It Won't Always Be This Great

by Peter Mehlman

  Okay, Commie, you want to know just how clutch Alyse was that night? How tactically and tactfully brilliant? I’ll tell you: Before I even got the chance to agree to drive Audra to the hospital, Alyse turned again and said, “Winnie, I’ll get you some coffee and you can hang out here with me and my kids for as long as you need to.”

  “That’s very kind of you, but I do not wish to impose, especially not on such a sacred holiday.”

  Alyse smiled and said, “The only sacred holiday in this house is Super Bowl Sunday.”

  I threw in, “We have a Super Bowl party every year to justify the price of our plasma TV. It’s our big religious event.”

  Apparently unversed in secular Judaism, Winnie said, “Thanks so much, but I can just go to the train and get out of your hair.”

  “Bad idea,” Alyse said. “You’ll want to be nearby for a while in case Audra needs you.”

  XII.

  Audra folded her bulky overcoat and put it in the back seat of my Saab. As we drove to the hospital, she recounted all the events that Alyse had figured out on her own. Angry at her father and, I may add, emboldened by my text message (DON’T LET IT GO), Audra had decided the first night of Hanukkah would be the right time to introduce her family to the jazz pianist she’d been dating for two months. Later, I learned that the relationship was the first thing Alyse had pegged. (“As soon as she introduced Winnie, it was obvious they were dating.” “Really? ’Cause I definitely didn’t pick up on that.”)

  Maybe that’s why Alyse wasn’t suspicious about anything going on between Audra and me. She already knew Audra had a boyfriend. Yeah, that must be it. Alright. Everything makes more sense to me now.

  Audra made certain to arrive home as close to sunset as possible, ensuring that her whole family would be there when she and Winnie made their entrance. Alyse had also visualized the rest: Nat Uziel opening the door, looking down at Audra’s hand around Winnie’s waist, looking up at Winnie, grabbing for his heart, and doing a bug-eyed swoon to the floor.

  I mean, don’t get the wrong idea, Commie. Nat’s a good enough person, but there are just some things you don’t expect, like racism to kick up in you big enough to stop your heart (especially after all his railing against anti-Semitism at the rally and with the petition. Hypocrisy really does catch up with us in the end, I guess).

  As Audra remembered it, an EMT was packing Nat into the back of an ambulance in what seemed like less than a minute. She said that, even in all the chaos, she noticed how cheerful the EMT was, like someone gaily working on an assembly line, her father just the next widget to be inspected, wrapped up, and shipped off to the repairs department.

  In that thin sliver of time between Nat’s clutching his heart and the EMT’s arrival, Jason Uziel used the words “slut,” “whore,” and “animal” several times, but got off “baboon” only once. Not that Winnie punched him out or anything. Audra had prepped him about Jason on the Long Island Railroad. Simply by removing his sunglasses, Winnie put a cork in the flow of epithets before Jason could pull out “the N word.”

  (“The N word” is another expression I hate, by the way, but what choice do you have?)

  Jason wanted to go in the ambulance with Nat. But, according to Audra, her father made a motion indicating that he didn’t want Jason there. I thought maybe that was a wishful perception on Audra’s part, but I didn’t call her on it. So Jason and his mother got into the Lexus to drive to the hospital. Audra said she’d made one step toward the car when her mother said, “Dear, I think it’s best you and your boyfriend don’t come to the hospital.”

  “Boyfriend.” It must be one of those woman things: Mrs. Uziel also sniffed out Audra’s relationship in no time. Audra told me she felt a wave of love for her mother upon hearing the word “boyfriend,” which, of course, made her a thousand times sicker about what she’d done. “Not that I ever thought that bringing Winnie home would cause my father to have a heart attack,” she said.

  I thought to myself: The man did have a heart condition. And it’s not like you weren’t aware of his hypocritical hang-ups.

  Hey, did I ever tell you my hitchhiking story from Maryland?

