by Zoe Fishman
“I don’t know, Mom. A dress?” he answered. He trudged into the garage.
“But what kind of dress? I’m in Dress Barn now.” In the background, Paul could hear the faint rhythm of soft rock.
“Someone named a store Dress Barn? That’s horrible.”
“I know, I don’t understand it either. And the dresses are pretty, so it’s even more of a misnomer. Anyway, do I need to cover my arms? I read online that I can’t show my shoulders or my knees.”
“Mom, I think that’s only for Orthodox Jews. That’s not us. You can wear whatever you want.”
Paul made his way through the boxes and boxes of shit he had amassed. Click, click, buy. Click, click, buy. Every time he felt useless or unappreciated or dismissed, it was click, buy, click, buy. And since that was most of the time, he had created quite a mess, literally and figuratively. It had taken Sylvie months to catch on, thanks to his covert maneuvering and the fact that he handled the bills, but then one morning she had gone down to the basement to look for who knew what, and the jig had been up. Boy, had it been up. He made a mental note to check in with David, to see what had been deemed worthy for sale.
“‘Us’?” said his mother, as Paul cradled the phone between his ear and shoulder to push a very heavy box out of the way. Free weights. An entire box of five- and ten-pound free weights. What had he been thinking?
There was a tone to his mother’s voice that he knew all too well, that he was going to ignore. He had been raised Southern Baptist, and his mother still was, although she had stopped going to church years ago. And although Paul hadn’t converted to marry Sylvie, it was a bone of contention between he and his mother that she was forbidden to give Teddy gifts on Christmas or to send a chocolate bunny on Easter. Sylvie was adamant about it, and Paul certainly didn’t care; he was an atheist anyway. But his mother was a different story.
“Mom, wear whatever you want, seriously,” said Paul. “Is that it?”
He spotted the bike, pushed into the far-left corner, covered in cobwebs. Maybe he’d used it twice? He couldn’t remember.
“No, that’s not it,” she answered curtly. “What happened to the party? Sylvie sent me an email. Heaven forbid she pick up the phone to call me.”
“Teddy doesn’t want one, so we’re not having one. Just the service at the synagogue and brunch here after.”
“And dinner Friday night at your house, but Sylvie’s parents are coming Wednesday.”
“We are? They are?” Wednesday through Sunday was a long time and broke the cardinal three-day rule. One minute—hell, one second—over a three-day visit with her parents, or his for that matter, never ended well. Never.
“Yes, don’t y’all talk?” He ignored her question. “So what do I wear to that?”
“To what?”
“Dinner Friday, Paul! Good lord, this is like a game of Who’s on First?”
“Mom,” said Paul. “It’s dinner, not the Oscars.”
“Well, excuse me for wanting to be respectful,” she answered in a huff. “I just don’t want to show up looking like a fool. What do I know about Shabbat?” She pronounced it with a hard a—Shaybat.
“Mom, really, don’t worry. You always look nice.”
This was not true, but Paul appreciated her respect, even if it was halfhearted. He was sure he would receive the same phone call soon, from his sister, Gloria.
“Well, thank you. And your father? What should he wear?”
“I don’t know, Mom! A button-down and khakis, I guess?”
“And we’re staying with you?” she asked.
“Are you?” Paul’s heart sank. His mother was silent.
“Yes, you’re staying with us,” said Paul.
Sylvie was not going to like this. He grabbed the bike by its handlebars, pulling it toward him.
“And what about Max and Barbara?” his mother asked.
“A hotel, I guess?” I hope, thought Paul.
“Fancy,” said his mother. “Well, if they’re coming on Wednesday, we’re going to come on Wednesday too. We don’t want to miss anything.”
“Okay, Mom, I really have to go.” Paul wasn’t listening anymore. His ankle throbbed, but he was going to hose this damn thing off and have a go at it, come hell or high water.
“Okay, okay. Bye, Paul.”
“Bye, Mom.”
