“An exposé?” he said, genuinely interested. “What kind of exposé?”
“Apparently they package it under different labels in different parts of the country and market it according to regional prejudices.”
“I don’t understand,” Nat said, sitting up.
“Around here, they target Jews by saying they won’t sell their product to anyone who’s anti-Israel. In other parts of the country, they promote their horseradish to white supremacists with thinly veiled slurs against all non-Christians.”
Nat wasn’t at all taken aback. He was fascinated. “So, they’re pioneers of hate-based marketing.”
I nodded and said, “That’s very well put.”
Nat smiled again. “I guess there’s a certain perverse genius in that.”
“Genius! How’s that genius?” said Jason. “It’s pure, unadulterated, rabid anti-Semitism! That’s what it is!”
On cue, Mrs. Uziel piped in, “Jason, keep your voice down. This is a hospital.”
And, weirdly, it was helpful to be reminded of that.
Nat said, “I wish all of you would stop hovering over me. The doctor said I’m fine, and you’re all acting as if I’m on my deathbed.”
The other members of the Uziel clan looked around, trying to decide if that was their cue to leave. I certainly took it that way, but not wanting to seem as if I couldn’t wait to bolt, I said, “You know, Nat, this would make a pretty spectacular deathbed.”
Nat smiled and said, “I could do a lot worse.”
For the first time, I was genuinely liking Nat. Suddenly, he was a normal guy, someone you could kibbitz with. So, in the spirit of kibbitzing, I said, “Some mattress company ought to come out with a line of deathbeds. They could call it something like The Sealy Extinct-a-Pedic.”
Nat pulled up his knees and slapped his thigh, laughing. So, I kept going with the idea:
“We at Sealy believe everyone should die well-rested. That’s why we’ve introduced this new line of deathbeds, so you can pass on in firm, ergo-dynamic comfort that continuously adapts to the individual contours of your lifeless body.”
Nat hooted, “I love that! Never mind Sealy. You and I should start our own mattress company.”
“Count me in,” I said, feeling pretty good about myself. After all, it’s a known fact that laughing is good for the heart. I read that somewhere.
“Who knew my podiatrist was such a card?” Nat said, smiling.
Jason just glowered because, you know, that’s what he does. Mrs. Uziel—whose first name I don’t know to this day, by the way—was smiling, probably because her husband actually (finally!) looked like he was having fun. Audra looked like she wanted to smile, but wasn’t entirely ready to let herself that far off the hook. She just curled up an inch or so more onto the bed. Nat looked at her and gave her a really sweet wink. He was crazy about his little girl no matter what form of shock value she brought home from college. It was a nice moment, but I still just wanted to get out of there.
Nat blew out a big sigh and said to me, “Does your family observe Hanukkah?”
I smiled and said, “Yes, but we observe from a distance.”
Nat let out a, “Hmm,” without any disapproving, holier-than-thou tone.
“We give the kids gifts—not many—eat tons of latkes, and that’s about it.”
Jason said, “And you have the temerity to call yourself a Jew?”
I’d noticed that the word “temerity” seemed to have caught on with the Orthodox community. The two Orthodox patients I mentioned earlier—Irwin Cole and Sam Kipnis—had both used that word in my office. I think I mentioned that I like both Irwin and Sam, but they did seem to have that somewhat obscure word right near the top of their vocabulary list.
Imagine the temerity . . .”
“Then he had the temerity to insist . . .”
Unlike Irwin and Sam, Jason had adapted the speech cadence you hear among hyper-observant Jews. That choppy rabbinical reggae. I can’t even imitate it.
I said, “Jason, as I told you the first time we met, I’m not a Jew according to your definition. But to answer your question, I’ve been Jewish for over 50 years, so it doesn’t take much temerity to call myself a Jew.”
As soon as I said that, I regretted it. I had no business getting into it with Jason. His mother was doing the job just fine.
