Tell Me How This Ends Well

by David Samuel Levinson

  Edith remained surprisingly calm, focusing on nothing but the hillside scenery that flew past the tinted windows. Because the traffic was light, they cruised along at a comfortable speed, Pandora remarking that she’d never seen the freeway as clear as it was that day.

  “Well, it is Easter weekend, dear,” her mom said. “Maybe all the Gentiles decided to leave en masse.”

  “Let’s not jinx it, Roz,” Pandora said, heading through a relatively clear Laurel Canyon, and then they were winding and wending and being spit out onto Hollywood Boulevard, her mom oohing at the distant Hollywood sign, which Pandora pointed out to her.

  “The last time I was on this street was with Mo, oh, thirty years ago,” her mom said, her chest heaving, as if the memory were too strong for her to carry. “We stayed at what your dad would call a fleabag motel somewhere around here. Mo had an audition with an agent not far from the motel. I left you at home with Dad, Thistle. Jacob was at sleepaway camp. Do you remember that?”

  “I do, Ma,” Edith said, recalling those two days she’d spent with her dad.

  Ten years old and just beginning to show signs of the woman she would one day become, the buds on her chest, the soft red hair sprouting between her thighs, the shifts in temperament and height and weight, her figure altering and lengthening and losing its boyish, flat lines to become fuller and rounder, girlishly shaped, beneath the loose-fitting clothes she wore out of embarrassment and hatred of her body. All sorts of changes happening on a molecular level, including one that nobody could see and that went undetected until one fateful night: Her daddy loved figs and ate them in every conceivable variation—jars of fig preserves, fig butter, and fig compote lined the shelves in the pantry, boxes of homemade fig bars were wrapped delicately and stored in the freezer. Edith disliked the smell and texture of them, everything associated with them, but that didn’t stop her from going out into the backyard and picking some fresh figs from the fig tree to surprise her daddy with that night after supper, which her mom had cooked the day before and left for them.

  Her daddy came home from the lab more tired and grumpier than usual, yet Edith had a secret weapon to counter his bad mood—she’d diced the figs, added some lemon zest and sugar, then made homemade whipped cream, just as she’d seen her mom do a thousand times. She covered all of it and stored it in the very back of the fridge to hide it from her daddy, who sat down at the kitchen table without a word while Edith heated up the baked chicken and wild rice, then dressed the salad. She set the table and poured him a glass of water. The meal began in relative silence, her daddy lost in his own thoughts, either grunting at her questions or letting them pass unanswered: How was work today? Did you have any breakthroughs in your experiments on the mice? These questions only seemed to make him more sullen and withdrawn, yet Edith kept at it, for she knew him and knew that all he needed was to get some food into him, then he’d be his pleasant old self again. And that’s more or less what happened—after a few bites, his mood shifted and he began to tell her about his day, going into great detail about it, mainly about how the grant he’d applied for had been accepted but that he was only getting a mere fraction of the money he needed to continue his research. He was going to have to fire his lab technician, for he could no longer afford her, which meant he’d have to do everything himself.

  “Unless you want to help me,” he said, smiling. “I could always use an assistant. Who knows? Maybe you’ll become a scientist like your old man. It’d be nice if one of my children followed in my footsteps and did something useful.” She knew he was referring to Mo. The whole family knew how he felt about Mo’s dream of becoming an actor. “Well, if you can’t be smart, you might as well be entertaining. Isn’t that right, Eddie?”

  “Mo has a right to follow his dreams, doesn’t he?” she asked, clearing the table only after he was finished. There were rules to follow, and Edith made sure to follow them, for she’d seen how touchy he could be when these rules of his were broken—no getting up from the table during dinner, no speaking out of turn during dinner, no interrupting him during dinner (or at any time, for that matter), no elbows on the table, no plates left unfinished, no second helpings unless he had already taken his, and no clearing the table until he had set his knife and fork down. She rinsed the dishes and put them in the dishwasher, then got out one small bowl and a dessertspoon, placing them before him. “I hope you left room for dessert, Daddy,” she said, grabbing the figs and whipped cream from the fridge.

