Over the shouts and hisses of the protesters, Zion addressed the mourners, who were sitting facing him, and spoke unsentimentally about Maximilian—Maxi, as he called him. It seemed impossible to Edith that she hadn’t seen the boy since he was five and there he was, eighteen years old, the spitting image of Sheik, with traces of Tatiana thrown in for good measure—his outsized ears, for example, his pert little nose and high Russian cheekbones. He was beautiful and, for a moment, Edith imagined that he was hers and beamed with the kind of pride she would have reserved for her own courageous son or daughter. “I didn’t know he’d be here. I’m sorry,” she said, speaking to Elias, though he was deeply involved in listening to Zion and probably didn’t hear her.
“The kid’s articulate. I’ll grant you that,” he said, turning to her.
It was then that someone in the crowd lobbed an egg at Zion, which grazed the top of his head and careened off to smash in the grass. He wasn’t as lucky with the next egg, which hit him right in the center of his forehead, the impact of which knocked him back, though only for a second, because he righted himself immediately, cleared the runny yellow yolk from his face and chin, and kept going, while Edith spun around and stood on her tiptoes, trying to find the culprit.
Around them, the sickening slogan of the afternoon, “The only good Jew is a dead Jew,” erupted out of the mouths of the mob. Another egg was lobbed and missed, then another and another, and Edith kept wondering when the police were going to step in, but they didn’t budge. The sixth egg broke against Zion’s shoulder, the seventh against his chest, yet he kept going, louder, stronger, repeating Maxi’s name, while the eggs kept coming, lobbed from nowhere and everywhere, and Edith left her place and elbowed her way through the crowd, knowing she was going to get into serious trouble for what she was about to do.
Elias trailed behind her, calling her name, but Edith refused to stop for one single second until she’d reached the van. It was sitting exactly where she’d left it, the police and medic having moved on to more pressing suspicious persons, and she climbed in, the pain in her hip spectacular and grim, but she would use it, she would not squander it, not like the wasted water in the empty fountain, the jets still firing into the air. Elias was suddenly at the van and he climbed in after her, saying, “You can’t be serious,” but she was. As serious and determined as she had been on her wedding day, as serious and determined as she had been in trying to take her own life after she and Sheik finally fucked on his bed while Tatiana was away and Zion was playing downstairs and Elias was taking his oral exams at American University. She’d left Sheik that afternoon prepared to lose Elias, to tell him the truth—“I’m in love with Sheik and he’s in love with me”—and ran into Tatiana on the stoop and the two chatted briefly, airily, the small talk of would-be friends. Then a couple of days later, an officer at her door, a restraining order, and her call to Sheik, who would not call or text her back—all of this hidden from Elias, to whom she blamed the attempted suicide by pills on the torture of academia and exhaustion, imploring him to believe that she’d collapsed emotionally under the weight of an avalanche of stress.
Now, seated beside him, Edith remembered making a lewd joke about him and his orals as Sheik went down on her and he laughed right in her pussy and didn’t stop, her body bucking on the bed, his tongue roughhousing her clit. “I’m sorry,” she said now, repacking the airbag and stuffing it back into place, then putting the van in drive. It shuddered and groaned and squealed, then the tires finally found purchase and off they went.
“Sorry for what?” Elias asked. He was thicker and bulkier and seemingly sadder than the last time she’d seen him. He’d cut his hair short, the peyos gone. Out of his black frock and hat, he looked like himself again, Elias Plunkett, the boy in jeans and a plaid shirt whom she’d met while she’d been waiting for Sheik to come around.
“For everything,” she said, “for this,” and she maneuvered the van down N. College Avenue until she came to Marston Quad. “Get out,” she said. “I don’t think you’re going to want to be Clyde to my Bonnie.”
She revved the engine to emphasize her point. She was tired of being afraid, tired of being mistreated, tired of a world that had not learned from its mistakes, that still came after her people and wanted them gone, disappeared, erased, dead. She was tired of living as if all of this hatred were okay, as if it were somehow justified, as if people didn’t have the freedom or the moral intelligence to choose between right and wrong. She was sick of the excuses, sick of being accused, sick of being sick of her fellow man. Mostly, though, she was sick of having to look over her shoulder, of speaking to roomfuls of people and having what she said fall on deaf ears.
“Don’t tell me what to think,” he said, strapping himself in.
“No, Elias. Maybe you didn’t understand. I’m going to need you later,” she said, which seemed to do the trick, because his face went from dark to light and he finally got out. Then she was pulling the van off the road and onto the quad, where she began a slow assault of honking, not wanting to hurt anyone. It couldn’t be said that Edith didn’t have a touch of murder in her heart, as she leaned on the horn and the crowd began to disperse and fall away, the signs coming down, either chucked at the van or abandoned altogether. She pressed on, leaving deep declivities in the earth, but she didn’t care, what she was doing was more important—she was parting the Red Sea, heading for the line of police officers, who were suddenly on the van, swarming around it, as Edith came to a complete stop, never once taking her eyes from Zion, who was still orating, still gesticulating, holding up pictures of Maximilian and saying “We will never forget him,” saying, “Life is short but he will live long in our memories.” He had much of his father in him, she suspected, and even from where she was, she could sense the charm and charisma oozing out of him. She watched him for another minute, then opened the door and stepped down onto the lawn, where she was immediately arrested, handcuffed, and led to a squad car. Some of the protesters booed, hissed, and spat at her, while others merely ignored her. Throughout it all, though, her ride to the station and her subsequent booking, Edith remained firm in her conviction that she’d done the right thing.
