Fleishman Is in Trouble

by Taffy Brodesser-Akner

  “You really want to get married?” Toby could not believe that anyone who had witnessed his summer thus far would ever think getting married was a good idea—not after Rachel, not after the lectures he and I gave Seth on marriage. In fact, he thought he was maybe going to be the impetus for a couple of totally fine marriages falling apart.

  “Not really. But being an unmarried man at a certain age, it’s like there’s no place for you in the world. The world needs you to have a family, or you’re always someone’s bachelor friend who he can use for a good time, but who has nothing substantial himself.” Toby was shocked, maybe unfairly but still, that Seth had such a depth of understanding of his place in the world. “My parents will die and then where will I go for Thanksgiving?”

  “I’m sure Libby would invite you,” Toby said. He hadn’t even thought about what he was going to do for holidays. “I can cook.”

  “No, I have plenty of invitations. But they rely on me being wantable, you know? I’m saying that that’s not the same as belonging somewhere. There are no unconditional invitations in my life.”

  Seth was right. The world knew what to do with a divorced man. Even a divorced man had a place to go and people to gather with. There were no outstanding questions about him. There were questions about men who’d never married, a suspicion about what kind of monster a healthy man in finance must be in order to not have settled down with someone by now.

  Now Toby sat, trying to look happy for his friend. What a relief it had been when Toby reentered the atmosphere and Seth was, for the most part, as he’d left him: a horndog bro with much if not all of his hair left. There was something pure and everlasting about Seth’s singleness: he loved parties, he loved girls, he loved sex. That had felt like a more stabilizing force than any other, as Toby contemplated divorce. But now he realized he’d been ignoring Seth. Not just recently. Maybe for the duration of their friendship. Seth was a real person. He wasn’t just someone who waited, frozen in time, for Toby to be ready to hang out with again. He’d had his opportunities, sure. But the truth was, he hadn’t gotten over his upbringing. His parents were so deeply worried that he wouldn’t marry someone who was Orthodox; now they were deeply worried he wouldn’t marry someone Jewish. He was worried that he would, that some kind of inertia would take him from his great big independent life and turn him into his miserable, God-fearing parents. All it made him was afraid.

  After college, Seth’s big thing was throwing theme parties in his loft in Williamsburg. He would have Super Bowl parties (where he wore eye black) and Easter egg hunts (where he dressed as a bunny) and sitcom character costume parties (Seth as Greg Brady). He had a seventies party one night where he tried to get people to agree to add a key-party element to it and curled his hair like it was a perm and wore an open shirt. He had enough charisma and magnetism and energy to almost pull it off. A full half of the women in attendance had put their keys in a bowl, though they were later shamed into removing them by the other half of the women in attendance. Toby had watched the keys’ removal from the fishbowl with equal parts profound disappointment and profound relief. Seth woke up the next morning with two women, whom he never saw again.

  Later his parties took on a new branding. He now called them “clubs.” There was an art club and a film club and a music club and there was a science club; there was even a sex club, where he got in front of the whole key-party problem by inviting a marital psychologist (“You didn’t hear this from me, but he basically saved the Clinton marriage!”) to speak on the topic of bringing back free love, which made everyone horny. In the film club, “the most decorated, tenured, award-winningest” NYU film professor (“She’ll probably be dean of the entire school in like five years tops”) came to discuss how Reaganomics affected movies in the eighties like RoboCop and Videodrome. The music club would have the classical music critic from the Observer (“a Pulitzer winner”) lecture on the topic “Is It Okay for Jews to Listen to Wagner?” Each club had different “memberships,” which was what he called his invite lists. There was some overlap. Toby, for example, was invited to all the clubs. Mostly the invite lists were divided only slightly among Seth’s male friends, but finely titrated to not include the overlap of the several women he was sleeping with concurrently, and their friends.