  She served him the figs, scooped some whipped cream on top of them, then sat down again, a little antsy to go to her room and practice the flute for an upcoming band recital. Still, Edith knew enough not to ask to be excused, for this was another rule of her daddy’s that he didn’t take lightly—he let them know when it was time to be dismissed. She sat there, listening to him talk about the chair of his department, who was stepping down, and how they wanted her daddy to replace him.

  “I already turned them down,” he said. “I’m right on the cusp of a breakthrough in my experiments, and if I take that crappy promotion—and it is crappy, Eddie, don’t you believe otherwise—I’d be giving up two years of intense research. On the other hand, how many people can say they love what they do? I wake up every morning and can’t wait to get to work. I stumbled on the perfect career, but it’s only because I’m exceedingly lucky.”

  Edith was proud of her daddy, for he was the first Jacobson in the family to go to college and to get a PhD. By contrast, his younger brother, Edith’s uncle Bernie, had never finished high school and had gone into the merchant marines. Now he owned a couple of pool halls in downtown Dallas, was superrich, lived in a huge house, and was on his third wife. He had fathered three kids—wild, pot-smoking, delinquent losers, according to her daddy—whom she liked but rarely saw. The difference between her daddy and her uncle was as startling as the difference between her and her own older brother, whom she loved but found silly and frivolous: Edith, who was book smart, took after her daddy, while Mo, who was street smart, took after their uncle Bernie, a consummate hustler and businessman with ties to the Jewish mafia. Mo even resembled Uncle Bernie, who had blue eyes, a square chin, and a lean boxer’s physique, more than he did their own dad, which raised the eyebrows of the three siblings, though their speculation was later quashed when Mo finally confronted their mom, who denied the allegation outright, reminding him that she’d stopped attending breakfasts at their grandmother’s because she couldn’t stand to be around Uncle Bernie. “He’s a classless pig,” she said. “Your dad might be many things, but at least he’s not a serial divorcer. It doesn’t surprise me he can’t keep a wife. He may be physically attractive, but that’s about where it ends.” (At his untimely death at sixty-one, he left behind a mountain of debt and a burner phone, which his fifth wife discovered in a desk drawer, with the names and numbers of countless paramours.)

  “Delicious. Just delicious,” he said, spooning some of the figs into his mouth. “My compliments to the chef.”

  “Thank you, Daddy.” Edith beamed.

  “Don’t tell your mother this, but your figs put hers to shame,” he said. “I don’t know what you did to them, Eddie, but they taste ambrosial.”

  It was a word she’d never heard her daddy say about her mom’s cooking and she sat there, as proud as she could be, studying the figs, which didn’t look nearly as gross or as distasteful to her as they once did. If her daddy liked them, well, she’d probably like them, too, despite her mom’s repeated insistence that she didn’t like them. She asked him if she could have a taste of his.

  “By all means,” he said, offering her his spoon. “Don’t forget the whipped cream, Eddie.” He slid the bowl toward her.

  She added some whipped cream, then held the figs between her lips before shutting her eyes, quickly emptying the spoon, and swallowing it all down, smiling as she did.

  “Well, wasn’t I right?” he asked. “Ambrosial.”

  She took another small bite of the figs, th
en a sip of water to wash the taste from her mouth, because quite frankly she didn’t like them. “Yes, Daddy, delicious,” she lied, her eyes watering from the bitter aftertaste. “May I be excused now, please?”

  She ran to her room, where her stomach began to hurt. And not just hurt, but also to swell. Her skin itched, her lips were sore, and her mouth felt as if someone had taken a mallet to it. She tried to lie down, but half an hour later, she was finding it difficult to breathe and to see, for her eyelids were swollen shut. Still, she did not call out for her daddy, who she knew was in his study and not to be disturbed.

