Ask Bob: A Novel

by Peter Gethers

  The embrace with Karen lasted three years. Over those years, the marriage got more and more volatile. Karen’s work took her out of New York for longer stretches of time; when she came back, she couldn’t wait to get away again. Ted spent hours every day writing a screenplay that he insisted he was going to sell only if he was allowed to star in it. “Fuck ’em,” he used to say on a regular basis. “If they want this baby, they’re gonna have to take me.” I believed him. Everyone believed him, even though none of us ever knew who “they” were.

  Unfortunately, we never got a chance to find out what would have happened if “they” wanted his baby but didn’t want him. On the day before their third anniversary, Karen came back from a two-week business trip to New Orleans and Chicago, went into the kitchen, and saw new brass faucets on the sink. She came back into the living room, looked at Ted, and said, “What’s that?” He shrugged and said, “They were a bargain.”

  This was almost the final straw. My brother was a compulsive spender. (My father was the opposite. He was a hoarder, so of course Ted was constantly getting rid of things and then buying new things to replace them.) Karen was a saver, planning for the future; Ted refused to admit that anything existed beyond that night’s dinner. Months earlier, Karen had forbidden Teddy to spend any more of their money on frivolous things. Particularly appliances—Ted was an appliance freak. He always had to have the latest stove or dishwasher. He had a near fetish for refrigerators; he must have discarded and bought three of them in the time they were married. Of course, neither he nor Karen cooked a lick. He just thought the sleek appliances looked the way a perfect kitchen—and a perfect life, a perfect marriage—should look.

  Karen went ballistic over the faucets. She was so angry that she went to a place she’d always been afraid to go: She demanded to see his screenplay. He wouldn’t show it to her. She insisted. They argued back and forth until finally she went to his computer, found the screenplay, and opened it, and then saw that it was right out of The Shining. It wasn’t exactly “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy,” but it was close. In a year and a half, he’d written six pages—including the title page. Two of the pages were verbatim conversations between Ted and Karen. Two more pages were verbatim conversations between Ted and our dad. The final page had a page number at the top and a note in bold type that said, “DEVELOP RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN ED AND CARMEN.”

  That was the end of the marriage.

  It was also the beginning of an intense three weeks for Ted and me. He had a kind of nervous breakdown. I don’t know what else to call it; he just kept crying all day and was unable to get out of bed. My dad wouldn’t talk to him—by this point, he hadn’t talked to him for quite a while—and my mom simply couldn’t drop everything and come to the city to help (although since we were both out of the house we were never exactly sure what “everything” actually was), especially if that help put her in between her husband and her son. So I left college behind for a while and stayed with Ted. Took care of him as best I could. Mostly that meant ordering pizza or Chinese food and smoking dope with him and letting him cry and talk. He insisted that I talk, too. He wanted to hear about school and especially about the girl I was pining away for, who would only consider me a close platonic friend even though I was fairly sure she was dating the entire college basketball team, two assistant professors, and a geek from the science lab who doubled as the late-night janitor. Despite my haze of jealous despair, my concern for my brother, and my even greater concern that my efforts at playing emotional nursemaid could lead to disaster—he obviously needed far more caretaking than I was capable of providing—those three weeks were wonderful, if odd and bewildering. It was just like when we were kids and I would go into Ted’s room (larger than mine because he was older) and we’d read comics and talk about sports and girlfriends and our favorite flavor of frozen Pepperidge Farm turnovers and all sorts of other crucial things.

  By the end of those three weeks, Ted had stopped crying and could order his own pizza. A very attractive neighbor, a dancer wannabe named Melanie, had begun coming over to check up on him. Ted got the great apartment, somehow, and Karen had moved out; Melanie had witnessed the dissolution of the relationship close up. One night I returned home and it was painfully obvious that I had become a third wheel, so I went back to school. Before I left, Teddy hugged me and thanked me. But the hug was another lie: What he really wanted was for me to get the hell out of there and forget that any of this had ever happened. He didn’t like being weaker than his younger brother, and I didn’t like having to be stronger than him. Even worse was the realization that I was stronger than him.

