This Is Where I Leave You

Chapter 17

I am having sex with Jen. She bucks and writhes under me, her hips rising up hard against mine. Her nails slice my back; her fingers grab my ass and then slide down my thigh to where my leg ends at midcalf in a hard, creased stump. But it’s not me, it’s Wade lying on top of Jen, and I’m sitting on the reading chair by the window, watching them go at it while I pull at the worn straps of my prosthesis, trying to strap it on so that I can get the hell out of there. And now it’s me again, lying in the smooth delta of Jen’s opened thighs, but it’s no longer Jen, it’s Penny Moore, and I’ve got both of my legs again, and Penny’s got her legs wrapped around me, and she’s biting down on my earlobe as she moans, and it’s actually feeling pretty good. Then, from behind me, a low guttural growl, and when I turn, I see the rottweiler, with the tattered threads of Paul’s red T-shirt still hanging from his teeth, alongside a thick chain of white drool. And when I turn back to Penny, she’s Chelsea, Phillip’s old girlfriend, and I’ve got one leg again, and the dog is crouching, getting ready to attack, and no matter how much I try to pull out of Chelsea, she just keeps rocking her hips and licking her lips. And then the rottweiler is upon us, and I can smell his feral scent and feel the crush of his jaws on the back of my neck, and I’m sandwiched between Phillip’s old girlfriend and a vicious rottweiler and I’ve got one and a half legs and this is not any way to die. And just as I feel the searing pain of the dog’s teeth sinking into the skin of my neck, my shout fills the basement and I wake up shivering violently in my own sweat.

It’s like Stephen King is writing my dreams in to Penthouse Forum.

Chapter 18

The lights go out again while I’m in the shower. When I step out into the basement, Alice is at the electrical panel again in her bathrobe. “We must stop meeting like this,” she says.

“This house sucks,” I say.

Alice smiles. “Which one is it, again?”

“I think it was number fourteen.”

“I can’t see the numbers.”

I go over to her, holding my towel in place with one hand.

“You smell like a little boy.”

“They’ve only got baby shampoo down here.”

“I love that smell.” She leans back against me, breathing deeply. “The smell of a clean baby.”

“Yes. Well . . .” Her own hair is freshly shampooed and has that clean, blow-dried smell, like baked honey, and that, combined with the sheer fabric of her bathrobe and my highly sensitized libido, makes for an awkward family moment. “I’ll have to find a new manly fragrance when I start dating again.”

“Oh, right,” she says, turning around to face me. “We haven’t really talked about that. How are you doing, Judd?”

“I’m fine.” I need to curtail this conversation for reasons both emotional and anatomical. “Here it is.” I lean past her to flip a breaker. The lights don’t go back on, but from upstairs, we can hear Paul yelling, “Who’s dicking around with the damn lights?!”

Alice chuckles and turns around to flip it back. “Paul signs the payroll while he’s on the toilet.”

“Two turds with one stone.”

She laughs and flips another switch. The lights come back on. “Let there be light.”

“Amen.”

“Anyway, Judd,” she says, turning back to me. “I know you’re going through a lot right now, and your family . . . well, they’re not exactly famous for their emotional wherewithal. So, if you ever want to talk, just remember, we were friends long before we were family.”

“Thanks, Alice. I’ll keep that in mind.”

She seems about to say something else, but after a moment she just nods and leans forward to kiss my cheek. I lean forward, not so much to accept the kiss, but to avoid any incidental lower-body contact. Things are hard enough already.

So to speak.

BREAKFAST IS SERVED. On platters, of course. The pastries and bagels continue to arrive every day, courtesy of my parents’ friends and set out by Linda, who quietly lets herself in every morning to see to things. Horry’s here too this morning, sipping thoughtfully at his coffee, sneaking glances at Wendy over the rim of his mug. His T-shirt says, YOU’RE UGLY, BUT YOU INTRIGUE ME. Beneath the T-shirt, his compact muscles bulge in exactly the way mine never did. Tracy is buttering a bagel for Phillip, and Phillip is creaming her coffee, and they’re smiling at each other in a way that makes it hard to look at them. I guess there was no lasting fallout from the Chelsea/Janelle/Kelly visit. Wendy is giving the baby a bottle while Barry chews a muffin and reads the Wall Street Journal. Ryan and Cole are watching cartoons on the small television in the kitchen. Mom is in the kitchen with Linda, organizing the endless array of catered platters. You could fill an airlift to Africa with all the food generated by one dead Jew. Alice is spreading fat-free cream cheese on a rice cake, and Paul is sitting next to her, chewing a glazed donut. He’s at the head of the table, but just to the side of Dad’s chair, which sits symbolically empty.

No one says anything. No one dares.

“Listen,” Paul says. “We need to talk about the Place.”

“The Place” was how Dad referred to the business. He never called it the store, or the shop, or the company. “I’m heading out to the Place,” he would say. “We hired a new girl at the Place.” I guess Paul picked it up somewhere along the way. Alice looks up from her rice cake, and you can hear her ticking, the woman behind the man. Whatever he’s going to say, she knows all about it.

“What about it?” Phillip says.

“Barney will come by at some point to discuss Dad’s will. But this is the part I want to discuss. Dad left half of the business to me. The other half is divided into three even shares for Wendy, Judd, and Phillip. So together, each of you will own one-sixth of a business that has not shown a profit in going on three years. The shares won’t generate any cash for you. Barney will have the bank valuate the shares, and then I’m going to buy them back from you. Depending on the value, I may not have the cash readily available, so I hope you’ll all cut me a little slack until I come up with it.”

“What is each share worth, roughly?” Phillip says. “I mean, what are we talking about here?”

“What about Mom?” Wendy asks. “Isn’t the business hers too?”

“Between Mom’s royalties and Dad’s life insurance and pension, she’s more than taken care of for the rest of her life,” Paul says. “I know you all might have been expecting a little bit more from Dad’s estate. Unfortunately, there’s not much that isn’t tied up in the business, which, like I said, isn’t in the best shape. There is the house though. It’s been assessed at upwards of a million dollars. Dad has it set up in a trust for us. When Mom sells it, we’ll all make a nice profit.”

“I’m not selling the house,” Mom says from the kitchen doorway.

“Well, not right now.”

“Not ever!” she says. “I’m only sixty-three years old, for God’s sake.”

“I just meant—”

“I know what you meant. You want to pull up the floorboards and look for money, you go right ahead. But make no mistake, I’m going to die in this house!”

“Okay, Mom,” Paul says, turning red. He and Alice exchange a quick, guarded look. “Forget I said anything.”

Mom starts to say something else, but Linda comes up behind her and puts a hand on her shoulder. “Hill,” she says. “He didn’t mean it like that.”

“This is my home,” Mom says, still irate.

“I know,” Linda says, leading her back into the kitchen. “It’s okay.”

We all stare at Paul, pissed at him for implicating us.

“The point is,” Paul says, “I’ve been working my ass off to try to save this business. I still don’t know if I’m going to be able to. We’re looking at closing one or possibly two stores—”

“I was actually thinking I’d like to join the company,” Phillip says.

His statement is greeted with stunned silence. Alice looks at Paul, her eyes wide with alarm. Tracy looks at Phillip, proud and knowing. Even Barry puts down his paper to pay attention. Wendy looks at me, her eyes widening with glee. Her smile says, This is about to get good.

“What are you talking about?” Paul says.

Phillip wipes his mouth and clears his throat. “I talked to Dad about it a little while back. It’s something he built for us, something he wanted to pass on. It’s his legacy to us, and I’d like to be a part of it.”

“Okay.” Paul nods his head and puts down his coffee mug. “And what is it you’d like to do for the company, Phillip?”

“I want to help you grow it.”

“The only thing you’ve ever grown was hemp.”

“And I made a profit.”

“Not nearly as much as we spent on your lawyers when you got busted.”

“Listen, Paul. You don’t believe in me. I get that. I never believed in myself either, really. But people can change. I’ve changed. And we complement each other. You’re the brains of the operation, I know that. But what about advertising and promotion? What about personnel and PR? I’m a people person, Paul. That’s who I am. And you’re . . . not one. You’re a good guy, but you’re a hard-ass and, let’s face it, you’re a little scary. You’re actually scaring me right now. Your face looks very red. Are you even breathing? Is he breathing?”

Paul brings his hand crashing down on the table. “This is my life!” he shouts. “I have given the last ten years of my life to this company, and it’s barely supporting Alice and me. I’m in debt up to my ass, and the company is in trouble. I’m sorry, Phillip, but we just can’t afford to be the next stop on your tour of professional self-destruction.”

“I understand why you’d say that, I do,” Phillip says. “But this is a family business, Paul. And I’m in the lucky sperm club, same as you.”

Paul gets up and shoves his chair back. “We’re not having this conversation.”

Mom comes back into the room, looking concerned. “What conversation?”

“Fine,” Phillip says. “I kind of dropped that like a bomb on you. It’s a lot to absorb, and you need a little time.”

“Absorb what?” Mom says. “Someone tell me what’s going on.”

“There’s nothing to absorb, you dumb shit! You’re not coming to work for me!”

“Well, technically speaking, we’d be partners. I’ll buy out Judd and Wendy. Judd’s not interested in the business, right, Judd? And Wendy, you’re going to be richer than God.”

I steal a glance at Barry to see if he’s offended. He is not.

“Baby brother, you can’t even buy a goddamn suit.”

“People change, big brother.”

Paul’s eyes settle on Tracy for a long, uncomfortable beat, and a bitter smile slowly spreads across his face. “Oh. It all makes sense now. Engaged to be engaged.” He shakes his head. “You’re a whore.”

“What did you just call her?” Phillip says, jumping to his feet.

“Not her, you. You’ve always been a whore.”

“Why don’t you come a little closer and say that?”

“Not in the house!” Mom says. She never broke up our fights, thought it was healthy for brothers to pound on each other every now and then, just not where they might break her things.

Paul steps right over to Phillip, where his height and weight advantage is more readily apparent. He’s about two feet away when Tracy steps between them.

“Okay, men. This is good, really good,” she says, her voice loud and clear, like she’s running a seminar. “You’ve each expressed a valid point of view that the other now needs to consider and internalize in a non-confrontational manner. Nothing has to be resolved immediately. And nothing can be resolved until each of you has come to appreciate the other’s position. So let’s agree, shall we, to table this discussion until everyone has had time to assimilate the new information and reconsider his own position. Okay?”

We all stare at Tracy as if she just started jabbering in ancient tongues. We have always been a family of fighters and spectators. Intervening with reason and consideration demonstrates a dangerous cultural ignorance. Paul looks her up and down as if he can’t quite believe she’s there. Then he nods and looks over at Phillip.

“Stupid. Little. Whore.”

Phillip smiles like a movie star. “Infertile limp-dick.”

