“I was wondering when you were going to make this about that.” Edith laughed.
“I didn’t make it about money,” Jacob protested. “Mo did.”
“What are you so afraid of, Jacob? That if Ma goes first, he’s going to cut you out of the will?” she asked. “Even if he did, Mo and I would still give you your fair share. Isn’t that right, Mo?”
“Maybe, maybe not,” Mo said.
“Fuck you, Mo,” Jacob snapped.
“Boys, boys, boys, I just don’t see the good in any of this,” she pacified them. “I love you both, but I don’t think you’ve asked yourselves the truly tough questions—like what happens if we get caught? Do you want to spend the rest of your lives in jail for killing a man you hate? Doesn’t that seem unwise to you? Doesn’t that sort of give him a kind of poetic justice?”
“How many times am I going to have to say this, Edith? We aren’t doing it for us, we’re doing it for Mom,” Jacob said. “You may not love her as much as we do, but you can’t sit there and deny that she’d be better off without him, just as we’d have been better off without him.”
“She made her bed years ago,” Edith said.
“Then we need to unmake it for her,” Mo interjected, coming to life. “He’s brainwashed her into believing all marriages are unequal and loveless, that all marriages are based on tit for tat, that all marriages work the way his does. Most marriages do not work that way. Mine sure doesn’t. You think Pandora would stay around if I ever treated her the way that asshole treats Mom? Hell, no! She’d take my kids away from me, and I’d probably never see them or her again—and I don’t like to admit it, but she’d be right.”
Edith found herself reluctantly agreeing on this point. She had been married and had treated her husband badly one too many times, all of her lying and obfuscating, all of her withholding, her inability to show genuine affection, genuine remorse, genuine forgiveness. He’d been the one to leave, to file for divorce, not Edith, who would have stayed with him indefinitely. Elias might have taken things from her, but they were only things—a backyard, a room, a car. And if she were truly being honest with herself, she would have seen that he hadn’t taken these things from her so much as she’d willingly relinquished them to him. On some level she had known that the parts of herself she couldn’t give him freely, like compassion, like love, she had to give to him in other ways.
She came to understand all of this at that precise moment, while standing at the wall of glass in her brother’s stunning, many-roomed home. It sickened her to see herself in such a sudden, harsh light, but even worse was that her marriage hadn’t fallen apart because she let it but because she let Sheik back into her heart.
Edith hung the dress up and stashed her heels in the hall closet, then, with still a few hours to kill before she had to leave for Pomona, she went out into the backyard for a swim only to discover that the pool was empty. Which made what she’d witnessed earlier between her mom and dad that much more confusing and terrifying—but certainly her dad had only been fooling around, hadn’t he?
The last time Edith had visited, she’d spent most of her time in the pool, out of harm’s way—harm being Pandora, with whom Edith had never quite found comfortable footing. Having grown up in the Valley, in Thousand Oaks, Pandora Orenstein-Jacobson was everything Edith was not, an alien species of Jew crafted out of Botox and collagen injections, silicone implants, and some of the most luxuriously long blond hair that Edith had ever seen, the color and texture of which, Edith was certain, existed nowhere else but in L.A.
Nieves ran in circles around her, yapping her little head off, then parked herself at the edge of the pool, snarling and snorting, while behind Edith, her dad banged on the glass, motioning for her to come inside. Before she went in, though, she stepped to the edge of the pool and looked down, recoiling in disgust, for on the bottom lay a large white bird, its feathers bloody, its wings fluttering, though she couldn’t be sure this wasn’t the result of the wind surging over it. She screamed just once, thinking it might draw the attention of someone, her dad, say, who was still tapping on the wall of glass. But no one came. She kneeled beside Nieves and petted the frothing, agitated terrier, trying her best to calm her down, but to no avail. The dog simply wouldn’t be consoled and kept running circles around the pool, certain that she was protecting the Jacobson family from an attack of feathers.
Edith went back into the house, passing her dad, and straight into the dining room, where the rest of her family, sans the trips and the twins, who were at school, were gathered at the table, feasting on bagels, lox, and cream cheese, compliments of Jacob and Dietrich, who apparently were not speaking to each other and sat at either end of the long, rectangular table.
