Between You and Me
Page 22
This was something Reggie might have understood. She’d recently fallen for a retired accountant and moved with him to a golf course in Cary, North Carolina, of all places. Though she hadn’t known him until a year ago, he’d grown up a few blocks from them in Crown Heights, and their families went to the same shul. But more important, he was pudgy, soft-spoken, with a bad knee and a hip that needed replacing. She was happy for the first time in her life.
Weren’t Persian husbands, particularly gorgeous ones, known for beheading their wives?
Over the years he’d met Aziz on several occasions, and true, before he’d become Joy’s fiancé, Paul had found the boy reasonably charming. He had a strong handshake and a bright smile, and even as a ten-year-old, he approached adults without hesitation, as if he couldn’t distinguish between those of his parents’ generation and his own. At a big summer picnic at Russell Demsky’s lake house—to which Paul went reluctantly, at Cynthia’s urging—Aziz came up to him with a bucket and asked, “Have you ever seen anything quite like it?”
Paul sat by himself on a lumpy rock, looking out at the flat water, waiting for a breeze to ripple the surface. Joy and Kyle had finished swimming and were now stuffing themselves with watermelon, and Cynthia was talking to old friends he didn’t know. Russell’s house always agitated him. Even before the remodel, with its extensive addition, it had a meandering quality, narrow hallways leading to small rooms packed with too much furniture, all the floors spread with rugs whose competing geometric patterns made him slightly nauseous. Russell hosted these picnics mostly as a way to do business and show off his stock, and the place was full of customers, dealers, wholesalers—ruggers, Joy and Kyle called them—talking about fabric and dye and the quality of knots. Among them was Aziz’s father, who’d been Russell’s main supplier in Tehran before clearing out after the fall of the Shah.
At the time Paul didn’t know who the dark-haired boy belonged to, only that he was grateful to him and his bucket for interrupting what had started as a moment of contemplation and had since lapsed into one of boredom. He liked the boy’s faintly British accent, which seemed to have less to do with geography than with class and good manners. From the bucket came an unsavory slurping sound, and when he looked inside he experienced an odd dizzying sensation at the sight of swirling water sloshing against orange plastic. It took him a moment to realize the water wasn’t moving on its own, and for a flash he believed the boy had magical powers, or mystical ones—confirming, in either case, childhood suspicions that the world was far more complicated than he knew. Then he saw the wriggling creature at the bottom, about six inches long, a black streak turning circles and figure-eights, at once frantic and graceful.
“It’s an eel,” Paul said, though even as he spoke the word it sounded like the name of an imaginary being, no less magical for having been identified.
“It really is beautiful,” the boy said. “And a little scary, don’t you think?” Paul had an urge to pick the eel up and feel its scales slipping against his skin. He could have kept staring at it all afternoon as it searched for an exit that didn’t exist. But he knew he had to be the one to say they should let it go. “Yes, of course,” the boy replied, without hesitation. “I’ve kept it long enough.”
He was already barefoot, but he waited for Paul to slip off his loafers and socks and tuck them behind the big rock. Then together they walked into the shallows, up to the boy’s knees and Paul’s shins. The boy let Paul hold one side of the bucket as they lowered it to the water. He peered over the rim but didn’t see the eel slip out. He thought he felt something brush his ankle, but it might have been a weed, or more likely an imagined sensation, one he wished he could imagine again. When the boy lifted the bucket, only a scummy film of water covered the bottom, now perfectly still.
“I don’t suppose I’ll ever forget that,” the boy said, and Paul agreed, though whenever they met afterward—at Joy’s bat mitzvah, at her sweet-sixteen party, again at her high school graduation—neither of them mentioned it. Instead Paul would ask Aziz about school, about living in the city—his family had a house in Jackson Heights and a storefront and warehouse in the rug district of lower Midtown—and Aziz would talk about teachers and friends and sports teams without any awkwardness or embarrassment, any sense that he was putting on a show. “He wants to be worshipped,” he’d say of a basketball coach who tried to model himself after Red Auerbach, chewing on a Sharpie instead of a cigar. “So we only laugh at him when he’s not looking.” His accent added a formality to his breeziness, and only afterward did it occur to Paul that if he’d heard Kyle talk to an adult so casually, without restraint, he would have cringed. “It’s a pleasure catching up,” Aziz always said after they’d chatted for twenty minutes, and then joined the kids his age flailing on the dance floor.
