“Why were you two holding hands when you came in?” asked Esme.
Daughters. One thing out of the ordinary and they’re on it.
Alyse said, “Do we need a reason to hold hands?”
Esme gave the question due consideration before replying, “No, but if you were holding hands outside at night, and there was like, lots of ice on the ground, it would make a lot more sense.”
I said, “Ezzie, nothing about love makes perfect sense.”
Ezzie widened her eyes for a second, as if she’d found a quote in Bartlett’s that she really liked, before snapping back to the blasé attitude her station in life demands. “Gee, Dad, a few more lines like that and you can write a song for Britney Spears.”
“Yikes, that hurt.”
“Not a Britney fan, Dad?”
“My answer should be ‘no,’ right?”
Ezzie cracked up at that one, which gave me what would have been a great feeling of paternal bliss, Commie, if I weren’t shlepping around thoughts of your lying in a hospital after taking the equivalent of 25 electroshock treatments all at once.
Esme needed a little prodding to close her books and go to sleep. Maybe twenty minutes later, Alyse and I were huddled in our own bed. I finally told her what had happened to you.
There was a stretch of silence until I added, “Boy, Commie being hit by lightning really fucks up our trip to the Cayman Islands.”
After that, the main thing we discussed was what your hair looked like after the lightning bolt. You always had a thick, somewhat unruly, mop. It seemed a natural thing to focus on. Did it straighten your hair? Did it make you look like a white Don King? Alyse said she knew a lot of girls who used curling irons in high school, but “that’s probably not the same thing.” And I wondered if maybe the lightning had changed your hair color from light brown to something more charcoal-y, like, I don’t know . . . Jerzy Kosinski’s? Alyse seemed to think that was a plausible theory and added that the electricity would have probably stimulated your scalp and strengthened the follicles, so maybe there was a considerable upside to the whole thing. Or, picture Roger Daltrey around, say, 1982.
Okay.
Enough.
That’s not true, Commie. I didn’t say the thing about the Cayman Islands. Alyse and I didn’t discuss the effect of a lightning strike on your hair. But, to recount what was said about you between Alyse and I, it would just be too maudlin to repeat.
Alyse snores sometimes. It’s a light, almost dainty snore, if that’s not a contradiction in terms. She started snoring at about 1:00 AM and I probably listened until 4:00.
TUESDAY THEN
I.
Alyse popped up and out of bed for her self-inflicted 5:30 wake-up call. If one gray can be grayer than another gray, that was the grayest day ever. Sometimes it’s hard to figure out what makes people live anywhere other than Hawaii. Manhattan makes some sense because weather isn’t even a factor there; it’s just another speed bump in the greatest city on Earth. But what the hell makes anyone in possession of a few adult dollars want to keep living in Indianapolis, Kansas City, Milwaukee, or Cincinnati? At least in San Diego or Oahu, you can check off weather and move on to dealing with all the other things that depress the hell out you.
I got out of bed and took three Advil purely on principle. In the middle of the night, I’d pondered the not-too original thought of how quickly your entire world can go to black, how beyond your control it is, and how, if there are 12 billion people in the world, 11.9999 billion of them probably deserved a bonk over the head by lightning more than you do, Commie. On an objective level, helplessness against bad luck is generally manageable—or, let’s face it, how dead would I be by now? But hopelessness weighs so much. And forget about feeling bad for yourself. By unwritten rule, that’s not allowed. The second you feel like life blows, someone will be there to tell you, “Hey, just imagine if you were living in Rwanda.”
That argument always pissed me off. I mean, really. That’s my choice? Feeling down about my suburban life or living through the Rwandan genocide? That’s it?
You feel bad about your coma? Hey, just imagine if you were living in Rwanda.
Oh, wait. That’s actually a tough choice.
Downstairs, I kissed Alyse, and she stared at Newsday without reading it. She had a Joni Mitchell CD playing on volume level three. All the girls from back then love Joni Mitchell. I never got it. Really, I never got it with a lot of the singers girls liked in the ’70s. Boz Scaggs? Peter Frampton? That dreary Jackson Browne?
They all loved Cat Stevens too, but he was someone I was actually on-board with. His stuff was really good. So good that when he went Muslim and gave up music, I was kind of pissed for a time. Another shred of pleasure in the world given up for God.
Alyse sang along quietly with Joni.
It was somewhat amazing that I could focus enough to catch some of the lyrics coming out of Alyse’s wobbly little voice.
We were both feeling numb, but Alyse doesn’t give into numbness as easily as I do. After the song ended, she said, “I was trying to sort out exactly why I’m feeling so totally depressed about Commie. I don’t know him too well. But then I realized there’s not much to sort out. It’s just about the saddest, craziest thing that’s ever happened.”
I didn’t know how to answer. Too many thoughts filled my head to actually allow any thinking. You know how when you picture the Great Depression in your mind and it seems like the whole world was in black and white? That’s how I felt. Everything in the kitchen looked vaguely washed out. They talk about how events can color your outlook on life. That morning, events un-colored my outlook on life.
