This Is Where I Leave You

Chapter 42

I am sitting shiva naked. The cheap vinyl of the shiva chair sticks to my ass like duct tape. Everyone I know is here, milling about, lost in conversation, but at any moment someone is going to notice. I can’t get up to leave, can’t really hide. I am utterly exposed. I turn to Phillip, but it’s not Phillip, it’s my uncle Stan sitting next to me, smacking his lips and farting a mile a minute. I ask him for his blazer. He flashes a toothless grin and tells me he can see my balls. Over the bowed heads of faceless visitors I see Penny, in the back, looking strangely at me, and it makes me feel sad and embarrassed. And then Jen arrives, looking nine months pregnant, full-faced and radiant. I cannot let her see me like this. People greet her warmly, remark on her belly, touch it with casual reverence. She moves across the back of the room and then, just in front of her, I see him. He’s seated in the back row, cradling a baby in the crook of his arm. He looks like he did when I was much younger, large and broad, with thick forearms and a barrel chest. Our eyes meet and he winks at me, then gets up to leave. Wait! Dad! But he can’t hear me. He’s heading to the door, the baby pressed to his shoulder, chewing on the seam of his shirt. I jump up to follow him, my nakedness forgotten, but only once I try to walk do I realize that I’ve only got one leg, and I’m not wearing my prosthesis. I fall down hard, my flesh hitting the oak floor with a resounding slap. Everyone turns to look at me, mouths agape, while through the crowd I see my father’s head descend down the front stairs and disappear.

I wake up in pieces, still calling out for him to wait for me.

Chapter 43

I climb up onto the roof and find Tracy already there, smoking one of Wendy’s cigarettes. She turns around, surprised, and then offers me a weak smile. “Did I take your spot?”

“It’s fine,” I say, crawling out to sit next to her. “Always room for one more.”

She offers me the pack. I take one and light it with hers. Then we sit there for a little while, staring out over the rooftops.

“What happened to your mouth?” she says.

“Someone apologized to me.”

She grins. “Does it hurt?”

“Only when I smile.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever actually seen you smile.”

“You’re not really catching me at my best.”

“I know.” She turns to look at me. “Phillip has been sleeping with that girl, Chelsea, hasn’t he?” There’s no anger in her voice, just sad resignation.

“I don’t know.”

“But if you had to guess.”

“He’s my brother, Tracy.”

“I understand.” She takes a slow, tentative drag on the cigarette. Smoking doesn’t come naturally to her. “I’m all alone here, Judd. I need a friend, someone to tell me if I’m crazy or not. Between you and me and the sunrise.” She leans forward and pulls the cigarette from my mouth. She holds it up with hers, watching the wisps of smoke float off of them and mingle, and then crushes them both out on the slate. She is dangerously close to tears. “We’re neither of us smokers,” she says.

“No.”

I look at her for a long time. She is older than me, but there’s something of a frightened child in her, some ancient, lingering pain that has never been soothed. “Between you, me, and the sunrise,” I say.

“Yes.”

“I don’t know for a fact that he slept with her. But my guess is that he did. And if he didn’t, he will. And if it’s not her, it will be, or has been, someone like her. The Chelseas of the world are drawn to him.”

The tears slide quietly down her cheeks and she wraps her arms around her knees. “Thank you.”

“I’m sorry,” I say. “I know how badly it hurts.”

She wipes her eyes and exhales slowly. “It’s my own damn fault, really. Whatever lies he’s told me, they pale in comparison to the lies I’ve been telling myself.”

“You deserve better than him. I love him, but that’s the truth.”

“You know what’s sad?”

“What?”

She smiles a little and turns her face up to the sky. “He really does love me. In his heart, he wants to be the man I need. It’s just not in him.”

“So, what are you going to do?”

She thinks about it for a moment and then shrugs. “I’ll wait until the shiva ends. That seems only right. Then I’ll gather up the tattered remnants of my dignity and say good-bye.”

“He’ll be crushed. You know that, right?”

“I’ll let him keep the Porsche.”

“Wow,” I say. “Parting gifts.”

“He meant well. I’m forty-four years old. I don’t have time for anger anymore.”

“You may be the best person I’ve ever known.”

She smiles and pats my knee. “I talk a big game.”

“Where were you when my life was going to shit?”

“I’m always available.” She fumbles around in her pockets and comes up with an embossed business card. It says her name, followed by a slew of acronyms. Below that it says BOARD-CERTIFIED PSYCHOTHERAPIST, and below that it says LIFE COACH. And right below that, in boldfaced type, it says this: HAVE A PLAN.

“Have a plan,” I say.

“Do you?”

“Whatever the opposite of a plan is, that’s what I’ve got.”

“Can I offer you a piece of unsolicited advice?”

“Sure.”

Tracy turns to face me. “You got married right out of college. You’re terrified of being alone. Anything you do now will be motivated by that fear. You have to stop worrying about finding love again. It will come when it comes. Get comfortable with being alone. It will empower you.”

“Empower me to do what?”

“To be the father you want to be, the man you want to be. And then you’ll be ready to make a plan.”

I nod. I’m picturing Jen, trembling in her empty bed, shredded with regret. She’s alone. I’m alone. I’ve never felt closer to her.

“Being alone isn’t for everybody,” I say.

TRACY’S GONE BACK inside. I’m still sitting on the roof, watching the town come alive, when I see a girl step out the front door of the Callens’ house. She’s wearing a little black dress and high heels, and her hair is a mess, her face smudged with last night’s makeup. It’s the girl Horry was making out with at the bar last night. She squints in the emerging sunlight and looks around, somewhat disoriented. She’s not sure where she is. But the advantage of a cul-de-sac is that there’s only one direction to go. She heads hurriedly down the street. It’s too early to be late for work. She’s rushing from something, not toward it.