He’d since gone on to Columbia, where he studied music and world literature, and then to the Berklee School in Boston, where he earned a master’s in composition. For several years he played in experimental jazz and new music combos whose CDs Paul found unlistenable—nothing but squeaks and groans—though Cynthia showed him reviews that claimed they were “important,” “cutting-edge,” and “brilliantly anarchic.” Recently, however, Aziz had given up music to learn his father’s business, which he would take over in a few years. During the day he oversaw operations at the warehouse, and in the evening he was taking classes toward his MBA. How he found the time to court Joy, who’d been living in San Diego for the past six years, Paul had no idea. He might have been grateful to Aziz for bringing her back to the proper coast—they’d put a downpayment on a house in Stamford—but his first thought on hearing the news was that the boy had tricked him. All this time his friendliness had been a ruse, his easy confidence a mask for unbounded arrogance. Had he been laughing at Paul, too, every time he turned his back?
The previous night, when they’d gathered at the groom’s father’s house in Queens for a rehearsal dinner, Paul had kept his distance from Aziz, who at first seemed happy to ignore him, laughing with his musician friends, an arm in shirtsleeves draped over Joy’s bare shoulders. And Paul thought Joy looked unusually small under that arm, diminished and fragile in a strapless purple dress. She’d always been self-possessed and quietly forceful, though languid when surrounded by those who put her at ease, with a look of just having woken up from an unplanned nap. Maybe with Aziz she’d gotten too comfortable. She’d let her guard down, and he’d taken advantage of her trust. Or maybe he had magical abilities after all, though Paul had made a mistake in believing them to be benign.
In this house, too, richly colored rugs covered all the floors, and more hung on the walls. Only here there was no backyard to speak of, no lake to stare at, and he couldn’t escape the patterns that made the room dance even as he sat still on a hard sofa, gazing into a cup Aziz’s mother had handed him. Inside was what looked like watery milk and tasted like carbonated toothpaste. A traditional Person drink, she’d said, and then added, Joy’s favorite. She and Cynthia had since disappeared upstairs to coordinate jewelry for the wedding.
Aziz’s father, thick-bodied, with a white pompadour and a mustache that covered both lips when his mouth was closed, stood inches from Russell Demsky, who’d had his left ear re-pierced some years ago, right after Kyle had come home from his first semester at college wearing a gold-plated hoop. He’d done it ostensibly to bond with his son, though Paul knew better: Russell couldn’t let anyone in the family out-bohemian him. Kyle had long since taken his earring out. He’d survived medical school and become an orthopedic surgeon. Even now he was still in D.C., on call through Saturday morning, though he’d promised to make it back in time for the ceremony. To Paul’s surprise he’d begun to turn into something of an adult, while his father remained a child, a diamond stud glinting on the side of his head. Russell and Aziz’s father spoke in whispers—co-conspirators, Paul thought, who’d arranged to shut him out of Joy’s life.
He took another sip of the toothpaste drink, wh
ich left a pleasant tingle on his tongue, and then Joy was standing in front of him, the hem of her dress brushing his knee. “What’s your problem?” She kicked his foot as she said it, the point of a silver pump jabbing his toe. Her hair was pulled back to reveal ears that seemed hardly to have grown in the twenty years since he’d first seen them, tiny little disks with silver baubles dangling down. “Eat too many kebabs?”
“Just enjoying watching the happy couple,” he said.
“You’re such a sap.” She reached down to pull him up. When he was standing, her eyes, raised by heels, were slightly higher than his. “Mom told me you’ve been on the phone with the caterers.”
“They always try to skimp on the hors d’oeuvres.”
“And she’s making you pick up the cake?”
“I’ve got a lot of time on my hands.”
“Better save some energy. You’re dancing with me on Saturday, whether you want to or not.”
