Rothman’s—because she remembered that was the thing Debbie kept reminding her about—all the while flashing on Stephan and his little silver locket, and the lights of Staten Island, and the lush way Josh Horton’s fingers raced over the piano keys, like they were unleashing a force far beyond the capability of his hands.
But she didn’t have time to drive all the way over to Rothman’s. Egg matzoh was disgusting anyway. Ron’s taste in matzoh was as bad as his taste in music. She’d pick up regular matzoh at the regular supermarket later. She took Sophia to the pediatricians for her checkup and then fed her milk and cereal before picking up the preschool carpool and depositing the twins at their friend Andy Spicer’s house, before driving across the railroad tracks to Nick’s, across the street from the pet store, two blocks up the street from her parents’. Blood skated through her veins like helium.
Nick lived in a rundown Victorian. A few straggly irises bloomed in the front yard. The screen door had rusty hinges and torn wire, but the wooden door behind it was thick and hand carved, with a stained-glass porthole.
He opened the door, a stocky man heading into premature middle age. His skin had the yellowish tint of an olive-skinned person who didn’t get outside often enough. He smiled at her through thin lips, with the same aura of detached bemusement that characterized his phone manner.
“Oh, well, hello, Rikki,” he said. “Come on in.”
The small entryway opened onto a parlor room, which, despite the ornate fireplace mantel and built-in bookshelves, bore a neglected bachelor air about it: dingy shag carpet, an overly elaborate stereo system with shoulder-high speakers, a television, and a round tiled coffee table with a Styrofoam container on it filled with dried-out chow mein. A stack of magazines rested unsteadily against the arm of the overstuffed couch.
“How did you know my stupid nickname?” Erica hovered uncertainly over the couch. “Nobody but my family calls me Rikki.”
Nick fluffed the sofa pillows in an impotent attempt to straighten up. “Last time I spoke to you, I believe you answered to Rikki? Debbie Shapiro’s your big sister, right? Debbie Lassler these days. Mother of Jared?” He winked.
With that wink, it came back to her. She knew Nick from school. He’d entered Mrs. Twombley’s third-grade class late, having moved from Illinois, and she’d been assigned against her will to show him around. He was one of those kids who sat in the back and didn’t call much attention to themselves. He’d won a multiplication prize on upper elementary math night, she recalled. In high school he’d starred on the wrestling team. He’d even signed her senior yearbook, she was sure.
“I don’t believe I’ve seen you since high school,” she said, though as she uttered that sentence, she realized she had, just the other day at the pet store, buying dog food. His dog, an Irish setter, lounged on the couch, shedding hair.
“You haven’t changed a bit,” said Nick. “You still look like you could beat me up.”
“Right,” Erica said.
“No, I’m not kidding. You’ve got those naturally sexy shoulders, those muscular arms, those long legs. You were on the track team, right? You still do any sports?” His eyes washed over her body.
“Just aerobics class and jogging once in a while,” she said.
“What beautiful eyes on that baby!” Nick exclaimed. “Your first?” He fluffed Sophia’s tufts of black hair.
“No,” Erica said. “My first girl. My fourth child.”
“Wow. You don’t look like a mother of four.” Nick motioned for her to sit down. He didn’t remotely resemble Erica’s notion of a drug dealer.
“Jared and Ashley and some of their buddies come and hang out here after school. I like to set up a friendly space for them, when they don’t feel like going home.” Nick waved his hand around, indicating the couch, the stereo, and the TV.
“Do you know my sister Debbie?” The couch bounced under her rear end.
“Oh, sure,” Nick grinned. “She’s a nice enough lady, on the anxious side. Her husband’s an asshole, though. Sorry.”
“That’s okay. I don’t like him either.” Sophia wriggled madly in Erica’s arms but she hesitated to put her down on the grotty couch. She didn’t want to sit around and make small talk. “So,” she said. “About those CDs.”
“I’ve got them right here,” Nick said. “Same music you’ve listened to before. Want to listen right now, with me?”