Backpedaling, I said, “I’m sorry, Jason. This is a difficult night for you and your family. I was wrong to take any kind of a tone with you.”
Nat waved his hand as if to say, No apology needed.
Audra, probably emboldened by her father’s wink, said, “This is America. Everyone’s free to worship as he or she sees fit.”
Well, that was like a Molotov cocktail thrown into Jason’s combustible head. “And how do you worship, Audra? By purposely trying to kill your father?”
“What?” Audra said, “You think I wanted this to happen?”
“I don’t think, I know. You’d have to be an idiot to not know what was going to happen. You know your father has a heart condition and, on the first night of Hanukkah, you bring that monster to our door? You’re probably disappointed it didn’t kill Daddy.”
Mrs. Uziel held up her hand and said, “Jason, calm down.”
“I will not calm down! Listen, Audra, you talk about everyone’s rights as an American? Fine. I have the right to protect my family from harm. And that’s just what I’m going to do.”
Audra got off the bed and stood up in what looked like a dramatic gesture to look down on Jason. “Oh, really? What are you going to do, Jason?”
“I’ve already done it.”
Nat, who had been trying to stay out of the fray, got a look of dread on his face and said, “What have you already done, Jason?”
“You want to know what I’ve done? I’ll tell you what I’ve done. While you were being examined, I called the police and told them my sister must be arrested for attempted murder.”
Mr. and Mrs. Uziel said, “Oh my God,” in perfect unison.
“I’m meeting with an officer tomorrow morning,” Jason said, leaning back and looking self-satisfied.
Mrs. Uziel said, “You mean, you’re going to try to have your own sister arrested?”
“And convicted and imprisoned, hopefully.”
Another round of “Oh my God’s” swept around the room. I considered comforting Audra by calling up my Law & Order expertise to let her know there was no chance that she would even be arrested, much less put on trial, but I restrained myself. The exact phrase that ran through my head was: This isn’t my peace to negotiate.
The various scenarios and implications of Jason’s actions swam silently around the room. Audra’s jaw clenched. She looked out the window as if ready to parachute out. Mrs. Uziel stared at her son, her eyelids batting as if she were communicating in Morse code. Only Nat seemed unruffled, returning his gaze to the non-spot in the air above him.
And me? I was telling myself that no one would hold it against me if I politely got the fuck out of there. And I was right. I could’ve just left. Nat probably would have thought, I’d leave too if I could. Mrs. Uziel would’ve likely just been relieved of her agonized embarrassment at having a stranger witness her secret family insanity.
I guess I stayed for Audra. In my office, she’d always seemed like someone who had the world all figured out. Just seeing her so—I don’t know—so reduced, standing there, biting the inside of her cheek . . . it just killed me. I tried to get a handle on her state of mind and got as far as realizing that Audra was about the same age as Alyse was when I’d met her. She was another girl. Another smart, cute girl. A smart, cute girl in crisis. I couldn’t leave. Because really—well, I just couldn’t.
Jason sat upright and alive like he owned the moment. At 23, he looked almost young.
Nat took an exaggera
ted breath through his nose and opened his eyes.
“Jason,” Nat said, “I have contributed to and therefore have very strong ties to the Nassau County Police Department. The moment I tell them that your allegations against your sister are ridiculous, they will send you off on your way like they do with all citizens whom they regard as crackpots.”
The vitality visibly drained from Jason’s body. “But you won’t tell the police that.”
“Yes I will, Jason.”
“How could you, Daddy? Audra is guilty! She brought that animal into our home with a cross hanging from his neck. She tried to take advantage of your heart condition and send you to an early grave!”
Nat paused to look upon his son so his words might sink in. “Jason,” he said, “I have failed you as a father. My self-righteous, vengeful bullying—that’s what I’ve passed on to you. And for that, I’m sorry.”
