All This Could Be Yours

by Jami Attenberg

  She did not do that now, though, staring at him, nearly dead. For she was alive and young. Now, finally, she appreciated her body.

  “I forgive you for your shut-down emotions, and your insistence that no one speak on Sundays in our home, because it was the only day you weren’t working. On the one hand, it made me feel desperately lonely. On the other hand, it taught me to be independent and entertain myself in my brain, and I acquired a certain amount of discipline from it. We’ll call that one a wash.”

  A nurse poked her head into the room, glamorous to Alex’s eye, long hot pink nails, lined lips, a honey color to her hair. She’s giving him the talk, thought the nurse. That’s the face of saying goodbye. All the goodbyes she had seen in her life. The nurse backed away and closed the door.

  “I do not forgive you for exposing us to all your illegal activities.” That part Alex whispered, in case the nurse was still close by in the hallway.

  She had done her most thorough research on him during her last year of law school, Googled the truth, what was available anyway, until she couldn’t stand him or herself anymore. Why not before then, who knew? The times there had been outsiders in her house, she remembered their faces so clearly. There they were in the papers, in expensive suits, handcuffed, heads down, off to jail. She had called him on it the next time she was home to visit, what little she knew. Accusations of money laundering, nefarious professional associates. Dirt everywhere. “I’m working with what I have available, Alex,” he said. They were friendlier by then; he seemed genuinely proud of her, and had told her so. She was a little sorry to fuck that all up. Who didn’t want to get along with their father? Who didn’t want their daddy’s love? “Everything is just business,” he said. A claim with which she could not argue; she knew for him it was true. Still, it was then she knew, truly, he was bad. A bad capitalist.

  “I expected more from you,” she yelled.

  “No, you didn’t,” he said.

  She rejected him, finally. She swore to use her law degree to help people. That’ll show him, she thought. But doing good was hard, as it turned out. A lot more work, a lot less success. She had taken the wedding present from him anyway, a big check for the house’s down payment. Hadn’t blinked. What the money did and where the money came from was all muddled together in her head.

  He hit us all, she thought. I should have asked for more.

  She leaned in close to his face. “I do not forgive you for making me believe less in the possibility of good in the world. I do not forgive you for spitting on the notion of family.” She could smell three days of hospital all over him, and she could smell the approach of death, sour, and like shit. “Also, I don’t think you care if I forgive you.” Well, maybe he did.

  Before she was a certain age, the age of nonchildhood, and Gary was even younger, of course, they had a handful of good times with Victor, most of them spent in silence. He liked the movies, old ones, capers and gangster films, and a theater near their house showed them on Saturdays. Her mother had headaches then, needed extra naps, and a building he was putting up was nearly finished. Things were flowing easily, and he had a little time on his hands. He took the kids to the movies, and the entire family acted like he was saving them from a burning house. What a saint, what a hero. All the popcorn and soda they desired—Alex was still a year away from her chubby moment—under one condition: that they keep their traps shut on the way home. He filled up two children with junk food and sugar, thought Alex, and then expected complete silence from them afterward. Were you trying to torture us, or did you really not know how children worked?

  But sitting with him and watching television or movies was the best way to connect. She saw that now. She remembered visiting home from college in the late nineties. It was a Sunday night and The Sopranos was on. Her father was deeply fascinated with that show, had been since the beginning, had mentioned it to her before, wanted to make sure she was watching it. It was during spring break, and it was the season finale, and the cruel matriarch of the family was having a stroke, but no one could tell if she was faking it or not.

  You better not be faking it now, Dad, thought Alex.

  “This show is very good,” said her father then, shifting in his chair, pointing at the screen and grinning. “They really get it right. Look at that, Jersey, on TV like that. I knew guys like them growing up, real tough guys. I tell you what, we all wanted to be like them.” His Jersey accent had come out of hiding.

  “But they were criminals, Dad,” she had said.

  “Yeah, but they were in charge. Still are. I mean, less than they used to be, but they still got a piece of it. I know some of them. Sort of. You know how in New York you gotta go through a lot of people to get things done.”

  “I don’t know, actually,” she said.

  “Well, maybe you’ll learn someday,” he said. He looked at her, and she thought she might have seen some respect in his eyes, an assessment of her not as her female form, but what rested underneath her shell, her mind, her soul. “But I hope you don’t have to,” he said.

