Moses stood there, unmoving and numb. He’d always suspected that his dad felt this way about them. He could tell that Jacob and Edith were as stunned as he was. “No, Daddy, you’re the despicable one,” Edith whispered at last. “You never loved us because you can’t. You rob everyone around you of sympathy, but you have nothing to give back. You expect love. You demand servitude. You always have to have your own way, or you throw a tantrum like one of your five-year-old grandsons. Daddy, you’re an abuser, and if Ma weren’t here right now, I’d kill you myself with my bare hands.”
Their dad started to speak, but Jacob cut him off. “Show her the video, Mo,” he ordered.
“Ah, the video,” their dad jeered. “I was wondering when that was going to surface.”
“I’ve already seen it,” their mom said. They all took steps back, as if they’d been smacked in unison. “Your father showed it to me.”
“It really just proves how depraved all of you are to think I’d tamper with your mom’s oxygen tank,” their dad said.
“But you did,” Edith said, the first of them to recompose herself. “I picked it up, Ma, to put it back in the minivan. It was much lighter.”
“Lighter than what? Air? What exactly do you have to go on?” their dad asked, smirking.
“I checked the tank myself, Thistle. It weighs exactly the same as this one when it was full,” and their mom touched the tank sitting on the floor beside her.
“That’s not possible.” Jacob shook his head in disbelief. “He’s clearly doing something to it in the video.”
“I’m…moving it,” their dad said. “That’s all. Arrest me if that’s a crime. Go on.”
“We want you to leave.” Mo found his voice. “We want you to go away and never come back. You slammed the lid of the barbecue down on my son’s hand on purpose. And even if we can’t prove it and Ma doesn’t believe it, you tampered with that tank, and you’ve never once apologized or taken any responsibility for any wrongdoing—not when you hurled that baseball at me, not when you fed Edith figs, not when you made Jacob watch all of those horror movies with you, knowing that he was too young and that he’d have nightmares for years. You are not, nor have you ever been, a real father. We can take care of Ma, the three of us.”
“Don’t make me laugh,” their dad taunted. “You can’t even take care of yourselves, much less a dying woman who needs constant care.”
At this, their mom swiveled out of the bed into her wheelchair. “Let me know how all of this ends,” she said with dismissive finality, rolling to the door, which Moses opened for her.
“That’s just great,” their dad snapped. “Now you’ve upset her.”
“Now? I think she’s been upset for over forty years thanks to you,” Jacob said. “And just who the hell are you to criticize any of us?”
“Do you know why none of this matters to me at all and why I’ll sleep like a baby tonight?” their dad asked. “Because tomorrow I get to drive away from here and never think about any of you wretched, ungrateful losers again. I’m cutting you all off and that includes whatever inheritance you thought you were getting. Your mom and I are going on a three-month cruise. She wants to see the world, and I’m happy to give that to her. Now if you don’t mind, I need to get some sleep,” and he shut off the light, slid under the covers, and shut his eyes. “You can all leave anytime.”
Edith marched over to the rollaway. Moses was sure she was going to reach for the syringe, though now was not the time for it, he wanted to tell her. They would have to wait until everyone was gone. Instead, she closed the rollaway, latched it, then pushed it out of the room, Jacob and Moses following. She left it by the wall of glass and went out to speak to Elias, who kept peering in at Jacob and Moses. It seemed Gibbs had left, for Moses had a text from him asking if they were fishing or not. He texted back that they weren’t. Then he went to find Pandora, but she was not in their bedroom or anywhere in the house. She’d grabbed his hand at dinner, briefly giving him hope, but that was fading already. He found her in the garage with his mom, sitting in the front seat of the Expedition. They were chatting, and he didn’t want to disturb them, so he just waved. They waved back, their faces gaunt and expressionless, which he took as a terrible sign.
