If only I’d told him just part of the story, just the part about throwing the bottle through the window, maybe he’d have slowed up his walking or just stopped to listen long enough to have missed . . .
“You’re not in trouble, are you?”
“Nah. Probably not. It’s an unbelievable story, though.”
“You’re killing me with suspense.”
“I know, but the story requires focus. Where are you with the dog?”
“I thought it would be great to walk him on the beach. Hilton Head is freakishly warm right now—like 85 degrees.”
“Global warming is really underrated. Unfortunately, it’s cold as the Yucatan here.”
“The Yucatan is in Mexico.”
“Oh, right. Jesus. I meant the Yukon. I always mix those up. What I’m saying is, it’s cold as hell.”
“Yeah, I got your drift.”
“Isn’t it weird how you can say it’s cold as hell or hot as hell? I mean, really, what’s the goddamn weather like down there?”
You laughed again. “I miss your insane thoughts.”
“I’ll store some up for the Cayman Islands. In fact, maybe I’ll sit you down and tell you the meaning of life.”
“No, no, no. Don’t leave me hanging. What is the meaning of life?”
“Well, if you have to ask . . .”
After we hung up, I looked down to see how long the call had lasted. Eight minutes. It felt longer, but in a good way. Like we really covered some ground. I checked the time on my dashboard just to see if the phone time was off somehow. It wasn’t.
The time was 3:34.
IX.
I pulled up to my house and quickly picked out the FBI car occupied by Agent Francine Brooks. Francine Brooks? I thought. Sounds kind of Jewish.
Agent Brooks couldn’t be less Jewish. For one thing, she was black. For another, well, that’s enough. She was black.
“Agent Brooks?”
“Yes, sir. Nice to meet you.”
“How are we doing?”
“Don’t worry about a thing, sir. Agent Horton has been looking into this Detective”—she looked down at her notes—“Byron. Recently divorced, rumors of drug use, and a few complaints of intimidation. Other than that, he’s actually a superb cop.”
“Somehow that’s not very comforting. The other cops, the ones over him, will tell him the FBI is looking into him, right?”
“The Nassau police have no idea we’re looking into him.”
“Then how did Agent Horton find out all that information about him?”
Expressionless, Brooks looked at me. I widened my eyes like, Was that a bad question? Brooks held her flat look. I took the hint. This was on a need-to-know basis and, clearly, I didn’t need to know.
“Wow,” I said lamely, breaking the moment, “Agent Horton is something else, huh?”
“Yes, he is,” Brooks said, her features loosening. “He may look like Charles Kuralt, but he’s an amazing agent.”
“Charles Kuralt. So weird you said that. I told Horton he should have his own TV show.”
“He gets that a lot. By the way, if you want, you can give me the code to your security system.”
I guess I reacted like I’d been told the FBI had picked up chatter about a terrorist attack on my family, because then she added, “Oh, no! Don’t be concerned. It’s just a precaution. I’m sorry.”
“No, I’m sorry. Guess I’m a little edgy. Sure, the security code is—”
I stopped myself thinking it would be weird to tell this FBI agent that our security code is:
G-O-Y-S.
Alyse and I came up with the code after figuring out who we were trying to keep out. It was funny at the time.
“Let’s see. The code is . . . 4-6-9-7. It’s a date, April 6, 1997. Something happened. It’s a long story.”
“I got it.”
“Anyway, I’m happy you’re here. You want to come in for coffee?”
“Oh, thank you. Not right now.”
“Well, all you have to do is knock.”
“Another agent, Ken Foreman, will be replacing me here at about seven. Here are our cell numbers. Call us if—” Then, glancing at her passenger side mirror, she said, “Your daughter is coming.”
I turned and saw Esme trudging home as if her backpack was filled with bricks. Being on a need-to-know basis, I didn’t bother asking how she could identify my daughter at fifty yards in a mirror that makes things look even farther away.
“You should go greet her.”
One look at Agent Brooks and I took her meaning. No point in Esme knowing her home was under surveillance by the most powerful law enforcement organization in the world. Really, how do you explain that to your kid?