  Toby’s favorite of the clubs was Science Club, and most particularly its spinoff, Physics Club. Seth hired a Fulbright scholar (“He won during what was called the highest-stakes year that the Fulbrights ever had”) to discuss string theory or the Doppler effect or the Ehrenfest theorem, and all the Ivy Leaguers would ask questions, and purse their lips and nod thoughtfully at the answers, and afterward the slow, steady stream of booze and pot that were passed around the lectures would suddenly become something quantifiable in the bloodstream of everyone there and the whole thing would descend (or transcend) into a quiet and sloppy hookup carnival.

  By then, Toby was engaged to Rachel, and suddenly, Rachel kept finding conflicts with the timing of the clubs. Toby would RSVP no, but Seth kept insisting, You have to come, you have to come. Rachel continued to make excuses, saying always that they were busy with dinner with her work colleagues or dinner with their neighbor (had Toby agreed to these dinners before, or was she just making these things up?). Finally they found a night they could attend, a night so far in advance, where Rachel was taken by surprise and did not have alternative plans waiting in the wings. Finally she agreed to go, but dawdled in the apartment for so long that they were late, and by the time they got there, there was just low lighting and making out and dancing and it was clear that Rachel didn’t approve. “Oof,” she said. “It’s like Plato’s Retreat in here.”

  “It’s a physics lecture,” Toby answered. “Or it was before we showed up two hours late.”

  Seth saw them at the door and ran over. “You made it!”

  “Here we are. What’s new with you, man? You remember Rachel?”

  “It’s been forever,” Rachel said.

  “Of course.” He kissed her on the cheek. “Listen, things are dimming here. I gotta keep up the energy.” He left and put on an African mask that had been lying on the table. He called out to the room: “I am the god of copulation! Pray to me!”

  “See?” Toby said. “He’s always up for a good time.”

  She watched Seth start a small conga line of young women across the room. “Is Seth depressed chronically, or just tonight?”

  He thought she was being a bitch, just hating his friends again—“I don’t hate them, I just don’t see why you like them so much! Explain it to me!”—but now he thought about that night again. He could finally see it clearly. Seth had staved it all off by being the drunkest guy in the room, and the most oversexed guy in the room. He’d pretended he was having so much fun that he allowed himself to function as other people’s ids, their good times, the guy they went out with when their conventional, totally satisfying lives hit a snag. Toby had never not wanted his charisma, his height, his looks, but now he saw it: Seth didn’t have anything else. He didn’t have any friends. He didn’t have anyone close to him. Toby had dropped off and I had dropped off and nobody had taken our place. We had probably not even been good friends to him in the first place. Why hadn’t Toby understood this before? Listen to the patient, etc., etc.

  Now Toby asked, “Did you talk to Vanessa about what happened?”

  “I don’t want to worry her. I’ll have another job in no time. My old boss called me this morning that he’s got a lead on a new shop and he’s taking us all with him.”

  “Speaking as a former married person, you seem off to a terrible start,” Toby said. “If you’re lying now, when the stakes are absolutely nothing, I hate to see you in five years when she gets fat or has a miscarriage.”

  “But I love her. I really do. She’s gentle and nice. And it’s just time. I don’t know. Are you supposed to want to get married? Or are you just supposed to marr
y the person you’re into when you decide it’s time to get married?”

  “Don’t ask me. I didn’t do it right. Do you know she’ll say yes?”

  “I think she’ll say yes,” he said. He was becoming irate. “Got any more questions? I mean, we’re, like, in love? She’s a wonderful person? Is that a good reason? You don’t seem happy for me. I was always happy for you.”

  The waitress finally came along to ask for their orders. Toby ordered the vegetable soup with no rice but was told that there was already rice in it, so he ordered the Cobb salad with no egg yolk or blue cheese or bacon. (“Do you have any diet ice for my friend here?” Seth asked. The waitress looked confused and Seth laughed, which made her even more confused, so she gave up and walked away.)

