Pandemonium

Cars queued up behind him. No one had honked yet. I climbed in. “I need a beer, an Italian beef, and a beer.”

“You know what would be good with that? Beer.” He punched the accelerator, burping the tires, and then braked to a halt fifty yards later at a stoplight.

He looked over at me. “If this is what therapy does for you, sign me up.”

“Where’s Amra?”

“Shopping. There’s this place called the Container Store that sells—”

“Lingerie?”

“Fish, but good guess. And Mom wants us to pick up groceries.”

“Can you drive me into the city tomorrow?”

Lew stared at me. “Why don’t you take the train?”

“I don’t want to schlep my stuff through train stations.”

“What, your one duffel bag? You are such a wuss.”

“A wuss? You still say wuss? The light’s green.”

He rolled through the intersection, but the traffic ahead of us wasn’t moving. “What are you going to do in the city?”

“I’m going to see some people.”

“What people? You don’t have any people.”

“The Art Institute, then. Where are you going? You missed the turn.”

“Nonsense. I have an unerring sense of direction.”

“I’m driving on the way home.”

“This car? Not a chance, Delacorte.”

There was a strange car in the driveway—a dark blue Buick that looked freshly polished. We parked on the street. Lew opened the Audi’s trunk with his remote (“Because I can”), and we carried the grocery bags into the house. A man sat at the kitchen table across from my mother, his back to us. I didn’t recognize him at first, but then he turned and smiled broadly. “Well look who’s here,” he said.

“Hi, Pastor Paul,” Lew said.

The man pushed himself out of his seat. He was dressed in khakis and a striped golf shirt, his brown leather shoes too dressy for the rest of the outfit.

My mother stayed seated, her face pleasantly blank. He came to me first. The groceries made a hug impossible, thank God. I shifted the bags slightly and held out a hand. He clasped my hand between his own. “Del, Del, Del.” He slapped the back of my hand, then gripped my shoulder. “I can hardly believe it. You look just like your father.”

I hadn’t seen Pastor Paul since my father’s funeral. My mother had stopped going to church when I was small, but my father had put on his suit every Sunday, dragging Lew with him. I stayed home to watch TV. I was jealous of Lew, but he begged to stay home so often that I knew I was getting the better deal.

I suddenly remembered a show I used to watch. It only played on Sunday mornings, and it was called something like The Magic Door. The magic was all done by green screen: a live-action guy with a guitar and a weird cap—an acorn?—who was magically shrunk down to the size of animal hand puppets. The guy would go through a door in a tree and come out in this magical forest, and sing songs where half the verses made no sense to me. It wasn’t until high school that I realized it was a program for Jewish kids, and the mini guy was singing in Hebrew.

The pastor moved on to Lew, giving him his own hearty handshake. I remembered that aggressive enthusiasm. I never went to Sunday school, but I’d gotten to know Pastor Paul from his frequent visits. He’d arrive at odd times—the middle of a Saturday afternoon, or an hour after supper—and my parents would have to drop what they were doing and make him coffee. If I wasn’t around he made a point of asking for me, and Dad would make me come in from the backyard. Pastor Paul always made a big fuss over me, asking me how I was doing, telling me how much I’d grown, even if I’d just seen him the week before. He was big into tousling my hair. He was a tousler.