I haven’t been in the Callens’ house in years. The action was always at our house. The front hall smells of Pledge and potpourri. The oak flooring creaks beneath my feet. The wall by the staircase is adorned with framed photos of sunsets and forests taken by Linda in her travels.

I find Horry in his basement apartment, lying naked on the floor, in the last convulsive throes of his seizure. His mouth is filled with white foam, which drips down his chin like soap suds. The cloying smell of sex and sweat fills the dark bedroom. I grab a damp pillow off the bed and jam it under the back of his head, which is tapping out a staccato rhythm on the oak floor. Then I throw a blanket on him and press my hands against his chest and shoulders to let him know I’m there. He shakes beneath me like a dying animal, his rhythm slowing, his muscles unknotting as he comes to a gradual stop. I wipe the tears and sweat from his face, and after a short while, I see in the dim light that his eyes are now open.

“You there?” I say.

“Yeah,” he grunts, his voice thick with spit. His eyes roam the room in quick, nervous jerks.

“She’s gone,” I say.

He closes his eyes. “And with a great story for her friends.”

“We should page your doctor,” I say.

Horry shakes his head. “I’ll be fine. Sex can bring it on. Elevated heart rate, endorphins, adrenaline. Something.”

“Aren’t there meds you can take?”

“You can’t get hard on the meds.”

“Well then, I hope she was worth it.”

He looks up at me. The whites of his eyes are vaguely pink, like something ran in the wash. “I wish I could remember.”

After another few minutes, he rolls over and onto his knees. He ignores my proffered hand and stands up on his own, the blanket falling away from him.

“Well, you have some nice fingernail scratches on your ass,” I say. “Always a good sign.”

He smiles weakly and bends down to wrap the blanket around his waist. Horry’s got the kind of abs you want, the kind that ripple and flex effortlessly under his skin. Looking at him, you can’t help but be reminded of who he used to be, who he should be now. We all start out so damn sure, thinking we’ve got the world on a string. If we ever stopped to think about the infinite number of ways we could be undone, we’d never leave our bedrooms.

“Don’t say anything to Wendy, okay?”

“You got it.” It’s not clear to me which part of this he wants kept from her, but it’s not a talk I’d want to have with her anyway.

“Thanks.” He rolls his head around on his neck, stretching out the kinks, and breathes deeply. “I can still smell her on me.”

For some reason, I don’t think he means the girl who just left.

ALICE IS PERCHED on the edge of my bed when I come out of the shower. She’s wearing sweatpants, a T-shirt, and the forlorn expression of an abandoned puppy.

“Alice . . . ,” I say.

“I know.”

Water drips down my legs to my heels, leaving a trail of wet footprints behind me.

She furrows her brow and looks away from me. “I just wanted to apologize for . . . the other day.”

“It’s okay.” It isn’t, but it’s what you say, right?

“I got a little crazy. I’m sorry.” She offers up a lame, hollow grin. “It’s all these hormones I’m taking.”

“Okay.”

“Things don’t have to get all weird between us.”

“Okay.”

“Can you say something besides ‘okay’?”

“Fine.”

“Come on, Judd. Throw me a bone.”

“Get out of here, Alice.”

“Please, Judd. You won’t even look at me.”

“Can you blame me?”

“No. I guess not.” Alice looks down at her clasped fingers like she’s kneeling in prayer and then back up at me. “The thing is, you’re having a baby by accident. Wendy squirts her kids out at will and doesn’t even seem to particularly like them. I’ve been trying for so long, and it just doesn’t seem fair.”

She sits there on the edge of the bed, pretty, sad, and tragically resigned. I remember how she ran to help Paul when he hurt his shoulder yesterday, and I feel a powerful urge to kick her teeth in.

“You have a good marriage,” I say.

“What?”

“You and Paul. You love each other, don’t you?”

Her face turns red, and her eyes grow wide, like she’s about to cry. “Yes. We do.”

“That’s a lot harder than having a baby. It’s damn near impossible, really. And you’re putting it at risk.”

Alice thinks about that for a moment and then nods her head. “You’re right. I know you’re right.”

“I mean, any asshole can have a baby, right?”

“I can’t.”

There is no talking to her. And now the tears come, just like that. Where have all the happy, well-adjusted women gone? Every one I talk to these days is one wrong word away from a crying fit.

“Alice . . .” I have no idea what to say anymore.

“No,” she says, sniffling. “You’re right. I’m sorry.” She wipes her tears with her wrist and shakes her head. “I put you in a terrible position. I understand that. I just need to know that things are okay between us.”

At this point, I just want her out of here. “They’re not, but they will be.”

“You promise?”

“Sure.”

“Thank you.” She stands up, still crying, and gives me a hug. I accept it, but my hands stay firmly at my waist, keeping my towel up.

“Okay. I guess I’d better let you put some clothing on.”

“That would be great.”

“Thanks for understanding, Judd,” she says, and she must be joking, because, Alice, honey, I would travel to the ends of the earth, kill or die, just to find one single thing that I could understand.

Chapter 44

You never saw a sorrier bunch of mourners. Paul’s arm is tied up in a sling. The back of Phillip’s hand is black and blue and looks like an inflated glove, to the point that his knuckles have disappeared. My lip is swollen and split. Picture us there in the living room, crouched uncomfortably in our low chairs on this sixth day of shiva, hungover and fuzzy from the prescription painkillers Mom doled out like candy this morning. We squint in the daylight, which seems aggressive and spitefully bright today. Wendy is exhausted because Serena hasn’t slept through the night since she got here, and Mom is ragged and moody. There’s been no sign of Linda since their argument yesterday.

According to the informational pamphlet Boner left on the piano, this is the last full day of shiva. Tomorrow morning he will come and lead us in a small closing ceremony, snuff out the shiva candle, and then we’ll part ways, back to the flaming wrecks of our individual lives. In my case, I have no idea what that even means. My rented basement feels to me like a bad movie I saw and forgot.