He slid his phone back into his pocket and dragged the bike out into the sun, covering both of his hands in dust and grime in the process. A spider crawled over his knuckles and he yelped, flailing his hand in exasperation and sending it flying into the yard.
Paul stood in front of the bike once he had it positioned just right, sweat dripping from his brow and pooling at the small of his back underneath his T-shirt.
“Shit,” he said, getting a good look at it. He was going to have to clean the damn thing unless he wanted a spider to crawl up his shorts. He sighed heavily and turned on his heel, limping back up the stairs and into the house to get the necessary supplies.
Back outside, a wave of exhaustion swept over him. He got to work anyway, squirting a translucent blob of dish soap into the red bucket and then filling it with water from the hose; plunging a blue rag into it and then following the dusty and dirty curves of the bike until it turned back to its original color. Plunge, wring, rinse, repeat. He was really sweating now; his shirt stuck to his torso like a second skin. But he couldn’t take it off, even though he desperately wanted to. He wasn’t in shape.
Max and Barbara Schwartz. They had never liked him. He had always been not smart enough, not driven enough, not Jewish at all, and they had resented him for winning their daughter over anyway.
He plunged the cloth back into the bucket and wrung out the water onto the white cement of the driveway before starting on the bike’s black leather seat, thinking.
When Paul had finally met Barbara and Max, after nearly a year of dating Sylvie, he had wanted them to like him. Of course he had. And he really wasn’t worried about it; everybody liked him. Paul Snow was a likable guy.
But from the start they had been so cold to him, shaking his hand but barely making eye contact, asking Sylvie all about herself over brunch at the crowded restaurant she had picked. Barely even acknowledging that he was there. Despite this, when Sylvie had gone to the bathroom, Paul had told Max and Barbara that he wanted to marry their daughter. That had been his plan all along—he had bought the ring, he was doing it whether they gave him their blessing or not, but he was just being polite.
“But we don’t even know you,” Barbara had said.
“I guess you’re going to have to get to know me, then,” Paul had replied, his nerves shot to hell, but he wasn’t going to let them know that.
When Sylvie had returned, they had all put on their best smiles and continued with their eggs Benedict and French toasts. Paul had finished his Bloody Mary in a single gulp.
And when they had gotten married, at some country club in New Jersey with two hundred people Paul barely knew, Sylvie’s father had cornered him by the bathroom.
“You have to work hard now,” he had told him, “now that you’re her husband.”
As if Paul didn’t work hard in the first place. As if Max had made any effort to know him or his work ethic at all.
The bike gleamed in the sun, its silver paint revealed. Paul took a step back to admire it and then plunged the rag back into the bucket to tackle the spokes of each wheel.
Her parents had warmed to him only when his company had started to do well, when he and Sylvie had moved out of their tiny apartment and into the house they had bought for next to nothing: the worst house in the best neighborhood that Paul had renovated top to bottom by himself. And he would be lying if he hadn’t felt satisfaction from that approval. But then they’d gifted them with a big check, for new furniture, Sylvie’s mother had said, and Paul had been angry all over again.
“We can afford our own furniture. Hell, I can build most of it,” he’d proclaimed angrily to Sylvie aft
er she had waved the check at him, which had arrived tucked into a Hallmark card in the mail.
“Of course we can,” she had said, “but why should we if we can use this instead?”
Sylvie didn’t seem to understand the kind of obligation a check like that came with, the unspoken debt inked into the dollar sign. But Paul did. And when Sylvie had gotten pregnant with Teddy, the time had come to pay up.
“You’re going to raise the baby Jewish,” Barbara had told him, during one of their interminable visits. They were in the waiting room at the doctor’s office for Sylvie’s first ultrasound. Sylvie was signing in at the front desk, leaving them alone together.
That had always been the plan. Paul had no problem with it, but to be told instead of asked had sent him into a rage so blinding that he couldn’t even see the screen when Teddy’s tiny alien profile had shown up.
Paul was finished with the bike. Its silver chrome gleamed, the spokes of its wheels only slightly tarnished by time. Paul was very tired, every muscle in his body protesting further activity, but he was determined. He poured the dirty water out of the red bucket onto the green grass and draped the rag over the banister of the stairs leading up to the deck.
