It Won't Always Be This Great

by Peter Mehlman

  “Yeah. It never really bothered me or popped into my mind with any, you know, regularity. Hardly ever, in fact. Still, now that we’ve talked about it, I’m glad. Because I wouldn’t want you thinking it’s a major regret or whatever. Certainly not for me, so . . .”

  Even though I was being pretty honest, I also really wanted to change the subject. The older I get, the more I believe that facing facts head-on hardly ever does anyone any good.

  Sylvia—God bless her oppressive competence—knocked on my open door and, with a smile, whispered, “Someone in the examination room needs a podiatrist.”

  “There’s a patient. Gotta go. I love you.”

  Freed in mid-squirm.

  I had a run of three straight patients and then Sylvia handed me a message saying that Rico, the guy from the assisted living place, had called.

  I went to my office.

  “Mistah Feets! Wassup, my man?”

  “Not much. How are you, Rico?”

  “I’m good, man. Good.”

  “How is everyone over there?”

  “You know, the same.”

  “Is Ruth improving after her mini-stroke?”

  My normal tendency would be to avoid having Rico think that Ruth occupied even a tiny spot in my mind. But now, I just didn’t care. Constantly monitoring everyone’s opinion of me suddenly felt pointless and stupid. I guess it was about time I realized that people are going to think what they think. You can’t influence their views and why waste time trying? It just shocks me how long it takes to reach such a simple conclusion. I couldn’t have figured that out at nineteen? Whenever I do finally grasp a basic life lesson, I always think I’ll pass it on to Esme and Charlie to save them years of doubt and insecurity. And I do try and will keep trying. But, more and more, I’m convinced everyone has to learn these things for themselves. Considering how critical good parenting is in a kid’s life, it’s amazing how you, the parent, can be so superfluous.

  “I guess Ruth’s head cleared up some ’cause she asked if she did anything to embarrass herself when you was here. She had no clue! That mini-stroke knocked a whole week out of her head. Gone.”

  “What did you tell her, Rico?”

  “Shit, man, I told her she didn’t do nothing embarrassing, that she acted like, really nice, you know?”

  “She buy it?”

  “No, man. I think she knew I was lying my ass off. But what could I do? Tell her that she told us she never sucked a dick?”

  “No, Rico. I think you were smart to leave that out.”

  “Yeah, I think so too.”

  “So, what did you call me about?”

  “Carolina asked me to ask you if you would give him a call.”

  “Is he okay?”

  “He’s good. But he’s going blind, so he can’t see the numbers on the phone too good and, by the time he dials right, he’s made like ten wrong numbers.”

  “It’s frustrating for him.”

  “There you go.”

  “I’ll call him right now.”

  “You da man, Mistah Feets.”

  After I tell you about my call to Carolina, I’ll try not to go off on any long tangents. I’ll fail, but I will try. I just think you’ll find this little thing about Carolina interesting.

  V.

  After minimal small talk, Carolina said to me, “I lied to you on Friday about something. I don’t want you to feel singled out because it’s something I’ve been lying about my whole life. But, after you left on Friday, I started feeling bad about it. You’ve always been a good listener. So lying to you just didn’t sit right with me.”

  “Carolina,” I said, “you’re killing me with suspense.”

  “Sorry about my—what’s the word?—preamble.”

  “Preamble. Okay.”

  “The thing I lied to you about was when I told you I was never married. The truth is, I was married in 1962, in Texarkana. The marriage lasted three months.”

  “Three months can be a long time.”

  “Thank you. Most people would laugh at me when hearing that: ‘Three months! That don’t even count!’ But it counted for me and I appreciate you supporting me in that feeling.”

  “Sure.”

  “Her name was Esther. Pretty, pretty girl. For me, it was love at first sight, so when she got pregnant, I married her. She was morning sick for the first month or so, but when she got over that, she started going out and shopping and doing whatever she did. She was kind of new in town, so she didn’t have any friends that I knew about. I was working for my dad at the time, so I wasn’t too sure what she did with her days.”

  “Uh huh.”

  “This one day, I come home from work and she’s not there. I don’t think much of it. But, when it got around seven and eight o’clock, I started worrying. Like I said, she didn’t have any girlfriends. Down in Texarkana in 1962, a black man didn’t call the police and report a missing person.”

  “I can imagine.”

  “I walked around for hours looking for her—another thing a black man had to think twice about doing. Then I came home hoping she’d come back, but she didn’t. I called a few of my friends and they hadn’t seen her. I didn’t know what to do. So, I gave it some more time and decided I’d go to the police if she wasn’t back by morning. In daylight, going to the police was at least a little less intimidating.”

  “Uh huh.”

  “I slept maybe two hours and, come daybreak, I walked to the police station. On the way, I passed a newsstand and there on the front page is a picture of Esther.” Carolina paused for about ten seconds to gather himself. “Seems Esther was arrested because she happened to be present when the police raided this house where a woman was running an abortion business.”

  “Oh, God.”

  “Yeah. And even worse, she was there just resting because she’d already had her abortion. They also arrested two white women who were waiting to get fixed up. Everyone knew about this abortion lady. She was open for business every Tuesday afternoon. And one day, I guess the police decided to shut her down.”