Paul moves so fast that it’s impossible to say whether Alice’s shriek is in response to Phillip’s remark or the sudden ensuing violence. His hands latch on to Phillip’s neck and the two of them spin backward into the antique buffet, knocking over platters, candlesticks, and Tracy, who was still between them when Paul attacked.

“Not in the house!” Mom shrieks, smacking at their backs. “Take it outside!”

And who knows how much damage they might do, how badly Paul will beat Phillip’s ass, if right then Jen doesn’t appear like some kind of mirage, floating in from the front hall with an awkward smile. “Hi, everyone,” she says.

At the sight of Jen, every person in the room freezes, along with most of my internal organs. Paul looks up at her in shock, his hand still cocked to punch Phillip, who has fallen to his knees against the wall.

“The door was open,” Jen says. “I hope I’m not interrupting anything.”

“Jen, dear,” my mother says, suddenly composed. “What a nice surprise.” These are the moments when you really have to wonder what reality my mother is living in. She can go from casually watching two of her sons pummeling each other to graciously welcoming the woman who ruined her other son’s life without missing a beat.

As for me, I’m shocked and self-conscious that Jen is here, that our broken marriage is now, in effect, on display. But I also feel an unbidden rush of excitement at her arrival, wondering at the speed of light if this somehow means we’ll be getting back together. In that instant, it doesn’t seem so far-fetched; the pregnancy was a false alarm, she’ll stay for the shiva, we’ll have some hard talks, I’ll yell and she’ll cry, but she’ll still bunk with me on that pitiful sofa bed in the basement. And when the shiva is over, we’ll go home and start again. I won’t even go back for my stuff at the Lees’, just bequeath it to the next desperate tenant. I’ll start fresh, all new things.

Jen looks at me. I look at her. And then I remember the money, sixteen thousand dollars sitting at the bottom of my duffel bag, the money she threatened me with in her voice mail. She’s not here to get me back or even to pay her respects. She has Wade’s baby in her belly and our money on her mind. And now the rage is back, along with a healthy measure of self-loathing for being the pathetic cuckold who wants his cheating wife back.

“I’m so sorry about Mort,” Jen says, hugging my mother.

“Thank you, dear.”

And before things can get any more surreal, Phillip, seeing his opening, hauls off from under Paul and sucker punches him right on the chin and Paul goes down hard. Phillip jumps to his feet and stands over Paul, wincing as he shakes off his fingers. Jen looks at me, eyebrows raised in surprise. I look back at her with a light shrug, and for that single instant, we are us again. And then I remember we’re not and look away. Alice is on her knees, pulling up a dazed Paul, while Tracy hustles Phillip out of the room. “Who’s the little whore now, bitch?” Phillip says, cradling his hand.

We should all just face reality and stop taking our meals together.

Chapter 19

I’m so sorry about your father,” Jen says to me once the room has cleared out. She moves to hug me, but I step back like she’s contagious. She lowers her hands and nods sadly. She is wearing a navy dress that hangs effortlessly on her, stopping at midthigh. Her perfume reminds me of our bedroom, and it makes me homesick. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Are you seriously asking me that?”

“No, I guess not,” she says. “This must be hard for you.”

“It’s not like he died suddenly. I’ll be fine.”

“When will you be coming home?”

“I don’t have a home.”

“I mean, when will you be back in Kingston?”

“In about a week.”

She gives me a funny look. “You’re going to spend a week here? Every time you were here with me, you couldn’t wait to be out that front door.”

“We’re sitting shiva.”

“Oh. I didn’t think—”

“Yeah. Dad wanted it.”

She is momentarily distracted by a half-trashed platter of smoked salmon on the table. “Wow, that really reeks.”

“It’s lox. That’s how it’s supposed to smell.”

“Well, could we go outside for a little bit? I can’t handle the smell of fish ever since . . . you know.”

“I don’t mind it. And you won’t be here for very long anyway.”

“Judd, please. I know it’s a bad time, but I really need to talk to you.”

“What, Jen? What could you possibly have left to tell me? Are you and Wade getting married? Is that it?”

“No. It’s nothing like that.” She is looking around at the discarded food all over the dining room table, the half-eaten bagels and Danishes, the sliced vegetables, the maple syrup and waffle fragments smeared across the tablecloth by Ryan and Cole.

“Good, because, you know, adultery is probably not the best foundation upon which to build a marriage.”

“Oh, crap.”

“What?”

She looks at me and then covers her mouth and bolts from the room.

I find her in the powder room, vomiting into the toilet. When she’s done, she flushes the toilet and sits on the floor with her back against the wall, wiping her mouth with a torn strand of toilet paper. “Jesus, I hate this part,” she says.

She looks up at me, and there’s something in her eyes that I don’t like. When you’ve been married to someone for a while, you occasionally share these brief psychic moments, and right at that instant I know what she’s going to say just before she says it, even while I’m thinking that it can’t possibly be true.

The last time I had sex with Jen, as near as I can figure, was around three months ago. It was exactly the kind of rote, forgettable sex we’d been having at that time, the kind we’d sworn, back in the day, that we would never have. There was nothing technically wrong with it; tumescence and lubrication were both achieved on cue, his-and-hers orgasms distributed on schedule like party favors. It’s just that after you’ve been married for a while, it becomes much harder to lose yourself in sex the way you used to. For one thing, you’ve become a bit too efficient, you’ve learned what works and what doesn’t, and so foreplay, entry, and orgasm can often be condensed into a five-to-seven-minute span. Good sex requires many different things, but in most cases, efficiency isn’t one of them.

Also, when you share all of the administrative headaches of life with someone else, small piles of unaddressed, quotidian resentments build up over time like plaque, lingering on the fringes of your consciousness even as you kiss, lick, and fondle each other. So even as Jen panted in my ear and rocked her hips beneath me, some part of her brain would be consumed with the basement lightbulb she’d been asking me to change for going on a week now, or how I never managed to fully close my dresser drawers in the morning, which didn’t bother me but somehow threatened the delicate balance of her entire universe, or how I considered a cereal bowl washed even if all I did was rinse it with hot water and leave it in the sink, or how I never remembered to give her phone messages from friends who had called while she was out. And as I slid into Jen and felt her long smooth thighs clamp down on my hips, I might be thinking that she’d been a little bitchy tonight, that she had a tendency, at times, to react with a disproportionate amount of bitchiness, which only served to exacerbate things, digging whatever marital hole we were standing in a little deeper. Or maybe I’d be thinking about the latest American Express bill, how Jen had once again exceeded our budget by over a thousand dollars, and how I knew, if confronted, she’d have a rationale for every single line on the statement and then assure me that there had been returns made, that significant credits would appear on the next statement. I already knew from experience that these phantom credits would never materialize, or, if they did, Jen would use them to justify the next bill as well, effectively applying a single month’s credit to two bills. When it came to profligate spending, Jen was a demon accountant, bending the laws of mathematics to her will. And even as she shuddered through her orgasm, Jen might have been thinking about how I couldn’t, for the life of me, get my underwear from my body to the hamper without a stopover on the bedroom floor, or how I wasn’t as warm as I should have been when her mother called, and maybe, as I came (after her—let the record show), I would probably be thinking about how much goddamn time she spent on the phone with her mother and girlfriends every night, or the way she spit large chunks of toothpaste out into the sink and left them there to harden into little winter-fresh slugs that had to be scraped off the porcelain. She couldn’t handle a slightly opened dresser drawer, but a sink full of crusty, expectorated toothpaste was apparently not an issue.

None of this was very serious, obviously, just the minor aches and pains of a living marriage. And every so often we’d get into a fight over something larger, and we’d scream and vent all of our gripes, tears would fall, hurts would be validated, and sex would get good again for a while, passionate and intense, and then the cycle would repeat.

So we lay there fucking through our resentment, our thoughts wandering as we rubbed mechanically against each other—for warmth, or intimacy, or maybe just base gratification, our minds a frenzy of disconnected thoughts and festering gripes, each of us too distracted to realize that the other was equally self-absorbed. And there was no hazy afterglow when we were finished, no lingering in each other’s arms as the sweat slowly dried on our skin; just peeing, washing, and the donning of sleepwear, and then the warm, numbing glow of the television.

Chapter 20

So, you’re going to be a father,” Jen says gingerly.

“How is that even possible?”

We are standing on the patio in the backyard, overlooking the pool, which is brimming from yesterday’s rain. Today the skies are clear, and the August sun is burning through what’s left of the morning fog.

“I’m almost three months. Think about it.”

“You can’t possibly know that it’s mine.”

“Yes, I can. Trust me.”

“Trust is not my first impulse when it comes to you.”

“It’s your baby, Judd.”

“Bullshit.”

“It is.”

“You can keep saying that, and I can keep saying ‘bullshit,’ or you can say something else.”

She looks at me for a long moment and then shakes her head, giving in. “It turns out, Wade is sterile.”

The sound of my laughter surprises me. There is nothing remotely funny about the wife who betrayed me, the wife who is no longer mine, with whom I have already buried one baby, telling me, after our marriage has been ruined, that she is carrying our baby. There are very serious, life-altering implications hovering in the air between us. But right at this moment, all I can think about is the fact that Wade Boulanger is all cock and no sperm. He may have destroyed my marriage and unseated me in my own home, but I’d unwittingly left behind a booby trap that just blew his legs off. So I laugh. Hard.

“I thought you might like that,” Jen says wryly.

“You have to admit there’s a certain karmic poetry to it.”

“I’ll only admit it if you stop laughing.”

But I can’t. It’s the first time I’ve laughed in months, and it feels strange doing it, but I can’t seem to stop. And soon Jen is laughing with me, while inside of her, cells replicate in an organized frenzy as the seed of our bad timing takes hold.

“Wade couldn’t have been too happy about this.”

“It was a blow. But we talked about it. He’s okay with it. He supports me.”

“Imagine my relief.”

She closes her eyes, taking the hit, and then looks at me. “That was officially your last shot, okay? This is going to be tricky enough without you constantly punishing me.”

“How exactly have you been punished? You have the house, you have Wade, and now you have the baby you’ve always wanted. I missed the part where life got so rough for you.”

“People stare at me. I’m the town whore.”

“If the shoe fits . . .”

“And now I’m a pregnant whore. You think this is easy for me?”

“I think it’s a lot harder for me.”

She looks at me for a moment, and then looks away, twirling her hair with her fingers. “Point taken.”

Jen is allergic to the words “I’m sorry.” She concedes with little expressions like “Point taken” or “Understood,” or, my personal favorite, “Okay, let’s drop it, then.” But I know Jen, and I can tell she’s feeling sorry, for me, for her, for the little fetus that will be unwittingly born into our broken lives.

“Please,” she says. “Tell me what you’re thinking.”

