Fleishman Is in Trouble

by Taffy Brodesser-Akner

  He made his voice into a weird foreign accent. “Are you a kept woman?” He felt like an idiot the minute he said it.

  She stopped her tracing motion. “This isn’t a job interview, is it?”

  He walked through his door at one, hoping he didn’t smell too much like sex when he paid the babysitter. He took a shower and checked his phone to see if Nahid had been in touch already. When he entered the bedroom with a towel around his waist and looked up from his phone, he noticed that Hannah had woken up and was sitting in his bed.

  “You have camp in the morning.”

  She was clutching her phone; it already had an appendage feel about it. He looked more closely at her. “Are you crying?”

  “I texted Mom.”

  He sat down on the edge of his bed. “And?”

  “She didn’t respond.”

  On the day Hannah was born, as the surgeons sewed Rachel back up, Toby held her. He couldn’t look away from her. “You are mine forever,” he whispered. “I will always take care of you.” Rachel was crying, her arms splayed out like she was on a crucifix, and still he couldn’t look away from his new baby.

  The next day, Rachel said that in the dysphoria and near-mania that followed that hellscape of a thirty-five-hour labor that failed in every possible way except the most important one, she watched Toby and their baby and felt like she’d been tricked. She said she suddenly realized that the whole goal all along had been to get her to have a baby so that they two could be together, Toby and Hannah, and she could be discarded. She raved about this in her hospital bed, and in the coming weeks and months, even as she slowly got better physically and emotionally, she still talked about this first instance of motherhood, about having felt she’d been tricked. People would come to the house to see the new baby, and she would answer their innocent question about how labor had gone, but she couldn’t do it politely. She had to go into the details of how scary it was and how alone she’d felt, and she’d always end with the story about Toby holding Baby Hannah in his arms, and her conspiracy theory that her marriage had been a ruse for Toby to get his baby and leave her behind. It was unlike her. She usually kept things so light with strangers; she was usually so concerned about appearances. He didn’t know why he thought about that now, except that Hannah looked so much like her mother when she was angry or scared or hurt or neutral. She only looked like Toby when she smiled.

  “She doesn’t know you got a phone,” he said. “She doesn’t know your number.”

  “But I wrote, ‘It’s Hannah.’ And then I called her.”

  “And?”

  “And it went straight to voicemail.”

  The last time he’d called her it went straight to voicemail, too.

  “She could be in meetings. She could be asleep. She could just not be looking at her phone.”

  “Maybe she’s angry at me for getting a phone before my birthday.”

  “No, that’s silly. She could be sleeping, we don’t know. It’s late.”

  He reached for her hand but she pulled it away.

  “Dad. Is she dead?”

  “Oh God, no, Hannah. What? No, she’s not dead. She’s totally fine. She’s working. You know how she gets. There are some places where there are literally no hours that we’re both awake.”

  “You’ve spoken to her?”

  “Yes, of course. She sends her love.”

  Hannah looked down at his comforter, where she kept tracing the same indistinct design.

  “You should go to bed,” he said. “You have to be up early and you haven’t even packed your bus bag.”

  Hannah finished her tracing loop and then stood up and went back to her room.

  * * *

  —

  TOBY WOKE UP to Solly standing over him and shaking his shoulders. “Dad,” he said.

  Toby jumped out of bed, bleary and panicked. “What is it?” It was still dark out.

  “We have to go to the bus for camp. We’re gonna miss the bus.”

  Toby looked around for a minute, then sat down on his bed. “Okay, let me get some coffee.” Solly was jumping in place.

  “It’s okay if you’re nervous.” Toby looked at his phone for the time and saw that Nahid had sent a text. The night came rushing back to him. It was only four-thirty. “Bud, we have two hours before the bus leaves. Should we go back to sleep for a while?”

  But Solly wasn’t having it. He was dragging Toby by the hand to the coffee maker and talking like he’d just done ten lines of cocaine. “I’m bringing all of my Green Lantern comics on the bus because they’re light but also because when people see me reading one they’ll want to read one and then I’ll have one for everyone.”

