Peep Show

by Joshua Braff

  My father begins to cough and search his pockets for a cigarette. “You had us drive out here so you could tell your son he can visit you in Brooklyn? Visit you, Mickey? Do you remember giving birth to this one, do you? I was there, I remember it. Look at him, he’s your boy.”

  “And I love him,” she says, a teary wobble to her voice. “I’d give everything I have and everything I am today if David would embrace the life I’ve found.”

  I’ve heard her say this so many times before. But it’s been a while. How ’bout it? Join the sect and you could be sleeping in your own bed tonight.

  “You mean he’s got to turn Hasid, Mick? Is that what you really want? A whole world of Orthodox Jews.”

  “I want my son to understand me. I want him to respect who I am and who his sister has become.”

  “Don’t worry, Mickey. I’m his father and I’ve always taught him to respect all shapes and sizes.”

  “Then why?” she says.

  “Why what?”

  “Why would a boy who respects me bring that picture to the Danowitzes’ home on one of the most important days in their lives.”

  My father rolls his eyes and thumps the table. “You’re still talking about that? You’re the one who left it out there to be seen.”

  “I threw it away!”

  “But that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. I told him all about it, Mick, the way we met, the—”

  “Why did you give it to him?”

  “He found it on his own! You put it in with all the other pictures.”

  “I would never put that picture in one of those boxes.”

  “Mom! It was in there.”

  “Stop,” she says, her eyes now frozen on me and tearing. “It doesn’t matter. What matters is that you pointed it at me. So close to my friends.”

  “You had a secret and I—?”

  “I need to keep it a private matter for the rest of my life. Tell me you’ll never, ever tell your sister and—”

  “Oh, Mickey, give the boy a break.”

  “Tell me you won’t tell anyone!”

  “I won’t tell anyone,” I say.

  “Promise me!”

  “Yes. Yes, Mom.”

  “Enough already. He said he wouldn’t for Christ’s sake.”

  My mother wipes her nose and eyes and sits up straight. “Now, I’m not saying you cannot see your sister. I’m saying that there will be times you can see her, privately, and there will be times when you cannot, cannot, see her at all.”

  “Are you done?” my father says.

  “I’m asking you to understand, Martin. We’re not who we once were. We are completely different people.”

  “Is that right?”

  “Do I look like the same person you married? The same person in that picture? Do you think Dena’s the same?”

  “You’ve worked very hard to be someone else. But I’m still me. I still love my girl.”

  “She is in love with her studies and she’s become an interested, intelligent, and involved baal teshuva who many people . . .”

  “I just want to see my kid! Look at me, Mick. I get to see her. I don’t give a flying fuck about your status in the shtetl. I’m not so young anymore. Look at me. I piss eleven times at night. I have headaches and heart burn and I didn’t drive an hour to hear you say that Debra’s too Jewish to see us.”

  “Did you give David a job at the theater?”

  “Yes. He needed a job.”

  “That’s his career path?”

  “Why not.”

  “In pornography.”

  “Pornography?”

  “Whatever it is you do there,” she says. “If it’s associated with me or Debra—the talk, the gossip in the community, Martin—she’ll never be able to marry a Lichtiger. I won’t be able to marry either, Martin. Ever.”

  My father’s hand is shaking as he wipes his forehead. No one speaks. He stands for a moment, then sits again. “You want us to hear that you’re an extremely religious person. You want to us to know that nobody is as connected to God as your team, the Lichtigers.”

  “That’s not what I said.”

  “How in hell can anyone as close to God be as close-minded as you are? If the Almighty One, blessed be he, knew how you’re treating your son, he’d never, ever like you.”

  “That’s a horrific thing to say to me.”

  “And it’s horrific what you’re doing to this family.”

  “You,” she says pointing at him, “have no idea what it means to keep a family together!”

  “And you’re full of it, lady. I may be a scumbag in your eyes but I love my kids and I . . .”

  Paula is back. “Are you ready to order?” she asks.

