by Zoe Fishman
“Wow, Sylvie, thanks.” Paul looked at her, his eyes pleading with her not to be angry with him. She gave him a small smile, indicating that the moment had passed. “I shouldn’t, but I’m going to eat a million of these.” He laid his crutches on the floor and sat down.
“Dad, they’re pancakes, not meth.”
“Meth! What do you know about meth, young man? I’ll show you meth; give me those flapjacks.” He speared three on his fork and plunked them onto his plate.
“Relax, nobody is doing meth.”
The thing was, Sylvie had come close to talking about Delilah, almost always on this day. But then Paul would inevitably say something ridiculous, as he had just now, and the door inside Sylvie, the one that led to Delilah, would slam and lock all over again.
But what if today was different? Paul didn’t mean to be insensitive; she knew that deep down, even as her anger still simmered from before. He just didn’t know what else to say. And she was so sensitive. Too sensitive. Which for Sylvie manifested itself as defensive, angry, immovable. Until today. With this pill.
She whispered Delilah’s name, testing it on her tongue. Each syllable was a relief, like loosening a too-tight belt. She would do it. She would commemorate the significance of the day. She would say Delilah’s name out loud, not just whisper it. But how? When?
Sylvie considered her options as she watched Paul and Teddy eat, pleased to see Paul consuming gluten so voraciously. Since he’d started up with his running, biking and swimming nine gazillion miles—to nowhere, as far as Sylvie was concerned—few morsels of food passed his lips that hadn’t been analyzed by the nutritional lab that had become his brain. And since he had been knocked off his bike, forget it. Sylvie was surprised she hadn’t found him naked in front of the mirror, pinching his nonexistent muffin top like a teenage girl in trouble.
When Paul decided to become a triathlete, it was like he had invented exercise. On the rare occasions she wandered down into the basement that had been Teddy’s playroom but had morphed into Paul’s personal locker room and gym, she felt as though she couldn’t breathe, like the bikes and sneakers and gloves and free weights were suffocating her. There was no room for her to take anything up, because his hobby took up their whole lives, all three of theirs. She couldn’t so much as don a sports bra without Paul waxing poetic on the benefits of interval training. And don’t get her started on the money he spent in the name of his newfound hobby. Sylvie hated it. All of it.
Still thinking of Delilah, Sylvie searched the kitchen, settling on the cabinet above the refrigerator. Quickly, before she could change her mind, she walked over to the cavernous pantry off the side of the kitchen and pulled open its levered door. Grabbing the collapsible stepstool from inside it, she walked it over to the refrigerator and set it up to reach her target. She climbed its three steps—Teddy and Paul with their backs to her, feasting still—and opened it.
The JCC, she called it, because that’s where the yarmulkes and menorahs, challah covers and the Seder plate, kiddush cups and candlesticks lived. Mementos of a life they sometimes lived, or the life Sylvie had wanted them to live, anyway, in the beginning. She was Jewish, had grown up in a moderately religious home in New Jersey—synagogue on holidays and the occasional Shabbat, a disastrous summer at sleep-away camp, a Bat Mitzvah—and so even though she had fallen in love with an agnostic man who had no intention of ever converting, she had been determined to raise their children as such.
But something had happened to Sylvie’s fervor as the years had gone by, as life twisted and turned its way forward. And certainly her faith had been challenged by the death of Delilah. Even so, she dragged Teddy to Hebrew School every week, sometimes by the scruff of his neck since he was so uninterested.
She wanted Teddy to know he was Jewish, to feel it in his bones the way she did, but lately she had had to face the fact that he just didn’t. Whether it was his age or the impending Bar Mitzvah he made no secret about dreading, she wasn’t sure. But she knew she would rather it be that than her fault for marrying a goy, as her father had said so many years before. She hadn’t spoken to him for four months after he’d said that. Finally, he had called her to apologize, which was a very big deal. Max Schwartz didn’t apologize.
She and her father had resumed their relationship, he had paid for the wedding, he was even friendly to Paul. But there was a chasm there, always had been, between the two families: New Jersey Jews and Southern Baptists did not blend well no matter how many drinks you had, and Sylvie would know. She had done the research.