I trudged upstairs to wake up the kids. At the top of the stairs, I saw Esme walking to the bathroom.
“What are you doing up already, Ez?”
“I don’t know. I’m just up.”
Okay.
I went into Charlie’s room without any of my usual, lame military bluster.
Charlie sat up and said, “I don’t feel good.”
“What’s wrong, kiddo?”
“My stomach. I have to go really bad.”
Shit, I thought, he’s not faking. His face was sallow and he was sweating.
I scooped him up in my arms. Esme was in the nearest bathroom and, even in an urgent situation, there was nothing that was going to make me barge in on her. I raced to my bathroom and got Charlie about three feet from the toilet, when the poor little boy’s intestines just evacuated.
“It’s okay, Charlie. Good job. You needed to do that. You’ll feel better. Just sit here for a few seconds and I’ll run the bath and we’ll have you good as new in no time.”
As the hot water filled the tub, Esme popped in.
“Why were you running down the hall?”
“Charlie doesn’t feel well.”
Esme looked down at the diarrhetic pool on the floor. “Ewww.”
“Yeah, eww. Ezzie, can you do me a favor and go downstairs and get the mop and a bucket?”
She took two steps, then turned around. “Maybe on that well-done bacon cheeseburger, the bacon wasn’t so well-done.”
“Maybe, Ezzie. Go.”
Of course, it was Alyse who wound up bringing the mop. Charlie was already in the tub, limp as a jellyfish. Alyse kneeled over and kissed him. “Good morning, sunshine.”
Charlie managed to eke out a smile, which was more than Alyse or I would do that morning. The good news was that any gloom in our general demeanor could now be falsely attributed to Charlie’s digestive tract protestations.
“Alyse, I’ll handle the mopping.”
“You sure?”
“I’ll be fine.”
By the time I finished bathing Charlie, putting him back in bed, talking him to sleep, mopping the bathroom floor, and spraying twenty gallons of all-natural deodorizer
(that doesn’t work nearly as well as the shit with all the toxic chemicals), Alyse had fed Esme, taken her to school, and returned to the kitchen.
There wasn’t even time to sit together and catch our breath. Podiatry called.
Alyse and I hugged like we were mutual life rafts, and then I went to work.
Let me tell you something, Commie. The troubles of two people do amount to a hill of beans in this crazy, mixed-up world. The problems of two people are a goddamn Kilimanjaro of beans.
I’d completely forgotten about our FBI detail until I pulled out onto the street and saw two generic cars parked on the curb, bumper to bumper. Agent Brooks (back on the job already!) got out of the first car and hailed me down. When I pulled up alongside them, Horton scrambled out of the back car with a huge green and white golf umbrella.
Horton asked, “How are you, sir?”
“Well, my kid just had diarrhea all over the floor, my oldest friend was struck by lightning yesterday, and I am still scared to leave my wife alone knowing that freak of a cop is still out there somewhere. Otherwise, I’m fine.”
“Really? Struck by lightning?”
“Really.”
“Where?”
“South Carolina.”
“Sorry to hear it.”
“Thanks. What’s up?”
“Well, I’m going to talk to your wife about the hate groups and all the online bidding. That’s all going fine. In fact, better than fine.”
“Okay. And what do you want to talk to me about?”
“It’s nothing urgent. I wanted you to know that we’ve been keeping an eye on Detective Byron. He was at a bar in Jericho last night.”
“You have a tail on him?”
“No.”
Before I could ask another question, Horton said, “Around noon today, Byron will be randomly drug tested by the Nassau County PD.”
“They told you that?”
“No.”
FBI agents must practice their blank looks in the mirror. My need-to-know status had tapped out again.
“Boy, you’ve been busy,” I said.
“Yes. I also know that Byron’s not going to pass that drug test.” He put his hand up, “Don’t ask me how I know.”
“Agent Horton, I don’t doubt that you have good reasons for telling me just so much, but I have to tell you, I don’t like this feeling I have.”
“What feeling is that?”
“Like there’s a ping-pong game going on over my head.”
“There is, and I’m sorry about it, but you’ll have to trust me that you’re better off not knowing everything.”
“In this circumstance or in my life as a whole?”
Horton allowed himself a microscopic touché smile before replying, “The most important point is that, very soon, Detective Byron will either be fired or suspended indefinitely. That should ease your mind some.”
I thought about that a second, and then just looked at Horton, scrunched up against the cold, rain dripping off the front of his umbrella.
“It doesn’t ease my mind.”
Horton turned his head.
“Agent Horton,” I went on, sighing, “down the road, are you sure Byron’s removal from the force makes him less of a threat to my family rather than more of a threat to my family?”
That was the first time one of my questions caught Horton off guard. “In all honesty,” he said quietly, “it could go either way.”
II.
For the first quarter of a mile of my drive to work, I thought of picking up my family and moving away as fast as possible. It wasn’t just the Byron thing. It was everything. Swirling, swirling, swirling, swirling thoughts. The Advil couldn’t even begin to beat back the pulsing in my head, and the Zoloft was on red alert.
