“Duly noted,” Jacob badgered, this round of sparring, Edith hoped, at an end. “Dietrich and I are headed out. Thistle, tell me again what time you want us to be at Pomona.”
“Oh, I think it’s probably better if you don’t come,” she said, flustered, for she’d forgotten she’d invited her entire family to her talk. “I mean, I think you’ll just be bored out of your minds. Besides, I’m sure Dietrich would rather see the sights than listen to me deliver a dry lecture on the state of ethics in America.” She yawned for emphasis. “See, the topic’s even putting me to sleep.”
“You don’t know my boyfriend too well, then,” Jacob mused, “because this is right up his Teutonic alley.”
Her dad went rigid when Jacob said boyfriend, his face darkening. Edith, worried that he’d malign him again, cut in immediately. “Okay, ladies, time to hit the road,” and she gestured to Pandora, who helped her mom out of her seat, the two heading to the door that led to the garage.
“Wait one second,” her dad said, following them. “I don’t think you’re in any shape for this, Roz. You heard what the doctors said. Plenty of rest.”
“Oh, Julian, please stop fussing. I feel perfectly fine,” she said, waving him off, but not before he’d come between the door and the two women. “If I get tired, I’ll take a little snooze in the car.”
“Who’s going to carry your oxygen, huh?” he asked. “It’s pretty heavy.”
“I think we’ll manage, Julian,” Pandora said, as Edith went to retrieve the tank from the guest room and ran into Mo, who was just exiting the kitchen. “You and Jacob play nice with him,” she whispered.
“Who, me?” He feigned innocence. “We’ll be fine, unless he cracks wise again about Jacob’s sexual orientation or says another disparaging word about Pandora or you. Then I’m going to snap his neck in two and dump his ass in the bottom of the pool.”
“Sorry? Another disparaging word about me?” she asked softly. “Please tell me it’s not the Emory thing again.” Her dad still took umbrage at her accepting the assistant professorship and for making tenure in the interim, which meant she wasn’t leaving Atlanta anytime soon. It was still a sore subject between them, but Edith refused to believe him so small and petty that he’d use it to demean her behind her back.
“Oh no, it’s even better than that,” Mo said. “Apparently, last month you missed the fifth anniversary of his retirement. ‘She couldn’t even bother to call and congratulate me. After all, that job put a roof over her head, fed her three square meals a day, and sent her to Harvard. She must have been too busy sexually harassing another student to pull herself away even for a moment.’ That’s what he told me, Thistle. I just happened to call them, and Ma reminded me to say something nice to him. Jacob was in Berlin, so he’s off the hook. Besides, I’m not sure the old man would’ve cared one way or another if he’d called anyway.”
“Oh, that’s rich,” she said, trying to modulate her whispering, though it was becoming increasingly hard to smother her anger. “I fly into Dallas to surprise him on his last birthday by taking him to Sea Island for dinner and giving him a two-hundred-and-fifty-dollar gift certificate to Orvis, and he has the gall to complain about me? Did he ever once extend himself when I was going through my divorce? What about when Jacob was in the hospital in Berlin? If it were my child who’d almost died, you better believe I would have dropped everything and gotten on the next flight.”
“You and I didn’t go, either,” Mo said. “What does that say about us?”
“We aren’t his parents,” she said. “But neither one of them does anything all day—Ma, when she was feeling better, used to have lunch with her friends, and Daddy, since his retirement, doesn’t stray far from that garden of his. Yeah, really important stuff they just couldn’t possibly leave. Who cares that their child’s in the hospital?”