Sylvie rustled around in the cabinet, her hand searching for the small white candle encased in its glass votive. She found it, finally, her fingers closing around its circumference as she pulled it toward her. A thin layer of grime and dust had collected on its surface, a result of its two-year residency. Her mother had given it to Sylvie, on the first anniversary of Delilah’s death, but Sylvie had shoved it into the back of the cabinet, annoyed.
She blew on it now in an attempt to clear the accumulated dirt, but it had embedded itself in the wax. She closed the door, candle in hand, and climbed down the stepstool.
“Mom, what are you doing?” called Teddy from the table, having turned around to see her carefully placing the candle on the countertop.
“Lighting a candle for Delilah,” she answered, pulling open a drawer to retrieve a matchbook from a trendy, overpriced restaurant she and Paul had gone to on their last date night, a date so far in the past she couldn’t even remember which month it had taken place in.
“What?” asked Paul.
She would not be irritated by the eagerness in his voice, Sylvie told herself. She would not. “A Yahrzeit candle,” she answered.
“Wait for me,” said Teddy, jumping up.
“What’s a Yahrzeit candle?” asked Paul. “Get me my crutches, will you, T?”
Teddy held them out to Paul as he picked up his leg with both hands to forcibly move it over the bench, his cast landing on the other side with a slight thud.
“It’s a candle you light to honor the dead,” answered Teddy. “Right, Mom?”
He was beside her now, with Paul nipping at his heels. He looked up at her, just slightly since he was nearly her height, waiting for her affirmation.
“That’s right, Teddy.”
She squeezed his thin arm. Paul leaned forward on his crutches, eyeing the candle curiously and reminding her of a T. rex in the process.
Sylvie struck the match.
“Wait, we need to say a prayer, Mom,” said Teddy, blowing it out before she could make contact with the wick. “Where are the yarmulkes?”
“I’ll get them.” So he was Jewish, this Bar Mitzvah–dreading son of hers.
She reclimbed the stepstool and snagged two black discs from the cabinet.
“Here,” she offered.
“Could you put it on my head for me?” asked Paul, gesturing toward his crutches.
“Sure.”
He leaned forward, and she placed it atop the bald spot that had gone from marble- to golf-ball-size in the past year, despite his best efforts. She liked that bald spot a million times more than his six-pack; she wished he knew that.
“Okay, T, do you want to start?” asked Sylvie. He took a deep breath and began.
Sylvie closed her eyes and mouthed the words along with him, a kaleidoscope of painful memories resurfacing. There was her belly, as taut as a drum, and there was little Teddy, touching it tentatively. And there was the pale blue of her hospital gown, the tops of her knees, her whole body shaking in those ice-cold silver stirrups. And Paul’s face, his eyes as still as glass as he met her gaze.
“Mom?” asked Teddy. She opened her eyes, summoned. “Mom, I’m done. Was that good?” he asked, looking at her hopefully.
“Beautiful, Teddy. Really beautiful. Thanks.”
The three of them stared down into the flame, Sylvie feeling its faint heat against her cheeks.
Chapter Two
Teddy
Teddy emerged from his front door reluctantly, the morning soundtrack of his neighborhood—birds tweeting, garbage trucks sighing, the occasional pair of moms in those weird skirt/shorts things he could never figure out shrieking in commiseration as they power walked by—blaring.
Man, what he wouldn’t give for a phone to play music on, a pair of headphones to escape into, he thought as he began his walk to school. But his mom refused to buy him one, claiming he was too young even though every other kid in seventh grade had one. No wonder he didn’t have any friends; he may as well have time traveled from 1800.
Teddy considered the possibilities of that story arc. Why anyone would want to find themselves in seventh grade again was beyond him. But maybe that was the point? A lord or baron dressed like Christopher Columbus, just plopped behind him in Spanish, sent ahead in time to save the world from Donald Trump. Teddy pulled his green notepad and pencil out of the back pocket of his navy cargo shorts, making a note. He liked to jot down the ideas he had. You never knew.