He got onto the bike. It was still the right height; his feet slid into the buckles on the pedals perfectly. The sun was high in the blue sky; he could feel it burning the back of his neck.
He pulled his T-shirt over his head and tossed it onto the concrete. Fuck it, it was hot. He began to pedal slowly, forcing himself not to look down at his pale midsection. He could feel it bulging over the elastic waist of his shorts.
Max and Barbara. Paul had thought that surely Teddy’s birth would transform them, the way all parents seemed to be transformed by the gift of grandchildren. Alas, this had not been the case. They were interested in Teddy, but in a removed way. Not once did they offer to babysit so Sylvie and Paul could go out when they came to visit. Instead, Barbara would take Sylvie to lunch, or she and Max would go to the movies after Teddy had gone to bed, as though they were on some sort of vacation. Sylvie had confronted them about it, but it had had no impact. Not much seemed to impact them. They were an impenetrable wall of self-involvement.
His mother had her faults, but at least she was a bona fide grandmother, taking Teddy for overnights when he was little, stuffing him with processed crap he never got at home, buying him ICEEs at the movie theater. Not so much in recent years, as Teddy turned the corner into tweendom, but that wasn’t her fault so much as just the natural progression of things, of life.
Paul pedaled a little faster. And then: Delilah. What a disaster Max and Barbara had been. Just awful.
Sylvie’s labor had come a month early, but they had gone in worried only about the baby’s prematurity. Despite Sylvie’s age, there had been no signs of distress; it had been a healthy pregnancy. Delilah had looked perfect and beautiful in each ultrasound. It had never occurred to Paul that she might be born with some sort of previously undetected complication, much less not alive.
Paul took a deep breath and held it for a moment, fighting the surge of emotion in his chest.
When the doctor had not found a heartbeat, when he had told them that Delilah was dead, Paul had felt as though a freight train had pinned him to the tracks and was roaring over him, the chug of its wheels so loud in his ears he couldn’t remember hearing anything else. He had never felt so useless in his life. There was nothing he could do to change it, to bring his daughter to life. Nothing.
He’d watched Sylvie push, had tried to hold her hand, but she had swatted him away. She was not useless; she had a job to do, and she was going to do it, just like she always did. Paul had been a little scared and a lot in awe of her then, at her ferocity in the face of such sorrow.
When Delilah had arrived, Paul had seen her. He had touched her dark head of hair with his hand. But Sylvie had refused to look at her, did not want to hold her, just closed her eyes and shook her head.
And when the question of burial had come up, Sylvie had insisted on cremation. She wanted the hospital to handle it, to handle everything. When Paul had tried to reason with her, she had been as adamant as he had ever seen her, and that was saying a lot. Sylvie was adamant often.
“Let them handle it,” she had said in a monotone, looking right through him with tired eyes. “Everything. I just want to go home. Please, just take me home.”
Paul stopped pedaling, his head down. The tears, he let them come. They rolled down his cheeks. So that’s what he had done. He had not held Delilah either; he had refused the footprints and the photos as Sylvie had told him to; he had let the hospital handle her cremation. Because that’s what Sylvie had wanted. It’s not what he had wanted at all, but it’s what she had wanted, and Paul’s opinion held no weight in the wake of such unrivaled despair.
When Barbara and Max had found out that they had left Delilah behind, all hell had broken loose. They’d flown down, presumably to comfort their daughter and maybe, just maybe, him and Teddy too, because they had also suffered a tragic, life-altering loss, but it hadn’t turned out that way. Mostly they had come down to yell at Paul.
How could he, why hadn’t he called them, the baby should have been buried in a Jewish cemetery, did he have no respect for human life, how could he let Sylvie go through with her decision not to hold her, how soon did he plan on getting Teddy into therapy and on and on and on. Not one hug, not one I’m so sorry, what a horrible thing to happen to you too, not even the slightest empathy for Paul’s position as Delilah’s father. He would always hate them for that.