She thought back to that terrifying moment when her mom called to deliver the news about Jacob, how he’d developed a blood clot during the long plane ride to Germany and how this blood clot had broken off and traveled to his lungs. Had she known then the extent and gravity of the situation, that he might have died, she would have dropped everything and gotten on the first flight to Berlin. Yet Jacob, when she spoke to him, told her not to come, that Dietrich was taking good care of him. Never one to be fussed over or comfortable being the center of attention, he downplayed it all, including what had been a superlative pain in his left calf—he thought he’d strained a muscle—and his subsequent collapse on the U-Bahn, which she only found out about later, after it was all over. Jacob spoke just once to her about those six long, excruciating days that he spent in Charité hospital, and that was only and again to commend Dietrich, who’d shown up each morning with flowers and a stack of DVDs (Family Guy, The Simpsons, Seinfeld), staying the whole day until the windows went dark and the nurse came into the room to remind him in a scolding, punitive tone that he’d overstayed his welcome and that he had to leave augenblicklich. After she’d gone, however, Dietrich dismissed the dismissal, climbing into the narrow bed and curling up beside Jacob, whispering German nothings into Jacob’s ear, while the other three patients turned their faces away to give the lovers some much-needed privacy. “The guy is a miracle,” Jacob had told Edith later.
“Speaking of not going, I don’t think I can make your talk. You aren’t mad, are you?” Mo asked.
“You can catch the next one,” she said, relieved, thinking of the van, which made her picture the cargo hold and the syringe she’d found. “Let’s say you found a syringe in the back of your car, what would you do with it?”
“You found a syringe in my car?” Mo asked, horrified.
“No, in the van,” she said. “Pretty creepy, huh.”
“You should get rid of it. Don’t throw it in one of our garbage cans, though. The kids are curious little shits and who knows what’s on the needle. If you want, I can take care of it,” Mo offered.
“No, I’ll do it,” she said. “But thanks anyway.”
“And as for my coming to one of your other talks, you can count on it.”
Which was sweet of him to say, though she knew Mo would never attend one of her lectures, just as he knew she would never see one of his movies. She loved him, even respected him, yet the roles he chose were often mindless, the movies often full of exploding cars and buildings, nothing more than video games projected onto the screen. Entertaining schlock, perhaps, but ultimately empty and a complete waste of his gargantuan talents. Her dad maintained that water sought its own level, yet in her opinion, Mo was far better than the bumbling cops and archvillains he repeatedly played. She hoped one day to see him prove her correct.
In the room, Edith grabbed the green canister, which was resting in her mom’s wheelchair, wondering if she shouldn’t pack it in the car as well. But it seemed to her that it was better for her mom if she walked, however slowly, to retain some sliver of independence. She suspected that part of her mom’s depression came from having to rely on the wheelchair to get around. This saddened Edith, for she understood that one day soon, maybe next week, maybe next month, her mom would be confined to the chair for the rest of her shortened days, erasing yet another bit of freedom.
She found the two women sitting in the Expedition, Pandora behind the wheel, her mom in the passenger seat. To her surprise, when she climbed into the backseat, she also found her dad, who was buckling himself in. “Daddy, what are you doing?” she asked.
“What does it look like I’m doing, Eddie?” he said matter-of-factly.
“Well, it looks like you’re coming with us to get manicures and pedicures,” Edith said.
“Oh, is that what we’re doing?” her mom asked. “I haven’t had a mani-pedi in ages!”
“I don’t see any reason why—”
“Julian, you need to get out of this car right now,” Pandora said without looking up from her phone. “I don’t mean to hurt your feelings, but you aren’t invited. Girls only.”
“Roz,
tell her it’s okay if I come along,” he said.
“Honey, please, you’re acting childish.” Her mom laughed. “He hates being without me, don’t you? You have a dozen projects to occupy you until we get back. You could finish mowing the yard. You could try to fix Brendan’s bike. You could tag along with Jacob and Dietrich, who I’m sure wouldn’t mind, but you’re going to have to apologize for what you said, of course. You could help Mo cleanse the house of hidden Pop Tarts and whatever else the kids have hoarded.”
“Don’t leave me alone with them,” he pleaded.
“Don’t leave you alone with whom? Your sons?” her mom asked. “Why ever not?”
“Are you going to tell me you haven’t noticed the peculiar way they’ve both been acting?” he barked. His voice held such genuine panic and fear in it that Edith couldn’t bear to look at him and had to turn away. “They’re up to something.”
“Our boys?” her mom asked. “Up to what, Julian?”
“Well, if I knew that, Roz, I’d be even smarter than I already am, now wouldn’t I?” he said snidely.
“Good-bye, Julian,” Pandora said and clicked the automatic door lock.
