“You finish up the yard?” his dad asked, continuing to stand in his way.
“I didn’t fly halfway around the world to mow Mo’s lawn,” Jacob said. “You were right, though. It did indeed run out of gas.”
“I distinctly remember telling you that you’d have to fill up the gas can,” he said.
“I have an idea,” Jacob said. “How about you go fill it up while I go say hello to my mother? You like to drive. Go make yourself useful.”
“Listen, you little punk—”
“Jacob, is that you?” his mom called. “Honey, is that Jacob?”
“It is, Roz,” his dad called back, though still refused to step out of the way. “He’s just on his way out to meet a friend for drinks. He’ll see you later.”
“Oh, don’t be silly, honey,” she responded. “I’ve done all the napping I can do for one day. Jacob, come in here.”
Jacob grinned a triumphal grin at his dad and opened the door, although he understood that this was nothing more than a pyrrhic victory, for the entire weekend was destined to be full of such skirmishes. He was happy to shut the door behind him, for once he had, his furiously galloping heart, which leaped and bucked at his rib cage, quieted down.
“Here you are,” his mom said once he was seated beside her. She was sitting up, a paperback resting in her lap. “I know you can’t stay long, but tell me—did Dietrich like the iced tea?”
“He’s drinking himself silly as we speak,” he said. “Thank you for making it and for our other gifts.”
“In this house, earplugs are essential. In fact, I think they should just hand them out at the door,” she said, breathing heavily. “I don’t know if either of you use a mask to sleep, but I find that the sun’s just so strong and comes up so quickly here.”
“We’ll give them a whirl,” he said, though he suspected they’d go unused.
“Were you and your father—I thought I heard…Well, he’s gotten so protective of me,” she said. “He’s actually been wonderful. I joke with him about it because he’s just not the same man I married. I’m constantly asking him what he’s done with the real Julian Jacobson,” and she laughed, which filled Jacob with incredible sorrow.
“I’d take it as a blessing that he’s finally acting like someone else,” he said.
“Oh, posh,” she said. “I know you two don’t always get along, but please put the past aside, for my sake. Just try, that’s all I’m asking. You can do that for four days, can’t you? I just…I don’t have the strength to referee anymore. You understand, don’t you?”
“Yes, of course,” he said, thinking about this conversation, which was already receding, and wondering if she realized they’d been having similar versions of it for the last twenty years. “I’m on my way to meet Clarence Chalmers. You remember him? He was my roommate senior year.”
“Didn’t he model underwear?” she asked. “For Calvin Klein, wasn’t it?”
“Not underwear, just clothes. For J. Crew, actually.”
“Oh, that’s right. Your sister was spellbound when she met him. Utterly spellbound,” she said. “She was beside herself when she found out he was gay. Is he still gay?”
“Of course he’s still gay.” He laughed. “Probably even gayer.”
“Such a pity. I’d love your sister to meet a nice man for a change.”
Then Clarence wouldn’t do for her anyway, because he isn’t nice, he wanted to say. Interesting, charming, even fascinating—but not nice.
“Oh, before I forget, Diet and I are taking you and Dad to dinner tonight at Luscious Friend. Apparently, Zagat rated it one of the best restaurants in L.A. Diet got us a table for seven-thirty, so we probably should have left yesterday for a reservation today.”
“That’s very sweet of you both, but your brother’s grilling and, to be frank, I just don’t think I have the energy to get back in the car. You know how your dad is. He got me up at the crack of dawn this morning because he wanted to beat the traffic.”
“And did you beat it?” he asked, rising.
“What do you think?” She rolled her eyes. “It’s L.A., I told him. If you didn’t want to deal with the traffic, we should have flown. But then we’d have to rent a car, and it takes him a lot longer these days to figure out how things work, like the lights and the navigation system, which frustrates him. He also doesn’t like to deal with LAX and I don’t blame him. Everything’s so difficult now, Jacob. When I used to take you kids to visit your grandpa Ernie, we sometimes had the entire airplane to ourselves. Do you remember that?” Jacob did remember it. He also remembered how relieved he was when his dad dropped them off at the curb and said good-bye. His mom yawned and shut her eyes. “Maybe I’ll try to take another little nap before dinner.”
