by Adam Wilson
The delivery guys from Domino’s stepped out of a Taurus. They supposedly smoked pot with their clientele. I wasn’t special. Probably one in a line of failed protégés, stoned, bitter at the world, amused by this man, his pain. Felt implicated in Kahn’s death. Like the pizza guys, egging him on, waiting for his next explosion to rattle my dull existence. And then of course the fact that I hadn’t forgiven, hadn’t held him in an afternoon hug, hadn’t said I’d understood even if I hadn’t.
“Actually, I saved your life twice,” Jennifer said.
“I think the first time you just saved my ass.”
“Same difference.”
Small crowd. Beth Cahill in back wearing a chaste blue dress she’d probably worn to graduation, not since. She sat alone, flicking the pages of her prayer book like it was written in another language. (It was.) No Alison in sight. Didn’t want to be worried about her but I was. Erin said he’d been alone when they’d found him.
No one big had shown, none of the names Kahn occasionally dropped. Just the pizza guys, some synagogue regulars.
Zarkoff said, “Seymour Kahn was an accomplished man. The ‘King of the Crossover,’ as he was often called, he holds the record for appearances on the most shows while playing the same character: the lovable Albert Stamn, who first appeared as a police captain on the short-lived NBC series Guns and Tarts.”
Zarkoff looked to the back of the room as he spoke, the way they teach you to in school, but it just seemed weird because only the front few rows were filled.
“That’s very similar to his IMDB page,” I whispered to Erin. Her hair was pulled back, still wet. Goth-black eyeliner, apparently unafraid of tears.
“Seymour, Kahn to his friends, of whom I was lucky enough to call myself one, was famous throughout Hollywood for his outlandish personality and romantic liaisons. He was the life of the party. The life of many parties.”
Zarkoff continued, tiptoed, tempo increasing.
“But behind the veil, behind the mask, Kahn was a tender man with a soft heart. He was troubled, certainly, at times ill. But inside him was a shining soul that touched everyone around him on a personal level. I do not exclude myself. Sometimes he would regale me with tales of his days in the spotlight, and as a young man on the streets of Boston. Though my main role is one of teacher, in Seymour’s court I was always student.”
Mary stroked Natasha’s neck. Sheila, in Jackie O. shades and black, played widow, fair enough. Her face looked calm, as though she’d been expecting this for a long time, from the day they’d met, when he’d slipped his arm around her waist, smiled stained teeth. Her whole life had become a reaction to Kahn’s death drive. That’s what the health food was about, the yoga, the shining varnish of her wood floors. She wanted to ignore death, ignore death’s spectator, who lived in her pool house, played along, not willfully, but acceptingly, knowing there was no other option. But she couldn’t ignore it with his DNA in one daughter, demeanor in the other, couldn’t ignore it with him needing her the way he did, the way maybe she needed him when no one else was around. Sheila crossed her arms over her chest. Must have been glad to get him out of her life.
Natasha picked something out of her teeth. Mary kept rubbing her neck, expressionless. Benjy cried. He hadn’t liked Kahn, but it’s easy to cry at funerals. Erin took a Kleenex, ran it across his face without looking, as if she’d been doing it for years.
“Seymour Kahn was a great man: a wonderful actor, a loving husband and father. He will be remembered fondly by all of us. If anyone else wishes to share words or memories, he or she may come to the podium and do so.”
Mary volunteered.
“Most of you don’t know me,” she said. “And the ones who do probably think I’m a home-wrecker. After all, I’m the one who stole his wife. But Seymour never blamed me. He never played the role of jealous ex. When Sheila and I first began to experiment, he was actually pretty encouraging. Some might even say he was too encouraging.”
Light laughter from the audience. Mary smiled, showing bleached teeth. Blinked, wiped her brow, found Sheila’s face in the crowd. Sheila nodded. Mary continued.
“I remember when I first started seeing Sheila. We were all living in L.A. then. Natasha had just turned six. I still had my own place, but I spent most of my time at their house in Laurel Canyon. Seymour knew what was going on; we weren’t trying to hide it. I would sleep with Sheila in their bed, and Seymour slept in one of the guest rooms. It was a tough time for him for a lot of reasons. He was finding out how hard it was to get acting jobs if you were in a chair. The only parts he could get were as homeless beggars, and he didn’t want those parts. ‘I want to dance,’ he would say, ‘I want to be Fred Astaire on wheels! The legless torso of Apollo! I want to wear a bowtie, drink martinis, seduce young girls with my eyes!’”