The idea appealed to Erica, quite a lot, in fact, despite the smarmy Nick and the smell of decaying Chinese food. But the necessity of putting Sophia down on a carpet where she saw dried cheese fragments and a broken paper clip made her decline. “I’ll just buy them,” she said.
“That’ll be $150,” he said, reaching into the drawer of an antique roll-top desk, sending a pile of pamphlets tumbling to the floor. Erica picked them up, shuffling the pile back into shape. Housemates.
“Don’t tell me this is your business too?” she asked. “Everybody I know is recommending you.”
“Yeah, I’m a multifaceted guy.” Nick stuffed the stack of pamphlets into a cubicle at the back of the desk. “Need a housekeeper?”
“No. Everyone else just thinks I do.” An Elvis Presley clock chimed the noon hour by bellowing out “You Ain’t Nothin’ but a Hound Dawg.” Erica dug in her purse for the cash, balancing Sophia precariously on her hip.
“Thanks for the stuff,” she said.
For good measure she stopped by the pet store and picked up some decorative orchids and a better heat lamp for Sammy before getting back in her car.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Ethan stepped out of his town car late afternoon, tired, distracted, and smelling of airplane air. He dumped his suitcase in the hallway and dropped his suit jacket on the stairs. Erica reminded him they were due at her parents in a half hour for the seder.
The small brick three-bedroom house where Erica grew up sat literally across the railroad tracks, in West Meadow Heights. Everything within remained essentially the same as she remembered from childhood; furniture accumulated on sale, with care and taste, maintained diligently with a dust rag and lemon oil. Before her mother got her real estate license, she’d sublimated her significant nervous energy making things: curtains, slipcovers, crocheted doilies for her potted plants. Her father, an engineer, now retired for two years, still built things: an entertainment center, a backyard deck, cabinets to hold the toys that still filled the basement. Dad received a decent pension, but despite the money flowing in from her mother’s real estate business, they still couldn’t bring themselves to buy new. So all their carefully accumulated and crafted possessions stayed in place, verging on the edge of shabbiness, in time-warped hues of avocado and orange.
Erica’s boys didn’t care. They loved their grandparents’ house, especially the miniature railroad in the basement, which they ran down to as soon as they arrived. Her father was setting the table with Mom’s good china, Haggadahs, wineglasses, plastic cups for the kids, and a full seder plate. Debbie was centering a sponge cake from Leonard’s on a silver tray. Ron was watching the Mets game. Jared sat on the floor, leafing through a copy of Guitar magazine. Erica smelled aluminum-foil pans of roast chicken reheating.
Ron pumped Ethan’s hand. “So how about those Mets!” he asked in his smooth, melodious
DJ voice that was completely at variance with his stringy body and annoying mannerisms.
“What about them?” He smiled politely, as if Ron were a pesky client he needed to accommodate.
“They’re on a roll.” Ron waved his arms enthusiastically. “And how about those Yankees?” he continued gleefully. “Fading fast!”
“I’m more of a basketball fan,” shrugged Ethan, following the boys downstairs to the model railroad.
Ron turned his jovial beady eyes toward Erica. “Well, at least you like baseball,” he said. “Even though you root for the wrong team. Watch out for Mookie Wilson. He’s the best first baseman the Mets have ever had.”
“He doesn’t hold a candle to Don Mattingly,” Erica said.
Debbie emerged from the kitchen, holding a blue platter. “Why don’t you put the matzoh on here, Rikki?” she asked.
“Oh my God, I completely forgot!”
“I told you to go to Rothman’s. I told you several times. I remember distinctly.”
“The stuff’s kind of tasteless, to tell you the truth,” said Erica.
“Matzoh is the major symbol of Passover!” Mom, hovering over Debbie, scrunched up her forehead and scratched the back of her neck.
“I’ll go to Rothman’s right now, before they close at sundown,” Erica said. A car ride appealed more by the second.