Reluctantly, he unlatched his seat belt and opened the door. “If you come home and I’m dead, I want you to call the police and have them launch a full investigation,” he said.
This made the two women in the front seat break into laughter, and though Edith finally joined in, her own laughter rang hollow and untrue, for she was thinking about the syringe she’d found in the van and wondering what it contained.
“Don’t be so morbid,” her mom scolded him. “You brought your fishing gear with you. Well, drive yourself to Malibu and fish off the pier. It’s a glorious day to be outside, Julian. Go fly a kite. Go for a walk. Live a little.”
As her dad shut the door and Pandora backed out of the garage, Edith had to force herself to speak, for her dad’s eerie declaration had left her numb and mute.
“What do you think that was about, Ma?” she asked once they’d turned onto Mulholland Parkway and the house was out of sight.
“Your dad can be such a Paranoid Percy sometimes,” her mom said. “Honestly, I don’t know what to do with him. He follows me around like a shadow! I can’t go anywhere these days without him popping up to check on me. It’s getting bizarre even by his standards. I keep asking him what he did with the real Julian Jacobson, because this version of him is not the version of the husband I know. I’m not complaining, though. Well, you’ve seen it, Thistle. Look at what good care he takes of me. He drives me right up to the door and lets me out. He hasn’t been down to the coast to go fishing in I don’t know how long. Between us, though, I wish he’d find a hobby that gets him out of the house more, because he’s driving me bonkers.”
Yes, Edith had seen it, though she had also seen the real Julian Jacobson show himself as well. There was that, and now there was the added strain of her earlier conversation with Mo, which only complicated matters further. For the first time in ages, Edith had no idea what to make of her dad. Normally, he was so oblivious to the impact his behavior had on those around him that the best way to deal with him was not to deal with him at all, not to engage him when he was acting paranoid and crazy, and not to react to anything negative he said. She knew that he fed on these sorts of unfortunate interactions, especially those with his sons. It came as a great surprise, then, to hear that he sensed a disturbance in the force, to quote Elias, who would have gotten a kick out of learning that her dad suspected that there was a plot to kill him afoot, true though it may have been. She prayed her brothers didn’t do anything foolish or rash while she was off getting her pimples squeezed and the calluses on her feet sanded.
“He won’t let me out of his sight,” her mom went on. “Sometimes, when I take a nap, I open my eyes and there he is, sitting in the chair across from me, staring.”
“That’s creepy, Ma,” Edith said.
“Your father’s not creepy, Thistle, and I resent you saying that he is,” she said. “What’s creepy is what I keep hearing on the news about those suicide bombers right here in L.A. There was another one just yesterday on the 405. Isn’t that right, Pandora?”
“Another Jewish family,” Pandora said. “Jacob told me the police diverted traffic onto the shoulder, but that he drove right past the car. They closed the entire freeway a little later, after it was definitively ruled a terrorist attack.”
“I swear, when you and your brothers were kids, the worst thing I ever had to worry about was that you’d get into a car with a stranger and that I’d never see you again. Now, though, Islamic extremists killing innocent people by driving right up beside them with a bomb? I wish you and Mo would take the kids and get out of L.A., Pandora.”
“And go where, Roz? This happens all over now,” she said.
“The answer used to be Israel,” her mom said, taking a deep breath. “But you can thank Washington for that. Refusing to come to Israel’s aid? America first? Has the world lost its mind?” She was breathing heavily and fell silent, then took another big gulp of air and continued. “Where was the UN? Where was the EU? Heads in the oil, that’s where. Oh, it nearly killed your father the day the Arabs invaded. I never thought I’d see it—a Jewish holy land where nothing Jewish remains.” She panted at this last part and shut her eyes to catch her breath.