It’s an absurd request. Our minds, unedited by guilt or shame, are selfish and unkind, and the majority of our thoughts, at any given time, are not for public consumption, because they would either be hurtful or else just make us look like the selfish and unkind bastards we are. We don’t share our thoughts, we share carefully sanitized, watered-down versions of them, Hollywood adaptations of those thoughts dumbed down for the PG-13 crowd.

What am I thinking?

I’m thinking I’m going to be a father, and I am not excited. I know I should be excited, and maybe at some point in the near future I will be excited, but at this moment, I feel numb, and if you were to peel away the numbness you’d find a thick mucous membrane of trepidation, and if you were to slice through that membrane, you would find a throbbing cluster of outrage and regret. We were supposed to be a family. We fell in love, our parents shook hands, we hired a band and a caterer and uttered vows, and now Jen will live in one place and I will live in another and this child of ours, this inconceivable progeny of our corrupted marriage, will live in a house with no siblings, thanks to his sterile, dipshit stepfather, and will be shuttled sadly between us, subject to the vagaries of our schedules, and he will be lonely and quiet and not quite sure of his place in the world. He will start dressing in black and experimenting with drugs and reading magazines devoted to firearms by the time he’s thirteen. No matter how hard I try, he will prefer Jen to me, which hardly seems fair, given the circumstances. I’ve always wanted to be a father, but not like this, not with the deck already stacked so badly against me. If I marry someone else and we have a child, that will make sense, but this doesn’t, this is a flesh-and-blood shackle that will keep Jen and Wade in my life long after I should be free and clear of them. And if I do have children with someone else, this child will feel jealous and discarded and no doubt gravitate toward his sterile, dipshit stepfather, and Wade’s already stolen my wife and home, I’ll be damned if I’m going to let him walk off with my unborn child too, but he’ll have the home-court advantage. Any thoughts of moving somewhere new and starting over will have to be shelved, because I don’t know exactly what kind of father I’ll be, but it won’t be the kind who lives in another state and sends shitty cards with a ten-dollar bill in them. Now, in addition to alimony, I’ll have to pay child support, which will be a neat trick considering the current state of my finances, and I’m going to be a father, I’m going to be a father, I’m going to be a father . . . I should be happy, should be thrilled, should be seeing the miracle in all of this, the silver lining, should be passing out cigars, should be hugging and kissing and thinking of names, but instead, thanks to my whore of a wife, the moment is marred by complication and despair and that’s not fair to my child and it’s not fair to me, and as soon as the kid is old enough, I’m going to sit him down and explain to him that none of this was my fault, that she did it to both of us.

And while I’m thinking all of that, another part of my brain is simultaneously thinking that Jen looks so damn beautiful right now, and she wore that little blue dress, and she knows how she looks in that dress, and I can’t believe that she’s not mine to touch anymore, because all I want to do is lift that dress up over her hips, slide into her, and stay in there until things change back, until we can once again be the family we were supposed to be.

And even as I’m thinking about her taste and her smell and her skin, I’m trying to figure Jen out, trying to glean if maybe she thinks this baby is a reason to rethink things, to maybe get rid of Wade and ask me to come back, and she’s maybe here trying to get a read on me, to see how receptive I might be to that proposition. We lost something vital in our marriage after we lost the baby, after it became known that the odds of another pregnancy were long, and now here we are, expecting, but the damage cannot be undone. Wade cannot be unfucked, and neither, it seems, can we.

That is a quick distillation of the myriad random thoughts flashing through my mind, but all I say is, “I wish this had happened before . . . before you and Wade.” Which I think is a pretty fair summation.

Without moving a muscle, Jen starts to silently cry, like those statues of the Virgin Mary that are always turning up in South American villages. “I know,” she says, her voice low and trembling. “I do too.”

I look at Jen. Jen looks at me. It’s an electric moment, and later on I will wonder if that moment was a last chance blown by two people too tied up in their uncertainty and resentment to seize it. But as it happens, Tracy has picked this moment to step out into the yard, in leggings and a tank top, with a yoga mat slung over her shoulder. Her hair is back in a youthful ponytail, and maybe I’m reading into this, but it seems to me that, after seeing Phillip’s ex-girlfriends last night, she is trying to look particularly youthful. “Hey, guys,” she calls to us, all carefree and breezy, walking over to extend her hand to Jen. “We haven’t been formally introduced. I’m Tracy.”

“Jen,” Jen says, shaking her hand.

“Don’t mind me,” Tracy says, scoping out a flat patch of yard and tossing down her mat. Then she bends over and starts to stretch.

“And who, exactly, is that?” Jen says.

“That’s Tracy.”

“So she says. Quite the firm grip, too.”

“She’s with Phillip.”

“Oh. I won’t get too attached, then.”

“Don’t do that.”

“What?”

“Make fun of my family like you’re still a part of it.”

Jen looks stung. It’s a good look for her. “Fair enough.”

We stand there watching Tracy’s rising ass as she descends into her Downward-Facing Dog, out of things to say. We are going to be parents. I’m going to be a father. I wonder if Wade will be in the delivery room, holding her hand while I sit off to the side like a spectator, waiting for my child to emerge from the spread legs that got us into this mess in the first place.

Phillip comes ambling out a moment later, in gym shorts and a tank top. “Namaste,” he says to us with a wink and a little bow.

“Hey, Phillip,” Jen says.

“Jen.” Phillip considers her as he unrolls his yoga mat next to Tracy’s. “I always suspected there might be something of the heartless slut in you.”

“Takes one to know one, I guess.”

Phillip nods and goes into a loose approximation of Tracy’s pose. “True that. But know this, my profoundly disappointing sister-in-law. Your looks may be a matter of public record, but let’s face it, your hottest years are behind you. As soon as we wrap this shiva, I am going to personally see to it that my brother here gets laid on a nightly basis by women ten years younger than you, ripe young honeys who will make him eternally grateful that you trashed your marriage.”

Before Jen can respond, Tracy abruptly pulls out of her yoga pose and kicks Phillip’s leg out from under him, causing him to fall on his ass.

“Prick!”

She yanks her mat up and storms disgustedly back toward the house while Phillip calls after her. “What the fuck, honey?!” Then, still sprawled on his ass, he turns to us. “She’s usually very congenial. I don’t know what bug crawled up her ass today.”

“That remark about ripe young honeys,” Jen says. “She may have taken that a bit personally.”

“Huh,” Phillip says, considering it. “In retrospect, that was probably insensitive of me.”

“I mean, what is she, fifty?”

“She’s forty-three and that was a cheap shot. I’d expect more, even from an adulteress.” He rolls to his feet. “On the plus side, no yoga this morning.” He reaches into his sock and pulls out a cigarette and lighter.

“You’re not going to go after her?” I say.

“I’m gathering my wits about me,” he says, flipping the cigarette into his mouth. “So, what were you guys talking about?”

“Nothing,” I say.

“I’m pregnant,” Jen says.

Phillip looks at Jen, then looks down at his freshly lit cigarette and pinches it out. “Mazel tov,” he says, smiling widely.

I am going to be a father, just when I’ve lost my own. There are some who would see a certain divine balance in that, one soul departing to make room for another, but I’m not that guy. I don’t believe in God when I’m in trouble, the way so many people do. But at times like this, when the irony seems too cruel and well crafted to be a coincidence, I can see God in the details. Due to some mental hiccup I can’t explain, when I think of God, I picture Hugh Hefner: a thin, angular man with a prominent chin in a maroon smoking jacket. I don’t know where that image came from or why it stuck the way it did. Maybe when I was a kid I was thinking about God and I happened upon a picture of Hef in a magazine and some neurons fired and a permanent association was made. But when your vision of God is America’s horniest senior citizen in his pajamas, it’s probably fair to say that you’re not the kind of guy who sees miracles in the mundane coincidences fate lobs at your unsuspecting head like water balloons from a high terrace.

Chapter 21

I always imagined I’d be one of those cool dads, the ones you see with long hair and trendy clothing and a leather wrist cuff. One of those guys who change diapers and never yell and buy all the overpriced snacks at the ballpark and carry the kid on their shoulders all the way home. I spent a good deal more time picturing myself as a father than as a husband. I figured I’d be a husband first, and certainly, I imagined what sort of woman I might marry—a smart, sensitive, good-natured lingerie model—but I didn’t picture myself as any particular type of husband. Just me, married, basically. A smarter man might have seen that as cause for concern, a big red flag flapping noisily in the wind.

Looking back, which is what you do when your life goes to shit, often and obsessively—I can’t really say if Jen and I would have made it if we hadn’t lost the baby. I know it’s the zenith of stupidity to count on a baby to save a failing marriage. The kid can’t even burp on his own, and you want him to repair a relationship that you’ve spent years twisting and tying into hard, salt-crusted sailor’s knots. But still, I can’t help wondering if that baby might have saved us, the same way that losing it accelerated our downward spiral into the thorny underbrush of marital decay. Losing him. Not it. “Losing it” is how you’d refer to your virginity or your wallet, but not your baby; even if you never did get to hold him, and smell his scalp, and wipe his white spittle off your shoulder. Yes, it was a boy. Baby Boy Foxman, it said, on his death certificate. He would have had untamable curly hair like me, and maybe Jen’s luminous green eyes, and he and I would have gone to ball games and to the park, and I would have taught him to ride his bike and throw a curveball. I don’t know how to throw a curveball, but you’d better believe I would have learned. And when he got older I’d have taught him to drive, and he wouldn’t have felt the need to rebel, to do hard drugs or mutilate his smooth, handsome face (Jen’s graceful cheekbones, my prominent chin) with studs and bolts, because there’d be nothing to rebel against, but if he had I would have given him his space, and then he’d have come back and we’d have bonded again, maybe over his first-ever beer—and who am I kidding, did I really believe he and his friends weren’t scoring beer already from someone’s older brother? But he was a smart kid with a good head on his shoulders and sometimes kids were going to act out, test their boundaries, but I trusted him to make the right decisions, and he knew he could always come to me, and . . . Damn. I’m off, just like that.

My point is that it would be too easy to say that losing the baby is where we went off the rails. People love to do that, to point to some single phenomenon, assign it all the blame, and wipe the slate clean, like when overeaters sue McDonald’s for making them fat pigs. But the truth is always a lot fuzzier, hiding in soft focus on the periphery. When it comes down to it, you’ve either got the sort of marriage that will withstand trauma, or you don’t. Jen and I had still loved each other, maybe not with the same hormonal ferocity that we did back when we’d first started dating, but no one really stays that way, do they? We still enjoyed each other’s company, had enough in common, found each other suitably attractive. We were content enough on a daily basis. But there was no denying that certain colors had faded and levels had fallen, like when a plane loses one engine but still has another three to carry it across the ocean.