  I’ll be quick. This is worth it. For maybe a month during my senior year, I was working a few hours a week at Jeans West in PG Plaza. Eddie Fleck, who had graduated already, was managing the store and asked me if I wanted to make some easy extra money. I thought it’d be good to have some funds so that I could escort Alyse on slightly more glamorous dates, and so I took the job. Really, it was incredibly nice of Fleck to offer. But then, Eddie was always a nice guy. I wouldn’t cheat off his test paper, but he was a nice guy.

  I took a bus to get to the store, and one day I missed it by a second, so for the first time in my life, I stuck out my thumb. A black guy in a pea green Gremlin stopped and asked, “Where you going, man?”

  I said, “PG Plaza.”

  He said, “Hop in.” He leaned over to open the passenger door and just as it flew open, his elbow knocked over a huge bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken.

  We looked at each other, frozen. I mean, come on! I’m three feet from this black guy, separated by a flock of fried chicken. I tried to be nonchalant while thinking maybe I could even up the stereotypes by having a wad of bills pour out of my coat. That’s how awkward it was. And then, out of nowhere, we both started cracking up. In unison, the whole comical absurdity landed and we both doubled over. It was fantastic.

  Of course, in retrospect, thank God that he laughed too. Knowing me, I’d have tried to break the tension by saying something idiotic like, “So, how about that George Washington Carver fellow?”

  But he turned out to be a really good guy, a tour guide at the Air and Space Museum. We even exchanged phone numbers, but, you know, I never called.

  Anyway, after Audra told me what had happened, all I said was, “You don’t know your father had a heart attack. It could have just been angina or palpitations.”

  I felt myself become distant toward her in the car. Maybe it was because, only a half-hour earlier, I was warmly aware of being in the middle of one of family life’s rare, memorable times. Alyse and I still talk about that Hanukkah night, how great it was to huddle up together in Charlie’s room. So can you blame me if I was thinking: Who needs this shit?, while sitting in the car listening to Audra talk over my windshield wipers rather than at home enjoying the holiday with my kids?

  On the other hand, maybe just this once, I felt like skipping out on my guilt. Obviously, it wasn’t too tough to see myself as an unindicted co-conspirator in Audra’s crime on account of my text message.

  Audra must’ve sensed my iciness, because she went silent halfway through the drive. In all the time I’d known her, it would have been hard to imagine ever discouraging her from talking to me. Just three days earlier, she’d admitted to flirting with me. Now I was in a car with her, just the two of us, in the basic setting that has led millions of American men to shtup their baby sitters. But me? I was pissed at Audra, feeling protective of Audra, puzzling over Audra, and periodically peeking at the shoulder strap of the seat belt running over her sweater, dividing her breasts and making them appear fuller than I’d remembered.

  U. G. H.

  An un-conflicted moment. Or only two thoughts in conflict. Is that too much to ask for? Making matters worse, I thought it was possible Audra caught the tail end of one of my peeks. Somehow, my general annoyance over the whole night allowed me to skirt my usual self-torture. So she may have seen an older guy checking out her chest. What was I supposed to do about it after the fact?

  You know, not long ago, Alyse was paying some bills and I was telling her about one of my patients. I described her as “a bit of a ditz.” Alyse didn’t react, so I silently thought about what a funny/great word that is. “Ditz.” Then, in one of those times when your thoughts cross over into words, I said aloud, “I love ditz.”

 
Alyse spun her head around and looked at me as if I’d admitted to editing a kiddie porn site.

  Less slow on the uptake than usual, I said, “Ditz. I said, I love ditz. The word ditz. Beginning with a D as in David.”

  My wife of a thousand years was genuinely relieved.

  Jesus. If I get off on another tangent like that, just smack me or I’ll wind up calling you from New York and telling you the rest of the story over a speaker phone.

  XIII.

  Not far from the hospital, with Audra staring out her window, we approached a railroad crossing. Naturally, about fifty yards from the tracks, the lights went red, the bells rang, the metal arms started slowly dropping. Just wanting this night to end, I gunned the car about twenty yards. Audra whipped her head around toward me and I slammed the brakes.

  In a muted tone, I said, “Sorry.”

  “It’s okay,” Audra said. “I’m sure you’d like to get back home.”

  I said nothing as the train approached.

  “Wow,” Audra said, “that could have been a close call.”

