My Old Man

by Amy Sohn

  Her blow-dryer was sitting on her kitchen table. She picked it up and began blowing out her hair with enormous expertise. The plot thickened as her hair thinned.

  “I thought you didn’t believe in blowouts,” I said.

  “I’m opposed to the regular blowout,” she said over the noise. “The occasional one I have no problem with.”

  There was a gay porno called Honcho lying on top of her magazine rack. I thumbed through it, staring at the bulging cocks. I was stalling but I had to.

  “I saw you,” I finally said, putting the magazine down.

  “Yeah?” she replied dully.

  “In the park the other night. I saw you with him.”

  She met my gaze, picked a few spare hairs out of the brush, and said, “I know.”

  I hadn’t exactly been prepared for her to trump me in the information department. “What?” I gasped.

  “How could I not have? You guys were so obvious when you left, with your little crouch walks.” She made a scrunched, mock-nerdy face and moved her two fingers like a bug. Leave it to Liz to mock me at the most dramatic moment of our so-called friendship. “It’s a good thing he didn’t, though. He would have had a conniption.”

  “Why are you doing this?” I said, striding over to her and leveling my eyes with hers.

  “I’m not do ing any thing,” she said sullenly, like I was the crazy one and not her.

  “You mean that was it—you just kissed—but nothing else?”

  “Oh, no,” she said. “We’ve been fucking for the last two weeks. I mean I didn’t set out to do anything. It just kind of happened.”

  “Liz!” I yelled. “You don’t start an affair with your girlfriend’s father because it happened.”

  “Sure you do! It’s actually a really funny story. I was on my way home from the subway, and I stopped in Boat for a drink when—” I stuck both fingers in my ear and sang the first few lines of “If I Were a Rich Man.” I was not sure why I chose that tune.

  When I finally unplugged she was saying, “…your dad sure knows how to eat quiche!” I didn’t know which was more upsetting: what she’d just said or the fact that she’d used the word “quiche” to describe it.

  “That’s disgusting!” I said.

  “No it’s not. I think what surprised me most about our sex together is how vibrant and modern it is. He’s a very open-minded guy, and way less judgmental than some of the other guys I’ve dated. Such an eager learner. He already knows the name of every vibe in my box—”

  “Stop right there!” I said. “Just tell me how long you’ve been seeing him. Since before Banania?”

  “Banania,” she said. “That was when I met him.”

  “And how many times has it been since then?”

  “That depends,” she said, setting the brush down on the desk. “Are we talking occasions or—”

  “You know what? Forget I asked. I don’t care how many times. I just want it to end.” I knew I sounded like a mother telling her kids to stop fighting but you resort to inane maternal logic when you’re in the midst of stopping sin.

  “Why?” she asked blankly, going into the bathroom.

  “ ‘Why’?” I repeated, following her in. “Are you seriously asking me why? Did you happen to notice the other night that he had a wife?”

  “Of course I did,” she said, as she began to pluck her brows. “But how could I let that stop me when he didn’t let it stop him? Your dad can be very aggressive when he sees something he wants.”

  “Are you sure we’re talking about the same person?”

  “Oh yeah,” she said, plucking a big one.

  I massaged my temple with my hand and sat down on the edge of her bed. There was a V-shaped stain on one of the pillows and I really wanted to believe it was saliva.

  “Look, are you mad at me about something?” I asked pleadingly. “You’re jealous about Powell so you want to punish me somehow?”

  “I find it very interesting that you think this has something to do with you.”

  “Of course it has something to do with me! He’s my father!”

  “I feel no anger, Rach,” she said. She pulled a purplish Missoni V-neck from her closet and set it on the bed.

  “But you’ve got to,” I said. “Otherwise you wouldn’t be doing this! If you want to put me through pain, I could give you about fifty other really horrible things you could do that would make me equally miserable and wouldn’t involve him. You could slap me in the face.” I grabbed her hand and hit myself with it across the cheek. “Come on! Go to it! Tell me what you’re pissed about. Let’s get it out right now. Let’s tussle.”

  “Rachel,” she said, peeling my fingers off her hand. “I do not want to tussle.”

  “I don’t understand why you won’t break it off!”

  “Because I’m not entirely convinced that that’s what he wants.”

  “It is what he wants!” I brayed. “I know him very well and trust me, it’s what he wants. I’ll help you join a white-women-who-love-black-men support group. I’ll post a JDate ad for you. Just don’t keep seeing him.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I can’t do that.”

  “How can you even be attracted to him? He dyes his hair.”

  “So do I.” She got some deodorant off her dresser by the window and rubbed it up and down her armpit.

  “And he has unbelievably bad seborrheic dermatitis. Have you noticed it? On his face? It’s like all over. And it’s really contagious.”

  “It’s not contagious,” she said. “Do you think I’m an idiot?”

  “I thought you wanted someone with money! My dad’s out of a job!”

  “I know,” she said. “I told him he should consider suing for ageism.”

  “He told you?”

  “We talk, Rachel. We don’t just—”

  “All right!” I said, forcing her to talk to the hand. I hated the fact that he’d told her. It made me feel like he was letting her in. And he hadn’t even told me right away.