Then, just as he was about to put his arm around her, there was Aziz’s again, landing in its place. And again she seemed to slump beneath the weight of it, her head tilting forward, as if his touch drained her strength. Aziz didn’t remove it to shake Paul’s hand, instead giving him an awkward bump on the shoulder with his free fist. “She’s not telling you secrets, is she?” he asked. “Confessing that she’s getting cold feet?”
He smiled as he said it, but this wasn’t his easy, confident smile. His dark cheeks looked plastic and strained. “Will you quit already?” Joy said. “I’m not getting cold feet.”
“She’s been freaking out all week,” Aziz said, and pulled her closer. Over the years his accent had faded, and now he sounded hardly better bred than any of the kids Joy and Kyle had grown up with, exotic only because of his name and the shade of his skin. “Yesterday she said she didn’t think she could go through with it.”
“It’s the whole production,” Joy said. “Mom, Dad. They’re making me crazy. Questions every two seconds. Everything’s got to be equal. Same number of guests, same number of toasts from each side. Do they think I care who makes the stupid jokes?”
Aziz gestured at their fathers, still huddled together. “For them, it’s just another chance to sell rugs.”
“Maybe you should postpone,” Paul said, somberly, working hard to keep a hopeful note out of his voice. “Take some time to think it over.”
Aziz shifted his arm, which now seemed to have a hypnotic, pacifying effect. Joy leaned into him, pressed her cheek against his neck. “I just want you to myself,” she said. “Our families,” she added, and glanced at Paul, “they can all go stuff it.”
To change the subject, Paul asked Aziz about the musicians, who now crowded around the buffet table, scarfing dates and squares of salty cheese. Had they played on the CD he’d sent Cynthia? The one with the bird on its cover?
“That’s right,” Aziz said, loosening his hold on Joy’s shoulder. “Shoot the Albatross.”
“I enjoyed that one,” Paul said.
“They’re playing for us on Saturday. Before we walk in, and while everyone’s heading into the reception.”
“Oh,” Paul said, imagining how quickly the hotel’s courtyard would empty as it echoed with screeches and hums. “What a treat. Another thing to look forward to.”
“You’re the worst liar I’ve ever known,” Joy said, sounding less annoyed than beleaguered, as if Paul were one more person trying to oppress her. But when they excused themselves to talk to other guests, she gave him a look—a familiar one, meant to forgive him, he thought, or else to let him know he meant something to her. Why, then, did it so unsettle him? After they were gone he had to stare hard at the rug on a nearby wall—a grid of diamonds inside of diamonds inside of diamonds—to shake the sight of her eyes passing over his.
•
The cake box was bigger than he’d expected, three feet wide and two and a half tall, but still it fit with no trouble into the back of his Jeep. One of the baker’s assistants wheeled it out on a cart and eased it onto the blanket Paul had laid out to keep it from sliding. Through a plastic window on top he could see swirls of white and peach icing, the stem of a sugar rose.
His own wedding cake had been far simpler—two rectangles of angel food with a layer of fudge between—but so had been the wedding generally. For the children’s sake, Cynthia wanted to keep it understated. The less fanfare the better. It was confusing enough to have their mother remarry, she said at the time. Plus, you weren’t supposed to make a big deal of a second marriage; throwing an elaborate party to celebrate risked linking its fate to the first. And of course Paul had agreed. He didn’t bother reminding her that this was his first wedding and, with luck, his only. They held the ceremony in the synagogue’s smaller sanctuary, the reception at the house. Only two dozen people came: on Paul’s side, just his parents, Reggie and her then-boyfriend of two weeks, and a pair of co-workers. There were too few people to dance the horah. As she was leaving, his mother said, as if to comfort him, “It still counts, as long as you signed the papers.”
