Tell Me How This Ends Well

by David Samuel Levinson

  “You’re going to give yourself an aneurysm. Stop struggling,” Jacob said, pressing a hand into the center of Diet’s bony, concave chest and pushing him back into the seat. It was what he should have done earlier, of course, and the moment he realized it, he felt a quickening of his pulse and a tightening up in his throat. “Just…will you just…relax?” He massaged Diet’s chest, the heat of him bursting right through the thin T-shirt and across Jacob’s palm, a heat like no other, full of pain and regret and lust and apathy and love. Yes, there was love, and it traveled through Jacob’s fingers and straight up his arm, radiating through the rest of him, warming his ears and his face, and finally coming to rest just behind his breastplate, where it remained, lodged like a fever, a memory of childhood—the minty Vicks VapoRub his mom used to swab on his chest whenever he caught the flu.

  “Now, just slide out from under it,” he said, gently drawing the slackening belt away from Diet’s chest as Diet maneuvered himself past Jacob’s hand.

  “Baby, you are a genius,” he said, kissing Jacob’s knuckles. “You are my hero.”

  “Aw, t’weren’t nothin’,” Jacob said, the sun colliding with the dewy lawns up and down the block and throwing an emerald tint upon the land. “I do believe we have arrived at our destination,” and he drove to the end of the cul-de-sac and up to his brother’s house, which was not as garish or ugly as he had remembered.

  An entire day after stepping onto a plane in Berlin, they were finally taking in the pink stucco facade of the two-story, Swiss chalet–style villa: the terra-cotta-tiled roof; the three-car garage; the freestanding basketball hoop; the overturned dirt bikes lying in the tall, drying, sun-drenched grass; the flourishing eucalyptus, palm, lemon, and orange trees; the boxwood hedges; and the climbing vines of wild roses, wisteria, and bougainvillea that spread out in purples, marigold-yellows, and reds, everything splashed in Technicolor and shimmering in HD. It amazed him that anything was alive, but then he understood that everything—grass, trees, flowers—had been genetically redesigned to survive on as little water as possible. He turned to Diet and said, “I’m apologizing in advance for anything rude and tasteless that any of them says or does.” Then he leaned in and kissed Diet hard and square on the lips.

  As he did, he heard what sounded like shouting coming from somewhere nearby and pulled away just in time to see his brother, Mo, round the corner of the house, throw his hands up in the air, and stomp off and then a shadow, which lengthened and grew the longer Jacob stared at it, the shadow that eventually became Julian Jacobson, his dad, who was pushing a lawn mower.

  “Welcome to the next four days of your life,” Jacob said, putting the car into drive and pulling up behind his parents’ minivan, spotting the personalized Texas license plate, which read CROAKR, and laughing to himself at first, then aloud, until Diet asked him what was so funny. He explained what a croaker was—a kind of fish that makes a drumming sound by vibrating its swim bladder—and that it was his dad’s all-time favorite fish to catch and eat, or catch and release, omitting the truly humorous bit, the ironic double entendre, which was ghoulish, Jacob had to admit, and gave him the shivers.

  “I still do not get this,” Diet said. “Explain it to me again.”

  “I will, Schatz, I promise. But now let’s introduce you to the Old Man and the C.” The C stood for colitis, but Jacob didn’t feel the need to explain this right now, either. He’d also save it for later, or tomorrow, or next week when they were safely back in Berlin and ensconced in their lives, all of this already fading, much like his desire to see his dad, who yanked on the cord to start the mower, which emitted a puff of smoke before spluttering to life, and who began to mow Mo’s unkempt, untamed front yard in earnest.

  And though to the world it looked as if his dad were doing a nice turn for his elder son, Jacob knew that he was in fact doing it for other reasons altogether, which had little to do with helping Mo and more to do with his own embarrassment at the way Mo maintained his yard, which of course reflected negatively on all of them, the entire Jacobson syndicate and all dead and buried antecedents as well.