The traffic light was out at the corner of Stratification and Seaview Avenue (never mind that, to view the sea from Seaview, you’d need a mile-high periscope). The back-up was huge and the progress slow. No one honked or tried anything tricky. The day was so gray and depressing, everyone just seemed resigned to, even at home with, misery.
The blocked path of my day gave me time to settle myself and prioritize the disasters in my life. No offense, Commie, but the situation with Byron was the one that worried me most. Everything else was a distant sound. It seemed to me that an unhinged detective on suspension would be worse than an unhinged detective whose day was filled with work. Neither option was great, of course.
When I was about twenty-five feet from the intersection, a BMW turning left collided with an Acura going straight. Guess whose fault it was. Civility broke down. Horns honked. Heads popped out of windows. Impotent curses flew from mouths. Cars drove up on the grass that divided the east and westbound roads to make muddy U-turns. The town beautification freaks were not going to be happy.
I waited, thinking about Byron. I have no idea what a Zen state is actually like, but I was in some kind of dark but clear-headed meditation. If anything, it was directly opposite to the nothing-to-lose euphoria I’d felt while throwing the bottle through the window. This was a nothing-to-lose calm stemming from depressed worry.
Another five minutes passed when, with a plan in my head, I got through the intersection with the help of a cop in an orange slicker. The second I was in the clear, I picked up the phone and called Sylvia.
“Sylvia, are there any gaps in my schedule this morning?”
Without hesitation, Sylvia said, “You have 20 minutes between 10:10 and 10:30.”
“Good. Thanks, Sylvia.”
I hung up and pulled out my wallet with its recently boosted inventory of business cards.
Either Byron saw my name on his Caller ID or he greets everyone by saying, “What the fuck do you want?”
“I want you to meet me in the garage of my office building at 10:10.”
“Why the fuck would I do that?”
“What if I promise you that you’d be making the biggest mistake of your life if you don’t?”
There was a pause, which I took as a good sign.
“Why the fucking garage?”
I left out the part about what a big fan I am of All The President’s Men and said, “I didn’t want you thinking I was going to have my chiropractor friend waiting around to come in and save my ass again.”
A longer pause. It kind of dawned on me right then that cops know what motivates crooks, but with law-abiding civilians, they’re a little lost.
“This better be good, asshole.”
III.
Commie, you’re not looking at me like I’m crazy, but I know you’re thinking it. Yes, I know what I said—that I’d hit the wall on adventurousness the day before. And that was true. But my mental state in the car had given me a kind of grim resolve that probably stemmed from a feeling that the entire world was going to shit. Maybe it was that nothing-to-lose attitude. Since that time, I’ve also considered the possibility that I had a need to atone for peeing in my pants the last time I’d met with Byron. Whatever. My son was sick, my daughter was being attacked in class, my wife was being eyed as sexual prey, the world was a dismal gray, and you were hit by lightning.
You may find this overdramatic, but maybe this was my cushy, suburban, bourgeois version of a Rosa Parks moment. Just stand up and fucking do something.
Alright, wise-ass. Rosa Parks sat down and did something.
You really do have that annoying law school attention to detail.
But at least you’re listening.
Three patients were scheduled before the 10:10 time gap. I freely admit, I treated them all on auto-pilot. One, oddly enough, was nine-year-old Sophie Wanderman, who came in with her father and a case of plantar’s warts just like Audra Uziel had at that age. Unlike Audra’s first appointment, however, I didn’t put the Pine Scent air freshener around my neck to make anyone laugh. I was in
no mood. I ran through the treatment like a stone-cold professional. I think I was no less effective than any other day, which is a little comforting in the sense that, let’s say on the morning you’re going to have an operation, your surgeon finds out his or her kid is turning tricks and hooked on amyl nitrates, there’s still a good chance the procedure will go without a hitch.
No, Commie, I don’t really know if you can get hooked on amyl.
Jesus.
I don’t even remember the second patient. After he or she left, I remember looking down at my watch, saw it was 9:20, and thought: In an hour from now, I’ll be ten minutes into my appointment with Byron. The third appointment was with another Orthodox Jew, Irwin Cole. Irwin is some kind of computer programmer. He was a decent, unassuming diabetic. (I told you before about Carolina having diabetes and its impact on the feet, so I’ll spare you a recap on my treatment of Irwin.)
I will tell you that, uncharacteristically, Irwin confided something in me that morning. I say “uncharacteristically,” because people don’t often confide in their podiatrist. Maybe, in dealing with their feet, we’re too far from their heads. Who knows? In strangely formal tones, Irwin simply said, “I’m having an extra-marital affair with a woman from the yeshiva.”
When I repeated that to Alyse, she referred to the yeshiva as the Theological Inseminary.
If I hadn’t been so preoccupied with my own life, I might have found Irwin’s story interesting. But the only tidbit that registered was that he’d met the woman in a Talmud study class.
I know what you’re thinking, Commie. It’s like being in law school and cheating on an ethics exam.
All I said to Irwin was, “Gee, Irwin, I hope things work out.”
It Won't Always Be This Great Page 27