  That was one of the few times she ever heard him talk openly about business matters. Maybe it had been best not to know too much as a child. A weekend or two in a hotel with Gary and Nana when those work associates would show up at the door of the house. “You go, I’ll stay,” said her mother, handing her nana some cash. They spent all weekend swimming in the heated indoor pool at the Marriott in Stamford, and calling room service, overdoing it on ice cream parfaits and jumping on the bed and screaming (at last they were allowed to make noise!), until a call from the front desk calmed them down. Nana had been at the hotel bar. Nana needed a break. She was the real saint, that Nana, but she was only human. If Barbra was silent on all matters Victor, then Nana was silent on all matters Barbra. I’ll never know what she thought either, thought Alex. But she liked to think Nana was trying to protect everyone because she recognized everyone’s truth. She had lived the longest, so she could see the real story. But she saw no point in revelations; she was simply trying to keep everyone alive. As Alex got older, Nana grew fuzzier, and had started to let things slip. She said to Alex, “It was like your mother and your father had the same cold and kept giving it back and forth to each other. I just didn’t want you two to get it, too.”

  The same illness. But her father was patient zero, she was certain of it.

  “I’ll cut you a deal. I forgive you for half,” said Alex to the dying man in bed. “I’ll split the difference with you, because I’m not perfect either.” That was it. She had said her piece. She reached out to embrace him, covering his chest with hers, and she clutched him tightly. For one second, she thought, Daddy. Then a series of staccato beeps went off. Something urgent was happening. She sat up. The beeps stopped. She hugged him again. There were the beeps again. She pulled away one more time. Was it her hug? Was he aware of her? She looked in his eyes. Nothing. No, it was something she was leaning on that was triggering this response. She could keep going. It was just an embrace. Who knows what would happen if she held on to him too long?

  Tempting, tempting.

  She allowed herself the thrill of considering it. But no, she would not be responsible for this man’s death.

  She checked herself: she felt done. Her mother had asked her for something, and she had accomplished the task. He would die soon, and then everything would be in place. Someday Bobby would die, and Sadie would have some kind of residual fury of her own against him, although Alex hoped not. Genuinely. Her ex-husband was certainly capable of other adult-like behaviors: he had a job, he paid his bills, he paid some of her bills, he made charitable donations to important causes, he was kind to his own parents, he had sustained real, nonsexual relationships with people for decades, and unlike her father, Bobby was not a criminal, even if he was a philanderer. So maybe he could learn to be a better father, and Alex would be able to say to Sadie, “I forgave my father before he died, and I’m so glad I did, and I never even liked him in the first place.”
It was just a ritual, the act of forgiveness. She bent her head and prayed for her daughter to be safe, for her mother to move on someday, and for her father to just die already.

  Alex left the room, never to return, she was certain. She walked the perimeter of the hospital floor, searching for her mother, ready for the truth. Her mother had picked up a nice pace and had some sweat on her brow, and she didn’t slow as Alex approached, so Alex joined her in her walk. Was Barbra suddenly stronger and better? Where had the frail woman stirring soup gone? Where was the grief?

  “Don’t you feel better?” her mother said, her cheeks flushed with life.

  “I wouldn’t say that.”

  They passed a rendering of some pelicans in flight, moss-covered trees beneath them, purple-blue skies, hazy watercolors framed in faux gold.

  “What do you want from me next?” said Alex. “Do you want me to wait here with you? Do you want to go home?”

  “I thought I’d keep walking. Just keep going with me for a minute.”

  Her mother was fast, and she flapped her arms in a focused way.

  “Mom, I know you loved him, but—”

  “We can’t help who we love.”

  “That wasn’t a critique. Just a statement of fact.”

  “All right, I loved him.”

  “But you know he was bad, right? Like a really bad man.”

  “No one is in any position to judge anyone else.”

  They approached an elderly man in a wheelchair, wincing each time he rolled the wheels. He had a red bandanna tied around his neck, and though he was frail, the bandanna gave him a jaunty look. Alex was tempted to stop and help him, push him where he needed to go, but she didn’t want to lose her mother.

  “No, we are. We are entirely in the position to judge. That’s what being a sentient human is all about. Our ability to assess what is right or wrong.”

  A nurse crossed their path, serious-looking, her hair gray, wiry, cut short in a practical style, headed determinedly to a fixed point down the hall.

  “There is a fuzziness to life that you, with your sharp legal mind, have never been able to fully comprehend.”

  A painting of a brass band, purples and greens swirling everywhere, the only spot of color in the décor.

  “I understand nuance. I’m a human being,” said Alex.

  “Well, so was your father. And so am I.”

  Her mother quickened her pace, and Alex found herself breathing a little heavier.

  “And . . . I just don’t want to tell you,” she said simply.

  There they were, suddenly, stopped by the elevator. She fucked me, thought Alex. She pushed the button, and the door opened immediately.