It took a long time for us to finally conceive. Jen had an asymmetrical uterus that only the most nimble of sperm could navigate, but we persevered. When Jen finally got an uncontestable blue line on her home pregnancy test, we did a little dance in the bathroom doorway, Jen waving the pee stick above her head like a lighter at a concert. And for a little while there, it was like new life had been breathed into us. We would stay up late into the night, talking about neighborhoods, and schools, and names, and how we wouldn’t let it change us, while deep down hoping to hell that it would, that this would be the thing that filled the hole left by all the other unnamable things we had somehow lost along the way. We started having sex more frequently, hotter, nastier sex than we’d had in some time, especially in the later months, as the growing mound of her belly compelled us to seek out new positions—sideways from behind, one hand wrapped greedily around Jen’s pornographically engorged breasts, the other sliding down below the wide orb of her distended belly, where she would squeeze it tightly between her thighs and grind against it. I had become increasingly uncomfortable having missionary sex with her, convinced that with every smack of our bellies I could actually feel the baby.

“I can’t feel the baby,” Jen said. She had called me at the station, where I was simultaneously screening callers for Wade and looking at pictures of Jessica Biel online.

“What do you mean?”

“He always kicks when I’m in the shower. Today he didn’t.”

“Maybe he’s sleeping.”

“I don’t feel right. Something’s wrong.” She was in her eighth month, and for the last few weeks her hormones were the inmates running the asylum. I had learned the hard way that it was best to pretty much agree with everything she said.

“Have you had any coffee? Maybe he just needs a little caffeine?”

“Just meet me at the doctor. I’m leaving now.”

I sighed and closed out Jessica Biel, but not before I saw the silent judgment in her eyes.

I was late getting to the hospital. Late because there were no damn parking spots and how the hell do you build a major hospital and not think to include a single substantial parking lot? So I was a half hour late, on the one day in recorded history that Jen’s doctor’s office decided to run on time. Usually you stewed for an hour in the waiting room, reading parenting magazines and trading quick sympathetic looks with the other expectant fathers, wordlessly affirming that when you weren’t sitting quietly whipped at the ob-gyn, you were out getting drunk at football games and hunting buffalo in a loincloth. But on that day, by the time I’d come in and identified myself and been led back to the examination room by the theatrically gay receptionist, Jen was already in tears, wiping the blue conducting goop from the sonogram off her belly. And as the room started to spin and my lungs started to contract, the doctor explained that our baby had been strangled in the womb by his umbilical cord. He’d already explained it all to Jen, so she had to hear it all again because I’d been late.

Jen stopped making eye contact with me after that. Our marriage had unwittingly become fused to that little ball of life growing in her belly, and when it died, so did we. And while she’d never admit to it and rationally knew that it was ridiculous, Jen simply couldn’t handle the fact that I’d been late, that I’d let her go into that examination room by herself. People need someone to blame. I had failed her in some fundamental way, and she simply couldn’t bring herself to forgive me. I think she may have tried to, but in the end, it just seemed easier for her to start sleeping with Wade instead. So now we’ve each done something unforgivable, and the universe is once again in perfect balance.

Chapter 22

No visitors yet. The mornings are generally slow. Jen has left to go check into the Marriott over on Route 120. She’s going to stay overnight, determined that we talk this through further. Phillip is still being yelled at by Tracy behind closed doors not thick enough to drown out her high-pitched, weepy admonishments. I feel bad for Tracy. I don’t know much about her, but she seems to be a nice enough person. Dating Phillip brings out the slut or the shrew in a woman, and there would be no dignity in a woman her age playing the slut card. Paul has used the excuse of driving Horry to work to go check on things at the store. Alice is on the couch, balancing her coffee mug and some mini muffins on her plate. Barry’s out in the backyard, trying to run a conference call while watching the kids in the pool. Mom, Wendy, and I are sitting on regular chairs, not willing to spend a moment longer than we have to in the shiva chairs.

“What did Jen have to say for herself?” Mom says.

“Nothing. The usual.”

“She looked good,” Wendy says. “Infidelity agrees with her.” Jen’s long limbs and slim build have always been viewed by Wendy with a mixture of resentment and awe.

“I think it’s interesting that she came,” Mom says. “I think it means something.”

“What, Mom? What does it mean?”

“I’m just saying. Things may not be as finished as you think.”

“Does it mean she wasn’t screwing my boss for a year?”

“No, Judd, it doesn’t mean that. She cheated on you, and I know that hurts. But it’s only sex, Judd, scratching an itch. We’ve been programmed to attach far too much significance to it, to the point where we lose sight of everything else. It’s just one tree in a thick forest.”

“It’s a pretty big damn tree.”

“Over the course of a fifty-year marriage, one bad year isn’t very significant. Your marriage might still be there to be saved. But you’ll never know if you keep indulging your hate and anger like the world owes you reparations.”

“Thanks, Mom. As always, your unsolicited advice, however useless, is greatly appreciated.”

“You’re welcome, sweetie.”

Phillip emerges and lowers himself by his arms like a gymnast into an empty shiva chair, letting out a long, dejected sigh. “Apparently, I’m an irredeemable asshole.”

“And yet, I have a feeling she’s not done trying to redeem you,” Mom says.

“Go figure.”

“Why are you doing this, Philly?”

“Doing what?”

“Dating a cougar.” Wendy.

“Dating your mother.” Me.

“Jesus Christ.” Phillip.

“I think she’s nice,” Alice says. “And very attractive.”

“Yes, she’s lovely,” my mother says. “And closer to my age than yours.”

“I’m not as young as you like to think, Mom. And neither are you.”

“Don’t be spiteful, Philly. It doesn’t suit you.”

“And that skirt doesn’t suit you. You’ll be giving everyone crotch shots from your shiva chair.”

“I just want to make sure you’ve thought this through,” Mom says. “Because there’s no scenario in which this doesn’t end badly.”

“Much like this conversation,” I say.

“Which ends right now,” Phillip says.

“We are your family, Phillip. We love you.”

We all say “But!” at the same instant.

Mom looks around, momentarily thrown. “That’s right. But. But she’s too old. But you’re not going to start a family with her. But have you even thought about her in all of this?”

Phillip shakes his head, not taking the bait.

“What happens to Tracy when this runs its course, Philly? You’ll have no trouble finding new lovers—knowing you, you already have. But the older she gets, the harder it will be for her to find someone. She has so much less time than you to find the right person, and you’re wasting it for her.”

“And why can’t I be the right person?”

Mom smiles at him, sadly and with great tenderness. “Don’t be an ass.”

“That’s it, I’m out of here,” Phillip says, getting to his feet.

“I’ll come with you,” I say.

“You’re not supposed to leave the house,” Mom says. “We’re sitting shiva.”

“Ask Wendy about her marriage,” I say. “We’ll be back before the dust settles.”

“Dick,” Wendy says.

“Sorry, sis. It’s every man for himself.”

Paul, returned from the store, steps through the living room doorway just as Phillip reaches it. “Hey, Phillip,” he says, smiles, and then punches him square in the jaw, sending him sprawling back into the room, knocking over a handful of chairs.

“Paul!” Alice shrieks.

“He sucker punched me before.”

Phillip, flat on his back, props himself up on one elbow, wincing as he rubs his jaw. Tracy comes running out of her room, having heard the commotion. When she sees Phillip lying on the floor, she shakes her head in disgust and turns on her heel, disappearing back into the den. We won’t be seeing her again anytime soon.

“If I stand up, are you going to hit me again?” Phillip says to Paul.

“No, I’m good,” Paul says, rubbing his knuckles. He reaches over and offers Phillip his hand. Phillip takes it and Paul yanks him to his feet, and then, to everyone’s surprise, pulls Phillip into a little hug and whispers something into his ear. Phillip nods and pats the back of Paul’s head. Then he turns to me. “You coming?”

“Unless Paul wants to hit me too.”

“What could I do to you that the universe hasn’t already done?” Paul says.

“Oh,” Phillip says, like he’s just remembered something. “Jen’s pregnant. It’s Judd’s.”

Everyone in the room turns to stare at me.

“I think I speak for everyone when I say, holy shit!” Wendy says.

“How could you not tell me that?” Mom says.

“Now I’m going to hit you,” I say to Phillip.

He shrugs. “Every man for himself.”

Then Alice stands up and very deliberately lets her coffee mug and saucer fall to the floor, where they shatter into pieces. She looks around at all of us as tears form in her eyes. “Unbelievable,” she says. And then, before anyone can say anything, can figure out what set her off, she turns and runs crying past us, up the stairs, and moments later we all jump as the door to my old bedroom slams shut and all the lights on the first floor go out.

Chapter 23

I’ve never been in a Porsche before. Phillip’s rides low to the ground and I feel every seam in the road, every pebble, transmitted through the hard leather seat. The floor is strewn with plastic soda bottles and fast food wrappers, the ashtray spilling over with bent butts, and gas receipts.

“Nice car,” I say.

He shifts into third and guns it. “I know what you’re thinking,” he says.

“What’s that?”

“You’re thinking I’m a fuckup and Tracy’s rich, and I’m just with her because she pays my way and I get to drive cars like this.”

“Why are you with her?”

Phillip sighs and shakes his head. “I’ve been trying to grow up, Judd. I know I’ve kind of cemented my place as the family fuckup, but believe it or not, that’s not who I want to be. And having hit more than my share of brick walls, I figured maybe a better class of woman would be a good place to start.”

“So you’re not using her for her money. You’re using her for her class.”

“I’m not using her. Not any more than she’s using me. Isn’t that what love is? Two people who fulfill needs in each other?”

I shrug. “My wife spent the last year of our marriage sleeping with my boss. Don’t ask me about love.”

“Your pregnant wife.”

“My pregnant wife.”

Phillip grins. “Looks like I’ve got some competition in the family fuckup department.”

“It appears that way.”

“How are you dealing with that, by the way?”

“By trying really hard not to think about it.”

“That’s what I would do,” he says approvingly. “So, where can I drop you?”

“What do you mean? I thought we would get lunch or something.”

“There’s something I have to go do.”

“Something or someone?”

“Your faith in me is duly noted.”

I look out the window at a flock of geese flying by in a V formation, getting out while the getting’s good. “It’s not you, Phillip. It’s humanity in general.”

“Well, cry me a river.”

“Okay, drop me at Kelton’s.”

“The ice rink?”

“Yeah.”

He gives me a quizzical look. “Going skating, are you?”

“There’s something I want to see.”

Phillip gives me a wry look. “Something or someone?”

Then, without warning, he swerves across the double yellow line to pass the minivan in front of us, and for a second we are faced with oncoming traffic and our own mortality. A second later he yanks us back across and, without downshifting, turns left through the intersection on what feels like two wheels, the centrifugal force throwing me against the door. “Jesus Christ, Phillip!”