Good for the Jews, bad for Edith Jacobson Plunkett, who then spent the next three hours in the Claremont Police Station hoosegow until Elias finally showed up and bailed her out, though not without letting her know he thought what she’d done was senseless, selfish, and stupid.
“You could have hurt someone,” he admonished her once they were outside. “What then?”
“But I didn’t,” she replied, leaning against his car. Her hip was killing her. She massaged it gently, caressing what she knew she would find later, after she’d undressed, the ugly bloom of a bruise, her battle scar.
“It’s not a battle, Edith,” he said, climbing in and unlocking the passenger-side door. “The barbarians are already through the gates. The bonfires have already been lit.”
“Don’t you mean the storm troopers have already captured the Millennium Falcon?” she asked, trying for levity, though her tone made it sound mocking, and she regretted having said it.
“You’ll be happy to know that my obsession with Star Wars happened in a galaxy far, far away,” he said, going on to tell her how he’d sold his collection a couple of years ago. “I realized I was putting far too much energy into that world and not enough into this one.”
“But you were so devoted,” she said, picturing the room and all of his collectibles again. For whatever reason, hearing that he’d gotten rid of it all saddened her.
“Now I’m devoted to other pursuits,” he said, pulling out of the lot. “Figurines of Princess Leia and Chewbacca? You had every right to leave me.”
“Elias, I didn’t leave you,” she said. “You left me. Remember?”
“Maybe it’s better if we don’t talk about this,” he said, heading for the 210. He gallantly insisted on driving her back to Calabasas, since the van had been impounded. “How’s Roz, by t
he way?” he asked. “I was sorry to hear she’s been ill.”
“We spent the afternoon at a spa, which lifted her spirits for a while,” she said. “Mud baths, hot springs, and fungal wraps. It was all very 1990s L.A.” As she went on to tell him about her mom, and her job and life since then, she kept wondering how he’d come to know about her mom’s illness and finally put the question to him.
“Julian told me,” he said. “We’ve remained in touch. He never said? I suppose he thought you’d take it badly. Are you taking it badly?”
“Not at all,” she said. “But you do realize he never liked you or had a kind word to say about you when you were his son-in-law and even before that.”
“Yes, I discussed all of that with him,” he said. “As his therapist, he actually approached me with it.”
“His what?” she exclaimed, stupefied. “You’re a therapist now? Since when?”
“Since I left the suffocating classrooms of academia and went back to get my degree in social work,” he explained.
“Let me get this straight: My the-examined-life-is-not-worth-living dad has not only been in touch with you, my ex-husband, but you, my ex-husband, are also his long-distance therapist?”
“Well, technically I’m a licensed clinician,” he said, correcting her. “But therapist is less of a mouthful.”
It was odd for her to hear that her dad had discussed his obnoxious behavior with Elias, its target, for she’d never known him to discuss his onerous behavior with anyone, much less with his own family. She supposed it was easier for him to unburden himself with someone like Elias, who lived thousands of miles away and had little investment in him, who wouldn’t judge him for his past and his maniacal indiscretions. Still, she didn’t like it, and she got the sense that Elias was about to unburden himself as well and that whatever he had to say was going to reverse the alchemy of the moment, turning gold into lead and lead into foolscap, on which she would pen her magnum opus, beginning with the line It didn’t end well for any of them.
“You do realize I can’t take you or any of this seriously,” she said, thinking of her day, its morning with Ephraim that had become her evening with Elias. Will the wonders of this complex, internecine clusterfuck of a life never cease? According to her phone, it was 9:30 P.M. She’d received no new messages, no missed calls, no notifications of any kind, which was more than okay with her, even if it was surprising, considering how many emails she got a day from various departments and various functionaries at Emory, the latter keeping her apprised of her case’s status, cc’ing and bcc’ing one another ad infinitum right on down the line. “On Monday, I have to meet with another evidentiary committee. This committee is separate from the Committee on Honor Code Violations,” she explained, “which is also separate from the Sexual Harassment and Misconduct Committee, which is also separate from the Faculty and Student Relations Committee, which first dealt with the complaint about four months ago. They’re trying to get rid of me, Elias. But I’m sure my dad has kept you abreast of the situation. I’m sure he’s thrilled to be proven right. He always hated that I took that position at Emory, even if it had nothing at all to do with him.”
“Speaking of,” Elias said. The traffic on the 210 was light in both directions, the blue-black sky stretching out above them like another road, this one traveled by dreams and dreamers. “You’re not going to like what I’m about to tell you, but I don’t think it’s fair to you or to me that I should have to keep carrying it around. I don’t think you’d want that. I know I don’t.” She knew without having to be told that what he was about to say had to do with Sheik, and she wondered what else Elias had learned in the interim between their divorce seven years ago and tonight. What other terrible things had come to light? “That fight we had about Sheik Cohen and the remark you made about him in the car. Remember?”