He kissed her on the cheek, then left the room, only to run into his dad hovering in the hall. He stepped out of the shadows, startling Jacob, who tried his best to honor his mom’s wishes by reaching down into the murky, gloppy pain to get at just one decent memory of his dad and him—and though he came up short, he willed himself not to give in to the bilious hatred he still felt for the man.
“How’s your financial situation?” his dad asked.
A safe question, it had become as commonplace from him as asking about the weather. “Fine. It’s fine. I’m teaching English. I love it.” Jacob was not going to give him the least bit of satisfaction in knowing just how much he actually didn’t love it, how much he wished that his last play hadn’t closed after only a three-night run or that he was next to broke. And broken.
“That’s good to hear.” His dad reached into his pocket and produced a money clip made of sterling silver like Diet’s, though this one had belonged to Grandpa Ernie.
It still amazed Jacob that Grandpa Ernie had left anything to his dad and he suspected his dad had pilfered it, as he’d pilfered his wife’s inheritance—her tens of thousands of shares of tech, eco-tech, and med-tech stocks, the millions of dollars in other assets—having it signed over to him, then hoarding it, putting her on an allowance, and justifying it all by reminding her that she was stupid when it came to money, which might or might not have been the truth. What Jacob did know about his mom’s relationship with money was that when it came to her children she was often generous with it, whereas his dad was uncommonly parsimonious, keeping a firm grasp on the purse strings and doling it out only when one of them was absolutely desperate and came begging for it.
“Take this,” he said and pushed a fifty-dollar bill into Jacob’s hand. “Treat your friend.”
Before he could protest—he wasn’t dumb enough to refuse money, not even from his dad—the man slid past him and into the guest room. Jacob knew this was nothing more than a payoff, not only for finishing up the yard, which Jacob now felt oddly compelled to do, but also for maintaining some sort of cordiality between them. It was a hollow gesture and had the same effect on Jacob it usually did—it lessened the hurt, reacting upon him like a topical anesthetic, delightful and numbing until it wore off, of course.
On the way to the rental car, Jacob removed the crushed dirt bike from the driveway and set it in the garage, busted frame, mangled spokes, and all. He wondered which of the trips it belonged to, which of them Mo would have to apologize to for destroying it.
It was nearly 4:00 P.M. and the torpor in his body had leached its way through him, giving over to an exhaustion of the spirit as well. Every movement he made and every thought he had felt twice as cumbersome, twice the weight as it normally ought to have, and for a moment Jacob wanted to turn around and go back to Mo’s, collect Diet, abandon the luggage and this weekend, drive to LAX, drop off the car, get on a plane, and return to Berlin. He wanted to forget the agreement he’d made with his siblings, forget the conversations they’d had about murdering their dad, forget their mom was dying. Mostly, though, he longed to let go of the guilt he’d been carrying around with him ever since he’d left home at seventeen. The packing and unpacking of it, like his cutlery, like his
clothes, into and out of boxes and the dark, seedy spaces into which he so often disappeared and that made him doubt his own ability to love anyone, especially himself.
Merging south onto the 101, retracing the route he’d made earlier with Diet, Jacob held his hands steady on the wheel and on the idea that he and his siblings were right and righteous, protecting a woman who could not protect herself. Yet in the back of his sleep-deprived, jet-lag-addled mind, he also sensed that killing his dad, if that’s what was going to happen, meant something different for him than it did for Mo and Edith. He couldn’t put his finger on exactly what it was or what it might eventually mean, though it niggled at him, like an itch in the middle of his back that he couldn’t get to or scratch. There was a message in this madness, he realized, that kept appearing to him in flashes, like sunlight on bubbles, and just as evanescent and flimsy; every time he tried to catch it in his fingers, it popped.