  Climbing out of bed, she stumbled into the hall, making her dizzy way toward her daddy’s door, but found the floor tilting away from her. Her legs, unable to support her, buckled, and she collapsed outside the study. One of her hands must have hit the door, because a few moments later, she heard it open. She tried to speak and found she couldn’t, but she did hear him, not his voice but the sound of his shoes on the carpet and the rush of air on her face as he stepped over her.

  She lay like this for minutes, waiting for him to do something, then heard him again somewhere nearby, in the kitchen, she thought, because she heard the fridge open and close, bottles rattling. Again, she tried to call out to him and again her voice was lost, nothing more than a whisper, a breath. She tried to get up, but her body refused to respond, her stomach churning and her face on fire, every inch of her chilled. Daddy, where are you? she thought, cocooned in sweat and blind to the world.

  She recognized that she was in the throes of an allergic reaction; she’d learned about them just the previous week in science class. Anaphylactic shock. That’s what was happening, and she wanted to scream out to her daddy that she was sick and needed his help, and she tried with all of her might to speak and to open her eyes again, and while speaking was impossible, she did manage to crack one of her eyelids open long enough to catch the murky image of her daddy standing directly over her, a terrible, creepy smirk on his face. Then she must have blacked out, because the next thing she knew she was waking up in a hospital bed and a nurse was checking her blood pressure.

  Yes, Edith remembered those two days and how nice her daddy was to her after that and for the next few weeks, until the episode faded and both of them forgot about it. But now, as they pulled up to the Hollywood Stardust Hotel, Edith fixated on the fact that her dad had tempted her into eating the figs.

  “I never told you this, Ma,” Edith now said, as Pandora’s phone rang and she answered it, speaking to what sounded like an advertiser who wanted to buy ad space on Pandora’s Box. She pulled up to the valet stand, continuing her conversation about the price and size of ad space. “But Daddy let me try those figs.”

  “Oh, Thistle,” her mom said. “You must be misremembering. Whatever put that idea in your head?”

  She decided against telling her mom the truth, out of fear of ruining the lovely day and also out of a deep sense of commitment to herself to keep past grievances from impinging upon this visit.

  “Well, it was all one big misunderstanding, wasn’t it,” her mom went on. “You always were a little too curious for your own good. Julian told me how you snuck the figs behind his back. I felt awful that I wasn’t there for you, Thistle.” After they climbed out of the car, she reached out and hugged her. “I love you so much. You’re my only daughter, and I only ever wanted you to be happy. You know that, don’t you?”

  “Of course, Ma,” she said, tightening her grip on this frail, unwell woman, who she suspected might be crying. They stood like that for a couple more minutes until Pandora said it was time to go inside and get muddy. “I’ll meet you in there,” Edith said, reaching for her phone because she’d gotten another text from Ephraim: Didn’t like the video?

  She wanted to respond, but now wasn’t the time, for the text she wanted to send would most certainly ruffle him and perhaps lead him to call her. She didn’t want to talk to him, not until after she’d relaxed and had a chance to contemplate her feelings. She silenced her phone and slid it into her purse, heading through the glass doors of Rejuvenate to join her mom and Pandora in the mud.

  Ninety minutes later, the three women emerged from a refreshing regimen of warm mud baths and hot spring soaks, to take lunch in a “controlled environment” off the main lobby of the hotel. Edith, who was not used to being pampered, marveled at the surroundings—the careful attention to detail that made her believe, if she shut her eyes, that she was in an actual Amazonian rain forest—the chirrup of crickets, the warbling of birds, the comforting swish of wind that blew over them. Until all of a sudden, a downpour, artificial thunderclaps, but she was protected—they were all protected—underneath a giant umbrella. Rejuvenating Rain was also part of the experience, and though Edith felt rather guilty about the amount of water it must have taken to make this experience as authentic as possible, she was more than pleased to set aside her moralizing and just go with the capitalistic, bourgeois flow of it.

  They ate kale salads and washed them down with cucumber water and seaweed smoothies, everything emerald green and smelling of the earth. The water, Edith learned, was desalinated seawater, delivered daily. She had no idea just how much her share in this day of beauty was going to cost her, but even this didn’t matter to her. She took her last bite of salad and said, “So, Ma, how much are you enjoying yourself? Isn’t this fantabulous?”