  “You think you should take all of them? They’re special to you.”

  “I think it’s a good idea. Also, I’m bringing Stealth Bunny.” Stealth Bunny was a square of Solly’s baby blanket that used to just be called Bunny. Rachel had told him on his sixth birthday that it was time to give up his baby blanket, that he’d never be invited to sleepovers, or that kids would make fun of him if they ever came over and found it. Solly went to his room and hid the blanket so that Rachel couldn’t find it. Later, when Rachel was working on her laptop in the living room, Toby sneaked into Solly’s room with scissors. He told Solly they could cut a piece of Bunny Blanket. It would have all the power of the rest of the blanket, since he’d put all his love into it over all these years. And best of all, it would be even easier to carry around. “We’ll call it Stealth Bunny,” Toby said, as he carefully cut the center square. “What’s stealth?” Solly asked, watching. “It means that you’re the only one that knows about it.”

  “Where are you going to keep Stealth Bunny?” Toby asked now.

  “Just on me. In my pocket. At all times.”

  “You think that’s a good idea? What if you lose it?”

  “I would never lose Stealth Bunny.”

  They played chess for the next half hour. Toby got a whiff of Nahid and took another shower. Solly woke Hannah up, which Toby knew because even in the shower he heard her screeching at him. Toby fed them breakfast, letting Solly fill the room with his anxiety, answering all his questions and praying that Hannah’s sullenness was the usual sullenness and that she was no longer thinking about her mother.

  Toby read the text message from Nahid, who was wondering if perhaps after his kids were asleep tonight, he might want her to drop by to do me in your elevator—no one will know [purple devil emoji, two eyeballs looking to the left emoji]. Last night felt like a long time ago.

  He asked Hannah to see her phone.

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m your father.”

  “No.”

  “I’m not really asking. This is part of the deal.”

  She handed it over, furious, and Toby scrolled through her Instagram, spot-checking like he’d read in a Consumer Reports special issue on kids and technology. It all seemed fine and innocent, if a little boring. Her avatar was a selfie where she was putting up two fingers like a reverse peace sign, like kids had begun to do in all their pictures—it was maybe something a member of a boy band did, or an athlete? He didn’t know. He looked through her updates. She had twenty-two friends, and her only two updates said “Going to camp, so psyched” and “Check this out LOL,” accompanying a picture of a cat in sunglasses with puffy text overlaid that read, “I think I’m allergic to mornings.” What was she doing poring over this thing all day when she was basically posting once a day about what she ate, and waiting for likes, and then liking other kids’ almost identical posts? It made him so sad for her and her friends for how self-conscious they were, how they had to grow up in a time when the world conspired to make them even more self-conscious.

  “You’re like the Gestapo,” she shouted at him.

  “I think you haven’t learned enough abou
t World War Two if you think that’s the case.”

  “No, you are. You’re the Gestapo.”

  “Stasi is more accurate, but even that.”

  Toby turned his attention to Solly.

  “You sure you’re feeling good about this, Sol?” Toby asked.

  “I’m really excited. But will you be lonely without us?”

  Toby stood up to clear the dishes. “I’m going to miss you very much, but I’ll get a lot of work and stuff done, and maybe I’ll even have a surprise for you when you get back.”

  Solly jumped. “What is it, Dad?”

  “What does the word ‘surprise’ mean?”

  “Tell me!”

  “My lips are sealed. You’ll have to wait.”

  At the bus stop, Toby could feel Solly’s jittery hum in his hug. He crouched down and looked him straight in the eye. “You are going to do so well there. And I am going to miss you so much.”

  Solly pushed his face against Toby. “Will you be there on visiting day?” he asked into his neck.

  “I will.”

  “And Mom will come, right? And she’ll email.”

  “She’ll do her best.”

  “And if I want to come home…”

  “I’ll come get you. I’ll always answer my phone. It’s not very far away.”

  Next, Hannah dropped her arms and turned her head and let Toby hug her like he was poison. He took her face in his hands and said, “I love you and I know you love me. You can act however you want to, but you’re my girl and I am your dad.” She wrestled her head out of his hands and boarded the bus without looking at him. Solly followed her.