None of us makes eye contact. We have pretty much had it with each other. We are injured and angry, scared and sad. Some families, like some couples, become toxic to each other after prolonged exposure.

Mom runs three weekly postpartum therapy groups in her living room, where young mothers come to share tips on colic remedies and toilet training while venting their frustration about lack of sleep, worthless husbands, and how the last bits of pregnancy fat have taken up permanent residency in their asses. When we were kids, we called these women the Sad Mommies and viewed them with a mixture of awe and pity, spying from the top rungs of the staircase to watch actual grown-ups cry. Some of those ladies could really wail, in a way that sent us scurrying back to our bedrooms to laugh hysterically into our pillows. Today, through a phone chain, or, more likely, through a Sad Mommies e-mail distribution, a number of them have all arranged to come pay their respects at the same time. This happens a lot, I’ve noticed. People form shiva alliances, arriving together to eliminate the risk of a one-on-one with the bereaved. Some of the Sad Mommies sit with infants strapped to their milk-laden chests in little knapsacks, vibrating unconsciously in their seats to keep the kids asleep.

“Don’t rock them,” Mom insists hoarsely. “You rock them now, you’ll be rocking them for the next four years. You’re robbing them of their natural ability to put themselves to sleep.” This is why they pay Mom the big bucks.

“Did you rock us?” Wendy says.

“Just you,” Mom says. “I learned the hard way. The rest of you learned to put yourselves to sleep.”

“I’d like to go practice right now,” Phillip says, resting his head on my shoulder. I think of Tracy and shrug it off maybe a little more violently than I meant to, and Phillip practically falls off his chair.

“What the hell?” he demands under his breath.

“Sorry.”

There are seven mothers, three of whom have left their babies home with the help. They are making a day of it. Brunch, shiva call, pedicures, and then a quick trip to the mall. “Good for you,” Mom says. “Any excuse to take care of yourself is a good one.”

An ad hoc therapy session breaks out. Paul, Phillip, and I listen in amazement as the women speak of all the injustices they endure, the sacrifices they make to propagate our species. Mom eggs them on, offers suggestions, wisdom, and absolution, which, when you get right down to it, is what they’re really paying for. Among Mom’s gems:

“Children crave discipline.”

“Don’t shield your child from anger; this business of saying ‘Mommy is sad’ when you’re angry is just a bunch of new age crap. If he pissed you off, let him know it.”

“One way or another, start having orgasms again. Restore your balance as a woman.”

“Love them to pieces, but demand their respect.”

The Sad Mommies share stories and offer harried grins, looking tired and put-upon as they discuss their marriages. One of them, bonethin with the sad eyes of a puppy, says, “Having kids changes everything.”

“Not having kids changes everything too,” I say. The mommies look at me with guarded respect, as if I’ve just said something complex and profound. Mom beams and nods, proud of her emotionally damaged son.

A blond mommy with dark roots and a floral skirt casually unbuttons her blouse and unsheathes a large, pendulous breast to feed her baby. Her belligerent gaze darts around the room like sonar, daring anyone to have a problem with it. I’ve never fully understood the agenda of angry breast-feeders.

“That was once a tit,” Phillip mutters.

Wendy smacks the back of his head, but without any real conviction.

SAY WHAT YOU will about the Sad Mommies, but they don’t overstay their welcome. They have schedules to keep, nap times and feedings to coordinate, manicure/pedicure appointments, and grocery shopping to get done. They rise as one, pulling up the low-riding jeans they really shouldn’t be wearing at this particular juncture, offering harried condolences as they shoulder their designer diaper bags, fumbling for minivan keys, thoughtlessly slipping orthodontic pacifiers like corks into the mouths of their restive babies. Their heels click down the hall like jazz rim shots, leaving a palpable silence in their perfumed wake.

A number of the regulars are back, women mostly, friends and neighbors who have to have their morning coffee somewhere anyway, and those husbands who are retired. Peter Applebaum is back again, and you have to admire his tenacity. He’s playing it a bit cooler this time, but he watches Mom intently, waiting for the right moment to pounce. I feel a surge of empathy for him. You can do everything right and still end up alone, watching time run off the clock.

Horry comes by to bring Paul some papers he requested. He shows no ill effects from this morning’s seizure, taking a seat in front of Wendy to talk to her. They run out of conversation pretty quickly, self-conscious around the rest of us, but he makes no move to leave, and she seems happy to have him there.

The women are talking about a dangerous intersection in town. There’s a short light and no left-turn lane, and there was another crash there just last week. Someone should do something about it. This leads to car crash stories, to speeding tickets, to the Paleys’ lawsuit against the city over the maple tree that fell through their roof in the last rainstorm, to the new, ostentatious houses that are being built around the neighborhood in defiance of the zoning laws, to the Elmsbrook courthouse, to the mall they were building behind the courthouse but the project stalled when the bottom fell out of the real estate market and now it’s a hangout for skateboarders and drug dealers, and someone should do something about it. The conversation unfurls through endless random associations, never lingering for very long on any one subject. No one asks questions or really even listens to anyone else, but just waits for them to finish so they can jump in with their own entry to the canon.

And it is right in the middle of this conversational jamboree that Mom suddenly stands up and looks over the crowd of visitors toward the front hall. We follow her gaze to see Linda closing the front door behind her, rubbing her shoes vigorously on the mat. Mom’s smile is small and tentative, completely out of character for her. Linda looks up at Mom and grins a wry apology. Mom moves through the chairs, picking up speed as she goes, hits the hall at a slow jog, and runs into Linda’s arms. They embrace fiercely for a moment and then press their foreheads together, whispering to each other, tears flowing. Mom takes Linda’s face in her hands and, with great tenderness, plants a soft, lingering kiss on her mouth. Then she takes her by the arm and they walk out the front door, leaving the rest of us to figure out how to breathe in a room in which the oxygen supply has suddenly, inexplicably been depleted.