Jacob said he was going upstairs to talk to Dietrich, to tell him about what had just happened, and Moses told him that Dietrich was welcome back there anytime. The confrontation with his dad had burned away Moses’s resentment toward Dietrich, toward anyone who wasn’t his father. The last couple of days had brought him closer to his siblings and to his mom and he wouldn’t have traded that for anything in the world—well, maybe for our dad’s death, he thought, stepping out into the front yard to appraise the damage to the door again. It wouldn’t have surprised him if his dad had vandalized it himself.
Edith and Elias came out of the front door and Moses shook his hand and said good-bye. It’d been years since he’d seen him, but his opinion of Elias hadn’t changed—he and Edith were still just as unsuited for each other as his mom and dad were. Edith walked him to his car and said her own good-bye, and as she and Moses wandered inside she asked him if he thought Pandora would mind if she set the rollaway up in her office.
“You’d have to ask her,” he said just as Pandora returned from the garage with their mom, who looked as if she’d been crying. Moses’s heart broke when he saw her, so frail and so old, and he wondered how it had happened, how he’d let her age behind his back. He kissed his mom good night, told her to wake him up before they left, then followed Pandora upstairs. They had missed their chance to get rid of their dad, and Moses regretted that he hadn’t let him choke to death at dinner. He went to check on the boys, all of whom were fast asleep. But he roused Dexter, because he just had to know.
“Did you tell Paw-Paw about the video you made of him by the minivan?” he asked softly. “I won’t be mad if you did.” Moses hated to take advantage of the boy in his sleepy, vulnerable state, yet he didn’t see any way around it. Still, he thought twice about what he was doing, for he felt terrible about implicating his own child in this horror show. But then Dexter was reaching under his pillow and pulling out two crisp hundred-dollar bills. He handed them eagerly to Moses, whose face went dark as he took them from his son. “Paw-Paw gave this to you?”
“He told me it was from the Truth Fairy,” he chirped. “He told me to keep it a secret, even from you, and that if I told anyone, the Truth Fairy would get supermad and steal the money back and turn me into a—a forearm.” He sniffled, darting his eyes back and forth with a keen vigilance, on the lookout, no doubt, for the Truth Fairy. A forearm? But surely the boy didn’t mean that. Firearm wasn’t right, either, but it popped into Moses’s head. No, it must have been a more threatening word—this was Julian Jacobson after all—though for the life of him he had no idea what it might be. “Are you sure Paw-Paw said forearm?” he asked.
Dexter pushed his face into the pillow to dry his eyes, for he was crying now. “If I told, Paw-Paw said the Truth Fairy would make everybody dead. He said I’d never see you again, and I’d have to go live in Dallas. I don’t want to live in Dallas! Their house stinks like farts!”
“Hey, language,” Moses scolded, thinking of his dad and the threat to turn Dexter into an orphan, the word buzzing hideously through his head. “Look, Paw-Paw was just teasing. Nothing’s going to happen to me or to Mommy or to your brothers,” he said, wrapping the shivering, frightened boy in his arms. “But I need you to be very brave and tell me if you showed Paw-Paw the video on Mommy’s phone. The video you made of him. I’m in pretty good with the Truth Fairy. I bet she’ll buy you whatever toy you want when she hears how brave you’re being. So what about it, champ? Did you show Paw-Paw the video?”
“You mean the one where he’s sticking a shot into that green torpedo?” he asked.
“A shot? You mean you saw Paw-Paw injecting a shot into the tank?” he asked, his heart racing.
“Yeah,” Dexter said. “I droppe
d the phone,” which accounted for the sudden shot of the grass. “He was shooting it.” He had seen what Moses had not, what wasn’t shown in the video. He’d been there and had observed his paw-paw using the syringe.
“Thank you,” Moses whispered, kissing him on the forehead. “Now have yourself some good dreams and sleep well.”
“Good night, Daddy,” he murmured, slipping back under the covers and shutting his eyes, though Moses had a feeling that he’d spend the entire night on high alert, watching the shadows for the Truth Fairy.
Moses left the room, hurried to the upstairs guest room, knocked quickly, then entered. “Jacob, I need to talk to you,” he said.
