Tell Me How This Ends Well

by David Samuel Levinson

  “Remember what?” Edith asked, alarmed.

  “We were playing in the backyard and I turned my back on you for like a second and all of a sudden you were just lying facedown in the dirt under the fig tree. I can’t believe you don’t remember.”

  “But what am I supposed to remember?”

  “You took a bite of one of the figs that’d fallen off the tree and went into shock. We had to rush you to the emergency room. I was probably like seven, so you would have been…five? We’ve known that you’re deathly allergic to figs since you were five. Why are you asking me that, though?”

  Then slowly, because she couldn’t believe it, because she’d always suspected it, though until today, when she’d been so tempted to play Russian roulette with the fig pâté, hadn’t truly been able to accept it, she told her brother about those two days when he and their mom were in L.A., how she’d eaten some of Daddy’s figs, which Mo remembered, but what she really wanted him to know was what she’d learned that very afternoon from their mom—that their dad had encouraged her to eat the figs and then lied to Roz about how it had happened. “Why would he tell her I snuck them?” she asked. “Do you think he just forgot about my allergy, too, and didn’t want to be scolded? Parents make mistakes all the time, Mo.”

  “Parents forget birthdays and anniversaries. Parents don’t forget their children’s food allergies. I know exactly what my kids can and can’t eat,” he said. She hadn’t wanted to believe it, for in believing it she’d be forced to reexamine other episodes—his beaning Mo in the head with the baseball, covering the pool without first checking to make sure Jacob wasn’t swimming along the bottom, as he was wont to do. These were accidents, according to her dad, yet nowhere in Edith’s memory could she locate the one phrase that would have undone at least some of the harm—I’m sorry. He’d never said he was sorry for what had happened to Edith that night, and now, coupled with what she’d learned from Elias, she was beside herself with disappointment and sorrow, for she, too, had always defended her dad against the likes of Mo and Jacob. It was more than simple, ordinary sadness, though, for it set off in her a series of unsettling, uncomfortable reactions, touching a deep, dark, oily well that was ignited into flame, which licked at her organs, singed her nerves, and burned her down from the inside out. A silent combustion of historical proportions, never before seen or felt with such an intensity by her, who was slowly coming to know it all differently, everything she’d ever trusted and believed in falling away to reveal its essence, not of what it was but of what it wasn’t, not a heart fashioned out of flesh and blood but a sooty heart of cold, hard coal that went on beating in the next room, oblivious.

  “Do you think he’s vindictive?” she asked, although she’d already come to this conclusion on her own. She thought about the harmless practical joke she’d played on Jacob by switching the suitcases and all at once felt even worse than before.

  “He’s a lot of things, but yeah, I’d say that’s one of his more obvious, unlovable qualities,” Mo said.

  “Then I know exactly how we can do what you want to do,” she said, just like that, just that easily. “Furthermore, I know how we can do it and not get caught.” She told Mo her suspicions about the syringe, noting, though, the slight hiccup that it had disappeared. She prayed her little brother had done what he always did and appropriated something of hers that didn’t belong to him. Patterns, she thought, and hoped this particular pattern held true, for this could be a little miracle of murder.

  “I told Jacob about it, so, yeah, he probably pilfered it. You know he can be really motivated when he wants to be. Look, I’ve got to get to bed. We can discuss all of this tomorrow,” he said. “The three of us,” and he reached over and hugged her. She melted against him, this big brother of hers, finally accepting her place among them, finally understanding that they had no other choice.

  “Before you go, I have a tiny confession to make,” she said, then told him about switching the suitcases because she thought Mo had given Jacob preferential treatment. “That’s always been my room, you know, but I…I thought it’d be funny.”

  “Yeah, about that,” he said. “Luckily for you, the German figured it out before Jacob did and we switched them back. I don’t know how he knew, but he did. His naturally keen sense of deceit really came in handy, I guess.”

  “I kept meaning to switch them back but just didn’t have the chance,” she said. She didn’t think of herself as a vindictive person usually, but then again I am my father’s daughter, she thought with a shudder, and she understood that she’d have no choice but to fully embrace and harness this quality, as they all would have to, if they were going to see this thing through.