I jogged over to Esme and was a little surprised she hadn’t noticed me talking to a black woman in a strange car. She’s usually way too on top of that kind of stuff.
When I reached her, I knew instantly why she hadn’t noticed me outside the FBI car. She had that look on her face kids get when they’re frozen out of a party or when they learn their conception was an accident.
“Ezzie, what’s wrong?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
There, there, honey . . . accidents happen.
As we walked to the house together in silence, Esme kept her head down, but I caught her sneaking sidelong glances my way every few steps. She wanted to talk, but clearly it was a discussion that needed her mother to make it official. I put my arm lightly about her shoulders, guiding her toward our house and nudging her away from the middle of the street.
Alyse, with her radar for knowing when family members are approaching, opened the front door for us and instantly noticed Esme’s look. Ezzie flew up to her room in her I-don’t-want-to-talk-to-anyone-but-you-so-you-better-come-talk-to-me-right-now way. Alyse, wearing a Yankees cap with a pony tail out the back—a look I love to no end—said, “Should we go upstairs to see what’s wrong with her, or just head to JFK and flee the country?”
That was a nice lull before the next wave of rage swept in.
Esme started by shouting down the stairs at us, “Why do I have to be Jewish just because you two are?”
In hindsight, not a bad question. But at the moment, I flashed to Nat Uziel’s vigilance speech from the day before. And, in no time, I had about a thousand pinched nerves in my neck.
Heavily, Alyse and I kissed our JFK dreams goodbye and hiked up the stairs. After a little prodding, Esme told us that her social studies teacher had decided to throw out the day’s original lesson plan to instead discuss the “horrible anti-Semitic crime that occurred over the weekend.”
I know.
Exactly how many ways was this one thing going to bite me in the ass?
By the way, her teacher’s name is Jennifer Sturdivant. The kids call her Jennifer. Not Mrs. or Ms. Sturdivant. Jennifer. I always think Jennifers are going to be hot but, at the October parent-teacher conference, this dream was shattered as Alyse and I sat across from a pasty, gray-eyed, farina-haired, thirty-five-year-old woman with a slight lisp. She spoke about Esme with an enthusiasm so over the top you couldn’t even feel good about it.
Anyway, Esme said Jennifer was acting “like really super offended” about the Nu? Girl Fashions vandalism. Alyse and I looked at each other, both thinking this Jennifer woman was talking through the kids and straight to the Jewish parents who paid her salary.
A hundred whatever years in America, and we go from being totally discriminated against to being sucked up to in the most blatant and annoying ways.
When Jennifer asked the kids for their reaction to the incident, Harley Binder raised her hand. Esme inhaled and went on.
“So Harley like, stands up and says, ‘The guy who threw the bottle through the window called Esme an anti-Semitic name!’ I cou
ldn’t believe she said that. Everyone in the class was totally staring at me like I was supposed to say something, but I didn’t know what to say. So, I just said it wasn’t a big deal and I, like, said what you guys said yesterday about You-ey not having a good inner life but that he isn’t a dangerous person?”
“Uh huh.”
“Well, like the whole class was like, ‘How can you say he’s not dangerous? He threw a bottle through a window—hello?’ I mean, like, they were attacking me! And then Jennifer asks everyone if they signed Mr. Uziel’s petition, and when she got around to me, I was so freaked, I just lied and said yes. But then Harley says that her father told her that we didn’t sign the petition and I lied. So I just started crying.”
Alyse glanced at me, conveying some guilt because she had told Gil Binder we didn’t sign the petition. Me? I couldn’t register any guilt because no one could know just how guilty I truly was. Under different circumstances, I probably could have enjoyed that dynamic.
“Honey,” Alyse said, “you have nothing to feel bad about. Harley has a big mouth and I’m going to have a talk with Jennifer. The only thing I wish you hadn’t done was lie about the petition. I told you why we didn’t sign it, and you agreed with us, so you’ve got to stick to your guns.”
Esme was getting her first taste of doing the right thing, her first taste of a Rosa Parks moment.