He knew he should let go of the resentment in order to move forward, but he just couldn’t. Max and Barbara were assholes, and they would always be assholes, and he was allowed to hate them. He could hate them and still be perfectly cordial to their smug faces, Barbara’s pulled so tightly that her mouth was never fully closed. That was his right.
Remember me? Paul wanted to yell into the empty yard. I have rights too!
His head still down, he eyed his stomach, thinking it was the perfect metaphor for how he felt. Defeated. Amorphous. Irrelevant.
Slowly, he dismounted the bike. His ankle was killing him. Overhead, gray clouds began to gather, covering the sun. He hobbled into the house just as the first drops fell.
Chapter Sixteen
Sylvie
Sylvie!”
“Amanda, hi, honey,” Sylvie replied, standing in the shade of Amanda’s front porch. “You look beautiful.”
This was a lie, but one that was required by law to tell if you were a decent human being. Which Sylvie wasn’t even sure she was, considering her ulterior motive.
“Come in, come in,” said Amanda. On cue, the panicked wail of a newborn began.
“So how have you been?” Sylvie asked, following Amanda into her living room, which was a virtual sea of discarded rubber pacifiers in an array of translucent colors and patterned burping cloths strewn over every curved surface. A pale-green, donut-shaped pillow, one that Sylvie recognized as one of the hundreds of items she’d had to send back after Delilah died, took up half of the gray micro-suede couch. Sylvie sat down next to it and stroked it absently for a moment.
“I wouldn’t touch that,” Amanda warned, picking the baby up and out of what looked like a tiny vibrating spaceship. “She barfed all over it at some point last night.” Sylvie withdrew her hand.
“Oh Sylvie, I’m a mess,” confessed Amanda. “This is hard. I mean, I love her and everything, but this is hard.” She unzipped her gray hoodie, revealing the white armor of her nursing bra. “And then, you know: this. Breastfeeding.” She grabbed the green pillow and settled the baby onto it before releasing one of her breasts. Hungrily, the baby suckled.
Sylvie took a deep breath, counted backward from ten in her head. She hadn’t been around a baby since she had lost hers, not in any tangible way, and here she was: smack-dab in the belly of the beast. What the hell had she been thinking?
The answer was she’d been thi
nking about one thing and one thing only. Paul’s doctor had refused to refill his prescription again, so here she was.
Every new mom left the hospital armed with a bottle of pain meds, Sylvie had reasoned as she called her unsuspecting coworker to arrange a visit during her maternity leave. And Amanda was big on the whole natural water birth, all organic, blah, blah, blah; she hadn’t shut up about it the whole time she’d been pregnant, and Sylvie would know since she sat in the cubicle next to hers. If there was anyone who was going to bring those pills home and let them sit in her medicine cabinet untouched, it was Amanda.
So here Sylvie was, premade frozen food from a fancy gourmet shop in hand, her best supportive smile pasted on her face.
Four-three-two-one, Sylvie finished. Okay.
“Apparently, I have one nipple that works and the other, it’s inverted or something,” Amanda continued.
Her hair was lank, escaping her ponytail in slack brown waves that stuck to her neck. Sylvie felt for her, she really did. She vaguely remembered her first disconcerting and exhausting months with Teddy; if you remembered them clearly, you would certainly never decide to have another.
“I have to, like, attach a plastic donut to it for her to eat.”
“Breastfeeding is a horror,” agreed Sylvie. “But it gets easier.” She paused. “Or it doesn’t. My only piece of advice is to be kind to yourself. If it brings you more pain than pleasure for too long, hang up your nipples and buy some formula. Honestly, it’s criminal how guilty they make us feel.”
“Did you breastfeed?” asked Amanda, wincing as her daughter sucked.
“Yes. But it was very, very hard for a very long time, and in retrospect I wish I had given myself a pass. At the year mark, like, to the exact second, I stopped. And that was hell too, the engorged breasts like hot bowling balls, the leaking, the secret expression into the work bathroom sink, just so I could breathe again.”