  “No,” my father says. “No we’re not. We don’t need to order. We’re leaving. Let’s go, David.”

  “Wait,” I say. “Mom? Look at me.”

  “Now, David. Let’s go.”

  I touch her shoulder but she doesn’t face me.

  “David!”

  “You won’t even look at me?”

  “Go,” she says. “Go with your father.”

  I stare at the top of her head before I walk from the booth to the door. I’m not breathing. My father barks to himself and starts coughing. Outside, he slams his hand on the top of his car and his cigarette package drops to the ground. As he leans for it, I watch his back arc and his head lower and boom, he vomits onto the pavement.

  “Holy shit.”

  “I’m fine. I must have eaten something.”

  He coughs, pounds himself on the chest and pukes again.

  “I’ll go back in and get you some water.”

  “No, I don’t want you to. I don’t want your mother to know.”

  I look back at the restaurant and she’s still inside, still in the booth. My father spits a few times and straightens up.

  “Let’s get out of here,” he says, and I get in the car. “Check for tissues in the glove box.” He wipes something off his lips with his hand. As I look for them, a deep chill comes upon me and it’s fear, I think, that’s raising the hairs of my arms. I find a few tissues and hand them to my father. His face is a chalky gray and he keeps clearing his throat. He coughs hard and I reach to pat the middle of his back.

  “What should we do?” I say.

  “It’s passing,” he says, and starts the car. “Let’s go. Let’s go get your sister.”

  “No. No. She’s in school anyway.”

  “Who cares?”

  He sees me shaking my head. “It’s not a good idea.”

  “One weekend,” he says. “One fuckin’ weekend.”

  The Greyhound drives by us and changes gears for the highway. My father puts the car in drive and follows it. I see my mother stand from the booth as we pass. She bends, looking for our car, and starts walking toward the door.

  Just for Fun

  I REMEMBER ALL OF THE nineteen days I went to this place with my sister. A horror I could not wake up from. My building was across the street from hers and of course I was never permitted to visit the girls’ section. It was my father who stopped it. He walked into my classroom and literally grabbed me out of there in the middle of prayers. I remember my feet leaving the floor as he ran with me, a silver-haired man in a red-checkered blazer, jogging the halls of the yeshiva, looking for the door.

  We’re silent as we approach the parking lot and I just know this is a horrible idea.

  “I think you should get her,” my father says.

  I face him but he doesn’t look at me. “No.”

  “Just say we’re looking for Dena Arbus.”

  “To who?”

  “Whoever’s there.”

  “I’m not going in there.”

  “Look at me, I’ll stand out too much,” he says.

  “We both will, Dad. Just say you’re her father and you’re here to pick her up early. Or let’s just leave. This is stupid.”

  He glances over his shoulder at the building. “Fine,” he sa
ys, and he’s out of the car.

  As the minutes pass, I envision a siren and then two long-bearded men dragging him by his armpits to the exit. Or my mother pulling in the driveway to a screech, running past me, holding her handkerchief on her head as she bolts to the door. I crane my neck to see if I can see him. Two teenage girls walk out of the building and see me there, sitting in the tan Cadillac with the engine running. I may as well be an albino kangaroo the way they gawk and keep turning back to see me, a boy, wow, in our very own parking lot. They end up joining three other girls on the swing set of a kiddie playground outside a separate entrance. I watch them tell their friends there’s a member of the male species sitting in that car over there and all of them look over at me. I see Sarah Danowitz before she sees me. She’s the only blonde Hasid I’ve ever seen. And by far the prettiest. My instinct is to hide, to keep the story away from her, to move over to the driver’s seat and get the hell out of here. But my father is in there. I just hate all of this. And here comes Sarah, to the shock of the other girls. Right outside her school, she’s squinting, the brave one, and walking closer and closer.

  “David?”

  “Hi.”

  “Are you looking for Dena?”

  “No. Not really.”

  She looks back at the school before facing me again. “So why are you here?”