And, hey, did you ever hear that there was another black woman who sat in the front of the bus before Rosa Parks? I heard it on NPR. Not that it lessens what Rosa Parks did, but it would be nice to know that at least one thing we learned as kids is totally true. I mean: Rosa Parks was second with the bus thing, Columbus didn’t discover America, and JFK’s story about the PT-109 is a little shaky. Next thing you know, they’ll do some kind of carbon dating and figure out that Jesus was an April baby.
X.
Anyway, as I told you, I have a fixation with Rosa Parks, and with anyone who has a moment of truth and does the right thing. So I brought her up with Esme and gave her a quasi-inspiring pep talk on trusting your beliefs and being willing to accept some heartache in defense of your principles. Esme actually nodded and, I don’t know, steeled herself.
Finally, a bit embarrassed, she said, “I hated how everyone in the class was staring at me.”
And I said, “I’m sure lots of them just stared because they were too scared to say they agreed with you.”
“Agreed with me about what?”
“That the You-ey thing was no big deal.” Esme looked doubtful, so I added, “Or maybe they stared at you because you’re nice to stare at.”
Full eye-roll and, “Ugh, Mom, how come you married him anyway?”
Of course that deflated me. After a wonderful family drama, Esme makes a sarcastic crack about Alyse’s choosing me, and boom: a blue haze blows in through my ears. My inevitable awkwardness was broken by the sound of Charlie barging in through the front door and motoring up the stairs. He flew into Esme’s room: “Guess what? I won a free-throw shooting contest!”
All three of us did our best to downshift about thirty emotional gears.
“Mrs. Rhodes made everyone in our class shoot seven free-throws and like, I got really hot and made four! More than anyone else in the class! So afterward, Trevor Blank whispers to me, ‘You got lucky,’ but Mrs. Rhodes saw him and said, ‘Trevor, stop talking. The champion doesn’t wish to be bothered.’ How awesome is that?”
“That’s so great.”
“That is awesome.”
“Way to go, Charlie.”
“Hey, why is everyone in Esme’s room? Is something wrong? What’s going on? Tell me what happened—”
There you have it: my son. From glory to off-the-meter worry, zero to sixty, in no time flat. Sometimes you hear how parents can choose their kid’s gender or eye color? I always think, Fuck eye color. Can you do something about the chromosome responsible for runaway dread?
“No, Charlie, nothing’s wrong.”
“Everything’s fine.”
“We were just chatting.”
Charlie was convinced. Or, more likely, he just let himself be convinced because he’s a kid who desperately wants to believe everything is fine. Watching him root around for a relieved look to put on his face, I knew our days of being able to so easily snow him were winding down.
After we all drifted out of Esme’s room, I super-casually told Alyse I was going to veg out in the den for a while. The truth was, I didn’t want her to see how pissed off I was. Maybe Alyse was pissed too. Maybe she was on her way to call her ex-boyfriend, Gil Binder, to tell him to find his daughter and tell the little pubescent cunt to go fuck herself.
I guess you can see how pissed I was. When have you ever heard me refer to anyone as a cunt, let alone a twelve-year-old?
When I got to the den, I pulled out my Blackberry and accessed my patient list. I scrolled to Audra Uziel, found her phone number, pushed text message, and typed in: DON’T LET IT GO.
Fuck it, I thought. What do I care if Audra rips into her father? Look what he’s done to my daughter.
I pushed “send,” and felt better. Sometimes, one little impotent gesture works wonders.
The Statistical God: “You made 14,393 impotent gestures in your life, of which 4,891 made someone think you were an asshole, one that had an indirect effect on someone’s health . . .”
I shoved my Blackberry back into my pocket and flopped down in front of a TiVo-ed rerun of Law & Order. TNT runs about thirty reruns a day, so I had a nice backlog. It was a pretty good episode focusing a lot on that insanely gorgeous ADA. I can’t remember the actress’ name. She married that guy who was a number one draft pick of the Giants, but then he got hurt and never panned out. I can’t remember his name either. But this girl just kills me. I think she’s from Texas, or is it her character that’s from Texas? Whatever. She’s tall and lean and dark-skinned, huge black eyes, great lips. Jesus, if I ever saw a naked picture of her in some magazine, I’d have to consider cheating on Jenji.