The Porsche’s tires gain traction and we rocket down the street to a chorus of angry horns from all the motorists he almost killed, and Phillip sighs. “Driving a Porsche is like fucking a model,” he says, and he would know. “It will never feel as good as it looks.”

PENNY SKATES BACKWARD in circles to Huey Lewis and the News, her legs whipping and scissoring beneath her as she speeds across the ice, executing a leap and then a spin. She is wearing black leggings and a worn gray hoodie, her hair tucked into a black ski cap. She moves with grace and confidence, her face flushed from the cold, and she doesn’t see me, shivering in my polo shirt on the lowest bleacher, falling briefly in love with her again . . . If this ain’t love, baby, just say so . . . Huey Lewis and the News are done, and the Dream Academy comes on singing “Life in a Northern Town.” Why are all skating rinks trapped in the eighties?

Penny picks up speed and then glides backward across the ice holding one leg up over her head with her hand. As she moves past, her eyes casually sweep up to the bleachers and she sees me. The surprise throws her balance off, and she goes down on her ass hard. I run through the opened door and out onto the ice, where she’s already back on her skates, dusting the ice flakes off her leggings.

“You okay?” I say.

“You scared me,” she says.

“I didn’t mean to.”

“You’re not allowed on the ice without skates.”

“Right. Sorry.” I step back through the door onto the rubber matting.

Penny skates over to the door and gives me a long, measured look. Then she reaches into one of the pockets of her sweatshirt and tosses me a key chain. “There are hockey skates in the rental shack. Go grab yourself a pair and come on out.”

“I wasn’t planning on skating.”

“And I wasn’t planning on falling on my ass in front of an old boyfriend. Things happen. Just roll with it.”

“I was never your boyfriend.”

Penny grins. “Fuck-buddy, then.”

“We never actually had sex.”

“And we never will if you keep parsing words with me.”

The hockey skates smell like something curled up and died in them. I’m laced up and on the ice in under five minutes.

I haven’t skated in years, stopped playing pickup hockey around the time I got married, but it comes back fast. While I was putting on my skates, Penny dimmed the main lights and turned on the disco effects, so we are skating to “Time After Time” through a dusky universe of spinning blue stars. It’s like we’ve been transplanted into a romantic comedy, and all that’s left to do is say something meaningful and kiss Penny at center ice while the music swells, and the happy ending is guaranteed. If you’re lost you can look and you will find me, time after time. Penny was always recklessly attracted to grand romantic gestures, to jumping into fountains fully clothed, to long, deep kisses in the rain. She dreamed of Richard Gere in his navy dress whites carrying her out of the factory, of telling Tom Cruise that he had her at hello. But we are hardly free and clear for a happy ending. After all this time, we are little more than strangers to each other, each of us pretending otherwise for our own sad reasons. I don’t even know if I’m here because she’s someone I once loved, or because I’m just lonely and desperate and more than a little sexually frustrated and our past gives me something of a head start. And there’s something off about Penny, something not quite there. I shouldn’t be here. I should be back at home, mourning my father and adjusting to the reality of becoming one myself, continuing to put all my energies into falling out of love with Jen.

And yet . . . Penny’s clear skin practically glows on the ice, and the piles of hair pouring out from beneath her cap fly behind her as she glides beside me, and there’s something perfectly pretty about her. I watch her profile from the corner of my eye, her slightly bent nose, her sculpted cheekbones, her big hopeful eyes that always seem seconds away from welling up. If you fall I will catch you I’ll be waiting . . .

“You want to hold hands?”

I look to see if she’s joking. She’s not. I consider telling Penny about the baby, but something stops me. I’d like to say it’s just my not having adjusted to the reality yet, but the truth is probably a good deal more self-serving than that. I take her hand and we skate through the rotating constellations. Her hand is in a black knit glove and mine is a cold, raw claw. I can barely feel her. I could be holding on to anything.

A FAT GUY with a walrus mustache and a jingling key ring shows up to open the rink for business. He waves to Penny, then disappears into a back room. A moment later the music stops, the lights come back on, and the stars disappear. As if by some unspoken agreement, Penny and I let go of each other. There will be no handholding under the harsh fluorescent lights. Walrus man reappears driving a beat-up Zamboni onto the ice.

“You know what would be nice?” Penny says as we step off.

“What’s that?”

She considers me for a long moment. “Never mind, I withdraw.”

“Come on. What were you going to say?”

“The moment’s passed.” She smiles and shrugs. I use my finger to free a thin strand of her hair where it’s gotten caught in her mouth.

“Thanks for the skate,” I say. “I needed that.”

“I’m glad you came by,” she says.

One or both of us may be lying.

PENNY IS TEACHING her first lesson of the day, and Phillip is late, naturally. I sit on a bench in the parking lot, watching the other skating instructors show up, slender women in baby T’s and black leggings that leave nothing to the imagination. They greet each other with waves and laughs. Their bodies, like Penny’s, are lithe and toned, and they walk with a graceful athleticism as they make their way inside. I suck in my gut and return their perfunctory smiles as they pass, trying for all the world to look like a guy who isn’t checking them out, even though, in their skin-tight leggings, you could spot those asses across a football field.

PHILLIP DRIVES US back home, somewhat more subdued than earlier. The convertible top is down, and the afternoon sun is hitting us hard, burning off the lingering chill of the ice rink. He pulls up in front of the house and we sit there for a moment, steeling ourselves to go back inside. “If we didn’t live on a dead end, I’d probably just keep on driving,” he says.

“I know the feeling, little brother. But your problems will just follow you.”

“I don’t know, this is a pretty fast car. How was the ice rink?”

“It was a little strange, actually. How was your mystery errand?”

“No mystery,” Phillip says. “I just needed some alone time to clear my head.”

“And is it clear now?”

“No. That was just a figure of speech.”

We smile sadly at each other. For some reason sitting here with my little brother, it suddenly occurs to me that we will never see our father again, and I feel a crushing desolation deep in my belly. We used to do this ventriloquist/dummy act for Dad. Phillip would sit on my lap and while I was trying to do the routine, he would suddenly spin and kiss my cheek, and then I’d yell at him and he’d say “sorry” in this high, hoarse cartoon voice, and Dad would laugh until his face turned purple. We didn’t know why he found it so funny, but we relished the ability to make him laugh, and so we did it at every possible opportunity. And then, at some point, we didn’t do it anymore. Maybe Dad stopped finding it funny, maybe I decided I was too old for it, maybe Phillip lost interest. You never know when it will be the last time you’ll see your father, or kiss your wife, or play with your little brother, but there’s always a last time. If you could remember every last time, you’d never stop grieving.

“Phillip,” I say.

“Yeah.”

“Your T-shirt is inside out.”

“What? Shit.” He pulls it up over his head. “I must have been wearing it wrong all morning.”

I nod slowly, accepting the lie, feeling sad and old and not up to the conversation. “Stranger things have happened,” I say.

Chapter 24

Today’s Inappropriately Self-Absorbed Shiva Caller award goes to Arlene Blinder, an obese, sour-faced neighbor with dark patches of varicose veins running up her thick, mottled legs. That’s an unkind description, to be sure, but the view from down here in the chairs is not a pleasant one. All legs and crotch as far as the eye can see, and, if you look up, double chins and nasal hair. And Arlene Blinder is far from anyone’s idea of a physical specimen. The small catering chair disappears into her massive bottom like it’s been swallowed, and the thin metal legs creak and moan as she settles down. Arlene’s husband, a rail of a man named Edward, sits beside her in silence, which is pretty much all anyone’s ever seen him do. Somewhere there must be an office he goes to, a job he performs, but if he does, in fact, speak, no one but Arlene has ever been around to hear it.

“Oh, we’re expanding the kitchen,” she says, as if someone had asked. “It’s been a nightmare. First they dig the foundation for the addition and discover a boulder the size of a car. They had to bring in all this equipment and it took them four days to get it out. And then, after they dig down, they tell me the existing foundation has crumbled, and they’re going to have to underpin the rest of the house. I don’t know what they’re talking about, all I know is it’s another fifteen thousand dollars out of the gate. If I’d known it was going to be like this, I never would have gotten started.”

For the record, there are other visitors, a handful of pleasant-faced, middle-aged women, long-standing friends of my mother, attractive women in the early stages of disrepair, fighting to keep age at bay with facials, compression undergarments, and aggressively fashionable skirts bought off the rack at Neiman Marcus and Nordstrom. They run on treadmills, these women, work out with personal trainers and play tennis at the club, but still their hips widen, their legs thicken, their breasts sag. Genetics help some more than others, but they are all like melting ice cream bars, slowly sliding down the stick as they come apart. There is something in their expressions that is either wisdom or resignation as they sit quietly around my mother and Arlene relentlessly holds the floor like a dominant elephant bull.

“And then yesterday they knocked out the water line and I couldn’t take my bath . . .”

“There’s an image I didn’t need,” Wendy mutters.

“Look at her chair,” Phillip hisses.

Indeed, the legs of the folding chair are visibly bowing, and whenever Arlene makes a hand gesture, the chair shudders and seems to sink a bit further.

“And the contractor is running two other jobs in the neighborhood. The Jacobsons, he’s redoing their pool house, and he’s doing a family room for the Duffs. So there are days when he doesn’t even show up, and God forbid the man should answer his cell phone. So whenever there’s a problem, which is pretty much always, I have to get in my car and go track him down.”

“When will you be finished?” my mother asks, and for an instant I think she’s asking when Arlene will be done boring us to tears.

“That’s what I’d like to know,” Arlene says. “At this rate, I won’t have a kitchen for the holidays, and my Roger is supposed to be coming in with the grandchildren.” Her Roger was in my class, a morbidly obese kid with crumbs on his shirt who wrote a computer program that he sold for millions, bought a mansion in Silicon Valley and a mail-order bride from the Philippines.

“It will be worth it when it’s done,” Mom says, trying to wrap things up.

“If it hasn’t killed me by then,” Arlene says, and then gasps at the potential offensiveness of her remark. But before the awkwardness of the moment can harden into something uncomfortable, there’s a sharp cracking sound as Arlene’s chair finally gives out, and she comes crashing down to the floor with a shriek. There follows a moment of stunned silence, the kind that stops time and pulls it like taffy. Everyone’s inner child struggles to suppress a grade-school snicker. It takes a handful of women to help Arlene to her bloated feet. I look at Edward, who has gotten up from his own chair but has been pushed outside the circle of straining women, and our eyes meet. And maybe I’m projecting here, but I would swear, at that moment, that he’s fighting back a smile that, unhindered, would split his face in two.

ARLENE’S FALL EFFECTIVELY clears the house, which frees everyone else to weigh in on the news that I’m going to be a father.

Mom: If it’s a boy, I hope you’ll consider naming him for your father.