  “My father is picking her up. It’s a birthday thing.”

  “I get a ride from your mom on Thursdays, so I guess he’ll need to drive me home too.”

  “But we’re not going home.”

  “Oh.”

  “We’re going to the beach.”

  “The beach?” she says, and laughs. “Dena? I don’t think she has a bathing suit.”

  “Well, yeah, she probably won’t swim.”

  One of the girls from the swing set yells something in Yiddish at us and laughs. All the others laugh too. Sarah smiles and sticks her middle finger up at them.

  “I better go look for my dad.”

  Sarah nods. “The beach.”

  I turn the engine off and open the door. A few steps toward the school and I can’t see anything inside because of the glare. I look back at Sarah, who’s now sitting in the passenger seat. Great. I walk inside the school and there’s a hum of distant voices. It smells like body odor but it’s faint and sort of pleasant, the way gasoline is. The scent brings me back to those nineteen days I spent here. I am unseen until I pass a classroom where a girl Debra’s age looks up from her book and notices me. She says something to her teacher and the woman pokes her head out the door.

  “I’m looking for my sister. Her name is Dena Arbus.”

  The teacher seems tentative and disappears for a full minute. When I see her again, she walks past me to the staircase.

  “Room three,” she says pointing, a Russian accent. “Up the stairs and to the left.”

  I nod and then my father and sister are walking down the stairs. The woman speaks Yiddish to Debra and glares at my dad.

  “Mein tater vil mir frier efpikin frier,” says Debra.

  The teacher nods and tries to smile. “Shalom.”

  All of us say it back to her and she heads off down the hall.

  “Hello, Deb,” I say. I get a fast hug and I kiss her but I can tell she’s confused.

  “You look different,” she says, and laughs a little.

  “Yeah?”

  “Does Mom really know about this?”

  I glance at my dad. “Oh, yeah. Didn’t Dad tell you?”

  “I told her,” my father says, completely out of breath. “It was discussed at length, so let’s get going, I got a surprise.” He starts moving toward the front of the building and we follow him. She knows this is bull. I can see it in her face.

  “Mom didn’t say anything,” she says.

  “It’s been planned since last weekend,” my father says. “My birthday present. I get to be with my daughter. Did you leave the car on, David?”

  “Your birthday’s next month,” she says.

  “But we’re celebrating now.”

  We all get outside and Sarah is still in the car. My father stops cold when he sees her. “Who’s the hell is that?”

  “Sorry, Sarah,” I say, and she puts her hands together in prayer.

  “Please let me come. I want to come. My mother’s fine with things like this. As long as there’s a parent.”

  “Your mother would kill you,” Debra says.

  “And what about yours?” Sarah says.

  “She gave me permission.”

  “Just drive,” says Sarah.

  “No, no way,” my father says. “I can’t just take you from school.”

  “I’ll call my mother and tell her,” Sarah says, and she jumps in the backseat.

  “What is she doing?” my father says.

  A car pulls into the driveway and my stomach drops. “Look, Dad, look,” I say and a part of me wants it to be my mother. It’s a blue station wagon that drives up to the swing sets. Four little girls in black come out of the building and walk through the playground to the car.

  “You’re Sarah, right?” my father says.

  “Yes.”

  “Please get out, Sarah.”

  Another car comes into the driveway. It’s my mother for a second but it’s not. My father starts the engine. “Please, Mr. Arbus,” Sarah says. “My mother lets me do whatever I want.”

  “Are you gonna get out or not?”

  “No,” she says.

  I look behind me at Sarah. She shrugs her shoulders and can’t stop grinning like she just won a contest. My father starts to cough, cough, cough, and it looks like he’s getting punched in the stomach. He reaches to roll his window down.

  “We shouldn’t do this,” I whisper.

  He snorts, spits, and fires a loogy but it’s mostly on the glass. “Goddamn it,” he says, trying to wipe it with his thumb. Another car, this one’s green.