He had to remind himself to drive slowly on the way home, though every time he looked down at the speedometer, he was five miles an hour over the limit. The twinge in his groin threatened every time he touched the brake, and again when he made it to the driveway and stepped out of the car. The nearest shade at this time of day was in front of the house next door, beneath an old oak whose branches stretched all the way to his bedroom windows. Parking there would have meant walking uphill, and worse, getting trapped by a chatty neighbor who last week had cornered him as he was heading out for a jog. She, too, had recently retired, from selling real estate, but unlike Paul she had nothing better to do with her newly open days than harass innocent passers-by. For twenty minutes she talked to him about recent proposals to install sidewalks on their side of the street. Did he know the township had an easement on the first ten feet of his yard? Did he think they’d cut down her tree? He tried to excuse himself by saying he had an appointment, and then because nothing else came to mind, added, “I’m getting fitted for a tuxedo.”
She didn’t know, of course, that he owned a tux already, but it was a mistake anyway. As soon as the neighbor heard about Joy’s wedding, the questions multiplied. She wanted to know every detail about the groom—what an interesting name! is he Algerian?—about the reception, about the honeymoon. “I never expected her to settle down. All those different boys she’d show up with. She’s not, you know,” she said, twirling a hand over her belly, “is she? You’ll love being a grandparent.”
He finally managed to extract himself by saying, yes, he thought the oak tree was likely slated for the chainsaw. “If I were you, I’d get over to the mayor’s office as soon as possible.”
Now, with the Jeep out in the open, he pulled the blanket over the top of the cake box to keep the sun off. He took his time clearing out the basement fridge and removing its shelves. Joy and Cynthia were due to arrive any minute from their appointment at the nail salon, but when fifteen minutes went by, and the sun rose higher, he maneuvered the wheelbarrow from the garage to the back of the car. Before attempting to move the box he pulled up the corner to test its weight. It wasn’t any heavier than the bags of newspaper, really, so he spread his feet apart, bent at the knees, and lifted.
What he experienced first was a simple physical sensation, the feeling of something inside him giving way, isolated for a moment before the pain arrived. And in that moment the image that sprang to mind was of the little black eel, back fin rippling as it turned circles in the bucket, and of Aziz’s serious expression as he lowered it into the lake. Only somehow the eel was Joy, and she was slipping into the water, and he didn’t want to see her go.
And then he was on his back, the box on top of him.
He learned what had happened only later, in the hospital, and for weeks after he kept picturing it: a piece of his lower intestine slipping through a weakness in his abdominal wall like an elastic knuckle, snapping down into his scrotum, smack
against his right testicle. The label for something so outrageous seemed far too ordinary. Hernia. He wanted a more drastic word, something with gravity, but when he asked the doctor if his condition had a Latin name, he received only a raised eyebrow in response.
Even while he was in the middle of it, though, when he didn’t yet know what to call it, he recalled an incident when he was ten years old, following a dispute with a neighborhood kid over stickball. They’d been arguing for most of an hour. Then the kid, fed up, cried, catch, and from a few feet away, threw the ball as hard as he could into Paul’s crotch. All the breath left his lungs, tears flooded his eyes, snot exploded from his nose, and he writhed on the gravel and weeds of the empty lot. He kept doing so even as the pain subsided into a dull throb, mostly because he didn’t want to have to stand and wipe his face while people were watching. Only when all the other boys left him alone did he pull himself from the ground.
It was being conscious of the snot on his face, and of his embarrassment at the thought of other people seeing it, that assured him he wasn’t dying in the driveway. But he stayed where he was in any case, afraid to move, until he heard Cynthia’s car pull up behind him. He kept his eyes shut as he heard doors open and close, plastic soles slapping pavement, gasps and shouts. “I’m okay,” he managed to call out, “sort of,” and then groaned in spite of his effort not to. He was aware of them moving the box from his chest, of being helped into the car and driven away. At first he thought Cynthia was driving and Joy was beside him in back, with her warm hand on his forehead, and tried not to be disappointed to discover it was the other way around. In the darkness behind his tightly shut lids he focused on the pain, which he visualized as a flame that enlarged or contracted with each breath, and on the hushed voices of his wife and stepdaughter, distinguishable only by a slight difference in pitch, a nearly identical rasp sounding somehow youthful and sultry in Joy’s but haggard and put-upon in Cynthia’s.