  Jacob wasn’t about to explain any of this to Diet and would save it all up for later, or perhaps, after meeting his dad, Diet, who was fantastically bright, would finally be able formulate his own opinion about the Jacobson patriarch, saving Jacob from having to explain why he and his siblings had to get rid of him. Although if you pressed Jacob, he probably would have said that plotting Julian’s death with his siblings was just a lot of talk and that none of them was actually serious about offing Dear Old Dada. I mean, it’s not like Mo and I are the Menendez brothers or that Thistle is Lizzie Borden, he thought, taking a deep, fortifying breath before stepping out of the car just as his dad turned away—on purpose? Jacob wondered, because he had to have seen them—and disappeared around the other side of the house.

  Now was Jacob’s chance and he took it, grabbing Diet’s hand and leading him quickly up the sidewalk, which was still splotchy in places from the evaporating rain. Jacob rang the doorbell while Diet let out a howl of excitement at the prospect of a gecko clinging for dear life to the front door, only to have a smiling Jacob point out that it wasn’t real.

  “Ceramic. Imported from Israel,” he said, flicking it with a finger. Three of the little inanimate reptiles adorned the salsa-red door, each with a different set of words painted across its avocado-green spine that, when read collectively, added up to Welcome to Our Humble Jewish Home. He looked for the expensive handblown-glass mezuzah, a gift from his parents on Mo’s family’s move into this, their second home, but found only two small screw holes and the outline of where it once had been attached to the glossy white doorjamb.

  Let’s leave, Jacob wanted to say, reaching for Diet. There’s danger here. But it was too late to say anything, for the door creaked open, though no one was there to greet them.

  “Hello?” Jacob called out, stepping into the house just as one of the twins, the not-so-invisible-after-all greeter, appeared from behind the door, a huge frown plastered across his face. He was clutching a remote control in his small hand and aiming it at the vaulted ceiling. On his shirt was an embroidered letter D.

  “You must be Dexter,” Jacob said, kneeling before him.

  “No, stupid, I’m Baxter,” he replied. “That’s Dexter,” and he pointed the remote at his brother, who stood at the top of the staircase in the same shirt, though his naturally had a giant letter B embroidered on it. “You be quiet,” Baxter shouted, chasing a ghost or an invisible playmate or pet up the stairs, where he finally came to rest beside his twin.

  “Charming,” Jacob said, rising, and pivoted toward Diet, who had been hovering on the threshold behind him just moments before, yet who was now standing with Mo under the lemon tree.

  As Jacob watched, Mo reached up and plucked off a small fruit and handed it to Diet, who brought it up to his nose and inhaled, his face lighting up with excitement again and chasing away the rest of the hooded darkness and doubt from his eyes. It was a marvel to see and for one brief second Jacob believed that all would go well, that bringing Diet with him to meet his family wasn’t as selfish perhaps as he’d previously imagined, and that his family might embrace Diet as he did and congratulate Jacob on a job well done.

  For there had been others, a litany of failures, though Jacob had known enough to never introduce any of them around, as he suspected it wouldn’t have mattered anyway, because none of them had stayed long enough to take any real hold or have any real effect on his life. Besides, no one in his family besides Edith took any true interest in Jacob’s romantic life, which caused a whole lot of friction and made him feel invisible, especially whenever they all used to gather to celebrate this or that Jewish holiday, though these gatherings had become rarer as they’d drifted further and further apart.

  Jacob remained in the doorway, continuing to observe his brother and his lover, who returned the lemon to Mo, the air filling again with the roar of the lawn mower, h
is dad’s re-approach, while Mo kneaded the lemon in his fingers, then absently tossed it into the air with one hand and caught it in the other, as if it were a baseball, which reminded Jacob of all the times he used to watch Mo and his dad playing catch, how he’d longed to join them but knew enough to remain on the wooden swing in the cool, canopied shade of the towering Chinese tallow trees, and how transfixing it was to watch the agile, confident Mo in the grass, his naturalness with the bat and respect for the game, the power in his young body, his windups as beautiful to Jacob as the pitches he let go. How jealous he was of Mo, until of course Mo shifted to his right or left and missed the ball completely and his dad erupted into heaves of taunting laughter, which altered Mo’s countenance almost imperceptibly, an incremental darkness that crept across his face as he collected the baseball and sent it back to his dad, who hollered, “At least one of my sons doesn’t throw like a damn pussy,” and shifted his gaze from Mo to Jacob, who smiled blandly and took the insult, because what other choice did he have?