He left the Valley and headed for the city of Los Angeles, in which for four years he’d labored under the belief and assumption that after graduating from UCLA he’d come away a full-fledged playwright. L.A.: the land of palms and palmists, charismatic charlatans and charlatanic charmers, a concoction of dreams and dreamers, and above all else a never-ending carnival of the flesh, which was nothing more than an attempt to hide the rot of the soul. Not that L.A. itself was soulless, but Jacob had to wonder if his own hadn’t rotted through while he passed his time going from one man and one bed to the next, never once thinking he had anything in common with them beyond a penis and a penchant for being treated poorly—and then he’d met Clarence and all that changed. But he’d lost Clarence, the circumstances of which had had such an impact on him, had been a defeat so profound, that he gave up L.A. and swore never to return.
Yet here he was, back at the scene of the crime, his own, his body lying prone on the floor of the past, only to disintegrate once he touched it, leaving behind a chalky white residue. Who had garroted him from behind? Who had drowned him in the bath? He might have said it was Clarence, whom he had loved without limit, though by now he knew differently.
The drive to Hollywood took him well over an hour, then he was taking a right onto Santa Monica Boulevard, barely recognizing any of it, although he suspected it had never lost its sinister, down-at-heel disposition of twenty years ago. Everything and nothing about it resonated with him anymore, just as everything and nothing about it was new or different. Which made sense, he guessed, considering whom he was meeting and why.
After graduation, Jacob had rushed to the opposite coast—if California were the gold standard of coastlines, then this made the Eastern Seaboard what? The kosher-salt standard?—and straight into the heart of New York City, which indeed lived up to its reputation for never sleeping, or at least never sleeping without an Ambien or three, as he unfortunately came to learn, for though he’d fled the perpetual luster and glare of sunshiny L.A., he’d also managed to bring the dreary skies of memory with him. And though Jacob understood that Clarence Lee Chalmers was not directly to blame for running him out of town, he was indirectly responsible for ruining the last few weeks of his senior year and for what happened to Thad Schneider. He and Jacob both, though as far as he knew Clarence still refused to come to terms with the part he’d played in the tragedy—Clarence, a loud and proud gay man, had convinced the shy, closeted, besotted Thad to come out to his devout Christian parents because Clarence believed it would help Thad let go of his “gay shame.” Clarence was supposed to have been there with him for moral support but flaked, missing the promised brunch with the Schneiders, too hungover after an epic night out with Jacob at Japón. In the days after, Thad seemed changed, though not for the better. He moved sluggishly around campus, his eyes darker and stormier than usual. Jacob asked several times if anything was wrong, but Thad just moved right past him without a word. A few days later, he hanged himself, leaving a note that started “Dear Clarence…” and ended “My love for you is eternal…”
Clarence had suggested Japón, and Jacob, speeding past it as if it were an optical illusion, a product of the sun, perhaps, or a mirage he hoped might vanish, registered the chill of that suggestion again, wondering why he hadn’t spoken up and offered to meet him someplace else. Yet hadn’t they spent many a splendiferous evening at Japón surrounded by every conceivable Hollywood type, from the likes of Willie Levine, the son of the head of Paramount, to Bernadine Bixby, the queen of movie gossip with the bifurcated tongue and every actor’s, director’s, and producer’s friendly nemesis, as well as everyone in between? Clarence knew them all, for they all wanted to know him, this erudite, rich, blond-headed boy, a standout among even the most beautiful of them. And Jacob, his sidekick, nowhere near as striking, yet handsome in his own right, so blisteringly funny, so goddamn genuine, with his aspirations tucked away in his pocket and that big, fat Texan smile plastered on his face. Yes, they’d often spent their evenings there, and sometimes Thad had even joined them, but not that final evening, when Jacob and Clarence drank the night away, partying well into dawn. A rowdy, drunken, and strange evening, Jacob recalled, that only got stranger later, as the two fell into bed together just as the sun came up and then slept the day away, spooning and fucking again and again, Jacob thinking Clarence had been returned to him only to realize with horror later that while they’d been in bed, Thad and his parents had been waiting for Clarence.