  “Boy.”

  “But, my friend, it gets worse. Because Esther’s picture was in the paper, three other men—one from Galveston, one from Lubbock, and one from somewhere else—came forward and claimed they were married to Esther.”

  “Oh, Carolina. I’m so sorry.”

  “She’d stolen all kinds of money from them. I didn’t even wait to hear the particulars of the scam she was running. It all just came clear to me that I had to pack up my things, take whatever money I’d saved up, and go somewhere far, far away. And that’s how I ended up in New York.”

  “That’s some story.”

  “And, like I said, you’re the first person I’ve even told it to.”

  “Does it feel good getting it off your chest?”

  “Not sure. I’ll get back to you on that.”

  “Can I ask you one question?”

  “Shoot.”

  “You said there were two white women arrested while waiting for their abortions. Were their pictures in the paper too?”

  Carolina chuckled. “No way, baby. They slipped the white girls out the back and let their husbands deal with them their own way. But Esther, they made a public example out of her.”

  “I admire how you just quietly left town. I’d have wanted to kill someone.”

  “Yeah, well, you wouldn’t have lasted very long as a black man.”

  The Statistical God: You spoke on the phone to a black person 92 times in your life, of which 23 were black people you knew, 54 were customer service representatives, 15 were civil servants . . .

  After the conversation with Carolina, I putzed around with a few hundred dollars’ worth of feet, then called Alyse. She wasn’t home, so I called her cell. No answer.

  I figured she was at
a yoga class. The thought of calling Audra back crossed my mind. But I still wasn’t in the mood. Instead, I walked out to Sylvia and asked her if Arnie was seeing a patient. When she said no, I popped in on him.

  Turns out, he was asleep on his couch.

  “Sorry, Arnie.”

  “No, no. I’m just wiped out. It’s cool. Besides, I don’t want my next patient to see gobs of sleep snot in my eyes. It’s unprofessional.”

  I told Arnie about the double-dealing horseradish company.

  “A marketing strategy that exploits people’s hatred. That’s fucking brilliant!”

  “I guess.”

  “Hey, we should order a few bottles of the Nazi variety. At the very least, they’d be good conversation pieces.”

  And so then we (I assume) became the first New York Jews to place an on-line order of Kick ’em All Out horseradish—the Nazi variety. Actually, Arnie placed the order. On his credit card. Six bottles shipped to the office. As Arnie completed the transaction, he looked up at me with total sincerity and said, “Should we subscribe to the mailing list?”

  Before I could answer, my cell rang.

  “It’s Alyse. I should go talk to her.”

  I walked back to my office. Alyse was calling from the car.

  “Where are you, honey?”

  “Hempstead. On my way home. You won’t believe from where.”

  “Where?”

  “I visited You-ey in jail.”

  “You’re kidding me.”

  “I know it sounds nuts.”

  “No, it doesn’t sound nuts. I’m surprised, but you do have a relationship with him. And with all the innocent-til-proven-guilty stuff, there’s nothing wrong with continuing to be a friend to him.”

  “I guess. The truth is, I haven’t really sorted out why I did it. I know the concrete reason but not the emotional ones.”

  “What was the concrete reason?”

  “Gil Binder called me and said, ‘So, I hear you hung up on Meri.’”

  “What is he, a yenta girl?”

  “I know. I dated the guy forty years ago and I’m still paying for it.”

  “So what did you say?”

  “I said, ‘Gil, I just didn’t feel like taking shit from Meri Katzen for not signing some idiotic petition.’ So, you won’t believe what Gil said.”

  “I’m sitting.”

  “Gil says, ‘Meri should have known you wouldn’t sign the petition.’”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “That’s exactly what I said. What’s that supposed to mean? And Gil says, ‘Let’s face it, ever since you stopped belonging to a synagogue, you’ve been headed in that direction.’”

  “What direction?”

  “Again, that’s exactly what I said. What direction? And Gil says, ‘Well, to be perfectly blunt, the self-hating Jew direction.’”

  VI.

  Commie, these are the kinds of moments that make me a guy who favors gun control. At that moment, all it would have taken is someone a smidgen less sane than me to grab a gun, drive to Gil’s mock-tasteful-modern style house, kick open the front door, take aim at him as he’s sipping his green tea, and empty a clip into his fat, Billy Joel-loving, St. Bart’s-vacationing ass.

  But that’s not me, Commie. Even though I truly believe that if I were given a license to kill five people a day, I could make this a better world, I also believe in “thou shalt not kill.” So, instead, I said to my beautiful wife, “That is so fucked up, honey.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “What did you say to him?”

  “I said, and I quote, ‘I’m not a self-hating Jew, I’m a you-hating Jew.’”

  “Whoa. I like it.”

  “I’m getting pretty good at this shedding friends thing.”

  “So you hung up on Gil.”

  “And I was so angry and resentful, I thought, What can I do to really stick it to them?”

  “Uh huh.”

  “I have to admit, I’d thought about contacting You-ey before that. In fact, not contacting him all weekend made me feel a little guilty. I’m like his only friend. I was actually a little surprised I wasn’t his one phone call.”