Her imitation was on. She had his cadence, dramatic pauses, slightly increasing pitch as he became excited. Audience wasn’t sure whether to laugh or not, but Sheila was smiling. For a moment Mary had channeled Kahn, the Kahn we all liked.
“I remember I’d come out late at night, to go to the bathroom or get a glass of water. The girls were asleep, and Sheila was asleep, but I’d hear John Coltrane or Mingus coming up from the living room, and I knew we were the only ones awake in the house, and that he was down there battling alone, and there was nothing I, or any of us, could do to help. But especially me. I was just making things worse. In the morning we’d see the empty bottles, so we knew, and we knew he was probably doing other stuff too. But he waited until we were asleep, until the girls were asleep. He didn’t want them to see. Eventually I moved into the house. My lease was up and it seemed the obvious thing to do. Seymour was actually the one who suggested it, said I basically lived there anyway. I knew it killed him, but he didn’t say anything, just sang, ‘Mary, Mary, quite contrary,’ and watched as I carried my things up the stairs into his bedroom, then carried his things into the guest room. One day I came home from work—it was spring, early spring, but it already felt like summer. That’s what it’s like in L.A. ‘Always too hot,’ Seymour would say, ‘just like Hades. We live here because we’re masochists.’”
Again, when she did the imitation—speaking from her throat to create the Kahn bark—it seemed, for a second, that Kahn was in the room, calming us, claiming us.
“Actually,” Mary said, “when he moved into our pool house in Boston, he said the same thing—that we’re masochists because we live in the cold. I guess he thought everyone was a masochist deep down. Also sadists, I think, which is the story I’m trying to get to. This one time shortly after I moved in, on this really hot day, I came home from work, really wiped out. I was in the kitchen making myself a cup of tea, and I happened to see through the window Natasha in the backyard, essentially—sorry, Natasha, you’re going to hate me for telling this story—essentially she was torturing our golden retriever, Randall. She had managed to leash him to a tree—this is a six-year-old girl, mind you—and she was whacking him with a stick. Just beating him with all the force her little body could muster. Randall was going crazy, crying and barking, which is why I looked out the window in the first place. I didn’t know what to do. I mean, this was California. What if the neighbors saw and complained and our PETA membership was revoked? We would be ostracized from our community, forced to attend sensitivity training! Without really thinking I ran out to the yard, picked up Natasha, and carried her inside, all the while trying to come up with something to say to this child who wasn’t mine, but whose mother I was in love with, and whose poor dog I was trying to save. As I was carrying her back across the patio I noticed that Seymour had been out there the whole time, just watching, sipping a beer, and not saying a word. Once I got Natasha inside and banished her to her bedroom to screams of ‘You’re not my mother,’ I went back out to the patio to talk to Seymour. I asked him why he’d sat there silent. ‘What could I have said?’ he said in a pathetic voice, this really soft whisper, different than his usual singsong. This
was the first time I’d ever confronted him, and I wondered what he thought about me parenting his daughter, not to mention sleeping with his wife. ‘You could have said stop,’ I said. I thought he might unleash on me, spit the type of venom I’d heard about—‘His tongue is a knife,’ Sheila had warned me—but he just said, ‘I have no authority,’ then looked me up and down for a long time, assessing me, not like he was checking me out, but like he was trying to understand who I was. ‘You’ll make a good father someday,’ he said. At first I was offended by him referring to me as a father, but later I came to realize it was a compliment. He was essentially saying that I would make a good replacement for him. And I think this story illustrates, well, either that he hated dogs, which I don’t think he did, or something more essential to his character. Namely that he understood his limitations. I know a lot of people think Seymour was a selfish man. But he wasn’t selfish. He gave his daughters to Sheila and me to raise even though it pained him more than anything else in his life—more than losing the use of his legs, more than the loss of his career. He gave them up because he knew we’d take better care of them, that he was a terrible father, that he was very sick and very troubled, and couldn’t raise his children in the way he wanted to, because his own worldview had become so skewed by his health problems and his physical limitations, which had exacerbated his bad habits and fueled his addictions. He understood this, and he accepted it, which takes a brave man. Instead of mourning the loss of his family, he tried to accept us as a new kind of family, one in which he and I could both play a part. He left Sheila and me to raise his daughters, not because he didn’t love them, but because it was the right thing to do.”