“Unless I’m seeing things, the peacock climbed out of Jacob’s trunk and is now sunbathing at the bottom of the pool,” Edith said.
“Maybe it wanted to go swimming also.” Dietrich directed this at Jacob, who ignored him. “Or maybe it just wanted to snatch a tan.”
“Catch a tan,” Jacob muttered without glancing at Dietrich. “It’s ‘to catch a tan.’ ”
“Someone was supposed to call the city this morning and have it removed,” Mo said, also directing this at Jacob, who also ignored him, and reached for another piece of lox.
“And someone’s children clearly can’t be controlled.” It was her dad. He stood in the doorway, his face painted with that all-too-familiar, shit-eating smirk of his—the smirk that sunk a thousand ships, as Edith’s brothers like to say. The same smirk that Edith found herself wearing at times when she wasn’t wearing her mom’s vacant smile. “I have an idea. Let’s place bets on which one of your little monsters threw it in the pool. My guess would be one of the triplets. What about you, Mo?”
“Julian, please,” Pandora protested. “There’s no need for you to use that tone.”
“Excuse me?” he said. “Your unruly kids dump the decomposing body of a rabies-infested animal into your pool, but there’s no need for me to use that tone? Boy, are you going to let your wife talk to me like that?”
“Honey, come sit down over here and have a bagel,” her mom said, already reaching for the platter of lox and the tub of cream cheese.
“Not until I get an apology,” her dad objected, crossing his arms.
It was time for Invisible Girl to remove her cloak and step out of the shadows before things got seriously ugly and out of hand, yet something inside of Edith refused, wanting to see where this would go and what would happen if she didn’t. “Pandora didn’t mean anything by it,” her mom mollified him. “Did you, Panda?”
“Hey, Dad, maybe you just need to learn how to take a joke,” Mo said, glancing over at Jacob and smiling.
This was, of course, the repetition of the same words their dad had used on the boys whenever he teased them and made them cry about getting a bad grade on a test, or not being able to fit into their suits. Jacob smiled back, though he did not lift his eyes from his plate.
“Just whom do you think you’re talking to, boy? I’m not one of your faggot actor friends. No offense, Jacob,” her dad said. “You see what I mean about him, Roz? The same spoiled ingrate as always.”
“Apple, tree,” Mo responded.
“Jacob, I will be in that room overhead,” Dietrich said, rising. “Mrs. Jacobson, I feel quite sorry for you,” and with that, he got up and left the table.
After Dietrich was gone, Edith turned to Jacob and said, “I’ll take care of this. You go take care of him.” Jacob kissed her on the cheek in thanks, then headed out of the dining room. “Now, Daddy, you and I need to have a little chat.”
“It’s going to have to wait, Eddie,” her dad said, “because your mom and I aren’t welcome here.”
“Not if you’re going to act like a four-year-old,” Mo said, spearing a slice of tomato and laying it on top of a heap of salmon and red onion, then taking a large bite. “Ma’s always welcome.”
“Come on, Roz, let’s go pack,” he
r dad huffed.
“Will you people just put a tack in it for one effing second?” Edith said. “Jacob did not fly halfway around the world to be subjected to your bullshit, Daddy, and neither did I. If you can’t be nice, maybe you should go. But you can go without Ma, because she’s staying.”
“Oh, Thistle, that’s nice of you, but I couldn’t possibly,” her mom said.
“You know what? Fuck this and fuck all of you,” her dad said, storming out of the room and out of the house, leaving the front door wide open.
Edith was certain her mom would follow him as she always did, but considering her weakened condition, she remained at the table, peering down at her plate. Edith also thought her mom might cry, for this was how she often responded to anything irregular and upsetting—a burst of tears, the effect of which was to produce in her children a terrible sense of inadequacy and guilt. “Let him go,” her mom said with a sigh, after Edith got up to close the door and returned. “He didn’t handle that very well. But honestly, Mo, he’s hurt you didn’t thank him for lugging that stupid barbecue with us all the way from Texas. I told him we should just buy you a new one when we got here.”