Jason tried to interrupt but Nat talked over him. “You see, Jason, in the ambulance, speeding to this hospital with the sirens and the lights and whatnot? I had a moment to consider how I’d gotten there; to ponder how the events of the last few days had led me to that gurney, my body connected to machines. That’s when I knew: all of my ruthless, pernicious, and unforgiving . . . shit? It was time to let it go. To forgive and forget. All of it. Finally. And Jason? You must let it go too.”
“No, I will not let it go.”
“Jason—”
“No. Never.”
Commie, in response to that, Nat Uziel closed his eyes again—this time for a full ten seconds—then opened them and looked coldly at his son. Jason looked stricken, as if he knew something big was about to happen. And he was right.
XX.
Nat slowly lifted his left arm from under the blanket, raised his hand to his head, and gently removed his yarmulke, softly dropping it on the night table inches away from Jason’s face.
“Son, you have to let it go.”
I’m pretty sure I have the things that happened next in the right order:
When the enormity of Nat’s gesture had sunk in, Jason wailed the word, “No!” in a pitch so gutturally tortured that the attending nurse barreled into the room with a CODE RED urgency that caused her to drop her Don’t Mess With Texas coffee mug. The mug shattered on the floor and caused Audra to step back and wheel around just as Jason, in a blind rage, grabbed the closest possible object he could find to hurl across the room and into the wall: the defibrillator.
But I guess Jason hadn’t counted on the paddles separating from the machine, because one of those paddles caught on the edge of the mattress, causing the machine to waft like a whiffle ball over Nat’s waist and flutter just over the edge of the other side of the bed, where it picked up gravitational speed and landed on Audra’s hospital sock-covered foot, causing disruption of the soft tissue envelope, the oblique spiral comminuting fractures of the second, third, and fourth metatarsal bones, not to mention the kind of nerve compression that can make a delicate nineteen-year-old girl pass out on the floor from pain.
XXI.
I got home around 8:45.
There was no point in my staying at the hospital. The surgery on Audra couldn’t be done for several days due to the swelling. And, anyway, even if the surgery could be done immediately, it wasn’t like I was going to supervise the thirty-two-year-old, let’s-hit-the-beach orthopedist who eventually performed the procedure magnificently and even wound up dating Audra for three months before she got past her gratitude and went back into her quasi-avant-garde pool of guys from the Meatpacking District.
When I opened the front door, I heard singing upstairs. I checked to make sure I was in the right house and, you know, it was indeed my stuff that was everywhere, so indeed I was home.
A show-off-y spray of electronic music pumped out, undoubtedly Winnie playing the computer keyboard we’d bought for Charlie two years earlier (one of our bigger wastes of money in recent memory).
Alyse, Esme, and Charlie screeched out the chorus to “Yellow Submarine” in creaky harmony with Winnie’s Caribbean baritone, and I thought: Well, things seem to have worked out well back at the ranch.
By nine, I was back in the car. Winnie was in the front passenger seat, Alyse and the kids squished in the back. I didn’t go into detail about what had happened in the hospital with the Uziel family, but just mentioned that Audra had gotten her foot broken, and that she’d be okay. That didn’t stop everyone from trying to fill in the huge gaps in the story. The whirring minds in the car were practically buzzing. I said to Winnie, “So, this will be a night you won’t soon forget, huh?”
“Man,” Winnie said, half-smiling, half-shell shocked, “my consciousness is all over the place.”
It had finally stopped raining when we got to the train station. Alyse and the kids all piled out to hug Winnie. The few straggling commuters who had worked late and looked like hell, literally or figuratively, rubbed their eyes at the sight of four of their generic townsfolk warmly bidding adieu to a massive, jet-black Rastafarian. I really loved that moment. It was like a small sticking-it-up-the-ass to the neighborhood. Conveniently forgetting my initial racist impressions of Winnie, I felt cool.
Alyse asked Winnie for his contact information and promised to invite him to our Super Bowl party. Winnie hesitated to accept the invitation, but Charlie and Esme cheered, “You gotta come! Please!”