“I’ll come with you,” Jared announced, slamming the door behind them before his parents could register any objection.
Erica pulled out of the driveway, plugging in her Jefferson Starship tape. “I tried talking to your mother about the boot camp,” she told Jared. “I didn’t get anywhere.”
“So, what else is new?’ He slumped down in his seat, fiddling with something in his pants pockets.
Erica hummed along to the Starship’s song “Sara.” Like most of her favorite songs, it had a dreamy, floaty quality. “Don’t you love this song?” she asked.
“It’s all right,” Jared said.
They drove along, listening to the music, not really conversing, arriving at Rothman’s just as the grumpy proprietor was locking the door. They convinced him to reopen the cash register and sell them his last two boxes of matzoh.
“Wanna get high?” Jared asked, pulling a joint from his pocket as they passed West Meadow Park on their return.
“Sure,” Erica said. “By the duck pond?”
They sat down on a bench across from Porky Pig the Litter Eater, a larger-than-life pink pig face that opened its mouth every ninety seconds, repeating, “I’m porky pig the litter eater. Give your litter to me.”
“This stupid pig has been here ever since I was in high school,” Erica said. She took a hit off the joint, then another, then a third.
“So, did you like my little present?” Jared asked.
“Yeah,” said Erica, embarrassed, wanting to change the subject. “So, what are you reading in Guitar magazine?” she asked.
“About Van Halen. About how he’s the best guitarist in history.”
“No way. He doesn’t compare to Eric Clapton. Did you ever listen to ‘Layla’?”
“Clapton was on heroin then.”
Erica looked at her nephew, cross-legged, leaning forward, his expression earnest and frowning, his black T-shirt loose at his shoulders. Debbie didn’t understand that teenage indifference was a fraudulent front, slender protection against a raw pit of emotion deep enough to drown in. Waves of purple and orange swirled along the horizon, backlit by the setting sun, as Porky made regular pronouncements from his open maw.
“Feed the starving pig!” Erica cried.
Gathering up paper cups, scrunched napkins, and discarded notices, they stuffed them down Porky’s mouth, laughing hysterically, their faces pink from the evening chill.
“We’d better get back, “Erica said, when they’d exhausted their supply. The purple and orange stripes had faded from the sky. It was nearly dark.
Jared zipped his nylon jacket up around his neck. They walked toward the car in damp grass, dodging duck poop.
“Dad hits me,” he said softly. “He used to spank me when I was little, any time I did anything remotely bad. Now he hits me for real, for nothing. Once he hit me because I wouldn’t eat my meatloaf!”
A chilly breeze whipped through. They both shivered.
“Nobody believes me,” Jared said. “Nobody but Ashley. I’m the dropout from the gifted program, and I’m the bad boy.”
“Has your Mom seen him hit you?” Erica asked.
“Yeah. She doesn’t like it, but it doesn’t matter. Whatever he says goes.”
“That’s inexcusable.” Erica grabbed both his hands, looking deeply into his eyes. It was an odd sensation, like mother to child, but not quite. Both their sets of eyes, so similarly round and long lashed, their swollen black pupils surrounded by hazel, flecked with gray, took up all the available space. “Does he hit your Mom too?”
“Oh no,” Jared said, averting his eyes ever so slightly, twisting out from under her grip. “He treats her like a princess.”
As she was parking in front of her parents’ house, Jared said, “I saw him hit her once.”
“What did he do? Where did he hit her?” Erica drummed her fingers on the dashboard in time to the music.
“I didn’t actually see it. I heard it. They were in their bedroom, and Mom screamed. She was screaming, ‘Don’t do that to me, Ron!’”
“And then what? What did you do?”
“Oh, I dunno. I didn’t know what to do. I think Ashley called, and then when I got off the phone, Dad was working in the yard, and Mom was boiling some potatoes or something.”
“Jesus,” Erica muttered. “I can’t believe this.”
Debbie banged on the car window.
Erica turned off the engine, opened the door and stepped out.