Peter Applebaum is the first to react. He clears his throat and rises to his feet. “Well,” he says. “That was unexpected.” He turns and walks sadly to the door, his head bowed in defeat. He was up for the challenge, maybe even invigorated by it, but this . . . he is too old for this. I get up and catch him at the front door.

“Mr. Applebaum.”

He turns around, surprised. “Peter.”

“Peter. You didn’t need that kind of headache anyway.”

He shakes his head and smiles faintly. “I’m seventy-two years old. I drink my coffee alone every morning, and I fall asleep with the TV on every night.” He smiles. “There are headaches, and there are headaches.”

“There will be other widows. I mean, have you seen some of these husbands?”

He has clear blue eyes and the wry smile of a much younger man. “Your mouth to God’s ear.”

“They’ll be dropping like flies, I’m telling you.”

He laughs a little, then pats my cheek. “Don’t get old, kid. That was where I went wrong.” I watch him as he heads somberly down the street. At seventy-two years old, women can still run roughshod over your heart. That’s something that never occurred to me, and I find it terrifying, but oddly reassuring.

Chapter 45

My parents had an active and noisy sex life. Years of Dad’s puttering in our walls had rendered them porous and poorly insulated, and we could hear them, as we lay in our beds at night: the steady bump of their headboard, Dad’s low grunts, Mom’s over-the-top porn star cries. We tuned it out like all the other noises a house makes: the clanging of the old steam radiators, the creak of the stairs, the hum of the refrigerator compressor, the plumbing gurgling in the walls. Dad never talked to us about sex. I guess he figured we’d pick it up through osmosis.

I was six years old when I walked in on them. I had woken up with a headache and padded down the hall to their room, the attached slippers of my pajamas whispering against the wood floor. Mom was on top, her back to me, rocking up and down, and I thought she must be exercising. Sometimes she exercised in front of the television, in tights and leg warmers that made her look like a cat. “I’m trying to look as good as her,” she explained, nodding her head at the woman on the screen, who, like Mom, was on all fours, raising her leg behind her like a dog about to pee.

“She looks like a dog,” I said.

“That’s Jane Fonda, and she is no dog.”

Jane Fonda had her hair piled up in a headband, which made her look like Mrs. Davenport, my kindergarten teacher. Mom, in her high ponytail and sports bra, looked like the genie in I Dream of Jeannie, whom I considered to be the most beautiful woman on the planet and whom I intended to marry one day. We would live in her blue bottle, which would stay on a shelf in Mom’s kitchen, so we could emerge in a funnel of smoke every evening to have dinner with my family. When we were done Jeannie would blink and all the dishes would be done.

“You’re prettier than Jane Fonda,” I told Mom.

“Of course I am, sugar,” she said, grunting as she lifted her leg. “But she has a better butt.”

I laughed at the notion of a better butt. “But no one can see your butt.”

“Women like to have nice butts even if no one sees them.”

“That’s silly.”

“Isn’t it?”

On the TV, Jane lifted her other leg. When it became apparent that she wasn’t going to pee, I lost interest.

Mom was moving up and down on her bed, but there was no Jane Fonda on the television, just a steady panting. Also, she was naked. I looked at her butt and wondered if it was as nice as Jane Fonda’s.

“Mommy?”

When she turned to see me, I saw my father’s disembodied head, crammed awkwardly against the headboard, his hair mussed, his forehead dripping with sweat. He looked like he’d been buried up to his neck in the sand.

“Hey, Judd,” Mom said, still rocking slightly, each breast bouncing lightly to a different rhythm.

“Are you exercising?”

“No, sweetie. We’re making love.”

“Jesus, Hill,” my father said, trying to get her to cover up.

“My head hurts.”

“Okay. Go back to your bed. I’ll bring you some water and a drink in a little while.”

“Can I come in bed with you?”

Dad said, “Jesus Christ,” and pulled up their comforter, while Mom laughed the way she did sometimes at things I didn’t intend to be funny. Normally I didn’t mind—it felt good to make her laugh—but tonight I had a headache and I wasn’t in the mood. So I padded back down the hall to my bed and promptly blocked out the entire event, the way you do.

YOU CAN SEE your parents have sex, you can see your wife in bed with your boss, and still, none of it packs quite the same surreal punch as seeing your mother kiss another woman. Wendy ushers out the shiva callers—“Thank you all for coming. We hope to see you again under happier circumstances”—while Phillip handles the stragglers and those who can’t quite take a hint somewhat less tactfully: “Okay there, Mr. and Mrs. Cooper. Don’t let the door hit you where the good lord split you.” And then it is just us, Wendy, Phillip, Paul, Horry, Alice, Tracy, and me, sitting in the living room, coming to terms with the new reality.

Paul opens the discussion. “What the fuck?”

“You didn’t know?” Me.

“What do you mean? You did?”

“We had our suspicions.” Wendy.

“So Mom’s a lesbian now? Cool.” Phillip.

“Don’t trivialize it,” Tracy says. “That was actually a very moving thing to witness.”

“She can’t be a lesbian,” Paul says. “She was married for forty years.”

“Well, it’s a little late in life for her experimental phase, don’t you think?” Wendy.

“I think they prefer the term ‘bisexual,’” Horry says.

We all turn to look at him.

“And you know this because . . . ?” Paul says.

Horry shrugs, blushing slightly.

“How long?” Wendy demands.

“How Long is a Chinaman?” Phillip says, mechanically repeating an old childhood joke.

“Run and play, Phillip, the adults are talking,” Wendy says. “How long, Horry?”

“I don’t really know.”

“Ballpark it.”

“I think they should tell you themselves.”

“Holy shit!” Paul says. “Mom is a lesbian.”

“A bisexual.”

“Whatever.”

“Well, whatever, then,” Horry says. “Mine is too.”