  “That’s the most disgusting thing I’ve ever seen,” my sister says. I laugh. It triggers a sort of hysteria in me and I’m laughing so hard. My father looks at me, still trapped in the mess.

  “Yes,” he says. “It’s true. I am disgusting. Now let’s go to the fuckin’ beach.”

  Atlantic City

  I WAS SEVEN THE LAST time I stood on this boardwalk. I remember my mother in a man’s shirt and a green ribbon that hung from her beach hat. I remember the taste of Fresca. But that’s about it. The beach is long, about a hundred feet until the water, and there are swimmers and rafters on this hazy, sticky-hot day. On the sand are lifeguard stands and various patches of water from when the tide was higher. The amount of sky and space is what I notice most. And the waves that crash so far off the shore.

  My father is very quiet and doesn’t look well. The girls go in and out of giddiness, knowing, perhaps, how this awful crime will unfold. In my mind I’m unconnected from the decision to steal them from their yeshiva. I told him fifteen times we should bring Sarah back. “They’ll figure it out,” he said, and just kept going.

  I watch the girls lean over the boardwalk railing in their matching dark dresses. He can be a savior, is my thought. A Robin Hood instead. He plucked them from God’s arms and brought them to the beach, where the salty air fills their lungs with life. My eye goes to the symmetry of their bodies and the contrast of black clothes on blue sky. By the time I get my camera out, Sarah is removing her shoes and now her tights. In court I’ll swear this was never my idea. I’ll apologize to my mother, to Becca Danowitz, to Peter Rabbi, to the grand rabbi and to every sect in every Hasidic community. In Yiddish. I lift my Graflex and try to capture the size of it all.

  “Gorgeous, right?” my father says. “Look at the water.”

  “Is this the hotel?” Debra asks.

  “Yes, right here. The Swan. But we have time before checking in. You girls are free to run around. Take some layers off if you want. I’ll go look for Brandi and see if she’s got some suits for you.”

  “Out by the wa
ter,” Sarah says. “Let’s walk out there.”

  Debra pulls her black sleeves up past her elbows. “I think I’ll stay here,” she says.

  “I’ll hold your shoes,” I tell her. “Go. Go on out there.”

  “Come on, Dena,” Sarah says, and is off, down the stairs and out on the sand where she stares down at her feet in quiet amazement. Camera to my face, I hear my own breathing as I watch her kick the sand. Click. My sister appears slowly in the bottom right of my lens. Shoes on. Sarah is running now and I have them both in my view. Click.

  “David.”

  My father is hunched over and his cheeks are a greenish gray.

  “Again?” I say.

  He clears his throat and coughs like he’s never going to stop. “I don’t see Arlene. I need to go lie down. If you see her, don’t tell her I’m sick. And she definitely doesn’t need to know about—”

  “Doesn’t need to know about what?” she says, right behind us.

  “There you are. Great. Good. When’d you get here, baby?”

  “You’re coughin’ like a madman, Marty. Have another cigarette. Doesn’t need to know about what?”

  Brandi’s in a long red wig and a white one-piece bathing suit and heels. She pushes a huge pair of sunglasses higher on her nose and steps closer to my father. “Doesn’t need to know about . . . ?”

  “I wasn’t even talkin’ about you, Arlene. I talked to Sheehan and we’re all set. You’re tight-lacing tonight. You know that?”

  “No. No one told me that.”

  “He’s a corset man. Eighteen inches, it’s in the contract.”

  “I’m thirty-six years old, Marty. If Sheehan wants eighteen inches, he can cram ’em up his ass.”

  “And there’s an interview.”

  “With who?”

  “The Peep Show Express. Some guy over there says he wants to meet you. Just plug the theater and tell him you need to get dressed. Do not mention my name.”

  “Where’s Deb?”

  I point to the beach and she walks closer to the railing. Debra’s sitting with her arms wrapped around her knees, as Sarah dips her toe in the water. “Mickey let her bring a friend?”