  Ted and I skirmished intermittently, but the battle between Ted and my dad went on continuously for years. Periodically, my father would cut my brother off. During those times they wouldn’t speak for months, sometimes as long as a year. Eventually, sentiment, blood, and guilt would overwhelm one or both of them and they’d reconcile. Then Ted would set him off again and the war raged anew. During those years—while Ted continued to live off various girlfriends and I went to veterinary school and then became a vet—my father’s hair turned white and he grew a bushy mustache. He also assumed a kind of actorish, regal manner. And because he smoked four packs of cigarettes a day, his voice became increasingly rough and throaty. At age fifty-nine, my father took a running leap back into his own family’s grasp and, just like his father before him, died of lung cancer. Ted was thirty-six and I was thirty.

  My mother, my brother, and I were all with our father when he died. Minutes before he closed his eyes for the last time, he nodded at Teddy but didn’t speak to him. He tried to blow a kiss toward my mom but couldn’t manage it. Then he squeezed my hand and told me to look after her. I don’t think my father made this request because he respected me all that much. He certainly didn’t respect my chosen profession; he thought that I’d become a vet because I couldn’t get into a real medical school. I suspect he told me to take care of my mom because he didn’t know what else to say to me. And he couldn’t ask my brother because he didn’t trust him at all. In my father’s defense, he wasn’t wrong not to trust Teddy. The last thing I did before my father died was to kiss him on the forehead and say good-bye. The last thing Teddy did before our dad died was to steal his watch from his chest of drawers.

  * * *

  “Why are you so nervous?”

  That’s what Anna asked me as we were driving to my parents’ house for the first time. It was six months after we’d met. Three months after we’d started hanging out together whenever possible, and a month after I’d talked to her about meeting the inmates in the loony bin. My dad still had four years to live, and recently he’d entered a phase where he was somewhat mellower, or at least less judgmental around me—probably because he knew he’d begun the process of dying, although no one other than my mother was privy to that information at the time—which gave me some reason to hope that Anna’s first encounter with my family might not be a total disaster. On the other hand, Ted would be there, too.

  “I just want them to like you,” I replied, glancing over at her as I drove.

  She shook her head at her pathetic, misguided boyfriend. “How could they not like me?”

  “Yeah, I know. It’s just that they’re … unpredictable.”

  “Everybody’s unpredictable.”

  “You’re not.”

  “No?” she said.

  “No,” I said. “You’re perfect.”

  I thought it was a romantic thing to say, but she gave me an odd look, a look that created some distance between us.

  “Do you really think that?” she asked.

  “Yeah. I really do.”

  The distance passed and the warmth was back in her eyes, but there was a momentary hint of something else, too. I couldn’t tell if it was confusion or exasperation or maybe even sadness.

  Anna took my free hand in hers and held it up to her cheek. “I’m not,” she said. “I’m really, really not.”


  “To me you are. I mean … whatever you do, I like. And I don’t think you could ever do anything wrong. Not really wrong.”

  “That’s a little scary,” she said. But she leaned over and kissed me lightly on the lips, which made me think it wasn’t all that scary.

  Then we pulled into the driveway and went in to meet the Heller family.

  My dad took to Anna right away. He was as charming as could be, telling her his favorite soap opera behind-the-scenes moments, which everyone who met him found hard to resist—at least the first time. He regaled Anna with the story about the beloved actress who played the stern matriarch on the show but had to take swigs of gin before every take; he told her about the weird gifts people sent in when characters on the show had babies or got married. And he asked her about all sorts of things: her studies, her parents, her high heels. He even made her take off her shoes so he could hold them in his hands; while he held them, he said to my mom, “Les, how do women wear things like this?” and then to Anna, “Really, how do you wear these things?”