  “I’m not entirely convinced he should stick with programming anyway,” she said coolly. “He’s always wanted to write the great American novel and—”

  “My father has not always wanted to write the great American novel. Where did you get this?”

  “Yes he has. When he was at Columbia he took this English class he really liked. His professor told him he had real promise but when he married your mom he had to get a real job and give up on his dreams.” She said “dreams” like she was one of them. “I think this could be an opportunity for him to regroup, take stock of his options.”

  “My father can’t even write a coherent email!” I said. “He uses all these parentheticals and double-dashes. I have to read them three times in a row just to figure out he’s telling me to tape The Sopranos.”

  She nodded slowly like she had years of wisdom on me. “He says it’s your family’s lack of support that’s one of the main reasons he’s put off his novel-writing for so long.”

  “How often do you see him anyway?”

  “As often as we can. He only comes over here when you’re working so sometimes we go to the Brooklyn Marriott. I figure we might as well revitalize the Brooklyn economy while we’re being illicit.”

  “Ugh!” I said. “I don’t even see what you see in him! He’s like thirty pounds overweight! How can you even—”

  “Why don’t you tell me?” she said. “Hank Powell’s fat.”

  “No he’s not!”

  “Sure he is. He’s got a bigger gut than your dad.”

  “He does not!” I was a terrible negotiator. You can’t reason with someone who’s insane to begin with. I could sneak into Liz’s bedroom in the middle of the night, slip her a Mickey, then do a secret vagina stitch. It was the only way to stop her. And I did have an extra set of keys.

  As she slithered out of her sweats I saw that she had an enormous thatch of dark curly hair, twice the volume of my own. But it tapered to a perfect V above her clit, like the
arrow a computer mouse made when you moved it. It was a hairy Jew beav, with a pair of perfectly waxed labia underneath—a perverse mix of modern and retro.

  She pulled off her shirt, fluffed out her hair behind her head, and turned to me, exposing her pert pink buds. My dad was dating the Jewish Uma Thurman. How could he ever go back to my mom? You can’t eat at White Castle once you’ve tried four-star.

  I tried compassion. “You know, my mom is going through a tough time right now. She’s really not on stable ground at all. If she finds out I could see her doing something very irrational.”

  “From what Richard says she’s got a really solid support network.” I shuddered. His name sounded weird in Liz’s mouth, like it didn’t belong.

  “Where’s your decency?” I said. “Don’t you have any respect for the sanctity of marriage? My parents have been married thirty-one years!”

  “Thirty-two.”

  “How do you know how long they’ve been—”

  “It came up,” she shrugged. I did some quick mental calculations. I was terrible with dates. Every year I went into a crazy tailspin trying to remember if my parents’ anniversary was May 17 or May 18.

  “All right,” I conceded. “Thirty-two!” She was showing me up in the arena of my own parental expertise. Her trumping me as a daughter infuriated me far more than her trumping my mom as a wife. She opened her dresser, drew out a white Cosabella thong, and stepped into it. The front patch was tiny, much thinner than her pubic hair, which emerged from all sides, like a bearded man eating a Dorito.

  “You can’t go messing with a thirty-two-year-old marriage,” I told her. “It’s Rosh Hashanah. How can you live with yourself?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’re breaking three commandments.”

  “Oh yeah? What are they?”

  “Let’s start with the Seventh.”

  “Ah ah ah,” she said, wagging her finger. “It’s only adultery if the woman cheats, not the man.”

  “Reform Judaism doesn’t believe in literal interpretation of the law!”

  “That’s why no one takes it seriously.”

  I wanted to lift her by her skinny arms and hurl her into the tennis bubble. “OK, fine. You’re coveting something that belongs to your neighbor.”

  “He doesn’t belong to you,” she said, slithering into a tan pencil skirt.

  “Of course he does!”

  “I find this very intriguing,” she said. “You experience this as a slight to you, not your mother.”

  “It’s a slight to everybody!” I said. “If my mom were in the room right now I’d gladly have her take this up with you.”

  “You obviously have unresolved issues. You see him like a husband. It’s the Electra complex. Classic Jewish daughter.”

  “Electra wasn’t Jewish.”

  “The Elana complex, then,” she said. “I seriously think you should try to work this out because it’s going to be a real problem for you in your relationships. I know a really good Buddhist psychologist in Tribeca who might be able—”

  “You think I need therapy?”

  “I get help, Rach.” She shrugged. “You don’t.”

  “Liz,” I said, getting down on my knees and gazing up at her pleadingly. I was stooping low but I was stooping to conquer. “Please dump him. I’m begging you.” She regarded me as though I was a Vietnam vet with no legs riding a dolly through a subway car asking for change.

  “This is not a one-way street,” she said. “I need to see where this is going to go. And to tell you the truth, Rach, I think he does too.”

  I felt like Stella McCartney. But at least she could take solace in her wicked stepmom’s gimphood. Liz was mobile. Maybe if I chopped off one of her legs I could take it but this way it was too much. My chest felt more constricted than Liz’s bulimic waist. I was only twenty-six but suddenly a heart attack seemed plausible. I’d drop dead in Liz’s apartment then and there. Then again, the grief might bring my parents together. They’d be forced to get over their differences in the interest of mourning their most prized possession. I wouldn’t be alive to appreciate it but what did it matter? Even death was a small price to pay to stop a divorce.