  “Yes, oh my, yes,” her mom said, her face ruddy with color, the ashen quality of her skin all but a memory. “This has been such a pleasant surprise, Thistle. I can’t wait for my massage.”

  She looked healthier and more vivacious, her old self again. Even her breathing seemed to have improved, as if she’d left the disease along with her clothes in the locker room, though Edith knew this was just magical thinking. If only it were that simple, she thought, wishing her mom a speedy recovery, yet understanding that no recovery was forthcoming. She would never get well, never get better, only worse from here on out, and it suddenly felt to Edith that her chief directive now was to make sure her mom lived out the rest of her days on the planet like this—comfortable, cared for, and bundled up with love. All of the things that should have been given willingly, all of the things she’d had to fight tooth and nail for, from a new washing machine to a proper allowance to maintain her dad’s house, to stock it with food, to keep it clean, to make sure none of them ever went without—Edith would make up for all of these now. It shamed her to realize how awful she’d once been, how she’d once looked upon her mom with pity and disgust, never seeing the sacrifices she’d made when Edith wasn’t watching, that happened well within the inner keep of her marriage. She’d laughed at her mom both behind her back and right in her face, had feared her for her witching ways, secure and strong in the notion that her dad was right, although, of course, she never found any evidence of her mom’s allegiance to the black arts, not in her closet, which she inspected regularly, or in the books and magazines she read, or in the conversations she had on the phone when she thought Edith wasn’t around. Still, the young Edith had fretted about the supposed hex she’d put on her daddy to trap him, wondering if his outbursts, when he called her mom such nasty names, which would’ve gotten Edith spanked, were his way of combating the spell. On one level, she had always suspected it was just a silly game, yet on another had grown up quite attached to the belief, almost hoping it were true, for it would have explained so much about what had gone on in that tiny house on Persuasion Drive.

  An attendant cleared the trays of woven hemp from the table and announced it was time for massages. Edith reached out to help her mom up, but her mom shooed her away and rose without trouble, walking as if she weren’t debilitated at all. Edith smiled after her, saying, “If I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes…”

  “You know that we’re the carriers of men’s pain,” Pandora said, “and that we keep it in our bodies.” Edith had never heard this before, yet in some strange way it made perfect sense to her. “I love your brother, but when I
agreed to marry him, I told him that if he ever hurt me the way your dad hurt your mom, I’d leave him in a heartbeat. I like him to think of it as a spiritual prenuptial agreement. And it goes twice for the kids. Abuse might run in your family, but it doesn’t in mine.” Though Edith didn’t appreciate Pandora’s self-righteous tone, she couldn’t deny that Jewish Barbie did have a point. “Does it bother me that Mo would rather stay home with the kids instead of looking for a real job? Yes. Does it worry me that he’s a forty-two-year-old, out-of-work actor? Yes. But you know what doesn’t bother me? He doesn’t let Julian bully him. He’s had to work on it, for sure, but he stands up to him when he needs to, because that father of yours, whether you want to believe this or not, ought to fall down on his knees and give thanks for the family he has, especially for that wife of his who still puts up with his bullshit.” Let’s hear it for my mother, Roz, patron saint of unappreciated wives, Edith thought. “Look, I know this is hard for you, Thistle, but I wanted to get you alone to discuss Julian. After what happened with Dexter, I’m thinking seriously about asking him to leave.”

  “You want to throw my dad out of the house?” Edith asked, moving past the attendant, who handed her a towel and pointed to cabana 3 at the end of the hall. “Does Mo know?”

  “Not yet,” Pandora said, pausing outside of cabana 2. “I thought you might bring it up with him. It’d be better if it came from you, don’t you think?”

  “Pandora, they drove all the way to L.A.,” Edith said. “Jacob and I flew in specially to celebrate Passover with them. Now you want me to speak to Mo about asking them to leave?”