After Mary, other people said words, what you’d expect, what a party that guy could throw, what a crazy character. Neither Erin nor Sheila stepped up. Natasha was the last to speak.
“My father was an asshole,” she said. “I loved him.”
Zarkoff led the mourner’s Kaddish. I remembered the first line, mumbled the rest. A handful made it to the burial. Beth was there, off to the side like a mistress in a movie. A machine lowered the casket. When it dipped below the surface, Sheila, who’d been so composed, fell to her knees, pressed her hands into the earth as though she could reach in and pull him back up, like those mothers who lift cars to save their babies. She made a low sound, somewhere between an “om” and an orgasmic moan. The sound seemed to come from a different part of her body, not even her stomach, but all the way from her calves and bent knees. Mary just let her, didn’t touch her. Said the Kaddish again. This time it sounded like a song, slow pulse set to the rhythm of lightly chattering teeth.
forty-one
Possible Ending #19 [ ]:
Chalk it up to failure of imagination, but I’m out of endings. Seen the movies, taken their clumsy morals, outlandish advice, learned whatever I was meant to learn, unlearned it, relearned it with exceptions that prove the rule, exceptions that don’t, asterisks, footnotes, side notes, sometimes subtly, sometimes not. Kahn dead, Mom gone, life goes on, etc. Winter coming, ice-fucked, still jobless, Sheila sad but strong, Benjy and Erin back together, maybe forever, maybe not, everyone not ready to move on, doing it anyway, no choice, I’m the same, smoking, staring at the snow, longing for love, life, etc. Looking for work, no resolution, maybe new life a slight improvement on old life with backslide potential, fall asleep again for years, wake to nuclear war, dying sun, earth barely alive, all the women I’ve ever met now offscreen, returned to invisible, still there in their own lives (just not mine), working, eating, smiling, singing, me in my movie waiting for the next one to walk in the door.
forty-two
Quiet Christmas/New Year’s, saw a couple movies, nothing too interesting. Christmas morning Benjy and I went to Sheila’s, watched while her family gave each other gifts, gave us dark chocolate imported from Colombia. Felt like family—warm, witty—but also like a family I would never be a part of. Natasha made a joke about herself being “sweet dark chocolate.”
Benjy said, “Dark chocolate’s not sweet, it’s bitter.”
When I looked at Natasha I could see Kahn: his mannerisms, the way he waved his hands, rolled his eyes.
New Year’s went to Dad’s, watched Dick Clark, helped Pam make cocktail meatballs. The twins threw cake at each other. Dad was quiet, gave me a hundred bucks.
“Look at Dick,” he said. “Still going. He had a stroke but now he’s back.”
That Tuesday got a call from a lawyer about Kahn’s will. Benjy drove me to the lawyer’s office. Sheila, Mary, Erin, and Natasha were there. Thought there would be a video, like in movies. Kahn would sit, explain life’s secrets, confess. Instead the lawyer read out what we got. I got the jazz CDs and a photo he’d taken in 1974 of a young woman, sun-bleached blond hair, deeply tanned, seated on a futon, legs crossed, sipping coffee, smiling. On the back in pen: “The Wellspring of Youth, I drink from thee. Ramona, La Jolla, California, July, 1974.”
He also left me a Teflon frying pan he’d bought but never used. Sheila and Mary got the money. Not much left. Natasha got his Golden Globe, Erin his movie collection, mostly porn. Ten containers of frozen semen were found in Kahn’s freezer. Stipulated they be given to Sheila and Mary for whatever purposes they might desire.
Starbucks called, said they were looking for someone with more coffee experience.