  He stood looking at the bus for a long time, waving though he couldn’t see behind the bus’s tinted windows, trying not to think about what he’d done. The bus left, and he waved until they couldn’t possibly see him anymore. He walked away and sent a text to Nahid:

  My kids just boarded the camp bus.

  The answer came quickly:

  Get here

  So he did. He was only ninety minutes late for work.

  * * *

  —

  THAT NIGHT, HE had a dream that he was in space and Rachel was there, but he couldn’t tell if she was a planet or a star, and he couldn’t ascertain her orbit, and yes it was a little on the nose but what are you going to do. He woke up three times. The first time, it was panic: You are in trouble. Fleishman is in trouble.

  The second time he woke up he was angry. It was more than a week now, which was long, yes, but that was just like her. Or it was thematically like her. She’d never pulled this kind of thing quite this long. He knew her too well, though. She was doing something he wouldn’t approve of, and had decided to apologize later. Or maybe not! Her apologizing days were probably over as far as he was concerned.

  The third time he awoke, he was back to panicking. He got out of bed before a dead image of his ex-wife could turn to him and say, “Why didn’t you save me, Toby?” He thought that maybe the one upside to Rachel having vanished and the kids being at camp would be the tiniest shot that he’d feel something akin to freedom, but he didn’t; he just felt untethered and lost. He thought of the kids now. When Hannah was a baby, there was a grocery store nearby that gave out balloons (this was before they realized the balloons were strangling the seagulls and discontinued the practice). Before they walked into the apartment, they’d say goodbye to the balloon by letting it go. They’d watch as it floated up and away, and Toby would feel disoriented and hug her tighter, like she was filled with helium, too.

  It was four-thirty. He went to the gym in his building, which only had an old StairMaster and dumbbells and two treadmills, though one was broken seemingly forever. He took a shower, and when he got out, he checked his phone to see what new misery the weather would bring him today and he saw that there was a missed call from Simone.

  It was six forty-five by now. Why would Simone be calling him? His stomach bottomed out and he sat, naked, on his bed, staring at the missed call. He called it back, but after a ring it got pushed to voicemail. He began to sweat through his shower-dampness.

  Fuck this, he thought. It was Rachel, pulling her regular shit—having Simone call to arrange a pickup so she wouldn’t have to deal with Toby. He got some pleasure thinking of Rachel arriving to pick up the kids to find out they weren’t even here. He participated in an extended fantasy about moving to another city with the children and letting her figure it out.

  At last, it was an acceptable time to show up at work. Early, yes, but acceptably early and he had some face time to make up for. Phillipa London arrived every day at seven A.M. He made sure to pass her office, since it was Phillipa whose promotion would create the vacancy that Bartuck said was basically (absolutely) Toby’s. He’d always thought of her as one of the good ones, a doctor who was dedicated to healing, with no tolerance for bullshit. But now that she was gunning for Bartuck’s job he thought that maybe she was like the rest of them. People thought the crisis in medicine had to do with insurance, but it also had to do with doctors who had checked out and now were just in it for a cash grab. He stopped in to talk to her.

  “Hey, Phillipa.”

  She was sitting at her desk, her straight beige hair pulled into a cyclonic cone on the back of her head. She looked up from a case file she was reading. She wore silky blouses and pencil skirts and pearls and big glasses.

  “Toby, hi.” Her nose had an upturned quality to it, so that when she was sitting, she looked like she was too good for you and when she was standing, well, who knew because she must have been at least five-ten or maybe even five-eleven.

  “I have a Wilson’s case, so I thought I’d check in, but”—he was flailing—“I’m waiting on lab results.”

  Her four fellows appeared at the door. “Dr. London, there’s a consult in the ICU.”

  She smiled at Toby. “I’m being paged.”

  Toby left her office and didn’t quite know where to go. Phillipa’s fellows called her Dr. London, and that was all you needed to know about her. Maybe it wasn’t ideal for Toby’s fellows to be so familiar with him, to download dirty apps for him and whatnot, but also he was breeding an environment where they felt comfortable enough to ask questions. He stood outside Phillipa’s office, checking his phone. Absent his parental responsibilities, absent the forward motion of knowing that he’d eventually have to get home and cook dinner, he was now drifting. He missed his kids.