“I think it’s wonderful,” Alice says. “I mean, they’ve been best friends since forever. What a deep bond they must have.”

“Jesus Christ, Alice! My father’s body is still warm!” Paul shakes his head. “Am I the only one who is having a problem with this?”

“A problem is something to solve,” Phillip says. “If there’s no solution, it’s not a problem, so stop treating it like one.”

We all turn to look at Phillip.

“That actually almost makes sense,” Wendy says.

“It’s something I learned from Tracy,” Phillip says. “Isn’t she something?” He leans forward to kiss her, and she turns away from his kiss.

“What’s wrong, baby?”

“Not here.”

“I just complimented you. What are you getting all pissy about?”

“I said not here.”

“And I said, what are you getting all pissy about?”

“This isn’t the appropriate time or place.”

“My mother just stuck her tongue down her best friend’s throat in front of her children and half the neighborhood. In case you’ve missed it, we don’t really do appropriate here.”

“I’m leaving,” Tracy says, getting to her feet.

“Since when do you walk away from a discussion? You live for discussions. That’s all you ever want to do is discuss the shit out of everything.”

She looks down at him and shakes her head slowly. “You are such an asshole.” Then she turns and heads back toward the den.

“But I’m engaging here, honey!” he calls angrily after her. “I’m taking ownership of my feelings.” He watches her go, then shrugs and turns back to us. “Don’t ever date a shrink,” he grumbles. “It’s like trying to read Chinese.”

Chapter 46

Jen has checked out of the Marriott. I make the drive to Kingston in just over ninety minutes and pull into my driveway, like I have a thousand times before. Her white Jeep is parked, as usual, too close to the center, and I have to open my door gently against the stone retaining wall to squeeze out of mine.

She comes to the door in her college boxers and an old concert T-shirt of mine. Elvis Costello and the Attractions. We went to see him play a few times. When I have a cold, I can sing “Almost Blue” and sound just like him. It never fails to crack her up. We have history, Jen and I, a mess of artifacts strewn haphazardly in our wake. Her hair is down, longer than I’m used to, and she is pale and tired, her eyes swollen from crying, and she looks for all the world like she can use a hug. So I give her one and she breaks down, sobbing violently into my neck, her body convulsing to the point that I worry about the pregnancy.

The bedroom smells of Jen. She lies down horizontally across the bed and closes her eyes. We’ll have to throw out the bed, I think to myself. There’s a lot we’ll have to throw out.

“Run me a bath?” she says.

She lies in the tub, in the slanted shadows of the afternoon sun through the blinds, while I sit on the edge, tracing letters in the surface of the water. We talk for a long time, long enough for her to have to add hot water twice. I don’t know what we talk about—the baby, the past, college, our honeymoon. She cries when she speaks briefly about Wade, not because she misses him, but because she’s humiliated. I remember what Tracy said about gathering up what’s left of her dignity. These are the facts: I am drawn to women like Jen, who are drawn to men like Wade, and it’s not healthy for any of us, but that’s just the way it is. The Tracys of this world will always fall for the Phillips, who can always be counted on to fuck the Chelseas. And round and round we’ll go, doing our pathetic little dance, denying our own true natures in the name of love, or something we can pass off in its place. I can feel myself getting angry again. I’m not sure at whom. I’ve been angry for so long it’s like a reflex now.

When Jen stands up in the tub, I watch the water cascade down her back. It’s a sight to behold, and one I can’t recall seeing before. We must have taken baths together, but I guess there’s always something new to see. Back in our bedroom, she collapses onto the bed, wrapped in a towel. “Judd.”

“Yes.”

“Will you lie with me?”

This is my bedroom. This is my bed. This is my wife. When I was a kid, I would flex my eyeballs to make everything go blurry. If I can just do that with my brain for a little while, flex until certain thoughts become blurred, this can be my life again. I strip off the sheets on my side of the bed and lie down on the bare mattress. Jen watches me and understands, then turns away, pulling my arms around her, wearing me like a cape.

“Do you think it can ever be the same?” she says. She is fading, her voice thinning out like the voice of a little girl.

“I don’t know.”

“Or maybe not the same. Something different, but good.”

“Maybe.”

She sighs and then shudders, pressing her back against my front as her breathing slows. I press my lips to her bare shoulder and take in the familiar smell of her. I slide my hands over her chest and then down past her navel, to where her belly is hardening, just above her groin. She takes my hands and slides them down a bit lower, just above the pelvic bone, pressing them into one spot on her belly then another.

“There she is,” she whispers. She leans her head back, her cheek lightly brushing mine.

“She?”

“Yes. It’s a girl.”

There is no reason I can think of that this should make me cry. Jen rolls over and wraps her arms around me, her damp hair falling over my face like a tent, and she rocks me back and forth, exactly like Mom will tell her not to rock the baby, or she’ll be rocking her to sleep until she’s five years old. She kisses my eyes. My cheek. My chin. My mouth, softly and with great tenderness. I can taste my tears on her lips. Sleep falls down on us like a heavy curtain.

I WAKE UP with a start. The room is bathed in dusky shadows, and I am momentarily disoriented. I take a minute to sift through the facts and determine which are real and which the residue of dreams. I am in my house, in my bed, with Jen sleeping beside me. Just like that, the nightmare is over, the curse broken. Jen is snoring lightly. She never believed me that she snored, and I always threatened to record her, but, of course, never did. It was one of those playful arguments that we would carry with us unresolved into old age. I look up at the familiar brown swirl of water damage on the ceiling. If it is possible to feel affection for water damage, then that’s what I feel for that little brown swirl.

Jen’s towel has come unraveled in her sleep, and a lone breast peeks out like a sentry, standing guard. I run my finger gently across her collarbone, around her shoulder, and down her arm. The years fall away from her in her sleep, her brow smooth, her mouth slightly open, like a little girl watching a magic trick. I have loved her for so long. Our past trails behind us like a comet’s tail, the future stretched out before us like the universe. Things happen. People get lost and love breaks.