  “I said I’m sorry.”

  Audra smiled in a way that gave me a chill and said, “That would have been the perfect capper on the night. I get killed by a train, my body is taken to the same hospital where my father is, and, when he has to identify my body, he realizes that I can’t be buried in a Jewish cemetery.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Audra just looked at me.

  “Oh, what? You got a tattoo?”

  Audra could have just said “Yes” or “Uh huh” or “yup,” but why just answer my question when in two smooth motions you can simply lift up your sweater, unsnap your front-fastening bra, and show me the tattoo reading “God?” in flowing script just above the surprisingly expansive areola on your high, perfectly rounded right breast?

  Again, a no-one-keeps-to-the-script moment. Like, what am I supposed to do with that?

  The weirdest thing about it, though, was what kept me from reaching out and copping a once-in-a-lifetime feel. I didn’t hold myself back out of any sense of propriety or guilt or fidelity. No, not me. I held back because it just seemed like too much work to take off my left glove, place it down, and reach out. Fuck, Commie. Don’t ask. Instead, I just took a long look at her breasts, making no effort to hide it. It was like seeing a naked actress in a movie and suddenly thinking, Holy shit! I can stare all I want! I must have gazed for five or ten seconds, silently. When I heard Audra say, “Go ahead,” I finally looked up at her. Maybe I managed some kind of perfectly executed cut-the-shit look, because shame suddenly coated her face. I felt instantly relieved at not having to say something so dusty as, “Audra, do you really think it’s appropriate to be baring your breasts in front of me, a married man, when you’re father is in the hospital and your boyfriend is with my wife?”

  I’ve always been amazed at how fast women can navigate bras. On and off and on again. Like nothing. The train hurtled by, the noise doing a brilliant job of dispersing Audra and my thoughts about what had just happened.

  We got to Park Israel Hospital and went right to the emergency room. Turns out, my diagnosis was correct. Nat didn’t have a heart attack. It was just palpitations or angina or whatever else they stick under the heading of CARDIAC EPISODE.

  Nat was already resting comfortably in a private room, no doubt one of the perks of being “prominent in the Jewish community.”

  I gave Audra a hug that was pretty chaste on the E=MC2 scale. Is that the right physics analogy? Does E=MC2 even have a scale? Whatever. When we disengaged, I saw her face go from relief to dread. Now she’d have to face the music. Actually, much worse—she’d have to face her family.

  It was no surprise that Nat was in the “amenities unit.” But you wouldn’t believe the room itself. Picture a suite at the Four Seasons, fully stocked with Perrier and heart monitors. The second Audra and I entered, I zoomed in on the king-sized bed with a Chippendale backboard. The only patient you’d expect to see lying limp in such grandeur was Sonny Von Bulow. Instead, it was Nat Uziel, tucked under a bazillion thread-count sheet wearing plush pajamas and his yarmulke. I flashed to my father dying in the semi-private room he’d shared with a jaundiced, cirrhotic Korean War amputee from Levittown, and said to myself, “motherfuckers.” I don’t even know why I said it or who I was saying it to. Just a general principle motherfuckers.

  A nurse outside Nat Uziel’s hospital room asked Audra and me to take off our shoes and put on paper-y foot covers. The door was cracked open and we pushed through into a suite so grotesquely spacious that Audra and I had already taken a few steps in before anyone noticed us. Mrs. Uziel had her back to the door and Jason sat across from her in country modern club chairs, chest-high at Nat’s bedside. We passed the shabby-chic sofa along the wall perpendicular to the door and the knotty pine coffee table with back issues of Vanity Fair and Architectural Digest. And, even then, we were a good seven or eight steps from the bed. The room had to be 700 square feet. When the bedside threesome finally looked at us, you could tell they didn’t know quite what to make of my presence. I swear, it could have easily been the set of a campy musical, with Mrs. Uziel and Jason breaking into a song called, What Is He Doing Here?