XI.
Sehorn! Jason Sehorn. That’s the name of the football player she married. Guy tore up his knee pretty bad, but, on balance, he’s pretty lucky.
Alyse came in and plopped on the sofa next to me. She missed the first ten minutes of the show but still picked out the alleged killer before I did. I asked her how she knew, and she said she’d recognized the actor from a lot of other shows, so, despite his airtight alibi, he wouldn’t have taken the part if he wasn’t going to be the killer. Even though it was cheating, it was still some pretty good armchair detective work.
Esme and Charlie were upstairs dutifully wrapping up their homework. One of the perks of Judaism is that there’s a better chance of your kids being studious. One of the downsides comes later, when you have to explain how good grades have no impact on your life. Anyway, Alyse and I watched another TiVo-ed Law & Order, this time with the short-haired ADA. I can’t remember this actress’s name either, but the character’s is Jamie Ross. She doesn’t knock me out like the Texan, but if there were a Miss American Bar Association Beauty Pageant, she’d be a major contender for the crown. Alyse and I, happy to shoo aside all the craziness in our lives, immersed ourselves in the case of a woman who jumped (or was pushed!) off the Brooklyn Bridge.
And, as the verdict was coming down, I had this thought that, if there were a janitor or something in Nu? Girl Fashions who got killed by my bottle of horseradish, it would make a really good Law & Order episode.
“You want to watch one more?” Alyse sounded like a teenager proposing a day of playing hooky, so what else was I to do but say, “Okay.”
“Oh, good.”
Hey, Commie. Maybe watching Law & Order with your wife is the meaning of life.
Alyse had stopped checking how the bidding was going on You-ey’s art, I had stopped glancing out the windows to see if Byron had slipped past our FBI agen
t, and we just sat there together. It was the kind of scene that makes America great: husband and wife cuddled up on the couch, all warm and cozy, with our FBI detail just outside. We playfully commented on every twist in the stories, Alyse made cracks about the ADA’s cleavage, I pretended not to notice—it was the best. Life felt familiar again. God knows how many episodes went by. Just as Jamie Ross was being swatted down by a judge for requesting absurdly high bail for a defendant against whom the case was seriously circumstantial, we heard Esme say, “Uh, are we perhaps planning to have any nourishment tonight?”
We looked up and saw her and Charlie looking at us like we were a pair of slack-jawed truants. The foremost job of children is to make sure no precious moment goes uninterrupted.
I hate to say this, but I think I prefer the dependent, vulnerable Esme to the budding wise-ass teenager Esme.
I guess I’ll get used to it. I hope so.
That was about when I announced to the kids that we’d be going to Bongo’s for dinner. It’s a fun family place with gorilla-sized portions and milkshakes dense as mud baths. Charlie was thrilled out of his mind. Esme said, “Oh, I guess I’m getting the Chinese chicken salad then,” the one somewhat healthy dish on the menu. Every other entrée should come with an angioplasty on the side.
I also should be happy my daughter eats well, but I worry there’s something joyless about that kind of discipline. Or any kind of discipline. Children scarfing triglycerides at McDonald’s – isn’t that what makes America great?
The kids went to bundle up and I said to Alyse, “We should tell the FBI we’re going out, right?”
I may have made the suggestion too quickly, or maybe my tone had a smudge of urgency to it, because Alyse looked at me and said, “I guess. But, to tell you the truth, I don’t even understand why they’re here. Why do they have to stake out our house? The neo-Nazis are a thousand miles away, and they have no idea where we are. Is there something going on with this that I’m not quite grasping?”
There are lots and lots of moments in a marriage when it’s important to pull off a convincing white lie. Sometimes I wonder how many white lies it takes to qualify as someone living a lie. Is the answer black and white? Aren’t you either living a lie or you’re not? Can you be merely living a fib? More unanswerable crap.
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