“It’s a bad time to be a Jew,” Edith declared, thinking suddenly about Justin Cohn, that poor Jewish colleague of hers who’d been out for a predawn jog in an empty and deserted Piedmont Park one Sunday morning when he tripped—was tripped with an invisible wire, said the article in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution—and as he lay on the ground, a gang of vicious youths in Hitler masks descended upon him from out of nowhere, brandishing bats and beating him until they’d broken nearly every bone in his body and left him to bleed to death. “They knew who I was,” he said later to Edith, who’d gone to visit him after she’d heard that he’d awoken from his three-week coma. “They have a list and our names are on it. All of our names, Edith.” The memory made her think about her upsetting morning on the shuttle, about her young, vulnerable, brave doppelgänger at the rental car agency, who too was still brave enough to wear her flashy gold Star of David, even in these darker times, or to spite them, Edith hoped. And what was her part in all of this mess, what was Edith doing to stem the tide of hatred and intolerance?
Well, for one thing, she was about to deliver a much-anticipated talk called “Death to the Rumors: The Unethical Portrayal of Jews in Film and Theater,” and she was trying to talk her brothers out of murdering their dad, and she was sleeping with a displaced Israeli, who’d been ousted from his homeland, though she wasn’t sure the last one counted, even if it made her feel better and gave her an inner sense of peace she hadn’t experienced in years. “Peace always starts with the self,” she liked to tell her students, who shifted in their seats like restless statuary, eyes vacant and limbs heavy. She tried to reach them on so many different levels and in so many different ways until she felt herself bleeding emotionally from the effort. “Change only happens when critical mass meets critical thinking,” she also told them. “Be the thinker, not the thought.” Oh, these minor spiritual pep rallies she threw for them, her voice rebounding through the lecture hall and the silence that boomeranged back at her, deafening in its totality. Were they all such lost causes? Edith wondered, thinking again of her dad, when her phone gonged—TBS1946, who’d played another word, or rather exchanged five tiles and passed his turn to Edith, who had taken a considerable lead.
She glanced at her tiles, shuffling them around, while her mom and Pandora discussed the Passover meal, the Passover guests, the Passover wine, and the Passover TV special. “I’m sorry, but did you just say ‘TV special’?” Edith asked, exchanging three of her own tiles and skipping her turn as well.
“Didn’t Mo tell you?” Pandora asked.
“No, apparently it slipped his mind,” Edith said.
“Norman Gl
ick, the executive vice president of development and talent for BravoREAL, thought it’d raise awareness of anti-Semitism here in America and with any luck globally. A percentage of the revenue is going to the L.A. chapter of the Israeli Relief Fund. It’s amazing how many Israelis we’ve accepted just in the past six months.”
“Yes,” Edith said, thinking of Ephraim, whose aunt, uncle, and cousins had relocated to L.A. last year. “I’m surprised Daddy agreed to appear on camera again, though.”
“Well, he knows it’s for a good cause,” Pandora said. “Besides, Passover just wouldn’t be the same without him,” and she winked, glancing into the rearview mirror at Edith, who winked back. What the hell is going on here? Did we suddenly call a truce that I don’t know about? Edith thought, panicking a little when she realized she might not dislike Pandora as much as she still desperately wanted to.
“Do you think—I was thinking of inviting someone to the Seder,” Edith said.
“Have you been holding out on us, Auntie Thistle?” Pandora asked. “Nu, so who is he?”
“No one. Just an old friend from college,” she said.
As far as Edith knew, she had no friends from college in the L.A. area, though, and absolutely no idea whom she’d invite anyway, but she wanted to leave the option open, just in case, for she didn’t think she could endure the Seder alone, without the comfort and support of her own foil. Mo had Pandora and the kids, Jacob had Dietrich, her parents had each other, and whom did Edith have? No one but the gorgeous, inappropriate Ephraim, who was far too young and who sent her videos of himself masturbating in the shower. Though not in his shower, she finally realized. She muted her phone and played the video again, her surprise turning to shock and her shock to disillusionment when she recognized the pink tiles of her own bathroom and the bottle of shampoo he was using to jack off. Yes, it was titillating, and yes, it turned her on, and, yes, it made her want him that much more, yet it also disgusted and frightened her, for she had no idea how he’d gotten into her house, much less why he thought it was a good idea to send her an illicit video of his crime. Clearly, he believed she wouldn’t mind, and worse, that he hadn’t done anything wrong. The utter chutzpah, she thought, her anger stoked. Perhaps the Israeli Army had trained him in the art of breaking and entering, but what about in the art of stalking, for what else was this but that?
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