  “Maybe with all the anti-Semitic stuff, he was embarrassed to call you.”

  “That’s exactly why he didn’t call me. He told me so.”

  “I’m somewhere between appalled and impressed that you went to see You-ey in jail.”

  “I know. I feel the same way. And, even though I’m feeling a little shaky about it, I think I’ll look back on it as an interesting experience. Not one I’d want to have again, but interesting.”

  “How did you know how to go about, you know, seeing him?”

  In a sing-song-y, don’t-get-upset tone, Alyse said, “Well, honey, the truth is, I called the police and asked to talk to Detective Byron.”

  “What? Why that prick?”

  “I figured since he was so taken with my ass, he’d be more helpful.”

  “Jesus, Alyse.”

  “Sorry about that. But I didn’t even see Byron. I got him on the phone. He sounded like he was in a real pissed-off mood. He just told me about the detention center and that was it.”

  “So, how was You-ey?”

  “Devastated, actually. He was so upset, he swore up and down that he didn’t throw the bottle, but that wasn’t the thing that upset him the most. It was the hate crime thing that was eating away at him.”

  “Did you ask him about what he said to Esme?”

  “Yeah. And he was really honest about it. At least he seemed honest. He said that when he came over, he started feeling sad because he didn’t think he’d ever have a home like ours with a wife and kids. And he said that it looked to him like Esme and I seemed so natural in our upper-middle class lives that his sadness turned to jealousy and he just said something he shouldn’t have said.”

  “Yeah, but that doesn’t explain the Holocaust denial line he said when he was busted.”

  “I asked him about that too. All he said was that he didn’t know why he said it.”

  “He probably said it because he believes it.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Not that it’s any excuse, but half the country believes it. The Holocaust, the moon landing—all bullshit. I’ll tell you, Alyse, since all the stupid people learned the word ‘conspiracy,’ there’s been no hope for this country.”

  “Yeah. Look, You-ey was so depressed I felt like I had to say something to make him feel a little better, so I told him that you thought he was innocent. I hope you don’t mind.”

  “You couldn’t cheer him up by telling him his art is suddenly worth something?”

  “I could have. But then I would have had to tell him that all the interest in his art was coming from neo-Nazis.”

  “Good point. And no, I don’t mind. I do think he’s innocent.”

  “Still?”

  “Yeah. Do you?”

  “I don’t know. I think I just want to think he’s innocent.”

  “Have you been driving throughout this whole conversation?”

  “No, I pulled over.”

  “Oh, good. So, are you worried about people hearing that you visited You-ey in jail?”

  “Um, no. Not really. In fact, I’ve had thoughts about going one step further.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “What would you say if I told you that, after You-ey is arraigned, I’ve been wondering if I should bail him out?”

  Commie, at that point, I decided not to tell Alyse I’d already thought of bailing You-ey out myself. When you think of Alyse bucking up and going to a jail to talk to a possible convict, it’s so amazing. It was like, suddenly Alyse and I were back on the same wavelength, albeit a whole different wavelength than we’d ever been on. On Sat
urday, she’d been hysterical about how all this shit was suddenly going down in our lives, and when you columbine with how I—Columbine? Jesus, I’m losing it. When you combine that with how I seemed to be enjoying the tumult, it’s understandable that she was upset. But now it was Monday and she’d caught up to my state of mind. As if we’d stepped out from the upholstered life You-ey wanted for himself and crossed into a world of intrigue. Not that I’m saying we morphed into some suburban, less-witty version of Nick and Nora Charles, but we were kind of working the case together. You know what I mean?

  Anyway, I thought it best to let Alyse think the idea of bailing out You-ey had never entered my mind. You know, let her continue getting her feet under her.

  The truth: Do all guys who’ve been married for over twenty years still ply all these strategies to bolster their wives’ confidence? I don’t think so. At this point, most guys have long ago shifted into manipulating their wives, if not outright playing them for saps. And vice versa. Most couples are bored magicians. She pulls out the rabbit, he takes four aces out of his ass, and they both yawn. How do people go on like that?

  “I have no problem with bailing him out,” I said. Then, to make me seem appropriately surprised by her question: “I mean, you know, on first reaction, I don’t think I have any problem.”

  “We’d have to put down, like, ten percent. It’s like going into escrow on a possible convict.”

  “Yeah. So, I guess you researched all this already.”

  “No, I just asked someone at the desk after I left You-ey.”

  I said, “Aside from doing your jail time, how’s the rest of your day going, hon?”

  “Totally awesome, sweetie. You?”

  “Just terrific, darling. I’ve been working hard, making a lot of money, and just, you know, doing my part to help the Jewish people continue to control a disproportionate amount of wealth in America.”

  “You once told me that it seemed like every time I talk to you, I apologize for something my family did. I swear, this is going to be the last time I apologize. I’m sorry. And I’m so glad you steadfastly refused to sign the petition.”

  Before going to lunch, I figured if my wife spent her morning in a prison visitation room, I could return Audra’s phone call before lunch. What one thing has to do with the other, I have no idea. But that’s what I thought.