  “Look, don’t beat yourself up,” Mo said. “Jacob’s none the wiser—the German promised he wouldn’t tell him. Sorry, I had to give them your room.”

  She hugged Mo, who then drifted upstairs. She slid out of her heels and then slipped quietly into the downstairs guest room, where her parents lay sound asleep, her mom’s breathing gravelly, her dad snoring lightly. Other than this, the house was quiet except for the sudden slamming of the front door, which made her wonder who was going out at this time of night and for what purpose. But she let this go—she refused to let herself worry and wonder about every little thing under Mo’s roof—and approached the bed, where she stood over her dad and gazed down at him, this man who looked like every other man she’d ever seen asleep, except that he wasn’t like every other man, he was Julian Jacobson, her daddy, her should-have-been protector. If anything, he had been the bogeyman who lived under her bed and the creature in the closet who wanted to eat her alive and the sad, pathetic ghost who did not know he was already dead.

  The rollaway sat in the far corner of the room, nearest the window. Someone had opened it and made it up, probably her mom, she thought, climbing out of her dress and into the small, spongy bed, forgoing her nightly routine.

  She slid under the covers and lay on her right side. As she spread her arm out under the pillow, which was how she always slept, something fell to the floor. Sitting up, she leaned over and shined her iPhone toward the spot where it had fallen and there it was, the syringe, just lying there. Jacob, she thought. Leaving her little presents under her pillow—a dead butterfly, a crushed frog, the decapitated body of her Barbie doll—just as he used to do when they were kids.

  Edith reached down and picked up the syringe, then lay back, staring at the liquid inside it, which she understood was insulin—it hadn’t taken much of a leap to realize that the last renter of the van had been a diabetic who had probably dropped the syringe by accident, that it had rolled under the seat and kept rolling, lodging itself in the wheel well where Edith had discovered it and from where Jacob had retrieved it. Insulin—fast-acting, fatal in large doses, and untraceable back to them. Insulin—it does a body good, she thought, imagining the three of them, she, Jacob, and Mo, holding him down, injecting the insulin between his toes, then waiting for it to work its magic and shut down his heart, this heart that beat only for itself, this damaged, destructive heart that she finally knew without a shadow of a doubt had to be silenced. Sitting up, she pointed the syringe at him as if it were a magic wand.

  “Figs, Daddy? Really? You let me eat figs?” she whispered. “What did I ever do to you? What did any of us?” Yet even as she said it, she suspected she was asking the wrong questions and that a better one might have been: “Did you ever even want us, Daddy?”

  Now that she was hopped up on adrenaline and too riled to sleep, Edith decided to check her phone. She read Ephraim’s texts, all seventeen of them, each one more intense than the next, darker and more disturbed—and all because she hadn’t replied to him immediately, all because she hadn’t known what to say or how to handle it. The first few were pleasant enough. But then the tone and frequency of the messages changed, the time stamp indicating that he’d sent the next several messages within minutes of one another, and these were alarming for their prescience and th
eir assumptions—that she was disgusted by him and what he’d done, that she didn’t understand how much he loved her, because if she had she wouldn’t be acting like this, all pouty and silent, wouldn’t be ignoring him if she truly liked him. He called her a fat bitch and a spoiled cunt and a selfish twat, demanding that she answer him, that she call him immediately, then he reversed himself in the next text, apologizing profusely and blaming the frustrating job hunt and his ex-girlfriend for making it impossible for him to trust another woman. Edith felt terrible for him, but even more for herself, because, although he could not have ever made things right between them again, he certainly didn’t have to make things worse by insisting he wasn’t a bad person, that he was just having a bad day.

  Pandora was right. We do carry men’s pain around in our bodies. And she wondered if she’d been too permissive with Ephraim, too desperate, too earnest, or if he just happened to be one of those men who took great pleasure in scaring the woman he allegedly loved. She waffled between wanting to respond to him and understanding that engaging him would only further fuel his mania. Still, she hated the idea that he thought he’d intimidated her, that he thought he’d won.