When the RMV opened for the New Year, I took my driving test. Benjy sat in back. We were in Mom’s Camry, not Benjy’s car. It had been sitting in our condo lot since she’d left for Florida, but she’d called a few days before my test, said I could have it, late Chanukah, early birthday present. A lot I’d wanted to discuss: usual sappy bullshit, reconcile, muffled crying. Instead she talked, quickly, about golf, her new clubs, a movie she’d seen with Kevin Bacon, and made sure I’d bought gifts for the twins. She must have known about Kahn, heard it through the synagogue gossip-line, but she didn’t mention him or the house, which had been put up for sale. Instead she talked on, as if she couldn’t stop, muttering inanities, asking about dentist appointments.
“Thanks for the car,” I said.
“You should really ask your father to buy you one,” she said.
Passed the test. They took my pic. Smiled, looked like an idiot. Benjy let me drive back. Dropped him at the library.
When he left the car, I almost said, “Thank you.” I thought about the words, but didn’t almost say “I love you,” which I’d never said to anyone, not since childhood.
I said, “You’re such a fucking nerd.”
Benjy grinned, told me to eat a dick, leaned back in through the window, rubbed his forehead against my forehead, said, “License.”
Realtor’s sign was there in the yard. Snow had cleared. Would be back, but for now the sun hung between two clouds. The house looked like an archival photograph: childhood home, early twenty-first century, still standing, unoccupied.
Soon the house will be filled; it will be a home. New family: better made, better prepared, equally fragile. I can see them, version 3.1: young mother, Japanese, beautiful, decorated in batik-print skirts, dangling earrings, a chiropractor, wears banana-cucumber facial masks, masturbates guilt-free; father an African American Buddhist, shaved head, high cheekbones, horn-rimmed glasses, professor of art history, secretly likes NASCAR, pines for a girl he knew in high school; two children, five and six, boy and girl, raised on free-range chicken, organic vegetables, no prizes in their cereal, bathed at night in jasmine water. I watch them plant trees in the yard, many trees, ten maybe, twenty: oak, spruce, apple, pear, lemon, all tangled among each other in a mess of branches and fruit, creating crossbreeds, new species. The trees grow upward, become sturdy. Stand above the house, catching rain, spreading shadow, filtering sunlight, lending tint to the far corners of the neighborhood.
acknowledgments
Thank you to all of my classmates and teachers at the Columbia MFA program, especially Emily Cooke, Dyannah Byington, James Yeh, Lincoln Michel, Dan Bevacqua,
Kalpana Narayanan, Binnie Kirshenbaum, and Sam Lipsyte. Sam deserves a special shout for his knowledge of firearms, and also for going above and beyond the call of duty in regards to reading, commenting, and dispensing life advice. Thank you to Paul Rome for early reading, insight, and friendship. Thank you to everyone at Bookcourt for being my Brooklyn family. Chad Bunning, you’re a hero. Thank you to Sam Apple and everyone at the Faster Times for being my Internet family. Thank you to Darin Strauss for being a mensch. Thank you to Steve Hanselman and Julia Serebrinsky for being the first people to believe in this book—it meant a lot and still does. Thank you to Julie Cohen for being Julie Cohen. Thank you to Jim Strouse and Andew Gorin for encouragement and conversation. Thank you to Prime Meats on Court St. for not making me put away my laptop. Thank you to the Rapp Family for cheering me on. Thank you to Erin Hosier, you fucking rock star, I love you. Thank you to everyone at Harper Perennial, and especially Carrie Kania and Cal Morgan for manning up and buying this fucker. Also thanks to Gregory Henry and Erica Barmash for having my back. Thank you to Oliver Munday for designing such a beautiful cover. Thank you to Michael Signorelli for truly being the best editor I could ever hope to have. I consider myself doubly blessed to have not only found a brilliant editor, but a true friend and brother. Thank you to my father, Jonathan Wilson, for a lifetime of books, book talk, and encouragement. Thank you to my mother, Sharon Kaitz, for being the opposite of the mother in this book. Thank you to Sarah Rapp for Everything. I have infinite gratitude.
about the author
ADAM WILSON is the editor of the Faster Times. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, the Paris Review, and Bookforum, among other publications. He teaches creative writing at New York University and lives in Brooklyn.
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