  Actually, for me, it was more like a cheesy sci-fi movie where I’d been mistakenly and tragically beamed from the happy family around Charlie’s bedside to the ostentatiously morose Uziel bedside. Where Charlie’s fish tank should have been, there was a brushed slate metal cart holding a really, really tasteful defibrillator and an electrocardiogram, presumably made special by Restoration Hardware. Where Esme should have been hilariously dropping latke crumbs into the tank, Jason sat in maximum agitation, nervously fidgeting and clunking his right elbow into the side of the medical cart. Unobtrusively placed on the side of the bed was an emergency call button encased in rounded wood. Also knotty pine, I think. I gotta say, whoever designed that room did an amazing job of dancing around the inescapable morbidity of the project.

  But, you know who wasn’t morbid? Nat. He seemed like the only lump of peace in the room. In fact, he immediately smiled at me as if he was really happy I’d tagged along. I’d entered with the dark view that, “When the revolution comes, you and this ‘amenities unit’ are first to go,” but Nat turned my attitude around pretty quick.

  “I’m here for my heart, not my feet,” Nat said in a jocular tone.

  “Audra was upset and came to me for help, so—”

  Jason interrupted me, “How the hell are you going to help her? What are you going to do—teach her how to eat a cheeseburger?”

  Mrs. Uziel gently said, “Jason, don’t be rude.”

  Audra went over to her father and hugged him and kicked off a medley of apologies that’s probably still going on today. Nat surprised everyone by saying, “It’s okay, honey. It’s my fault and I apologize to you.”

  “What do you have to apologize for?” Jason said. “She’s the slut who brought that monster to our house and caused your heart attack!”

  “Jason,” Mrs. Uziel said, “your father didn’t have a heart attack. And please keep your voice down. And watch your language.”

  You could see the pattern developing: Jason spits out bottomless rage, his mother chastens him, he slumps in simmering rage for half a minute, at which point the next trigger sends him back over the edge.

  Audra sat on the bed beside her mother and to her father’s right. Jason scowled at the nerve of his sister to get so close to Nat. I didn’t know where the hell to be, so I just stood at the foot of the bed. Really, all I wanted was to get out of there. Another family’s dynamic is something no outsider needs to see.

  After maybe twenty seconds of silent bedside vigil, Nat smiled again and said, “Boy, I used to love a good cheeseburger.”

  Jason lurched in his chair, but before he could get off his next blurt, Nat looked at me and said, “What
kind of cheese do you like on your burger? Cheddar?”

  “Actually,” I said, “I prefer American. After all, it is our national cheese.”

  Nat laughed, and said to his family, “I have some humorous podiatrist, no?”

  “Yeah, he’s a friggin’ riot.”

  “Jason!”

  Jason looked up at his mother, down at his father, across at me, and refused to make eye contact with Audra.

  “Good old American cheese,” Nat said, all dreamy. I was getting the impression that the second he was alone in the room, he’d order in a half-pound bacon cheeseburger from Peter Luger.

  As it turned out, I wasn’t far off.

  Jason hunched his shoulders and muttered, “Jesus fucking Christ.”

  This time, Mrs. Uziel glared her admonishment, which seemed to have more bite than her words. As for me, I was starting to welcome Jason’s outbursts. They were preferable to the interim periods of killer silence.

  “Good God,” Mrs. Uziel said, looking over the credenza through the picture windows that were probably fitted for curtains by Laura Ashley herself, “the rain just never lets up.”

  Audra turned toward the drops rolling down the glass with the pitch black of western Long Island spread out below. Jason shook his head until there could be no question that his mother noticed. Nat gazed at an empty space somewhere over the middle of the room, peacefully zoned out. I watched the sheets over his chest slowly rise and fall, and marveled at how his organs kept chugging away. This reverie ended when Jason cleared his throat with Richter Scale force. Nat’s eyes swung toward his son and quickly back to the vacant space somewhere out there. I had an odd thought then, wondering if, given the chance, Nat would take back that one microscopic sperm that became the noxious son beside him.

  XIX.

  During that particularly long hush, you could practically hear Mrs. Uziel and Audra flipping file cards around in their brains for a neutral conversation topic. Coming to the rescue was my job that night, so I said, “You know, Nat, there’s going to be a big exposé in the paper tomorrow about the makers of Mossad Horseradish.”