I want to forgive her, and I think I can, but it’s not like issuing a certificate. I’ll have to keep forgiving her until it takes, and knowing me and knowing her, that’s not always going to come easy. But at this moment, as she lies beside me, growing our baby girl inside of her, I can forgive her. I lean down to kiss her on the spot where her cheekbone meets her temple and let my lips rest there for a moment, inhaling the clean smell of her scalp. Then I whisper to her, my lips grazing the soft flesh of her earlobe. I hover in the doorway like a ghost, half-lit by the hallway lights, watching her sleep. Then I’m running, down the hall and then the stairs, which creak in all the familiar spots, and out the front door, where the cool evening air fills my nostrils like a drug.

Chapter 47

Phillip is up on the roof. Not on the wide area we sometimes sit on, but on the topmost gable above the attic, perched like a gargoyle. There’s a black Town Car parked in the driveway, its trunk open like a gaping mouth. A portly driver in a black suit leans against the car having a smoke. I jump out of my car and join Paul, Alice, Horry, and Wendy at the edge of the lawn. Serena, slung over Wendy’s shoulder, sucks happily on a pacifier. Tracy stands in the middle of the lawn, looking up at Phillip.

“Please get down!” she calls up to him. “You’ll kill yourself!”

“That’s the general idea,” Phillip shouts back. He stands up, one foot on either side of the gable, and spreads his arms out for balance. “Send the limo away.”

“What’s going on?” I say.

“Phillip proposed to Tracy,” Wendy says. “In front of us all.”

“And what did Tracy say?”

Wendy smirks at me. “Where have you been?”

“I went to see Jen.”

“Really? How’d that go?”

I look up at Phillip, trembling on the roof, arms spread like Christ. “Everything’s relative, I guess.”

“He’s taking it like a man,” Paul says.

“I swear to God, if you get in that car I’ll jump!”

Tracy turns to us. “You don’t think he’d really jump, do you?”

Wendy looks up at Phillip and shakes her head. “Only one way to find out, I guess.”

“I love you!” Phillip shouts.

“You’re being childish and manipulative!”

“Whatever works.”

Mom and Linda come running up from across the street. “What in the world is going on?” Linda says.

“Tracy’s not going to marry Phillip,” I say.

“Tracy’s not a fool,” Mom says. She steps out onto the lawn and faces Tracy. “There’s only one way to treat a tantrum and that is to ignore it.”

“Ignore it?”

“Yes.”

“But he’s not a four-year-old.”

“Honey, we’re all four-year-olds.”

Tracy appears conflicted. “What if he jumps?”

“Then I’ll have to rethink my thesis.”

Tracy looks at Mom for a long moment, her eyes growing wet. “You must think I’m such an idiot.”

Mom looks at her with great tenderness. “You’re no idiot. You’re not the first woman who wanted to believe in Phillip. But you’re far and away the best one, and I’m very sorry to see you go.” She steps forward and pulls Tracy into a warm hug.

“What’s going on?” Phillip shouts from above.

Tracy looks up to him. “I’m going to leave now.”

“Please don’t.”

Tracy turns to us and smiles. “Well, it was very nice to have met you all. I’m very sorry if my being here caused any problems.” She steps over to me and gives me a hug. “Let me know how it all turns out,” she whispers.

“Don’t go!” Phillip shouts.

But Tracy goes. She casts a last regretful look back up at Phillip and then climbs gracefully into the car. The driver tosses his cigarette to take her bag and slams the trunk. We watch the car drive slowly down Knob’s End and then turn back to the roof, where Phillip is now sitting dejectedly. “I can’t believe she really left,” he says.

“Will you come down now?” Mom says.

“I guess so.”

But when he stands up to pull his leg back over the gable, his pants catch on one of the snow guards. He loses his footing and slides down the side of the roof, scrambling in vain to grab on to the slate shingles. There is time for him to gasp, “Fuck me!” as he slides down the roof and then over the gutter. He is briefly airborne, arms flailing, before landing hard in the hedges that line the side of the house. We all run around the corner of the house to find him lying flat on his back atop a crushed bush, looking up at the sky like he’s stoned.

“Philly!” Mom shouts, falling to her knees in front of him. “Don’t try to move.”

“You ever notice how much closer the sky looks when you’re lying down?” he says.

“Can you move your legs?” Wendy says.

“If I feel like it.” He closes his eyes for a second. “That really hurt,” he says.

“I’m going to call 911,” Mom says.

He opens his eyes and looks at her. “Mom.”

“Yes, honey.”

“So what, you’re like, a lesbian now?”

MOM WAS TAKING care of Dad around the clock. When the stairs became a problem, they had a hospital bed installed in the den. Mom would put him to sleep and then go upstairs to sleep alone in their bed. She was tired and bereft and so Linda started spending the nights with her. One night, more as a distraction than anything else, Linda confessed to Mom that she’d had numerous female lovers in the years since her husband had died. Mom had never kissed another woman, a fact of which she was instantly ashamed. What kind of celebrity shrink hasn’t experimented? She owed it to her readers. “We were both sad and lonely and sexually deprived, and within minutes we were making out like a couple of high school kids.”

No one really wants to hear the detailed story of how their mother became a lesbian, do they? That’s not bigotry. I never wanted to hear the details of her heterosexual sex life either. But Mom is ready to unload. She perches herself on one fat arm of the leather easy chair in the living room and tells us her story. Linda sits on the other arm, for purposes of symmetry. They have clearly imagined this moment before.

“It started out as something purely surreal and physical.” Mom speaks in her TV voice, like she’s narrating the documentary of her bisexual awakening. “But Linda and I have been so close for so long. It was only natural that a physical relationship would evolve into something more.”