  His dad maneuvered the mower, which choked once and died and had to be restarted, to the edge of the yard and followed the curb, and as he did, Mo shifted his body, tracking him, his face full of a familiar childhood mischief. Jacob sucked in his breath and took a step toward him, alarmed by what Mo was about to do but even more concerned for his dad, which surprised him. It had been so long since he’d felt anything for the old man and didn’t even understand what he was feeling, until Mo gripped the lemon tighter in his fist, wound up his arm, and took aim at the senior Jacobson.

  Before Jacob knew what he was doing, he was shouting “No,” which he feared would be drowned out by the roar of the mower, yet Mo lifted his eyes and registered it, letting his arm drop. He opened his fingers and the lemon fell into the grass, which swallowed it. If they were going to go through with it, and Jacob continued to have serious doubts that they actually would, he saw no point in purposefully antagonizing, even wounding, the old man, then having to deal with the fallout. Not that Mo would have even hit him, but why give the old coot further ammunition? Why merely bruise him when they could exsanguinate him instead?

  “ ‘Fame is short-lived and you’re the last to know when you’re no longer hot,’ ” Mo said loudly and dramatically in an impressive and impromptu accent, channeling his favorite actor, the Australian-born George Lazenby, whose only claim to fame, as far as Jacob knew, was his portrayal of James Bond in 1969 in the rather forgettable On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, after which he was canned from the franchise.

  Jacob went down the walk to meet Mo, all ready to scold him for his passive-aggressive high jinks with the lemon, but instead veered off to help Diet, who was struggling with the suitcases, trying to lift them out of the trunk.

  “Let me get those,” Mo said, hurrying to the car to help. “That impression. It was pretty good, right? Tell me it was good.”

  “Yes, Mo, it was the best impression of Lazenby I’ve ever heard,” Jacob said, rolling his eyes at Diet, while Mo lowered both extraordinarily heavy suitcases to the ground, which impressed Jacob, for Mo was nothing if not the caretaker and archetype of good old-fashioned chivalry and in his house the guest was king. “So I see the old man didn’t waste any time,” he added, referring to the yard. “How’s Mom? Where is she?”

  “She’s with Pandora running some errands, then picking up the trips from school,” Mo said, gazing with slit-eyed frustration yet also with a sense of wonder, it seemed, at the wide swaths his dad was making in the yard.

  “Dad made it sound like she couldn’t even walk to the bathroom,” Jacob said.

  “She can walk, she just walks superslow,” he said, and something in his voice caught. “I can’t believe she didn’t get diagnosed earlier, Jay. What was she thinking? What was he? He didn’t notice that his own wife couldn’t breathe?”

  Jacob had never seen the adult Mo cry and didn’t care to see it now or ever, but luckily Mo got ahold of himself, the moment passing away without tears. “I don’t mow the yard so much these days because the city told us not to, but do you think he cares?”

  As Jacob and Diet made their exhausted way along the walk, rolling-dragging their suitcases behind them, Mo rushed on ahead of them into the house. “Baxter! Dexter! Come put your toys away! Your uncle Jay and his friend are sleeping in here,” he said, his deep voice echoing through the rooms and carrying out the front door to Jacob, who paused and turned to wave at his dad, imagining the alternative scene and what would have happened if Mo had fired the lemon through the air. (“I don’t grow just any lemons. I grow lemons specifically engineered to thrive in desert climates,” his dad explained later, comparing his son’s meager-sized fruit to the enormousness of his own back in Texas. “No common sense at all. I told Farmer Moans that I’d start him a tree and drive the sucker out here, but I guess he just likes those effete Meyer lemons better.”)

  He pictured his dad knocked unconscious and lying on his back in the grass, out cold for the remainder of the trip. The vision was so welcome and pleasant, so vivid, that Jacob didn’t hear Diet calling to him until he was in the house and taking his place beside him at the wall of glass, which gave them a clear view into the backyard.

  “Baby, you did not mention that pool,” Diet said, pie-eyed and more delighted than Jacob ever remembered seeing him. “But it is…empty. Why? This is California, land of the blue swimming pools and one-point-three actors in every home!”