In the hall, Moses told him what Dexter had just told him. “You have got to be shitting me,” Jacob said.
“I don’t know what’s in that syringe Edith found, but I’m pretty sure he planted it,” Moses said. “I’m pretty sure that one of these days, if Ma, God forbid, dies ‘unexpectedly,’ the police are going to come snooping around and pay the three of us a visit. They’ll check all of her tanks and see they’ve been tampered with. You don’t think that’s been his plan all along, do you? I mean, to implicate us in her death?”
“That incredible son of a bitch.”
“It must contain hydrochloric or sulfuric acid or a very potent chloroform,” Moses conjectured, not really knowing much about chemicals but knowing his dad. “Something that would degrade the lining of the tank, something lethal when it was inhaled. If anyone would know about that kind of thing, he would.”
“Okay,” Jacob said. “Then what’s the new plan?”
“We don’t have a choice now.” Moses scrubbed a hand over his face. “He’ll kill her if we don’t kill him. It’s as simple as that. We could confront him again, but he’d only find another excuse.”
“Then we have to do it between now and five o’clock,” Jacob said. The brothers came up with a plan right then and there. “I’ll tell Edith,” and off he ran to find their sister.
Moses went into the bedroom and found Pandora already in bed, playing on her phone. He shut the door and kept waiting for her to tell him to leave, but she didn’t. And when he undressed and slid into bed beside her, she did not protest as she usually did. She glanced up from her phone and said, “I take it you’re staying. Well, it’s about time,” and leaned down and kissed him. “Look, I know you know about that dalliance of mine with Gibbs. I want to say that it didn’t mean anything, but it did, Mo. As clichéd as this is going to sound, he listened to me in ways you haven’t since we got married.” And texted you in ways I never have, either, Moses thought bitterly. But she was right. “I texted him tonight that it was over, though. You don’t think I appreciate what I have and what we’ve built together, but I do. Seeing the way your dad’s been behaving on this trip put it into perspective for me. But let’s get one thing straight. If I ever see or hear you treat our boys the way your father treated—still treats—you, I will take them away and divorce you. Is it a deal? Can you live with that?”
“I can live with that,” he said, kissing her back, though he wondered if he could live with himself for lying to her, by omission, about what he was about to do. What does “living with it” even mean? Moses thought.
“Some night,” she said. “Have you heard from our producer?”
“Not yet. I’m sure he’s not thrilled with the way things went,” he said.
“I’m thrilled with the way things went,” she told him. “You’re a hero, Moses Orenstein-Jacobson. You’re my hero. I’m sorry for everything.”
“Me, too. Sorrier than you’ll ever know.”
“Just promise me we’ll never turn into your parents,” she said. “Your poor mom. She should come and live with us after their cruise.”
Moses started laughing. “Do you know something I don’t?” he asked.
“Not a thing. I was just thinking it’d be nice if she didn’t have him around. God, what an albatross.”
“What were you guys talking about anyway?” he asked.
“Girl things,” she said and left it at that. He knew then he’d never get it out of her. Pandora was like that—and he wouldn’t have had her any other way.
“I’m going to lock up,” he said, throwing on his robe and slippers and heading downstairs.
He went from room to room, switching off lights, then stood at the wall of glass, surveying the moonless backyard, wondering if Edith had been right about what she’d seen—Nieves being carried away. Well, it certainly wasn’t like her to run off and not come back and he had a terrible, queasy feeling that she had been eaten. He tapped the tint button on the controller and the glass went opaque, the backyard a memory.