“You make it all sound so perfectly normal,” Paul says.

“Well, yes. That’s how it felt, I suppose.”

“Except for the part where you were cheating on your dying husband.”

“Paul,” Alice says.

“No, it’s okay,” Mom says. “He knew.”

“Dad knew?” I say.

“Your father was a very enlightened man, sexually speaking.”

“Our father?” Phillip.

“Let me tell you a story about your father.”

“Please don’t.” Wendy.

Linda clears her throat. “Your father was always so good to Horry and me. He accepted us as family, he took care of our finances. When Horry was injured, and I was paying for all of his care, your father made our mortgage payments for a full year, so we wouldn’t lose the house. I would never have betrayed him. Hillary was the love of his life, and he died knowing she wouldn’t be alone. He told me that many times toward the end.”

“So Dad was cool with it,” Phillip says.

“He said he’d always sensed something there,” Mom says.

“So why didn’t you tell us?” I say. “You’ve always been so open about your sex life.”

“I didn’t want to complicate your grief. Mort was a generous and loving husband. He was a good father to all of you. He deserved to be mourned without any distractions.”

Something occurs to me. “It wasn’t Dad who wanted us to sit shiva, was it?”

Mom blushes and looks down at her lap. “Smart boy.”

There are exclamations and groans of dismay from my siblings.

“Oh, come on!” Mom says. “You knew how your father felt about religion. Or, rather, didn’t feel. I’m just surprised you all went along with it for so long.”

“We thought it was his dying request!” Paul says. “Jesus Christ, Mom! What were you thinking?”

“Do you have any idea how hard it is to get the four of you to stay in the same place for more than a few hours? My husband, your father, had died. I needed you. And you needed each other, even if you still don’t know it.”

“Boner lied for you,” I say.

Mom shrugs. “Charlie knows where his bread is buttered.”

“Tracy wouldn’t have dumped me if we hadn’t come here,” Phillip says, shaking his head.

“You’re welcome, honey.”

“You ruined my life.”

“Oh, Phillip,” Mom says fondly. “I may have overmothered you and screwed you up in ways large and small, but I think it’s time you took some measure of responsibility for where you choose to put your own penis.”

“You see? Right there. Please don’t talk about my penis. It’s out of your jurisdiction. Mothers do not sit around talking about their grown sons’ penises.”

“So grow up and I’ll stop.”

“You lied to us,” Wendy says softly.

“Yes. I did.”

“But you never lie to us. That’s your thing.”

“I never made love to a woman either,” Mom says proudly. “People can change. Not often, and not often for the better, but it does happen.” Mom, it should be pointed out, is loving this. Her children are shocked and mortified and hanging on her every word. There’s our childhood in a nutshell. It’s like we never left.

Phillip rolls off the couch, wincing in pain as he does, and stands up. “Okay. I forgive you for your lying and your treachery.” He walks over to Mom and Linda and pulls them into a group hug. “I’m happy for you guys.” Then he collapses onto the chair between them. “Anyone have any codeine? I think I’m bleeding internally.”

Chapter 48

Mom and Linda are over at Linda’s house celebrating their official coming out. Paul and Alice are in my old bedroom behind closed doors, procreating under my poster of The Cure. Good luck and Godspeed. I give Cole and Ryan baths while Wendy puts Serena to bed. This entails standing outside her bedroom door and listening to her wail. I towel off Ryan while Cole splashes around in the tub, playing wildly with rubber dolphins that squirt water when you squeeze them. “Dawphins,” he says.

“Don’t be an ass, Cole,” Ryan says.

“Hey!”

“It means ‘donkey,’” Ryan says, giggling.

“Stop being a wise-donkey,” I say.

He gives the matter some thought. “You’re a donkey-hole,” he says.

“You watch your mouth or I’ll kick your donkey.”

It takes him a second and then he laughs so hard I can see his ribs vibrating in his torso.

“Kick your donkey,” Cole repeats in the tub. He raises the dolphins up above his head and brings them crashing down into the water, splashing us. “Fucker!”

“Cole!” Wendy hisses from the doorway. She offers me a pained smile. “We’re working on that,” she says to me.

“It sounds like he’s got the hang of it.”

“Fucker dawphin!” Cole says happily.

I am going to be a father, I think to myself.

“IT FEELS LIKE the last day of camp,” Wendy says. She is sitting on the edge of Cole’s bed and I am sitting on the edge of Ryan’s in what used to be Wendy’s bedroom. “Tomorrow we all go our separate ways.”

“You going to be okay on the plane alone with these three?” I say. Deflect emotions with logistics. It’s what we do. Dad lives on in all of us. Our parents can continue to screw us up even after they die, and in this way, they’re never really gone. My siblings and I will always struggle trying to confront an honest emotion. We’ll succeed, to varying degrees, with outsiders, but fail consistently, sometimes spectacularly, with each other. The hardwiring simply runs too deep, like behind the walls of this house; circuit breakers on hair triggers.

“I’ll be fine.”

“And what about Barry?”

“What about him?”

“Nothing. Never mind.”

Wendy sighs and looks down at her sleeping boy, her face a complex amalgam of love and pain and fear. I don’t know that feeling yet, but I will soon enough.

“I have a very nice life, with a good man,” Wendy says. “I love him for who he is. Sometimes who he is isn’t enough for me, but most of the time, it is. There are women who would leave to find something better. I envy them, but I also know I’m not one of them. And how many of those women truly end up with a better man?” She shrugs. “No studies have been done.”

“And Horry?”

“There is no Horry. Horry is a fantasy. And that’s all I am to him. Time travel. We slept together as a favor to the kids we once were, not because there’s really anything there besides history and some completely useless love.”