“How could I forget it?” Edith asked.
“You accused me the next morning of knowing far more than I should have about him. I don’t remember what I said in response, but whatever I did say was a lie.” They were flying through the air, the night a gaping mouth devouring everything in its path, including her will to turn to Elias and tell him to be quiet, that she didn’t want to hear any of this because it no longer mattered. “It was Julian, Edith. He told me about Sheik. He told me about what you did. He told me all of it,” he said. Edith let what he’d just confessed hang between them, saying nothing, offering nothing. She’d always assumed her mom had mentioned Sheik in passing, which was her way, of course, her mom who never meant any harm but who had a way of causing it anyway. To hear it had been her dad all along, though, who’d come between Elias and her, didn’t make much sense, until of course it slowly did. “I know for a fact he feels terrible about it,” Elias concluded.
Still Edith said nothing, letting the navigation system punctuate the silence with directions—a left onto Mulholland Parkway, another left into Edelweiss Estates, then past the empty guardhouse and under the raised metal arm. Not so secure, your gated kingdom, thought Edith. They were on Von Trapp Lane, then curling around the cul-de-sac. Edith commanded him to keep driving, so he did, looping and looping around.
“You know for a fact he feels terrible about it,” she said. “Were those his exact words, or are you paraphrasing? Or are you covering for him? My mom covers for him. That’s how she’s spent the last forty years of her life, catering and covering for a man who treated all of us like your worthless figurines, collecting us and moving us around the house for his own pleasure. Did you know that? Did I ever tell you about the time he—” But she stopped herself as Elias stopped the car. They were idling in the driveway, the lights of the house dark except for the upstairs guest room. “I have to go inside now, Elias,” she said. “Thank you for the ride.” She unbuckled herself, stepped out into the cool, starlit evening, the air tinged with eucalyptus. She took a step, then leaned back in and added, “If you don’t have any plans for the Seder tomorrow, why don’t you join us? Or you can just watch the festivities on TV. I think the network’s going to stream it live.”
She didn’t wait for him to respond but shut the door and made her way up the sidewalk, her hip and feet and ego aching. She kept waiting to hear the sound of Elias pulling out of the drive, but he didn’t. Instead, he just sat there, thinking, she imagined, about the next word he was going to play. She half expected her phone to gong again before she’d even gotten to the door, yet her phone didn’t gong or ping or pong. It remained as dark and lifeless as Elias himself looked from the deep interior of the car, where the dim light of the dash cast his face in eerie relief and made his eyes shimmer, like the eyes of the coyote that appeared in the yard. It had something in its mouth, something white and furry by the looks of it, and Edith shuddered, knowing it was the little rescued terrier, Nieves, and that come morning, she’d have to break the bad news to the family.
“Get out of here,” she yelled at the coyote, which slunk away, across the street and out of sight, though she could very well have also been speaking to Elias. It didn’t much matter if he heard her or not, for he was already pulling out of the drive as if he had, flashing his headlights once, then he, too, was gone, disappearing down the block. She watched him go, then went into the house, where she found Mo sitting on the sofa in the dark. He pointed the remote control at the giant TV, yet nothing happened, the screen remaining dark, just a flat black expanse on the wall. She hobbled over and took a seat beside him, switching on the small lamp, a Tiffany-glass knockoff, on the end table, which lit the ceiling in colorful, cheery diamonds. She reached over and grabbed the remote, just as she used to do when she was a girl and her stupid older brother didn’t have the sense to realize the batteries were dead, or that Jacob had stolen them to power one of his toys. She removed the back and, sure enough, the batteries were missing. “And so ends the case of the inoperable remote,” she said, setting it down on the coffee table.
“What the hell happened to you?” he asked, turning and staring
at her.
“Emotional earthquake, 8.9 on the Richter scale,” she said.
“Welcome to sunny California,” he said. “How’d your talk go?”
“It didn’t.” She sighed and told him about the travesty that had been her evening. “I’m going to need someone to drive me back to Claremont to pick up the van,” she said.
“Well, you win hands down,” he said. “You definitely had a more exciting day than any of us.”
“It wasn’t exciting at all, Mo,” she said, but when she thought about it, she had to admit it had left her feeling different about herself, bigger and less fearful of the world, if only a little. “Oh, well, okay. It actually was kind of thrilling. I mean, I’ve never been arrested for anything in my life. They actually led me away in handcuffs! Like I was some crazy, lawless fugitive.”
“Speaking of that,” he said, leaning in closer.
She knew what was coming and wanted to head him off at the pass. “Before we get into any of that, I need you to answer a question: What do you know about figs?” she asked. Mo gazed at her, not understanding the question or its importance. “What I mean is, what do you know about figs as they pertain to me? I mean, I know I’m allergic. But when exactly did we know? How’d we find out?”
She expected to hear the story about how she’d been hospitalized while her mom and Mo were away, but her brother gazed at her as if he had never seen her before, his eyes huge in his head. “You really don’t remember?” he asked.
Tell Me How This Ends Well Page 23