“Um, Ma, I did thank him?” he protested. “What more does he want from me? That I get his name engraved on the damn thing? Besides, I’m pretty sure he slammed the lid on Dexter’s hand on purpose. Isn’t that right, Pandora?”
This was the first Edith had heard about Dexter’s hand, and it alarmed her. “What happened to Dexter?” she asked.
“Her ball-and-chain broke two of his fingers,” Mo said, pointing at her mom, who just sat there, stunned by the accusation that her husband, their dad, could have done anything of the kind.
“Oh, Mosey,” her mom murmured. “If you believe that, I don’t think we have any other choice but to leave.”
“You aren’t going anywhere,” Edith commanded. “And he doesn’t believe it, do you, Mo?”
“No, Ma, I suppose I don’t,” he said hesitantly. “But you better keep an eye on him. I wouldn’t want him ending up like that peacock.” Which made Edith wonder if that was how it was going to happen, if they’d just make it look like an ordinary accident—another old man slips and falls into a drained pool, breaking his neck. Hadn’t this been one of the ghoulish scenarios her brothers had discussed on the phone?
A commotion erupted in the backyard and diverted Edith’s attention away from the table. She looked out to find Nieves barking at her dad and her dad barking orders at what turned out to be the three Mexican day laborers from across the street. “Shut up, you dumbass dog,” her dad said and gave her a swift kick, horrifying Edith. The dog rolled in the grass and lay still for a moment before getting up and slinking off, while the men gathered at the pool, staring down at the peacock, her dad trying his best to communicate with them.
“Andale, muchachos,” and he held a fifty-dollar bill in the air. “First one to get rid of it,” he said, waving the bill at them, then folding it up and returning it to his money clip.
The three men formed a loose-knit huddle, speaking rapidly in Spanish, when suddenly one of them, the shortest and chubbiest of the three, reached up with the flat of his hand and smashed the taller, broader leader in the nose. A fight broke out among the two, the shorter man wrestling the taller man to the ground, bashing his face into the earth, while the third man lowered himself into the pool, grabbed the peacock by the neck, then hurled the carcass up and over the side, where it landed with an unpleasant, mushy thud at her dad’s feet, splattering some drops of blood onto his clothes and his glasses. Her dad reeled in disgust, pitching backward, twisting himself through the sunlight and air like a contortionist, her seventy-year-old, brittle-boned, acid-tongued dad, who suffered from terrible ulcerative colitis and the terror of losing his wife. And as he fell, Edith held her breath, her brain screaming no, while the rest of her trembled yes—the scene both horrified and titillated her, for how often were you able to bear witness to someone else’s punishment, the unequivocal delivery of instantly gratifying karma? There he was, his body seconds from the ground, his head seconds from crashing against the corner of an uneven, jagged flagstone, and Edith, unable to watch, shut her eyes and listened for the second thud of the morning.
When she opened her eyes again a few moments later, her dad was leaning all of his weight against the taller man, who’d caught him. His head rested in the crook of the man’s arms, his eyes closed, and for a second Edith wondered if he hadn’t had a stroke. “Daddy,” she said, pressing a hand to the warm, sun-drenched glass, and as if hearing her, he opened his eyes, lifted his head, and, using the man as leverage, righted himself.
“Looks like your hombres deserted you,” her dad said and glanced around, neither mentioning the fall nor thanking him. He removed his bifocals, which were speckled with blood, and breathed on the lenses, wiping them off with a handkerchief. “You want the fifty dollars, amigo, you take that thing with you,” and he pointed to the mangled body of the peacock lying in the lush green grass. The man looked down at the bird, then back up at her dad, sizing them both up before tossing his hands into the air and walking away without a word. “Well, fuck you very kindly,” her dad said, giving the peacock a kick and releasing scores of tiny white feathers into the air.