  Liz drew a pair of alligator-skin fuck-mes from the closet and stepped into them one by one. “Where are you going?” I said.

  “Rosh Hashanah dinner at my parents’,” she said. She lifted me up off the ground, spun me around, and ushered me through the doorway and out to the front door. “Have a great Rosh.”

  “What’s going on?” I said.

  “Nothing,” she said. “Just—don’t you have to be at your parents’ soon? Richard told me you guys were having dinner.”

  “I have a few more minutes,” I said. “Why are you in such a rush to get rid of me?”

  “It’s no rush. We just seem to be at a standstill.”

  “Are you expecting someone?”

  She paused for a second, then let out a long sigh and said, “I cannot tell a lie. I did chop down that cherry tree.”

  I looked at my watch. It was six-oh-two. My dad was right at this moment showering for dinner listening to All Things Considered on the waterproof radio. “Do not tell me he’s coming over,” I said.

  “I didn’t say it was your father.”

  “What?”

  “If you must know,” she said, rolling her eyes, “it’s our waiter, from that night.”

  “From Banania.”

  “Banania.”

  “What’s his name?” I said to test her.

  “Sebastian. He’s French-Algerian. I went in a couple nights ago for a drink and we started talking.”

  “You’re two-timing a two-timer?”

  “Whose side are you on?”

  “I don’t know!” My dad was cheating on my mom with a girl so promiscuous she couldn’t even commit to an extramarital affair. I felt seriously worried for the state of his pubes. What if she gave him herpes? It would be the irony to beat all ironies: my dad had managed to survive the seventies without it, only to contract it during the naughts.

  “What kind of protection are you using?” I said, as she nudged me out into the hallway.

  “Happy New Year,” she said, and shut the door in my face.

  I TRUDGED down the steps to my apartment, feeling like a wounded soldier coming home from battle. I was going to be late for Rosh because I was trying to get someone else to atone. It was the Neil Roth scenario all over again. I was totally lacking in oratory power.

  I went into the bedroom to change my clothes and as I was slipping on my skirt I heard the downstairs door open and shut. A pair of feet jogged up—fast and two at a time. My father was more of a clodder than a hopper. There was some murmuring from Liz’s apartment—I was almost certain I could make out a French accent—and a couple minutes later that Coldplay song came on, the sappy one.

  As Chris Martin wailed about the stars, and how they shine for you, and all the things you do, I went into the bathroom and ran a brush through my hair, since my mom was always telling me it wouldn’t hurt me to run a brush through my hair. I put on a vintage silk button-down blouse with a knee-length tweed skirt to make my mom happy; even if I wasn’t going to services with them I knew it wouldn’t hurt to dress like I was.

  I looked at myself in the mirror and put on a little lipstick and foundation and then I tossed some Roberto Cavalli on my neck. The Coldplay was droning on sappily and I wondered how any guy, even a frog, could keep it up in the face of such treacle. I jogged down the stairs and continued down the street and when I got a few steps away I stopped in my tracks.

  The supermarket giveaways were gone.

  My father picked up those goddamn giveaways every single time he passed my place. No other man could be micromanagerial enough to deposit a bunch of papers in the recycling bin on the way to visit his chippie. My dad was the Bette Midler of Cobble Hill. Even if he had no problem violating the Seventh Commandment he’d surely heed his own personal number one: “Do not
litter.”

  Liz had concocted the frog just to get me out of her pad. And it had almost worked. But it wouldn’t work again. I had to put an end to it once and for all.

  I could hear the Coldplay getting louder and louder as I climbed. As I arrived at her door I made my hand into a fist and was about to bang it against the door when over Chris Martin’s insipid whine I heard another, older male moan over the falsetto.

  The tone was vaguely familiar, close to the yelp he made when he stubbed his toe tripping over his own toolbox, or lowered himself to his knees to weed in the garden, but it was more elongated and slightly surreal. I stood there with my hand frozen inches from the peephole, unsure whether to pound or run. And then, before I could decide what to do, my father, as he so often did, decided for me. Through the door he exploded with the most disturbing two-word phrase that had ever emerged from his mouth: “Oh brooother!”

  I spun around and took the stairs so fast I tripped and almost fell on my ass. I clung to the banister and swung myself around it like in a dream where you’re flying, coasting on the air, and I didn’t stop until I was all the way to Court Street.

  How could he have the gall to sleep with his mistress on Erev Rosh Hashanah? How could he have the gall to say “Oh brother!” when he came?

  They were definitely doing it; there was no more denial. He had stopped over at his sweetie’s for an end-of-year bang. What did he think this was—the Jewish millennium? He’d arranged to see her when he knew I’d be out of the building, on time for the one thing per year I was on time for. And now he was going to be late and I’d have to cover. He would arrive at his Rosh Hashanah hearth, stinking of poot. This wasn’t just adultery. It was sacrilege.