“What took you so long?” Debbie asked.
“Fighting litter,” Jared muttered.
“You’re holding up the seder.” “I got your matzoh,” Erica said, handing Debbie the bag.
She peered in. “You didn’t get the egg kind,” she said.
: : :
Dad raised the first glass of wine—Ethan’s merlot—for the blessing.
“I can’t drink because of the medication I’m on,” said Debbie, taking delicate sips of seltzer water. Jared took a sip of wine before Ron grabbed the glass and exchanged it for grape juice.
“Oh, let the boy drink the wine,” Dad said. “It’s Passover.”
“I think this young man caused quite enough excitement this spring with alcohol, don’t you think?” said Ron.
“Babe, will you read the blessing for the bitter herbs?” Dad asked Mom.
Debbie refused the bitter herbs. She said the horseradish hurt her stomach and that Jared shouldn’t eat it either due to his DDD medication. She didn’t think he should eat the matzoh either, because of his wheat allergy, and produced some rice crackers from her purse. They sat untouched on Jared’s plate.
Dylan read the Four Questions, a task he’d been practicing daily. “Halilah hazeh, halilah hazeh,” he sang softly and quickly, his curly head bent down over the book, his right hand pulling nervously at his ear.
“Fantastic,” Erica said, reaching across the table and squeezing his hand. She drank her second glass of wine.
Mom, Debbie, and Erica served the dinner—gefilte fish, matzoh ball soup, brisket, chicken, potato kugel, green beans. “This is delicious,” Mom proclaimed. “Can you believe it’s all takeout?”
“It’s great, babe,” Dad said.
“Great matzoh ball soup,” Ethan concurred, flashing his engaging smile. Mom often told Erica she liked Ethan’s smile, though she’d also told her on numerous occasions that she found him too slick, too workaholic, too reserved, too Californian, in so many ways not the husband she’d imagine
d for Erica. Somehow even her marriage to a wealthy investment banker had managed to be a disappointment.
“This brisket is too salty,” muttered Ron.
“Would you like something else, Ron?” Mom fluttered and hovered. “A chicken leg? Some tuna fish? I think we’ve got leftover lentil soup.”
“No, don’t bother,” Ron said, picking at the roast potatoes. “I’m not very hungry.”
After dinner, dessert, and the afikomen hunt, Jared suggested a singing contest. “I can sing ‘Chad Gadyah’ all in one breath,” he said, rocketing through all twelve verses in a squeaky fast voice. “Two zuzim,” he finished breathlessly, red-faced and coughing.
“Jared, are you all right? Do you need your inhaler?” Debbie reached inside her purse.
Jared shook his head.
“Jared hyperventilates,” Debbie announced to the table. “His asthma comes on when he gets overexcited. “It’s part of his DDD. Jared, honey, are you sure you don’t need your inhaler? You look awfully tired.”
Shaking his head again, Jared got up from the table and disappeared.
“I hope his stomach is okay,” said Debbie. “There was wheat in that chicken breading.”
The boys ran back down to the model trains in the basement. Ron and Dad retreated to the living room. Ethan stepped outside, presumably to smoke one of his clove cigarettes. Erica didn’t think he’d cut down at all. In fact, she even suspected he was substituting some regular tobacco ones for the clove. She was not about to call him out on his bad habits, though.
Mom and Debbie commenced cleanup. Erica sat down in the living room to nurse Sophia. Ron was complaining to Dad about the new adult contemporary format on his morning show.
“I can’t relate to the songs on the playlist. They all sound alike. Three-chord wonders, all of them. No depth. No romance. You know what I mean, David?”
“I’m not the best judge. I’ve never been one for popular music. Well, I think I’ll see what the boys are up to downstairs.” Dad made a quick exit, averting his eyes from Erica’s semiexposed breasts.
“Well, nice of you to join me,” Ron said, exhibiting no such discomfort. “Your husband’s done one of his vanishing acts.”
Wrong Highway Page 13