Linda: That’s wonderful, Judd. I think you’ll be a great father.

Wendy: Jen is three months along? She doesn’t even have a baby bump yet. You’d better make sure she’s eating.

Phillip: Wade may have won the battle, but you won the war. At least your boys can swim!

Tracy: That’s wonderful, Judd. If you frame this with a positive attitude, it will be the greatest experience of your life.

Paul: This means I might have to rethink my theory that Jen left you because you’re gay.

Phillip: I’m going to be an uncle.

Wendy: Dumb shit. You already are an uncle.

Phillip: I meant again.

Mom: Presumably, Jen’s relationship with Wade is intensely sexual. This could very well be the end of them. Her priorities are going to change. You could start fresh.

Barry: New York is preparing the documents. We’ll have to massage the interest rates a little bit, but we’ll push it through. Believe me, in this economy, everyone wants this deal to happen.

Chapter 25

Ryan and Cole are in the pool. Cole wears Spider-Man water wings on his arms to keep him afloat. He and Ryan are engaged in an endless cycle of jumping in off the side and then climbing out to jump in again. Wendy sits suspended over the water on the far edge of the diving board, flipping through a tabloid magazine, while I pick at a platter of pastries on one of the lounge chairs. Serena is asleep in her carriage under an umbrella. The sun is just receding beyond the perimeter of the yard, and the mosquitoes haven’t yet emerged. It’s the best time to be outside.

“My God, I’m fat,” Wendy says, looking through pictures of starving starlets.

“You just had a baby, give yourself a break.”

“I had a baby seven months ago. I’ve been dieting and running every day, and everything in my strike zone still feels like the blob. I won’t even change in front of Barry.”

“I feel like I’ve put on some weight myself,” I say, biting into a marzipan-coated petit four.

She looks me over critically. “You are looking a little soft in the middle there. You may want to watch that. After all, you’re going to be getting naked in front of new women now.”

“From your mouth to God’s ear.”

Wendy laughs. “Jen had an incredible body. I would kill for her legs. And tits. And ass. I hope you’re not holding out for another one like that. They’re few and far between, and they generally don’t put out for unemployed divorcees with no abs.”

“Well, you know my motto. If at first you don’t succeed, lower your standards.”

“Mommy!” Ryan calls. “Watch me.”

“Okay, honey,” Wendy says absently, still looking down at the magazine. “Well, we can only hope that this pregnancy will leave Jen with stretch marks and a belly flap. No mother should have a stomach that flat. It’s just unfair.”

“I saw Penny today.”

Wendy puts down the magazine. “Penny Moore? How’d she look?”

“I don’t know. She looked good.”

“Is she married? Divorced? Kids? What?”

“She’s not married. She teaches skating and works evenings at the store.”

“Our store? She worked for Dad?”

“Yup.”

“So, Penny Moore is going to be your rebound. That’s fantastic.”

“No. I just ran into her.”

“Serves her right after the way she led you on in high school.”

“She didn’t lead me on and she’s not going to be my anything. She’s just an old friend.”

“She cock-teased you for your entire senior year. And if she didn’t mean anything, then why did you mention it?”

“I’m just making conversation.”

“I’m your sister, Judd. You don’t make conversation with your sister. You wanted to say her name.”

“And now I wish I hadn’t.”

“Oh, grow up. Your wife left you and you haven’t had sex in forever. You’ve got a kid coming, and God only knows what kind of mess that’s going to be. That pregnancy may be the best thing that ever happened to you, but it’s a ticking clock. You’ve got six months or so to get your shit together, to be ready to be a father and start caring for someone other than yourself. If I were you, I’d quit beating around the bush. You like Penny, admit you like her and go for it. Maybe you get somewhere with her, or maybe you get rejected. Either way, you get something.”

“I’ve been married for almost ten years. I’m out of practice.”

“No offense, little brother, but you didn’t exactly have mad skills back in the day.”

“Thanks for the confidence boost.”

“I’m just being honest.”

Horry emerges at the back door, sucking on an apple core. “Your uncle Stan is here. Your mom wants you back in your little chairs.”

“Kill me now,” Wendy says. “Please.” She tries to stand up, but her foot slides on the magazine, and she lets out a startled shriek as she loses her balance and falls into the pool. I jump to my feet, but before I can get moving, Horry comes tearing down the lawn and, after just a few long strides, executes a long racing dive into the pool. He resurfaces and swims over to where Wendy is coughing and sputtering, her sundress pooling around her like a tent. Ryan stands on the side of the pool, terrified. Cole floats and sings to himself in the shallow end, oblivious.

“You okay?” Horry says.

“Yeah,” Wendy says, somewhat nonplussed as he pulls her into a lifesaver’s hold. He swims her over to the side so she can grab on to the ladder. “Oh, Horry, you jumped in with all your clothes.”

“So did you,” he says. “You okay?”

“Yeah. I can’t believe I did that. I’m such a cow.”

“You’re not a cow,” Horry says, pulling the hair off her face. “You’re my sunflower.”

She smiles tenderly at him and briefly touches his face. “I remember.”

“You’re not a cow,” he says again, treading water slowly away from her. “And he should be better to you.”

“Thank you,” she says softly as Horry turns and swims toward the shallow end.

“You all wet,” Cole says to him as he arrives at the stairs.

“That’s right, little man.”

“You play with me now?”

“Sure,” Horry says, floating on his back. “I’ll play.”

The thing is that Wendy’s in the pool, so it’s impossible to tell if those are tears or just water that she’s brushing off her cheeks.

Chapter 26

The show goes on. We are all back in our shiva chairs, except for Paul, who has begged off, claiming some kind of retail emergency at the store. Alice has not been seen since the fit she threw this morning, but Tracy has reappeared, sitting off to the side, smiling graciously. The rest of us face the crowd like a rock band on tour, same set list, different town. We perform our sad little shiva smiles on cue and repeat the same inane conversations over and over again. He just slipped away, Mom says. Three kids now, Wendy says. I’m a photojournalist. I just got back from a year in Iraq, embedded with a marine unit, Phillip says. We’re separated, I say.

What happens is this. Every half hour or so, someone will ask me where Jen is. And I will say that we are separated. Then, like a game of telephone, word will quietly spread through the room, so that everyone present will know not to ask. And then, invariably, new visitors will arrive, and someone uninformed will ask me again, and the cycle will repeat. I feel bad for the ones who ask, who bear the awkwardness for the rest of the crowd.

My mother’s closer friends have known for weeks. Millie Rosen brings her daughter, Rochelle, who is twenty-seven, unmarried, and pretty in a forgettable way. She positions her right in front of me and makes painfully obvious attempts at engaging us in conversation. What pretty much every person in Elmsbrook except Millie knows is that I am not Rochelle’s type, being that I don’t have breasts and a vagina.

Mom’s older brother, Uncle Stan, has arrived with his latest senior citizen tramp, Trish, who wears her makeup like a drag queen, coloring way outside the lines with her lipstick and eyebrow pencils. Stan was an appellate court judge and married to my aunt Esther, a broad, sexless slab of a woman, for forty years. After Esther died of emphysema, Stan waited what he considered to be an appropriate mourning period, two weeks or so, and then began sleeping his way through all the willing widows in his retirement village down in Miami Beach. He’s closing in on eighty and has his pick of the litter, being that he can still drive and screw. I know this because he’s supremely gifted at working it into every conversation.

Uncle Stan is also highly accomplished in the field of flatulence, and he’s been here long enough for the room to carry the stale stench of his geriatric farts. The other visitors look around, wrinkling up their noses, searching for the source or for an escape route, but they are too polite to say anything.

Phillip is not. “Christ, Uncle Stan! That’s just brutal. How do you live with yourself?”

“It’s all that coffee I drank on the airplane.”

“He’s also on a high-fiber diet. The combination is like jet fuel,” Trish explains with a giggle. Women of a certain age shouldn’t giggle.

“Trish is a nurse,” Stan says proudly.

“Was,” Trish says. “I’m retired.”

“But she still has the uniform,” Stan says, winking and kicking at my feet. “If you take my meaning.”

“Stan!” Trish says, although she’s not nearly as mortified as she should be, if you ask me. Stan shrugs, then leans forward in his chair to release some more deadly fumes.

“Lord have mercy,” Wendy says under her breath.

PAUL RETURNS FROM the store, but instead of joining us in the shiva chairs, he makes his way purposefully through the crowded hallway and disappears up the stairs, ostensibly to check on Alice. “Why is he off the hook?” Phillip grumbles, sounding ten years old.

Someone has gotten my mother started on the topic of toilet training, and the room falls silent as she holds forth. She is considered to be an expert on the topic, and the children of her friends still e-mail and call her to ask for guidance as they struggle to train their children. There is a long and celebrated chapter in Cradle and All in which she basically explains the psychology of crapping. She details the way she trained each of her children, the mistakes she made, and, sparing no scatology, the funny things that happened along the way. Mom draws heavily on her own maternal experience throughout the book, and we are all mentioned by name. There are two pages on Paul’s undescended testicle, a section on Wendy’s late-blooming breasts, and a full chapter on how Mom finally solved my bed-wetting problem when I was six years old. I used to shoplift copies from our local bookstore and toss them out in the Dumpsters behind the Getty station, in an effort to keep the books out of circulation. I was in the sixth grade when my classmates finally discovered the book, and I never heard the end of it. That was the year I learned how to fight.

As Mom warms to her topic, she becomes a lecturer again, enunciating, gesticulating, and inserting little canned jokes that her friends must have heard a thousand times already but still laugh at because she’s in mourning. So Mom entertains the crowd with all the wisdom she’s gleaned about children and their toilet habits, and it’s so quiet that when another sound intrudes, we all hear it. It’s indiscernible at first, a burst of static and what sounds like a child out of breath, but then Alice’s voice can be heard loud and clear through Wendy’s baby monitor in the front hall. And what Alice says is this:

Are you hard yet?

There is more panting and a low moan, and then Alice says, Put it in me already.

Then a moment of quiet, followed by Alice’s short, high-pitched moans and Paul’s grunts as they start to go at it. The visitors, all twenty or so of them, sit shell-shocked, their eyes wide, as Mom stops talking and turns toward the monitor.

Harder. Fuck me harder, Alice cries.

Quiet! Paul grunts.

Yes, baby. Come in me. Come now.

“I would not have figured Alice for a talker,” Phillip says. “Nice.”

“I put Serena in there to nap earlier,” Wendy announces to the room. “I guess I forgot to take the monitor out. My bad.”

Phillip leans back in his chair and grins widely. “This probably shouldn’t be making me as happy as it is.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, people,” Mom says sternly. “It’s just sex. You’ve all had it. A few of you might even have some tonight.”

“I know I will,” Stan says, kicking my leg again. Dirty old man.