She gets off the bed and onto her knees to kiss the forehead of each sleeping boy. Wendy taught me to curse, matched my clothing, brushed my hair before school, and let me sleep in bed with her when bad dreams woke me up. She fell in love often, and with great fanfare, throwing herself into each romance with the focus of an Olympic athlete. Now she’s a mother and a wife, who tries to get her screaming baby to sleep through the night, tries to stop her boys from learning curse words, and calls romantic love useless. Sometimes it’s heartbreaking to see your siblings as the people they’ve become. Maybe that’s why we all stay away from each other as a matter of course.

I COME DOWN the basement stairs to find Phillip sitting on my bed, holding my duffel bag full of cash. “This is a lot of money,” he says.

“Yeah.”

“Can I have some?”

“Define ‘some.’”

Phillip thinks about it for a moment. “A grand?”

“Are you going to gamble it?”

“No.”

“Are you going to buy drugs?”

“Jesus, Judd.” He tosses the bag onto the floor and heads for the stairs. “Forget I asked.”

“Phillip.”

He turns around. “I have nothing, Judd. No home, no job, nothing. I’ve been waiting tables and sponging off Tracy for the last year. I’m just looking for a fresh start here. The plan was to work with Paul, but he’s being a real dick about it.”

“Well, maybe you have to work for him for a while, before you work with him.”

He thinks about it for a moment and then hoists himself up to sit on the Ping-Pong table. “I could probably be persuaded to do that.”

“I’ll talk to Paul,” I say.

“Yeah, because you guys are tight like that.”

“People can change.”

Phillip laughs and sits back down on the bed. “It’s been nice here, this last week, being brothers again.”

“We never stopped being brothers.”

“It felt like we did.”

“Yeah. I guess it did.”

“Well, I’ll have to stay more local to see my new nephew, huh?”

“Niece. It’s a girl.”

Phillip smiles. “A baby girl. That’s nice.”

“Yeah.”

“I’m making a concerted effort to be considerably less fucked-up.”

“I know.”

He pulls himself off the Ping-Pong table and heads for the stairs. “Well, I’ll let you get some sleep.”

“Phillip.”

“Yeah.”

“Take a grand.” Sixteen grand in a shopping bag feels like much more than sixteen grand in the bank.

“Thanks, man.” He starts up the stairs.

“I’m serious. Come take it.”

Phillip grins and pats the back pocket of his jeans, which I now see has a slight rectangular bulge. “Way ahead of you, big brother.”

Chapter 49

Penny opens the door brushing her teeth, dressed in leggings and a tank top.

“Hey,” I say.

“Hey.”

“I hope it’s not too late.”

“Too late for what?”

“Right. Good question. Well, for an apology, first of all.”

Penny looks at me like she’s peering through fog. I catch a glimpse of her lonely, cluttered apartment behind her. It feels like my fault.

“It’s not too late,” she says.

“I’m glad.”

“Was that it?”

“What do you mean?”

“Was that your apology? I wasn’t sure. Sometimes people say ‘I want to apologize,’ and then that’s supposed to be their apology, when in fact, by saying they want to apologize, they manage to avoid the actual apology.”

“Oh.”

She shrugs. “I’ve been apologized to a lot.”

“Penny.”

“Is there something you want to say to me, Judd? Then just say it. You’ll never have a less threatening audience.”

“I didn’t really think it out,” I say. “I just came.”

“Well, there’s no danger of sounding too rehearsed then.”

There’s a small chunk of white toothpaste lodged in the corner of her mouth. I consider reaching forward to rub it off and decide against it.

“I’m really very sorry for leaving you at Wonderland.”

She shakes her head. “That’s not what you’re sorry for.”

“It’s not?”

“You’re sorry for not telling me that Jen was pregnant. That you were horrifically conflicted about it, that you’re still in love with her, and that you were probably the worst possible guy for me to climb into bed with.”

“Yes. I’m very sorry about that. Ashamed, really. It took me ten minutes to work up the nerve to ring your buzzer.”

“I know. I was watching from the window.”

“I really am sorry. You deserved better.”

“I forgive you.”

“Really? Just like that?”

“Yes, just like that.”

“You still sound angry.”

“I sound distant. Because I am. Because as much as I appreciate your coming over here, I have spent the last day building a big old wall between you and me, and I’m going to stay back here on my side of it.”

“I guess I understand that.”

“It’s nothing personal.”

We stand there in silence for a moment. I don’t know what I expected.

“So, the shiva is over?”

“Yeah. I guess. Tomorrow morning.”

“Then what?”

I shake my head. “I don’t really know.”

“Well, there’s no law against taking your time to figure it out.”

“I guess not.”

“Baby steps,” she says, and then grins joylessly. “Sorry. Bad choice of words.”

“It’s okay.”

“Well,” Penny says. “We’re back to awkward again, and you know I don’t do awkward. So I’m going to give you a hug . . .” She steps forward and hugs me. She is warm and light in my arms, and I am filled with a deep sense of regret as her hair tickles my fingers. “And now you should get going.”

“Good-bye, Penny. I hope I see you again.”

Her smile is at half strength but somehow genuine. “Take care, Judd Foxman.”

I’M WALKING TO my car when I hear footsteps behind me. “Judd.”

I turn around and she launches herself into my arms, becoming airborne just before impact, squeezing the breath out of me. Her legs wrap around me, and I hold her there while she hugs me. When she pulls back, she is smiling brightly through her tears. “I was never good at walls,” she says.

“No you weren’t.”

“I want you to know that I’m still going to hold you to our pact.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. We’ve each got five years to come up with a better plan. If not, it’s you and me, babe.”

I nod. “You and me.”

“You good with that?”

“I’m good with that.”

And then, because we are lit like a movie in the glow of the streetlight above us, and because at that moment I love her as much as I’ve ever loved anyone, I pull her into me and I kiss her lips. When she opens her mouth, I can taste the toothpaste on her tongue.

“Minty fresh,” I say.

She laughs in musical peals, like small tolling bells, the kind of laugh that can make a man feel just a little more whole.