Edith turned her face away just as her phone gonged, announcing a new text message. It was a short video of Ephraim in the shower, lathering up his lean, hairy chest and firm, basketball player’s ass, some of the suds dangling off his thick, circumcised dick, which he touched, fondled, and masturbated, saying her name as he did. The sight of him and his erect cock made her skin prickle all over, but it was the sound of her name that truly made her wet. Never in her life had she had a lover who said her name the way he said it, who truly wanted her to know that his big, unshaven balls and perpetual erection were for her and her alone. No, she didn’t love him, but who cared about love when this was on offer—a six-foot-two, green-eyed, black-haired former Israeli soldier, her own puppy dog, who lived mere seconds away and whom she could call for sex anytime she wanted. Again, she rued her decision not to invite him along, yet still maintained that it would have been torturous for him. She didn’t want to subject any lover to her dad’s grilling, and certainly not a potential boyfriend—although her relationship with Ephraim was never going to amount to more than what it was.
Still, something about the video was not quite kosher—beyond the content, of course, which Edith still found both exciting and unsettling—though she didn’t have time to figure out what it was, because Pandora was upon her, saying, “Hey, there you are! We need to leave in a few if we’re going to make our appointment at Rejuvenate.”
“We’re rejuvenating?” Edith asked.
“It’s the new spa at the Hollywood Stardust Hotel. A day of beauty for you, me, and Roz,” and she smiled that phony smile of hers, further exasperating Edith and making her want to punch Pandora right in her spongy, phony lips.
“I have to be back here by three-thirty to get to Claremont by five.”
“It’s only eleven-fifteen, Thistle,” Pandora reassured her. “I think it’s safe to say we won’t be mud-bathing for four hours.”
“Oh, they have mud baths!” She beamed, ignoring the second part of her sister-in-law’s comment.
“It’s a surprise for your mom from her two doting daughters. You can pay me back whenever,” Pandora chirped. “She’s been so blue lately, you know.” Did Edith know this? She wasn’t sure she did. “I just hope we can leave the boys alone without them killing one another.”
The first true thing to come out of Pandora’s mouth since Edith’s arrival, and it made her laugh and warm to her sister-in-law. “Wouldn’t it just be so nice if they did, though.” Edith shuddered at the implication. “What I mean is, they’re all so stubborn. Pure Jacobson cavemen.”
“No need to explain. I know what you meant,” Pandora said knowingly. She looped an arm through Edith’s, leading her back into the dining room, which was now e
mpty of Mo as well. “Roz, do think you’re up for a drive into L.A. with Thistle and me? I need to pick up some things for tomorrow night: a couple of jars of gefilte fish from that little place on Wilshire and another box of chocolate-covered matzo, a request from my boys, whom I cannot deny a thing,” and she smiled again, though this time she seemed to mean it.
“That sounds lovely, Panda,” her mom said. “I could use a little diversion, I think.”
“A diversion?” her dad asked. He was standing in the doorway, looking to Edith as if nothing had happened and apparently nothing had, except for the dark spots on his pants. “What was that about a diversion?”
“Oh, there you are, Julian,” her mom said. For the first time that morning, Edith detected the faintest intimation of disappointment in her mom’s voice. “Did you take care of the rooster?”
“Yes, Roz, I took care of the rooster,” he said, although as far as Edith knew, the dead bird was still lying in the grass, baking in the hot California sun.
“Oh, good, I’m so glad to hear it,” she said. Then, “Oh, I said rooster, didn’t I? I meant peacock. These damn pills make me so loopy, Thistle.”
“It’s okay, Ma,” Edith soothed. “You can be as out of it as you want. This isn’t a loopy-free zone.”
“Not pills, Roz. The medication,” her dad nagged, less gently this time, an edginess to his words that might have startled Edith if she hadn’t heard it a million times before.
“But is there an actual difference?” inquired Jacob, who had returned from upstairs. “I mean, I’ve just spent the better part of the last few seconds trying to figure out what the real difference is and I just can’t. I think you’re splitting hairs, Pop.”
“Pills refer to medicine, a dosage, whereas medication refers to treatment,” her dad said. “Look it up if you don’t believe me, but it seems any wordsmith worth his salt would appreciate the distinction.”
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