He was going to be a screenwriter, maybe a director someday—he wasn’t sure. But he had ideas all the time, and sometimes they were decent. He had seen a lot of movies; he knew decent. He slid his notepad back into his pocket and continued on, pausing for a moment to face off with a squirrel, its entire body vibrating as it devoured the acorn it held in its front paws.
“Hello,” he said. The squirrel stared at him a moment longer, and then scampered away, its bounty stored for later consumption. Great, he was talking to squirrels now.
He rounded the block, stepping around bags upon brown bags of lawn clippings and leaves hugging the perimeter of the enormous brick house on the corner. His house was big, but this house, it was like something out of Gone with the Wind.
He hadn’t cared for that movie. It was too much for him, all the sighing and the way the actors spoke, like their noses were held together by chip clips. High up on a green hill this house sat, its redbrick exterior flanked by two concrete lions at the bottom of a staircase leading to its expansive porch and incredibly tall, like tall enough to imply that a giant lived inside, white door.
There were a lot of big houses in his neighborhood, but this one was the biggest. And as far as Teddy could tell, just an old couple lived there. What did they need all those rooms for, anyway? It had to be lonely, all that extra space, filled with what he imagined to be dark, heavy furniture no one was allowed to touch. What if they were vampires? Interesting. He pulled out his notepad again, making a note.
At the intersection, he pushed the Walk button. There was one four-lane road between his house and his school, but other than that, it was a fairly uneventful journey. He could do it with his eyes closed, which he knew, because he had done it more than once.
As he waited for the light to change, he thought of the candle his mom had lit for Delilah. It was the equivalent of aliens beaming down from outer space and into his backyard. She never did stuff like that. What had gotten into her? he wondered. Whatever it was, he liked it.
Behind him, he heard them coming. Taylor and Kai—girls from his grade. The most popular girls, if you were keeping track, and of course everyone was. It was just part of being in middle school, Teddy had noticed, this popularity percentage point phenomenon. Even he, someone who came in at a steady .02 on his best day, was well aware of the hierarchy that had become law the moment sixth grade had begun.
It was strange, the stock characters the popular kids had turned into, as though they had taken a summer class he hadn’t enrolled in after fifth-grade graduation. For God’s sake, Taylor used to eat her boogers in the first grade—Teddy had seen her do it—and now she was flipping her blond hair around like someone in a shampoo commercial.
The girls didn’t even say hello as they came to a stop beside him, these girls Teddy had been in class with since kindergarten. He imagined a zombie walking up, ripping their heads off with his bare, purple and rotting hands and gnawing on their neck meat. Neck Meat II: Tween Revenge. A small smile played across his lips as he looked out into the traffic.
Teddy saw it happening before the drivers did, he was sure. An enormous white Suburban, with stick-figure replicas of a dad with a tie on, a ponytailed mom in a sun visor and three children in descending height spinning a basketball, wielding a baseball bat and holding pom-poms, respectively, pasted across its back window, veered into the left lane suddenly, completely sideswiping an unassuming gray Toyota Corolla in the process. Teddy thought of his mother. She hated those stickers with a passion. Oh for Christ’s sake, she muttered every time they saw one, which was often.
Metal scraped metal as brakes yelped and glass shattered; the sound of the Corolla’s side mirror slamming into the ground. The baby-blue Prius behind the Corolla stopped just short of slamming into its rear, as the driver tried to steer herself to the far lane, in front of the Suburban. There was no road shoulder to speak of, and so all around them, the other cars dealt with the accident’s aftermath, attempting to get around the inconvenient mess and on with their day.
“Holy shit,” remarked Taylor with zero emotion, her vocal cords as limp as boiled spaghetti noodles.
“Seriously,” said Kai, her voice at exactly the same ineffectual register.
The light had turned in the meantime, and the three of them walked across the street together, single file, their heads turned toward the scene.