  My mom, Leslie Heller, aka Ms. Polite at Any Cost, was extremely reserved, to the point of being unfriendly. It kind of rocked me. I’d seen her upset, I’d seen her crying, I’d seen her angry, although her anger was usually fairly tepid and most often aimed at herself or at people who’d done something to hurt various family members. What I’d never seen directed at any of us, especially me, was blatant disapproval or disappointment. My mom was the stabilizing, calm presence, the generous soul who too often was underappreciated or overlooked. No one realized it then, but she was actually the glue that held us all together. We mistook her quiet strength for being merely quiet. But not that evening. At the first encounter with the woman I was going to marry, my mother acted as if I were a young, innocent chick and Anna were an approaching fox.

  Anna tried. She smiled and offered to help with the cooking. (This was little more than a gesture, since Anna knew that my mom was a great cook, whereas the only thing Anna made was microwave popcorn; still, she was hoping it was the thought that counted.) She effusively admired the house and the garden. At one desperate moment, running out of accolades, she even commented on how clean everything was. It didn’t matter; nothing worked. All she got in return was a subtle but unmistakable resistance.

  As for Anna’s meeting with Teddy, it went about as expected.

  At first he was charming and funny. Apparently he and my dad had agreed to bury the hatchet for the night, and if my mom seemed indifferent or even a bit hostile toward Anna, Ted appeared to be quite taken with her. At some point, my mom went into the kitchen to wash the dishes and my dad went in to help her, which left just the three of us at the dining table. I was full and had polished off a decent amount of wine. Despite the few snags, I was feeling almost out of the woods. Anna was relaxed, smiling, and had gone from holding my hand surreptitiously under the table to slipping her fingers into mine in plain view.

  Then Teddy said something about going to put some money down on the lottery.

  Anna said, “Really? You really do that?”

  “Sure,” he said. “I’m gonna win.”

  “Come on,” she said.

  “Okay, but don’t come crawling to me when I win my hundred and fifty mil.”

  She laughed and shook her head in disbelief.

  Teddy said, “I’m serious.”

  By this time, I was poking her under the table, but she missed the cue for silence. And she had no idea that the ice beneath her feet had suddenly become very thin.

  “You make it sound like just because you want something, it’s going to happen.”

  “Come on,” I interjected. “Let’s go to the basement and shoot some pool.”

  No one took me up on the chance to walk away from the discussion.

  “You don’t think I can win?” Teddy said to Anna.

  “Well … sure. I mean you could win.” She smiled at him, as if to show that she hoped he would win.

  “Oh, I’m gonna win. Sooner or later.”

  “Just because you want to?”

  He shrugged. Teddy would never try to outargue you. Logic wasn’t his style. His modus operandi was to charm you into wanting to agree with him. Which definitely was not Anna’s style. She believed in stubbornly sticking to logic over all else, even after it became abundantly clear that logic held no sway when people wanted deeply to believe in something.

  Anna leaned toward Ted and said, “But if you think that way, then you don’t actually have to do anything. In fact, it pretty much guarantees that you won’t do anything. You just wait around for stuff to happen. You don’t think that’s kinda nuts?”

  Teddy smiled and nodded. His charm offensive had clearly failed. So he turned to me, at first looking quizzical, then offering a slow, broad smile, and he said, “I get it. She’s a cunt.”

  That’s when my mom and dad came in with dessert.

  Anna’s mouth was open and her jaw hung slack She looked as if she’d been slapped.

  “Apple pie?” my mom said.

  * * *

  From the New York Daily Examiner:

  ASK DR. BOB

  Dr. Robert Heller is one of New York’s leading veterinarians and is the author of a book about taking care of pets, They Have Nothing but Their Kindness. Dr. Bob takes care of cats, dogs, horses, birds, snakes, turtles, frogs, small pigs, and many varieties of rodents. You can e-mail him at AskDrBob@NYDE.com and ask him any question about the animal you love. His column runs every Tuesday in NYC’s most popular newspaper.