You could hear a pin drop in the living room. That is, if it weren’t for Paul’s escalating grunts and Alice urging him—Come on, come on!—over and over again.

“Sexual stamina runs in our family,” Phillip explains to the crowd. “This could take a while.”

Linda miraculously appears in the hall and unplugs the receiver. “Sorry about that, everybody.” It’s unclear if she’s apologizing for what they’ve heard or what they’ll now miss.

“Alice is ovulating,” Mom explains.

Some of the women nod with understanding while their husbands grin stupidly and look up at the ceiling. The low buzz of hushed conversations slowly returns, like a machine powering up, but a short while later, Paul comes downstairs to sit in his shiva chair and the visitors fall silent, trying not to stare at him. Trying and failing. He looks around the room quizzically, then down at his shirt. He checks his fly. “What?” he says, looking over at me. “What’s going on?”

Before I can answer, Uncle Stan stands up and begins to clap, his large, gnarled hands coming together with the mild clink of pinky rings, a doddering, bent standing ovation of one.

“Sit down before you fall down, old man,” Mom says.

Paul looks around one more time, then shrugs and leans over to me, making a sour face.

“Who farted?” he says.

Chapter 27

Penny shows up as the shiva is winding down for the night. “Hey,” she says, taking the empty chair in front of my seat. She’s wearing a black sundress and sandals, her skater’s legs crossed tantalizingly at eye level. “I’ve never paid a shiva call before.”

“You’re doing great,” I say.

“Some old perv pinched my butt on the stairs as I was coming in.”

“That’s my uncle Stan. He’s harmless.”

“Tell that to my butt cheek. It’s like he wanted to take a piece with him.”

“Hello, Penny,” Mom says.

“Hi, Mrs. Foxman. I’m so sorry about Mort.”

“Thank you. He was very fond of you.”

“He was such a nice man. We all miss him down at the store.”

“Well, it was very nice of you to come see us.”

“I’m just sorry it’s taken this long. You know we keep the store open until nine in the summer.”

“Penny is the only one Dad trusted to close up and turn on the alarm,” Paul says.

“It’s not exactly rocket science,” Penny says, blushing. Then, noticing Wendy, “Oh my God, Wendy! I didn’t recognize you.”

“That’s because, unlike you, I’ve actually had the decency to age. Look at you. I bet they still card you in bars.”

“Hardly,” Penny says, shifting nervously under Wendy’s unflinching scrutiny.

“I mean, Jesus,” Wendy says, shaking her head. “What are you, a size two?”

THE VISITORS ARE all gone, and the house has fallen quiet. Penny and I sit in the dark by the pool’s edge with our feet in the water. The only light comes from two submerged pool lamps, so all we can see is a fine mist rising up off the heated water. “So, how are you doing?” she says.

“Fine, I guess. It’s a lot of family time. I think we’re going to need a year off from each other when this is over.”

She nods, tracing little circles in the water with her toes. “I live around the corner from my parents. My mother has macular degeneration; she can’t see well enough to drive anymore. So I take her grocery shopping every Tuesday and I have dinner with them every Sunday night.”

“That’s nice, isn’t it?”

She shrugs. “It can be, with the right mix of meds. God, it’s hot out here.”

“Yeah. It’s been like this all week. Muggy as hell.”

“You’d think it would get cooler at night.”

“Yeah. Not lately.”

“Oh God, Judd. Listen to us. We’re talking about the weather. Are we avoiding something, or do we simply have nothing to say to each other?”

“Conversation was never a problem for us.”

“Well, then, let’s put a moratorium on small talk, okay?”

“Deal.”

“And for God’s sake, let’s get in the water already.” She stands up, and I can’t quite see her eyes, but I know they’re daring me. “Turn around,” she says.

I do, and a few seconds later I hear a light splash as she slides into the water. I turn around and see the dark pile of her dress on the ground. I pull off my polo shirt and my cargo pants. I hesitate for a moment when it comes to my boxer briefs. To doff or not to doff, that is the question. How did Penny answer it? In the dim light coming up from the depths of the pool, it’s impossible to say. I slide into the pool with my underpants on. Better safe than sorry.

She holds on to a rung of the ladder while I tread water a foot or so in front of her. After a few moments, my eyes have adjusted enough that I can look into hers. I flash back to Horry and Wendy, looking at each other in this exact spot a few hours ago, this haunted pool that seems to pull dead and buried love to its surface.

“I’ve been thinking about you, Judd.”

“Me too.”

“Do you think you’d like to kiss me now?”

I glide over to her, my hand falling over hers on the ladder rung. Up close, I can make out the tantalizing outline of her breasts, wet and glistening, where they disappear into the water. “Listen,” I say, but then, somehow we’re already kissing, deep and slow, our tongues colliding softly, gathering speed. And her taste is exactly as I remember it, brings me back in an instant to those nights of sweaty dry-humping in my basement, and I can feel her nipples hard against my chest, her fingers gliding up my back to my neck, pressing against the spot where my spine becomes my skull.

I have kissed no one but Jen in over ten years, and we have not kissed like this in a very long time, with gaping mouths and frantic tongues, where kissing is its own kind of sex. I am kissing another woman, and the awareness of these lips opening against mine in wet surrender, these fingers snaking down my chest, these smooth, naked thighs wrapped around my hips, is both exhilarating and surreal. If one woman is willing to kiss me like this, it stands to reason that, in due time, others might be equally willing, and for the first time since I walked in on Jen and Wade, I feel something approaching optimism about my future.

After a while, Penny stops to catch her breath, gasping a little as she turns around to rest her arms against the edge of the pool. I swim up behind her and put my hands on either side of her arms, pressing my chest against her back. She leans her head back to press her cheek against mine. “That was so nice,” she says.

My body falls against hers, and when my erection, straining underwater against my soaked underpants, falls lightly against the curve of her ass, she emits a low groan.

“Listen,” I say. “There’s something I want to tell you.”

“Tell me tomorrow,” she says, pressing herself hard against me. “Just do that now.”

PENNY LEFT A little while ago, after kissing me a few more times. Now I’m horny and throbbing and sleep is an impossibility, so, for some twisted reason, I dial Jen’s cell.

“Hello?” Wade’s voice. I should have realized he’d be there. Wade’s not the sort of guy who would pass on the opportunity for some hotel sex. I hang up, wait a minute, and dial again. “Hello?” he says with a little more emphasis, like maybe the mystery caller hadn’t understood him the first time. It’s Jen’s cell; why the hell is he picking up? I hang up and dial again. This time his voice is thin and clipped. “Judd,” he says. I listen to his breathing for a long moment and then I hang up. On my next call, Jen picks up.

“Hey, Jen.”

“Judd,” she says, probably with a sardonic, knowing nod for Wade’s benefit. I picture them lying in bed, him running his thick fingers up her naked thigh to the curve of her ass as she talks to me, his other hand fondling his thick, semi-erect cock, getting it ready for her. Wade could not get enough pancreatic cancer to satisfy me.

“So, we’re going to be parents.”

“It’s late, Judd. Can we talk tomorrow?”

“Oh, I’m sorry. Am I interrupting something, again?”

“No. I’m just exhausted.”

“Would you have left me?” I say, surprising both of us. “If you hadn’t gotten caught, do you think you would have left me or left him?”

I can hear her breath catch on the phone. “I honestly don’t know,” she says.

It is one of those questions that can’t possibly have a right answer, but hers still hurts.

“I’m sorry I disturbed you. Go back to sleep.”

“Can we talk tomorrow?”

“Yeah. Maybe. I don’t know.”

“I hope we can.”

“Bye.”

I wait about three minutes and then dial Wade’s cell phone.

“Hello?” he says.

I hang up. It’s a small victory, but you learn to take them where you can get them.

Never marry a beautiful woman. Worship them if you must, go to bed with them if you can—by all means, everyone should have carnal knowledge of physical perfection at least once in their life—but when it comes to marriage, it’s a losing proposition. You will never stop feeling like a gatecrasher at your own party. Instead of feeling lucky, you will spend your life on edge, waiting for the other stiletto to fall and puncture your heart like a bullet.

I AM RUNNING through darkened halls. Behind me I hear the jingle of the rottweiler’s tags, the scrabble of his paws on the floor, the low gurgle of his breath as he gains on me. I am sweating and panting, and no matter how hard I try, I can’t seem to pick up any speed. And then I round a corner and my prosthetic leg falls off, clattering woodenly to the ground. I scream as I go down, and even though the dog is not yet upon me, I lurch awake knowing he will be soon.

Chapter 28

Alice Taylor was standing against the wall at Jeremy Borson’s house party, sipping spiked punch from a plastic cup and smiling at something one of her friends was saying. We’d gotten friendly over the last few months; she had started touching my arms when we talked and walking closer to me in the halls, so that our hips occasionally bumped. Just a few days earlier, walking home from school, I had impulsively taken her hand when it grazed mine, and she had squeezed back and we’d stayed like that for the rest of the walk, never mentioning it. For the first time in my high school career, a girlfriend appeared to be within my reach. We’d be meeting tomorrow afternoon at the mall for burgers and a movie, and I fully intended to hold her hand again, maybe even try to kiss her during the movie.

And there she was, at Jeremy Borson’s party, in cutoffs that showed off her smooth, tanned legs and a white V-neck sweater, her wavy brown hair pulled up off her forehead with a headband. Even as she laughed with her friends, I saw her eyes wandering over the rim of her cup to find mine, saw the little surreptitious smiles being aimed at me, the light dancing across the surface of her lip gloss. There was something new in those smiles, something bold and promising, and I began to make my way through the crowd, marshalling my resources and chugging down my spiked punch for courage. Maybe we’d go outside for a little while and I’d kiss her tonight. I was pretty sure she wanted me to.

The room was hot and throbbing; Tears for Fears blasting on the stereo system, girls dancing awkwardly in the square left by the prudent removal of a coffee table, kids pressed up against each other in the crowded living room, drinks held aloft at high angles to avoid spilling. Here and there couples made out against the walls, although the ones with any class went out to the yard to grope and suck in private. There were viral whispers of vomit in the powder room, of porno in the basement, of controlled substances in the garage.

I don’t know exactly what happened. Someone bumped into someone across the room, maybe clowning around, maybe completely by accident, but we were a roomful of sweating dominoes, knocking one into another, until I was thrown forward into Tony Rusco, who had a beer bottle in his mouth right at that moment. The bottle banged audibly against his teeth, and he spewed his beer all over his shirt. He turned around, wiping his face on his arm, and, with no preamble, kicked me in the balls.

If you have no balls, or have some but have somehow made it through life thus far without ever having injured them, then you’ve missed out on one of the most exquisitely nuanced variations of agony known to man. It is the piano of pain, melody, harmony, bass, and percussion all in the same instrument.