The rollaway was gone, and he heard the echo of Edith’s voice—she was talking animatedly on her phone, probably to Elias, thought Moses, for it sounded as if she’d known the caller forever, using a kind of Jacobson shorthand with him that Moses recognized in his own speech patterns with his wife—coming from the long, dark hallway, where a sliver of light escaped from under the office door. He was about to go back upstairs when he caught a faint reddish glow in the kitchen and went to investigate, thinking that one of the boys had left the fridge door open again. It wasn’t the fridge, but the candles, which were still burning, remarkable considering that it was some two and a half hours later. They threw a soft, warm aura upon the walls and the sleek, titanium appliances. Here was modernity entwined with the medieval, here was his life entwined with the lives of his forefathers, and he was transfixed by the candles and by his own luck, for he had never thought of himself as lucky until that second, standing in his kitchen and listening to the sounds of his house settling around him. Things actually have a way of working out for the best, if you wait long enough, if you believe strongly enough, he considered, thinking about Pandora, who was awaiting his return upstairs, and about Gibbs, who’d been doing his best to woo her away. Some things also have a way of unraveling, even the closest of friendships, and he left the candles to burn themselves out. Instead of going upstairs, however, he grabbed his keys and went into the garage, heading straight to the freezer chest. He peered down at the large black garbage bag, which he removed. It was heavy, but then dead bodies often were.
Moses loaded the bag into the back of the Expedition, climbed into the front seat, and headed in the direction of Calabasas Lake. The roads were empty, and he made incredible time, pulling up to the house twenty minutes later. He parked in the driveway, unsure whether Gibbs was at home or not, though when he peeked into the garage he saw that both cars—the Bentley and the Hummer—were there. The house was enormous, twice the size of Moses’s, with an atrium and fountains and a giant greenhouse, where Gibbs raised rare hothouse flowers. He’d done well for himself and deserved every ounce of his success. Action films, dramas, period pieces, thrillers, and comedies—he was about the most versatile actor in Hollywood these days, with an emotional range that took Moses’s breath away.
Moses grabbed the garbage bag from the back of the car, then lugged it over his shoulder and into the house, where he set it down before collecting his toiletries and the odd assortment of clothes he’d left in the guest room. He set all of it by the front door, then picked up the garbage bag and headed for the French doors that opened up onto a sprawling backyard full of real Grecian statuary, a white marble gazebo, several white Adirondack chairs, and a lap pool, which was painted a majestic empyreal blue, the bottom adorned with a giant stencil of Gibbs’s winking face. A remarkable likeness, thought Moses, who pulled out his dick and urinated into the water directly into the actor’s smiling, parted lips. When he was finished, he grabbed the bag and dumped its contents into the water—the frozen remains of the white peacock immediately sank to the bottom, covering up Gibbs’s huge right eye and half of his nose—a pert little thing he’d had done when they were still kids, a gift from his parents on the occasion of his bar mitzvah. Then he removed the watch and chucked it into the pool as well, shouting, “Time to lea
ve my wife alone.”
A light inside went on and Moses flew back into the house, nearly stumbling in his slippers, scooped up his possessions, and raced out the door, tossing the house key onto the sidewalk. He had just gotten into the car when Gibbs stepped out, yawning and rubbing his eyes. They stared at each other for a moment, then Moses peeled out of the drive, gunning the gas.
Moses sped through the dark, quiet streets, making it home and into bed again in fifteen minutes flat. He lay on his back and laughed silently to himself, thinking of Gary Goldstein and the white peacock thawing out on the bottom of his pool. Before falling asleep, he set the alarm on his phone to wake him up at the usual time, 3:30, though not for the usual reason of getting to the gym. Rather, he set it so he could join his brother and sister in kidnapping their dad, incinerating his body, and returning home before anyone was the wiser—all this before their mom woke up to find that her husband had changed his mind about leaving early and had instead gone fishing.
Julian was hovering over her. She sensed him by his breathing, which was steady and bellicose, and by his scent, which was recognizable and pungent, as if he’d bathed in cayenne pepper before getting into bed, and she kept her eyes shut. It had been happening this way every night for the last few months, ever since he started that regimen of sleeping drafts and aids, a concoction of dandelion root and melatonin, then an iSleep PM lozenge, Apple’s first foray into the multitrillion-dollar pharmaceutical market. She waited for him to lean down and kiss her, as he usually did, then to shuffle out of the room, to attend to whatever adventure or misadventure his sleepwalking had in store for him.
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