  Dear Medicine Man Bob:

  First off: longtime reader, big fan. Loved your comparison of Confused at the Dog Run’s pit bull to the whole steroid scandal in sports. Okay, enough sucking up. Sorry about that. On to my problem. It’s about a new animal I just brought into the house. I have one cat, Binky, and one dog, Esther, and they get along just swell. But my wife fell in love with a cockatiel and we brought him home and the bird drives the other two animals crazy. I have to say, I’ve gotten totally attached to the new family member, Baretta, but it has caused real havoc in our household. Any thoughts on how to restore some sanity to our previously copacetic environment?

  —Looking for a Return to the Past

  Dear Looking:

  Let me begin by saying that there can never be too much sucking up to Dr. Bob. So never apologize for that. As to your problem, it’s not an easy one to solve. I have two words for you: time and patience. Okay, I realize that’s actually three words. But I don’t think the connective should count as part of the equation. So back to your problem. Having your home space invaded is traumatic. It takes time for things to jell. Not everything can fall into place easily and perfectly. Even in the animal kingdom, there are issues to be negotiated and compromises that have to be made. Cats and dogs get along better than Israelis and Arabs, but now you’ve gone and thrown a Palestinian into the mix. I admire your courage, but you’re going to have to come up with a two- (or even three-) state solution now. The Middle East has managed to hang on for quite a while, despite a lot of volatility, so I suggest you follow a tried and true historical path: Do your best to negotiate, weather the storms, and enjoy the periods of détente. In the meantime, be as attentive to all sides as possible, and show that you have no favorites. I’m sure there will be uprisings on all fronts, so that’s where the time and patience come in. It’s going to take time. And the only way to survive that is patience.

  Note to Dr. Bob’s readers: Please don’t write nasty comments to your favorite vet because I compared Looking’s problem to the Middle East. I think it’s a valid comparison. I often wish that the various antagonistic forces over there would take a few lessons on canine and feline togetherness. All abusive e-mails will not only hurt Dr. Bob’s feelings, they will be transferred immediately to Trash. If you want to send an abusive e-mail that will be read, feel free to criticize the sudden use of the third person to describe myself.

  —Dr. Bob

  * * *

  CHAPTE
R 3

  In retrospect, the first year of our marriage was a little odd.

  It didn’t seem so to us because getting married was what we desperately wanted to do and it was more important than any potential inconveniences. Also, nothing ever feels odd when you’re actually doing it. Only on reflection do you scratch your head and go, “What the hell was that all about?” I know what it was about: We wanted to be together. Even if we couldn’t actually be together.

  We got married in a civil ceremony at the courthouse near my parents’ home. Anna was in graduate school—the second year of a two-year program in interior design—and she came down from Providence, Rhode Island, for the big event and the weekend-long festivities. My parents attended. A few of Anna’s friends from college came down, too. Most important (at least to me), my best friend, Phil Colavito, came.

  Phil and I had been best friends since we were ten years old. Even though we’d gone in different directions, our friendship was inviolable. I was a year away from becoming a doctor of veterinary medicine. Phil was running the local bowling alley in our hometown, which he’d taken over after his dad had a near-fatal heart attack and couldn’t work anymore. At first, I was amazed that Phil had chosen to rescue his father’s business. He was a smart and deeply funny guy, with a savagely cynical view of the world. I thought he could be anything, do anything, and go anywhere. But what he wanted—or at least what he decided—was to stay firmly rooted in his hometown, run the family business, and spend a lot of his considerable energy making fun of everything and everyone that surrounded him. His current girlfriend, a local girl named Darlene something-or-other—I’m not a hundred percent sure that Phil actually knew her last name—was a perfectly nice person. Not particularly attractive, not dumb but not smart, and although it was obvious that Phil didn’t really care for or about her, they’d been dating for six months. The day before my wedding, I asked him about his relationship with her after working up my nerve while we split a six-pack.