  “I’m happy for you, man,” Toby said. “I’m sorry, I’m just—I am not in what the psychiatric community would call ‘a good place.’ Here, let me give you a blessing: May her uterus be bountiful and yield unlimited quantities of finance babies, and may they thrive in a bull market.” Seth smiled a little. “May her dowry include many different varieties of vaping marijuanas, and some Ecstasy, and may she remain too stoned to notice how easily your eyes wander to her much younger cousins.”

  “We need to celebrate,” Seth said. “Where’s Libby?”

  “She’s at Disney World. She sent me a picture from the Peter Pan ride.”

  “I cannot picture that. She would dissolve around happiness.”

  “I feel like people there with her should be able to demand their money back.”

  Before they left, Seth said to Toby, “I can’t believe it was so bad for you. I always liked Rachel. I thought she was hot and nice. And you seemed happy. And then just one day you weren’t?” Even with his good friends, the questions were never about him.

  “Nah.” He answered them anyway. “It was like the fall of Rome: slowly, then all at once.”

  Seth nodded in a show of sympathy and all Toby could think was: Haven’t you been listening?

  * * *

  —

  TOBY CALLED HIS therapist, Carla, whom he’d stopped seeing actively when the apps took over his attention span and his time, but it was August and she was gone to the island where mental health professionals vanished to in the summer. The useless social worker from school was even more useless than usual, camping in the Adirondacks with her family for two weeks. He called mental health services at the hospital but was told that all adolescent and pediatric psychologists were out until September. This is what happened when an entire field of medicine was as disrespected as psychologists. They made their own rules, and one of them was that nobody was allowed to have a breakdown during August, and the other was that this was fucking Europe and they got to take a whole month off from work.

  Maybe couples therapists didn’t go on vacation. He wondered if the counselor he and Rachel had nearly beaten to death with their vitriol was still around. Maybe he should call that guy and tell him what was going on with his patient. Dr. Joe? Was that his name? Yes, it was just about two years ago, and Toby had been begging Rachel to go see a therapist, which, naturally, she viewed as a personal assault. Then, out of nowhere, she finally agreed. That was a time when he was still sure that if Rachel could just see her anger and her nastiness through a neutral screen, she could get help and they could move beyond it. But he was also already thinking that maybe this was a last-ditch effort before realizing that this was not something that could be fixed.

  It was the same bullshit. She said: “I feel like I’m being punished for earning a living.” And “I feel like I have to tiptoe around my success, that he loves what the money brings and hates me for bringing it.” And “I talk to him plenty nicely. He screams and throws things when he’s angry and I do my best to stay neutral. I do it for the children. I wish he would, too.” He was made physically weak from her accusations and her lies. Were they lies? Or did she actually believe all of this? As much as Toby tried, it became clear that the advantage in couples therapy accrued to the person who could hold their shit together. He wanted to cry, he wanted to hold his fists up at her and make her hear him. As they went back and forth, Toby trying to refute every half sentence, even knowing that that was the wrong thing to do, he could feel himself losing the room. Dr. Joe took his glasses off and used the heel of the same hand to wipe his eye in what appeared to be poorly veiled exhaustion.

  “Look, Rachel!” he wanted to say. “We broke a couples therapist! That’s how bad we are! Just let me go!”

  * * *

  —

  TOBY HAD MARRIED Rachel for many reasons, and one of the main ones was that she wasn’t crazy. She was pretty, she was nice (at the time), she was smart (he thought), she loved him back. But mostly, she wasn’t crazy. Crazy wasn’t an insult the way he used it, he swore it, particularly after he called me crazy a few times. It was just a designation, a category. Yes, he admired my particular brand of eccentricity and erraticism. Yes, it was one he didn’t want to live with. He would love a dinner party full of crazy people. But he didn’t want a life with a crazy person. And now look. Now look what he had to deal with.

  Maybe he should have reconsidered his stance on craziness. He imagined that women who were crazy were constantly emitting their irrationality. Rachel was difficult and opinionated, but she always made sense, and he was very grateful for that. Now he wondered if she’d just been holding it all in, and so when the dam broke, it flooded. In the law of opposites, it now made sense. He was so not crazy, he was so measured and rational (according to him), that of course the person he ended up with was crazy. Why else would she disappear like this?