  From experience she understood that the best way to take away a man’s power and render him useless was to pretend he didn’t exist. With trembling fingers, she tapped out a single line of text—“Who is this?”—then sent it, already erasing him from her phone and her memory, already undoing that first meeting, that first kiss, the first time he was inside her. She had liked him and would miss him, but she was done granting passes and swallowing excuses. She was done trying to figure out how to navigate the waters of this man’s, any man’s, broken, embattled psyche. Mainly, though, she was done trying to understand the brutality and violent tendencies that lived within every one of them, including her adoring brothers and her less adoring daddy. Yes, even them, she thought, lying back on the bed, certain that her dad must die, yet still uncertain, even after everything she had learned and had said, if she wanted any part of it.

  Moses ran. He ran as if he were being chased, like Babe Levy in Marathon Man, or as if he were training for the Olympics, like Harold Abrahams in Chariots of Fire. He might have been running in place and going nowhere, but even so he felt that he was putting some distance between himself and the past two days, between himself and the rest of his life. He ran to shut off his brain. He ran to keep running, because that’s what his body wanted.

  At forty-two, he was arguably in the best shape of his life, which took both diligence and sacrifice, alimentary and otherwise. What he’d given up to look the way he did! And how could he not, considering that his face and body were his prized possessions and an integral part of his livelihood and his identity? He did it for Pandora and the boys. At least, this was what he told himself when he rose at 3:30 each morning to be at the gym and on the treadmill by 3:45. He did it for other reasons, too, not least of which was to undo all that his parents, especially his dad, had done to “reward” his obedience—filling him with banana splits, hamburgers, extra-cheese pizzas. The greatest of all ironies then being that his dad immediately turned on him, chastising Moses for being too fat to fit into his clothes and publicly shaming him in the huskies section of Dillard’s, the trauma of which sometimes revisited him when he was out shopping with his own boys. Then he’d have to cower in one of the dressing rooms until the fear and panic passed, or he’d have to call Pandora, who would appear a few minutes later to round up the kids and let him slip away. It’d take a few hours of intense weight lifting and cardio to expunge these memories, but then Moses was as good as new, returning from the battlefield of the past having once again slain the fire-breathing dragon that was his dad.

  “You give your dad way too much power,” Pandora had told him once early on. “He’s just a big, dumb bully.”

  “Yeah, but he’s my big, dumb bully,” Moses had replied.

  “Change the conversation you have with him in your head and you can change the conversation you have with him in real life,” she had advised him.

  “He doesn’t do conversation,” he’d said. “He just stabs with his mouth.”

  “The first time I heard him call you an idiot, I was in the other room and thought I’d misheard. The second time, I was just too shocked to say anything. But you remember the third time, don’t you?” Yes, he remembered it vividly, remembered how Pandora had turned to his father and asked him nicely not to use that word again when referring to the man she loved. This had been a first for Mo, a woman, who loved him, standing up to his father in defense of him.

  “My mother liked to pick on my brothers,” she’d told Mo later. “My father’s more like Roz. He just stood by and watched her do it. I love my mother, but when she started picking on me, I had to put her in her place. You’re going to have to stand up for yourself eventually, Mo, because I’m not about to spend my life with a pussy.” Then she’d told him to fuck her because there was nothing like a good fuck to chase the idiots out of their heads.

  He thought about that conversation as he glanced down at his wristwatch, where a red digital heart pulsed rapidly on the small glass display above the words “Target range achieved, begin your cooldown, Moses,” which he did, or which the treadmill did for him automatically, the two devices paired and synched. His pace slowed until he was walking briskly, taking long, steady strides.