First there’s nothing. A surprising amount of nothing actually. No pain at all, just white noise and the shock of having been hit there, in your softest of places. And because the pain has yet to arrive, you dare to hope that it won’t come at all, that the impact was less direct than you first thought. And then it comes, like thunder on the heels of lightning, at first just a faint rumble, a low, steady hum of discomfort. If it were a musical note, it would be one of those bottom bass notes they use in horror films to create an ominous sense of dread, of dark, fanged things hiding, poised to spring. It’s a loaded hum, because you know a note that low only has one direction to go. And as you feel the dull, pulsating pain emanating from the center of your being, from your core, you think to yourself, I can handle this, this is nothing, I can kick this pain’s ass, and that’s the exact instant that you find yourself suddenly on your knees, doubled over and gasping, with no memory at all of how you got there. And now the pain is everywhere—in your groin, your gut, your kidneys, the tightly flexed muscles of your lower back where you didn’t even think you had muscles. Your body is tensed too hard to breathe right so your lungs are constricted, and you’re drooling because your head is hanging, and your heart can’t pump your rushing blood fast enough, and you can feel yourself teetering, but you have no muscles left to correct with, so you end up collapsing onto your side, your nerves fusing together into knotted coils of anguish, your eyeballs turned up into your skull like you’ve grabbed hold of a live wire in the rain.

There’s really nothing else like it.

Rusco didn’t belong at this party. He had graduated two years ago, a small miracle considering the record of suspensions he’d racked up for fighting, drugs, and vandalism. Now he operated a forklift in the warehouse at one of the furniture outlets gathered in a cluster at the top of Route 9 and lifted free weights with his buddies in his front yard. He was rumored to have pulled a switchblade on Mr. Portis, our aging phys ed teacher, who had subsequently suffered a nervous breakdown; to have punched out the bouncer at the Dark Horse when they wouldn’t serve him a beer; to have beat the shit out of his own father in the eighth grade.

So even if I could have gotten to my feet at that point to fight him, he’d have only knocked me down again, so I just curled up into the fetal position while the room spun around me and psychedelic colors swam across the insides of my eyelids, and Rusco put his boot on my head and said, “You want to watch where you’re going, shithead.”

And then he was gone, and Alice was hovering over me, helping me up, she and Jeremy taking me upstairs to Jeremy’s parents’ bedroom, where they lay me down on a paisley bedspread. “Are you okay?” she kept saying, while I tried my best not to cry. I was enjoying her concern and her proximity, her hair intimately brushing my face as she leaned over me, but I hadn’t exactly kicked ass out there, and I would be damned if I was going to compound that by crying in front of her.

“He’s such an asshole,” Alice said.

I rolled away from her and closed my eyes. I think I might have dozed off because when I woke up she was gone, and a couple of seniors were making out in Jeremy’s parents’ bathroom, their quiet moans reverberating off the tiles.

I was limping home when Paul pulled up beside me in Dad’s Cadillac. He’d been granted unlimited use of the car from the moment he was awarded his baseball scholarship, which was why, instead of being at the party, he’d been off somewhere getting laid in the backseat. “Hey!” he said. “What happened?”

“Nothing.”

“I heard you got your ass kicked.”

“It wasn’t my ass.”

I looked over at Paul and, to my surprise, saw that he was simmering with rage. “Get in,” he said.

“It’s past my curfew.”

“Fuck curfew. Come with me.”

“Where?”

Paul hit the wheel and looked straight ahead. “Just get in the car, will you?”

The Cadillac smelled of perfume and sex, and my balls throbbed with every bump and curve. “Fucking asshole,” Paul muttered as he steered across Centre Street. “Let’s see how he likes it when I stand on his head.”

I was scared and still in considerable pain, but I felt safe next to Paul and touched that he was so angry that someone had hurt me. We had drifted apart in high school, but we were still brothers, and here he was, interrupting his own evening, which surely had involved some degree of female nudity, to stand up for his little brother.

“Quit crying,” he said softly. “You can’t let him see you like that.”

It was a cloudless night and the neighborhood was bathed in the blue light of a low moon. Paul sped through the empty streets, and I fantasized that we were headed to the diner by the interstate, two brothers out for a late dinner to tell each other about their respective nights. We weren’t those kinds of brothers anymore, but I often wished we were. A few minutes later, we pulled up in front of a dilapidated Victorian with a sagging porch. Rusco was out on the front lawn, perched on his weight bench, drinking a beer. The two guys he’d been with at the party were sitting on his front steps, each with a beer in hand. I watched as Rusco registered my presence in the passenger seat, watched him take in Paul’s tall athletic frame as he strode angrily through the glow of the Cadillac’s headlights and up the driveway, and, for one delicious moment, saw the fear that spread across his face as he realized what was happening.

“Hey, man,” he said, getting to his feet. “You’re on private property. Get the fuck off—”

Paul’s fist hit his open mouth with a loud crack, and whatever euphoria I’d been feeling disappeared in an instant. Rusco went down hard as his two friends jumped up off the stairs, not sure what to make of Paul, who was now standing over Rusco and shouting, “Get up and fight, you little pussy!”

I jumped out of the car and ran up the sidewalk to where Rusco lay on his back, dazed. Blood spilled from his mouth, and my stomach turned when I saw that his two front teeth were gone. “Forget it, Paul,” I pleaded, suddenly terrified. “Let’s just go.”

“Come here, Judd,” he called to me. I came up and stood beside him as Rusco rolled over and tried to sit up. His chin looked like it had been dipped in red paint, and his eyes were rolling unfocused in their sockets. When he got to his knees, Paul kicked him in the stomach and he went down again. A light went on in an upstairs bedroom, and from in the house, I heard the sounds of barking.

“We have to get out of here, Paul.”

“Kick him in the balls,” Paul ordered me. His eyes were blazing, the cords on his neck standing out angrily against his skin.

“It’s okay,” I said. “We have to go.”

The front porch light came on. I grabbed Paul’s arm and started pulling him toward the car. “Come on!” I pleaded.

From the ground, Rusco lashed out with his leg, ineffectively hitting Paul’s ankle. Paul grabbed the leg and lifted it, spreading Rusco’s thighs. “Kick him in the nuts and then we’ll go,” he said.

The blood gathering on Rusco’s chin started to run up his cheeks as Paul lifted his leg higher. When he opened his mouth to spit out some more blood, it looked like the very tip of his tongue was missing too. “I don’t want to!” I shouted.

And then, behind us, the front door opened and a fat woman in green sweatpants and a large bra appeared, clutching the collar of an enraged rottweiler, who strained ferociously against her grip. She had the same jutting forehead as her son, the same small, humorless eyes. “What the hell is going on here?”

“We’re leaving,” I said, my voice cracking as Paul and I backed away.

“Tony, what happened? Oh my God! Is he okay?”

The rottweiler snarled and barked at us and I could see his spit flying in the yellow light of the porch as he fought to escape Mrs. Rusco’s grip. We were almost at the curb when she said, “Get ’em, Max,” and let go of the collar. The rottweiler flew off the stairs, and we turned and ran as fast as we could. I could hear his claws tearing at the concrete walk, his low growl vibrating deep within my bowels. Paul overtook me on the sidewalk and jumped through the open window into the passenger seat. I jumped onto the hood and then up onto the roof, feeling the aluminum bend under my weight. I turned just in time to see the dog leap through the window after Paul. The car shook under me as the dog snarled and growled, and Paul’s screams changed from terror to agony. I screamed for help at the top of my lungs, screamed until my voice cracked and then refused to come. It would take three days before it returned, three days spent sitting in the hospital while they operated on Paul’s shoulder and performed skin grafts onto his ruined arm. I screamed and cried and pissed my pants, helplessly stomping on the roof as Paul screamed and wept.

It was Rusco who ultimately got the dog out of the car. He came staggering down the walk, his chin and mouth caked with blood, and yanked open the door, yelling, “Down, Max!” as he went. By now the dog was in too much of a frenzy to heed his master, so Rusco pulled him out by his hind legs and tried to hold him back. The dog lurched out of his grip and tried to run back at the car, barking furiously, but Rusco stood in his way and yelled at him. The rottweiler danced around him, barking and snarling, and at first I thought it was blood dangling from its mouth, but then I realized it was a wet strip of Paul’s red T-shirt. “Get out of here!” Rusco shouted. “He’s going to get past me!”

“Hold him!” I yelled hysterically from the roof. Beneath me, the car was distressingly still.

“Just get in on the other side!”

I don’t remember coming down off the car or opening the door. I remember Paul’s head jammed under the steering wheel, his body spread across the bench at odd angles, the blood pooling up in the cracks between the vinyl seat cushions, the suffocating stench of blood and shit. He didn’t make a sound when I moved his head out from under the wheel so that I could sit down, but he groaned when I slammed the door, so I knew he was alive. So eager had Paul been to beat the shit out of Rusco, he hadn’t even bothered to turn off the engine, so I was able to raise both windows immediately. A few seconds later, the rottweiler hit the side of the car with a thump, his teeth gnashing against the glass. I stared numbly past him at Rusco, who looked back at me expressionless, his face painted with blood like a savage, while the dog howled and threw himself repeatedly against the car. At some point I threw the car in gear and drove slowly away, not wanting to shake Paul. Through the rearview mirror, I watched the rottweiler chase us for a little bit, then stop in the middle of the street to bark furiously at us. I should have thrown the car into reverse and run him over, but I didn’t, I just kept driving, and the ignored impulse became one more thing that would haunt me in the days and years to follow. If only I had backed over the dog. If only I had jumped off the roof of the car to help Paul. If only I had refused to get in the car with Paul to begin with.

At some point I managed to get my bearings and drive us to the emergency room, but I have no recollection of that. I vaguely recall a nurse sticking a needle in me because Paul had lost a lot of blood, and then my parents showed up and they stuck needles in them too. The police briefly impounded the Cadillac for evidence, which is why at some point I woke up in a panic in the back of the police car that was taking me home. My parents would be spending the night in the hospital. The cop driving me was an old guy whose face I couldn’t quite make out from the backseat. He told me I’d saved my brother’s life. It would soon become clear that Paul didn’t see it that way. The silent consensus, evident in Paul’s glare, my father’s pained expression, and my mother’s lack of intervention, was that the wrong brother had been mauled. I didn’t know it at the time, but that was the night we broke, and in the years to follow, the jagged pieces of us would continue to drift further and further apart, small vital bits getting lost here and there, until there was no hope of ever putting us back together.

Animal Control put down Max two weeks later, after a hearing my father attended armed with grisly pictures of Paul’s injuries. Suits and countersuits were filed, criminal charges leveled and dismissed. A few weeks later I finally kissed Alice Taylor in a darkened movie theater, and then surprised us both by crying like a baby.