  He told David Cooper that Karen was third on the transplant list. But Toby’s reserves were depleted, of both rest and fluids. In his weakened state, he was susceptible and primed for the acute jealousy of the thing he saw before him, which was an utterly normal marriage, a thing he had tried so hard at and had wanted so badly. It was an enormous privilege to take your spouse for granted until something bad happened; that was life, and that was beautiful, this idea that you’d just be trudging along and remember each other’s birthdays once a year and fall into bed exhausted and wonder if you had enough sex and then one day BAM! you become awakened to just how much you needed that person—some crisis like this, and that was all you’d need to remember how much you loved your spouse. That was all Toby had ever wanted. Sometimes you saw couples who seemed wild about each other, always holding hands, sitting on the same side of the table when they ate out, even when they were together alone. Rachel would say that those people were putting on a show, that they were covering up a real poison in their relationship, and that was the only time Toby ever felt like she was on his side: when she was working as hard as he was to make their misery seem normal.

  * * *

  —

  HE WALKED INTO his office and pretended to look at his phone because he needed a second to think. You couldn’t be alone in this hospital. There was nowhere to just sit and be. Even when you just wanted to zone out in the middle of your own office, everyone
could see. Nobody told you how important it would be to constantly appear stable while you were getting a divorce, because everything you said and did would be more meaningful and poignant than you’d intended. Standing alone in the middle of your office, staring into the middle distance, was not a sign of stability.

  He looked up and saw Joanie, who’d been on call overnight. “You look tired, Toby.” She put her hand on his upper arm, a move that could be taken for friendship but could also be taken for something else. She was looking hard into his eyes, trying to get behind them. He thought back to a month ago—was that just over a month ago?—when he felt young and new and like his whole life was ahead of him, and he sat in his lecture hall after class and Joanie had taken his phone from him and downloaded dating apps while he tried not to giggle. The summer had just begun then; it felt like it was never going to end. It felt like he would never feel pain again. Now, the heat was suffocating.

  “Is everything okay, Toby?” she asked. Why was she calling him by his first name? He had a pit in his stomach from the intimacy—a regret that he’d allowed himself to be unseated as a giant to his students. They had seen too much of his personal life; they’d seen him too sad lately, and too worried. He’d stopped instructing them. He was awful.

  He thought about telling her to call him Dr. Fleishman, but he couldn’t quite figure out a tone that would allow him to pull that off—Joking? Chiding? Authoritative?

  “Everything’s fine,” he said.

  She took another step toward him, and it wasn’t that she was close, it was more that she was advancing, and his only recourse was to let her or to step backward. He stepped backward.

  “I’m worried about you,” she said. “I know you’re going through something.”

  “What do you know?” He tried to laugh. “What do you think you know?”

  What was she doing? He didn’t think she had this kind of boldness in her. After this round of fellows had completed their first year, he’d taken them to Chelsea Piers to celebrate with a trapeze lesson—it was the conclusion of an extensive in-joke they’d all developed over the year about offsite corporate events that included team-building exercises. She’d been too afraid to try, but she’d watched, and when he was done with his turn, he’d sat on the side with her and talked to her and learned she was in a club consisting of mostly old men who went to Marx Brothers screenings and that she did improv and was learning how to play bridge. She’d said, “I’ve been in training for old age my whole life,” and he’d laughed, having not realized that she was funny; he’d thought she was just this mousy, studious type with alternative affectations, a wacky-neighbor character with no real footprint. He’d felt so bad for her, like how was she going to function in life if she couldn’t even hang (literally, figuratively) with her co-workers. Then, finally, a year into her fellowship, he learned that despite her quiet, despite her apparent wish to fade into the background, she was a real person. It was just that she hid herself in plain sight. He began to see everything she did as deliberate. He didn’t feel bad for her anymore. Instead, he just felt foolish, the way quiet, smart people can make you feel dumb just for existing.