  As his body cooled down, his mind heated up, imagining the next couple of days and all the planning he still had to do. He was happy his siblings had come, though a little less happy about that stupid mezuzah Jacob had bought for them in Munich. How could Jacob have possibly thought it would make a good gift? “You should have seen Pandora’s face when he and the German presented it to us,” he’d told his pal, Gibson, as they’d arrived at the gym. Gibson Gould—né Gary Goldstein—of the American James Bond franchise, a role Moses had been up for and which had gone to his best and oldest pal, or his best and oldest enemy, depending on the day. These days, he was more prone to see Gibson merely as a soulless hack, but he kept this opinion close to his bulging pectorals. He never wanted to stray too far from his friend’s good graces, just in case, and he remained eternally grateful for Gibbs and his parents, Donald and Anita Goldstein, without whom he never would have survived Julian Jacobson’s house of horrors. “They ‘presented’ it to you? What? Like an Oscar? Or a Golden Raspberry?” Gibbs asked. “ ‘And now in the category of Tackiest Trinket That Should Have Remained Hidden in His Suitcase, the award goes to…Oh, it can’t be! I can’t believe it! The award goes to…Herr Schmuck Jacob Jacobson!’ ”

  “That’s funny, Gibbs,” Moses said, not laughing. “They’d already screwed it into the doorjamb, so what were we going to do?”

  “Kiss it and make up.” Gibbs cracked up.

  “Jew slay me,” Moses said. “Jew really do.” He decided not to tell him about what his son had found hanging in the guest room closet.

  Moses stepped off the treadmill and headed for the empty locker room, where he took a quick shower, dressed, then proceeded to the juice bar to reconvene with Gibbs, who was talking on his phone. Moses ordered his usual smoothie, a concoction of plankton, molasses, and raw quail eggs, and drank it all down, gagging on it a little. Though he knew it was good for him, its congealed, gelatinous texture left behind a slimy coating and a dirty aftertaste that only a sugary treat, say, a Krispy Kreme doughnut or three, could take away. Luckily for him, the Krispy Kreme near his gym opened early and after saying good-bye to and fist-bumping Gibbs, who indicated he’d call him later, Moses jumped into his dad mobile, an Apple Car—a space-gray station wagon made of a durable, scratch-resistant, titanium-and-steel polymer—and zipped out of the lot.

  Moses loved this time of morning most, when the streets were deserted. In just a few hours the traffic would be backed up for miles, despite the warning the new mayor had issued to those caught driving alone in L.A. proper during peak commute times. Steep fines, points on one’s record, possible sus
pension of one’s license, even some jail time for repeat offenders. (That Edith had made it to them in Calabasas without getting pulled over struck him as miraculous.)

  Here, in the Valley, at 4:30 in the morning, Moses had no need to worry, especially since the traffic lights were on timers, remaining green, the speed limits having been lifted on certain roads like Ventura Boulevard during certain times, of which this was one. He was free to drive as fast as he wanted. Everything and anything to accommodate the automobilists in their automobiles, to get and keep people moving, to get them to their destinations as quickly as possible, reducing their carbon footprint and its accordant guilt.

  After buying a dozen assorted doughnuts and piping-hot black coffee, Moses pulled back onto Ventura, his watch lighting up with Pandora’s face, which spoke the text she’d just sent him: “Okay, I got Edith and Jacob up. I’m not happy about it and neither are they. In the future, please handle your morning plans the night before, Mo. Your inability to plan ahead is still an issue. Get your shit together. Now the whole damn house is up. What is so important about a stupid sunrise anyway? Your sibs don’t seem to give a shit about it, FYI.” Pandora Orenstein-Jacobson, his beloved, angry wife and the mother of his sons, all of whom he worshipped, from the twins, feisty Baxter and maudlin Dexter, to the trips, budding lady-killers all, mealymouthed Brendan, sweetmouthed Bronson, and foulmouthed Brandon. He was blessed—my God, but am I blessed, he thought—with this family of his, which was crumbling around him thanks in large part to his own inflexibilities, according to Pandora, who demanded, as she threw him out of the house two months ago, that he either stop going to bed at eight o’clock, attend some social functions with her, ones with her friends and not just industry people, and fuck her once in a while, or she was going to divorce him.

  His watch instructed him to make a left onto Tujunga Avenue, then a right onto Dilling Street. “Your destination is on your right,” announced George Lazenby, whose voice Moses had been able to lease, download, and install directly from iTunes. It was well worth the $29.99. Sometimes he liked to let himself get lost just to hear Lazenby, whom he considered his patron saint, give him directions.