So Jacob drove right on past Japón, kept driving until he spotted the giant gold menorah glimmering in the distance and hung a right into Menorah Carwash Emporium, a more than pleasant sight. In college, he used to drive here all the way from Westwood to have his car cleaned and detailed, chiefly because he liked the owners, the Nathans, Persian Jewish refugees who’d faced persecution in their native Iran and come to L.A. in the early 1970s to escape the demonic shah. Elijah and Aviva Nathan, Ellie and Viva familiarly, were never without warm, generous hellos, always asking Jacob about his studies—“Keep your grades up and keep writing, my friend. I see an Oscar in your future,” Ellie liked to say, and Jacob loving him so much that he didn’t have the heart to tell him the truth, that he feared he’d never even get a play produced, much less win an award. They’d had a child, a son, who died young, though neither Ellie nor Viva ever talked about him, only to say once in passing that he was buried in Qom. Jacob kept in touch with them for a few years after his move to New York, then called their house one day to find the line inexplicably disconnected. He wrote and sent them a letter, which was returned unopened.
The mystery of what had happened to the Nathans plagued him for years and out of it grew the inspiration for his first three-act play, Tell Me How This Ends Well, which eventually found an Off-Broadway home at Rattlesnake Theater in the West Village—the story of a Persian Jewish couple who flee the shah and open up a car wash in Los Angeles and the surrogate gay son they adopt after their own drowns. The play won no awards, though the critics received it well, citing Jacob as “a young, talented hopeful with many more productions in him.”
After he parked, Jacob went into the small, tidy waiting area, which looked exactly the way he remembered it—photographs of famous and not-so-famous actors and their cars lining one wall, nightscapes of familiar Los Angeles landmarks lining the other. When he asked the young black attendant where the Nathans were, he told Jacob that he’d never heard of them.
“Ellie and Viva Nathan,” Jacob repeated. “I…I used to know them. They’re the owners.”
“Might have been, might have been,” the attendant said. “Now it belongs to some Russian guy, Yuri something. So you want a car wash? We’re running a special today—$89.99. That includes a rabbi saying a blessing over your car.”
This was the same gimmick the Nathans had used and for a moment Jacob, beside himself with anger and remorse, wanted to reach across the counter, grab the guy around the collar, and say, “Tell your Russian cockroach of a boss that I’m the Nathans’ son and an attorney and that he can’t disrespect my parents by making m
oney on their idea. Tell him to cease and desist, or else.”
Instead, he wandered back out into the harsh California sunshine, got into the car, and sped out of the lot, glancing in the rearview mirror at the twinkling brass tines of the menorah and catching briefly, as if rising out of the dust of his grief, the ghostly figures of Ellie and Viva Nathan, waving. Were the Nathans still somewhere nearby, or had they succumbed at last to the horrors of the times, the “Jews in the News” segments on the nightly news that he secretly followed on YouTube—another torched synagogue, another murdered youth, another suicide bomber on the 405 or the 101, the anti-Semitism that swept across L.A. with the tenacity of a wildfire? Had they been frightened enough to give up at last, pull up stakes, and move away, becoming other people with other names? It was not unlikely. Nothing, he thought, was unlikely anymore. He felt unsettled by this train of thought, even after he pulled up to Japón, shut off the engine, and went inside to look for Clarence.
Jacob spotted him seated in a booth by the window. He did not approach Clarence immediately but remained at the door, drinking in the place as it were. Low-lit, still reeking of stale smoke, and still just as glamorously decrepit with its cracking red vinyl booths and black japan-topped tables, Asiatic flairs everywhere, from the Japanese calligraphy above the bar to the lanterns dangling from the ceiling.
“Death in the Afternoon,” Clarence sang as Jacob approached, holding up his coupe glass, which contained the last couple of sips of a neon green–yellow liquid. “Hemingway thought he invented it—absinthe and champagne—but whatever. I’m pretty sure the drink’s been in my family for generations, though.” He laughed. “He did off himself, so how reliable can he be?”
“ ‘Kills Like White Elephants,’ ” Jacob returned, sitting down across from him.
“Splendid. Just splendid. You must be a playwright.”
“Only on Thursdays and only when I wear my Edward Albee underwear,” Jacob said, the waiter appearing and setting a drink down on the table before him.
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