A guy I’d seen at the gym who, as far as I could tell, limited his workouts to reading the Wall Street Journal in the sauna, walked out of the train station and stared at Winnie, then us, then back to Winnie, who looked right back at him. Alyse said to Winnie, “That guy will be at the Super Bowl party.”
Winnie laughed and at last agreed. “I can’t wait.”
Maybe a quarter of the way home, with Alyse back in the passenger seat, I turned to my family and said, “Let’s take a drive and look at some Christmas lights.”
The suggestion was weird enough to make everyone shrug and say, “Okay.”
We rolled north toward the WASPy rich areas along the Long Island Sound. People living there had an obligation to be tasteful, so we were spared the lawns with three-bedroom crèches beside obese plastic Santas—you know, the ones with the demented smiles like you see in the other less monied, kitschy, wishful thinking towns of Long Island. The festooned homes we cruised past looked stunningly beautiful. At one point, Esme made me stop the car outside one particularly killer house—a craftsman style, according to Alyse. It was huge and woodsy with gigantic windows rimmed by amber lights. “Wow,” Esme said. “I’d sell Charlie to the terrorists to live in that house.”
God help the guy Esme marries. Kid has expensive taste.
We drove maybe ten miles an hour up and down winding streets (the ones that are too exclusive to be laid out on any grid), with the kids ooh-ing and aah-ing at the beauty and sheer elaborateness of their Christmas decorations. It was like watching fireworks on July 4th without all the garish, blistering noise.
Along a street called Leatherstocking Lane—no, seriously: Leatherstocking Lane—I lost focus for a moment and drifted my right tires onto a previously flawless lawn, plowing a Goodyear radial rut into the soaked grass. The kids laughed. I said, “Oops,” and kept driving. Oh, well. Another brush with being a fugitive.
After a while, the kids fell asleep in the back. All we needed was Silent Night to complete the sweet peacefulness of it all. We drove some more, wordlessly, one array of festive lights after another reflecting in our eyes. Finally, we reached a Mediterranean-style villa on a sprawling, manicured lawn that led right into the Long Island Sound. Wrapped around the entire home were blue and red lights set parallel to each other with dripping snow-like white lights suspended between them. The precise, God-like elegance was so spellbinding that I felt divinely compelled to look at Alyse, my life’s work, and say, “Honey . . .”
She turned to me.
An
d I said, “You know, the people in the world outside of this car . . . they’re all out of their fucking minds.”
Alyse tapped my arm. “Yeah, they’re a pretty unruly bunch.”
About the Author
After graduating from the University of Maryland, Peter Mehlman, a New York native, became a writer for the Washington Post. He slid to television in 1982, writing for SportsBeat with Howard Cosell. From 1985-90, he returned to forming full sentences as a writer for numerous national publications, including The New York Times Magazine, GQ, Esquire, and a multitude of women's magazines due to his advanced understanding of that gender.
In 1989, he moved to Los Angeles, where he bumped into Larry David, whom he’d met twice in New York. David, developing “a little show with Jerry Seinfeld,” invited Mehlman to submit a sample script. Having never written one, Mehlman sent a humor piece he’d written for the Times Magazine and got an assignment, which became the first Seinfeld freelance episode, “The Apartment.” Over the eight-year run of the show, Mehlman rose to executive producer and coined such Seinfeld-isms as “yada yada” “spongeworthy,” “shrinkage,” and “double-dipping.”
In 1997, Mehlman joined DreamWorks and created It’s like, you know . . . a scathing look at Los Angeles. In recent years, he has written screenplays, a novel, and humor pieces for NPR, Esquire, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Los Angeles Times, several of which were published in his collection, Mandela Was Late. In addition, he has also appeared on-camera for TNT Sports and the Webby-nominated Peter Mehlman’s Narrow World of Sports, while also starring in his short film Blank, for which he won best writing at the Los Angeles Comedy Festival.
He lives in Los Angeles. This is his first book of fiction.
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