  “The Great Drought: The Sequel,” said Mo to Jacob, as if he’d been the one asking. “It was either drain it or pay a monthly luxury water tax so steep it’d make your nose bleed. Too bad you weren’t here during the show. The network always kept it topped off, heated, and sparkling. But them days are over, or nearly over…Look, I should warn you guys about something before you settle into your room and unpack.”

  Just as the two leaned in to hear what Mo had to say—for some reason unbeknownst to Jacob, Mo was whispering—the letter D, which meant Baxter, appeared at the top of the stairs with what else but a nosebleed. “Dexter, what did you do to your brother?” Mo asked, hollering up the stairs.

  “Nothing,” Dexter boomed, his reply just as loud and grating as Mo’s and making Diet cringe. “He’s a liar if he said I did anything,” and he appeared again beside his brother, wrapping an arm around the other’s shoulders, each boy grinning from ear to ear. And in that moment Jacob was finally able to tell them apart, because Dexter with the B was missing two front teeth, while Baxter with the D, who was bleeding profusely from the nose, was missing two bottom teeth.

  “Okay, well, you’re dripping on the hardwood, which is going to upset Mommy, so get your butt in the bathroom lickety-split. I’ll be right up,” Mo said and turned to Jacob. “Don’t tell the old man. Every time they come out here, Bax gets a gusher. He thinks the kid has leukemia, which he doesn’t—it’s just the dry air—but I don’t feel like dealing with another round of Let’s Make a Prognosis, starring Dr. Julian Jacobson.” Jacob held one hand up to his own mouth, the other to Diet’s, and mimed zipping lips. “Okay. Now, while I take care of Old Faithful, you guys make yourselves at home. If you’re hungry, have a snack, but don’t eat too much because I’m grilling tonight.”

  “Hey, what’d you want to tell us?” Jacob asked, but Mo was already halfway up the stairs and didn’t respond. After he was gone, Jacob took hold of Diet’s hand. “Are you as overstimulated and overtired as I am right now? It makes for a truly surreal experience, huh.”

  “It makes for a truly surreal something. I think I would like to stay at a hotel,” Diet said. “It is already way too chaotic and loud, and I fear I will not be able to get any work done. We will also not have any privacy to carry out our, um, business.”

  “Baby, we discussed this,” Jacob said. “It’s important to everyone that I be here. Besides, this is what you signed up for. Don’t back out on me now.” After he said it, he realized how it made him sound, as if Diet owed him, which of course he did, thought Jacob,
recalling the trip they’d taken to Munich to visit Diet’s family, an eye-opening, nerve-racking weekend to say the least. “What’s fair is fair.”

  “Ja, ja. Sehr gut,” Diet said, pressing a hand to the glass, as if he wanted to reach through and touch the imaginary lapping waters in the empty dreidel-shaped pool. “I must nap now, or I will never make it,” his voice soft but stern.

  They made their way upstairs to the guest room, where Jacob shut the door as Diet headed directly for the two large windows that faced the street. He drew the curtains, darkening the room, while Jacob fiddled with the pullout sofa.

  “If you need anything, like towels and sheets, they’re in the linen closet in the hall,” Mo said through the door. “I’ll be downstairs reading a script.”

  “How’s your head?” Jacob asked as they made the bed, Jacob smoothing out the sheets and the blanket and arranging the pillows just so. He had recognized early on just how much Diet appreciated tight corners.

  “It hurts a little, but I think I will be fine,” he said.

  “Mo suffered a concussion when we were kids,” Jacob said, waiting for Diet’s final assessment. He gave the bed the once-over, offering a tacit approval with his eyes, a telegraphed yes that Jacob had also come to recognize. Then and only then did he take a seat at the foot of the bed, where he was joined by Diet, who kneeled down on the pile carpet, a sudden supplicant.

  “He got beaned in the head with a baseball. And you know what our dear old dad said that night at dinner? He pulled out a five-dollar bill, slid it across the table to Mo, and said, ‘Buy the team another ball because I’m sure it got the worst of it.’ Then he started to laugh.”

  “Is that not funny?” Diet asked, unlacing Jacob’s shoes and slipping them gently off his feet. He set the shoes and socks aside. “To me, it sounds funny. Didn’t Mo laugh?”