  Once, I’d written a short story—this was back the first time when I thought I might write fiction—and it ended up in some anthology. Three of us from the anthology were asked to read our stories at a Barnes & Noble on the Upper West Side. Toby showed up. He told me he was worried no one else was coming, which, well, no one else came.

  After, Toby asked if I wanted to get a drink. I lived in the Village back then, in a dreamy studio on Bleecker Street. We began walking toward the subway, but we got there and passed it. I pulled us off onto Sixty-fourth Street and ducked into the street-level doorway of a brownstone to light a joint. I’d been sleeping with—trying to be the girlfriend of—a copy editor at the magazine who kept leaving pot at my apartment, and for the first time in my life, I’d been smoking it regularly.

  “Jesus, Elizabeth,” Toby said.

  “This is my enjoyment, Tobe.” We walked quietly for another minute.

  “That story was good,” Toby said. “I remember always thinking that you were my funniest and smartest friend. And also that you would never live up to your potential.”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “No, just that I’m really proud of you. I think you’ll do something big someday.”

  I took out a cigarette. He indicated that I should give him one, too, and he took my sweater off my bag, where it was hanging, and wrapped it around his head like a Bedouin.

  “Is that so she won’t smell smoke on you?” I asked.

  “May no man find favor in you,” he said in his Beggar Woman voice.

  We stopped walking.

  “Because I’m so fucking crazy?” I asked.

  “What?” he asked.

  “I’m so fucking crazy,” I said.

  “Wow, you never forget anything, do you? I was drunk. That was ten years ago. I meant something else.”

  “What did you mean, then?”

  “That I just couldn’t take your ups and downs. I couldn’t be responsible for them.”

  “You were not responsible for my ups and downs ever, or for anything about me. We were just friends.”

  Toby was quiet.

  “I’m glad you ended up with someone so sane, Toby,” I said. “I’m glad you ended up with everything you ever wanted. You got your
girl on a career track, you got your great job and your big apartment. That’s just fucking great. I’m happy for you. But one day you’re going to understand that you were so busy being allergic to craziness that you have not realized you have drowned in something boring and predictable and unsmart and insidious.”

  I hailed a cab and waved goodbye. He had been so concerned that he’d end up with someone crazy that he’d accidentally ended up with someone cruel and unloving. At home, Rachel smelled the cigarette despite his best efforts, but only after realizing he was holding a woman’s sweater that didn’t belong to her. She didn’t ask him whose sweater it was, or who he’d had the cigarette with.

  The next day they learned they were expecting Hannah.

  * * *

  —

  SUDDENLY, IT WAS four o’clock, so he rushed back to the lobby of the Y for his kids. He stood as the lone man among the large-sunglassed mothers who talked chaotically in packs of three and four and tank tops that said RUN THE WORLD and NEVERTHELESS, SHE PERSPIRED. Soon their children came bouncing downstairs filled with requests and demands, and among them were Hannah and Solly, who looked like they had just attended a funeral. His poor kids. Toby waved to get their attention. Solly, finally seeing him, ran over and hugged him for a full twenty seconds. Hannah wouldn’t even look at him.

  They walked in silence for two blocks, Solly holding his father’s hand tightly. Finally, Toby spoke to Hannah. “I know you don’t want to be there,” he said. “I don’t know what else I can do.”

  “Everybody knows why I got kicked out of camp,” Hannah said.

  Bubbles had taken two separate dumps over the course of their absence: one on Toby’s bed and one on the bathroom floor. “At least one is in the bathroom, Dad,” Solly said. “We don’t have to give him back, right?” There was something heartbreaking about Bubbles. He trembled constantly. Toby had looked up whether he might be cold, but the veterinary forum he found only said that dachshunds tend to be anxious. Welcome to the family, buddy, Toby thought.