Safe on the other side, they stopped and looked at one another. Teddy thought this was probably the first time Taylor and Kai had looked at him in two years. It was certainly the first time he had been up close to either of them in that long, probably even longer. Kai was pretty, he thought. He had forgotten the freckles spread haphazardly across both of her cheeks, like constellations.
“You want to go over there? Tell the police what we saw?” Teddy asked.
“Are you kidding?” asked Taylor. “No way. I don’t want to be late. It was just a sideswipe, anyway; it’s not like anyone is dead. My mom does it, like, twice a month.”
“But we saw what happened,” said Teddy. “It’s our obligation to help.”
“What are you, like a Boy Scout or something?” asked Taylor, flicking her hair again.
A blond strand escaped, floating through a sunbeam that filtered through the trees before disappearing onto the sidewalk. Teddy made eye contact with Kai for a millisecond before she broke, examining her white Converse sneakers instead.
“Come on, Kai. Let’s go,” commanded Taylor. Kai turned dutifully, and they strolled off at a quick clip, leaving Teddy alone.
He watched them leave. People, most people, were really just assholes, he had noticed. That was a good way to start a movie, he thought next, a voiceover saying just that as the camera panned in on this exact scene. He whipped out his notepad to jot it down and then pivoted left, toward the accident.
Teddy followed the sidewalk approaching the two women, who were out of their cars. The SUV driver was just as he had imagined, shorter than him, even, wearing a visor as her sticker had promised, her highlighted hair pulled into a ponytail, and dressed in head-to-toe spandex, the kind his mother couldn’t stand. He knew this because she commented on it every time they were out in public together. Sometimes she treated Teddy like he was a girlfriend who would somehow understand her anger, instead of like a son who had no opinion about spandex to speak of other than that sometimes it looked nice on butts. Hers was not one of those butts, Teddy noticed.
Ahead of the spandexed woman a few feet, the other woman stood next to her Corolla, smoking a cigarette. He approached carefully. There was a girl on the other side of her, as skinny as a paper doll, scowling into the sky.
“Hello,” Teddy offered tentatively, feeling self-conscious but also smug, since he was doing the right thing.
“Hey,” the woman replied in a thick Southern accent, grinding out her cigarette on the sidewalk with the toe of her purple plastic clog.
She was dressed in pink scrubs with hyperactive puppies emblazoned
all over them. Teddy was nauseated looking at them, the pancakes from that morning gurgling in his stomach, so he focused on her face.
It was heart shaped, like a cat, with wrinkles around her blue eyes that extended like tree branches. Her curly brown hair sat atop her shoulders crisply, shellacked into position by copious amounts of gel. It was a lot to take in, and for a moment, Teddy began to regret his piety.
The paper-doll girl regarded Teddy with a curious squint. Her long legs were encased in light blue denim and her pink T-shirt read And? in rhinestones. On her feet were fuchsia flip-flops. She had the same curly brown hair as her mom, but instead of being frozen into submission, it was wild and free, escaping in tendrils from the enormous bun she had piled on the top of her head. Her blue eyes were fringed with what appeared to be purple mascara despite the fact that the rest of her face was completely bare.
Definitely not from his school, thought Teddy, falling immediately and desperately in love.
“I saw what happened,” said Teddy.
“You saw that bitch sideswipe us like we were in the goddamn Indy 500?” asked the girl.
“Krystal, if you don’t watch your damn language, I swear,” the woman barked at her. She looked at Teddy. “You saw it?”
“Yes ma’am,” replied Teddy. “Just thought I’d come over here in case you wanted me to tell the police or anything.”
The girl, he knew her name was Krystal now, regarded him with a degree more of interest, Teddy thought, but he couldn’t be sure. Sirens heralded a cop’s arrival, sending traffic scurrying like ants around an apple slice.
“That’s nice of you,” the woman in scrubs declared, squinting at Teddy as though she didn’t know what to make of him. “See, Krystal? This boy is a good Samaritan. He could teach you a thing or two, that’s the truth.” Krystal rolled her eyes. “I’m Patty,” she said. “And this is my daughter, Krystal, but I guess you probably know that already. Say hi, Krystal.”