  “I’m going now,” said Alex. She got on the elevator and turned, holding the door open with her arm.

  “All right, honey.”

  “I don’t feel any better for doing that, you know. For saying goodbye to him.”

  “I’m sorry,” her mother said.

  “I feel worse.”

  “You’ll feel better eventually, when—”

  “When he’s dead?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “OK then. Call me when he’s dead.” The door closed, her mother shaking her head at her.

  Elevator, first floor, winding hallway, and then she gave up, grabbed the first exit door she could find, and made her way out to fresh air, only to discover she was just one lot off from where she had parked. She sauntered across the asphalt. Maybe she did feel better after all. Or maybe she was just happy to be out of that place for good. She had no sense of what her immediate desires were. Did she want food or drink or sleep? It would be perfectly reasonable for her to go back to the hotel, pull closed the blackout curtains, turn off all the lights, and hide beneath the pillows and duvet for the next few days until her mother called with the news. She would be in darkness, in absolute, divine darkness. Her own disappearing act.

  She tore off her mother’s sweater in the broad, blazing New Orleans heat. Almost home, she thought. Almost free of people.

  But as she wove through the lot, she heard a sound of distress: hard sobbing from a woman. None of my business, she thought. I have helped enough distressed people for one day.

  Her skin burned in the sun. I should have worn more sunblock, she thought. I should have protected myself better. Maybe my hair will lighten. Maybe I’ll look different after this whole experience.

  The sobbing continued as she passed a row of ambulances, and she found herself a little angry about it. Here would be another thing she would have to deal with, if she cared to deal with it, if she could muster up enough energy. Do I really have to?

  Once she had gone to a meditation class and the instructor had gently said, “In every exchange, imagine you are the other person.”

  Once, on vacation with her ex-husband, she had visited a church in Paris, which is something she would never have done in America—she was a Jew—but the churches were older and better in Paris, and the ceilings were so high and impressive, and God could have been all around her there—why not there, as much as anywhere else?—and she sat in a pew and bowed her head and felt the sunlight streaming in through a stained-glass window, and at that moment she thought, This is not God, but also I am not alone.

  Once she had a baby and saw herself so clearly reflected in the eyes of her infant daughter, she knew she would have to be the better human, always, in order to show her the way.

  Once she had loved, and someday she hoped to love again.

  She walked toward the sobbing. Hot, cold, hot, hot, hot, the noise grew louder, and then she stopped, for she saw where the sound came from, a blond woman in an SUV, the heels of her hands against her eyes, her torso shaking, and then one, two, three times, she banged her head on the steering wheel, hard, as if she meant it to hurt. It was Twyla. With her pink lipstick. Now that’s grief, thought Alex.

  This is not mine to deal with, she thought. This is not mine at all.

  Alex turned and left, abandoning her car. She’d come back for it later. She needed to walk this off.

  For fifteen minutes, she walked aimlessly, thinking: This is bad, this is terrible, this is awful, and I don’t want to know, and you can’t make me. No way was Twyla that upset about Victor. It had to be something else.

  She had lost the thread on her desires. She saw a streetcar several blocks away, polished and shiny and green, its crimson door beckoning to her. Now that’s what I want, Alex thought. She took off, racing toward the streetcar, where the driver generously paused for the out-of-breath, sunburned, middle-aged white lady to make her way to the car, dig in her purse excitedly for change, and take her seat in the back.

  Ah, I’ll wait for her, he thought. She looks like she really needs a ride.

  Late Afternoon

  14

  Sierra, at her mother’s house in Chalmette, dropping off her baby girl for the day. The two of them standing in the driveway, examining the new roof on the garage, the old one battered by a tough decade of rain. Sierra had her head slightly tilted to the right.

  “Is it . . . ?” She looked at her mother, who also had her head tilted.

  “Yes,” said her mother.

  Her father had put in the new roof himself instead of hiring a contractor, then had injured his back, and was now bed-bound with a few painkillers until further notice.

  “I think sometimes your father fixes things just so he can hurt himself and recover,” said her mother. “Then I have to take care of him all day, and he gets to pop those pills. What a life.”

  “Anyway,” said Sierra.

  “Anyway,” said her mother. “How’s that car treating you?”

  It was a Mustang convertible, bright red, like Sierra’s hair, which no one had dared question; obviously she’d be getting the one that matched her hair. She’d had it for nine months. There were already four dings in it, which Sierra did not point out, but her mother had noticed anyway.

  “You never knew how to take care of anythin
g,” her mother said.

  “That’s not true,” said Sierra. “Look at this little monkey,” and she smoothed her daughter’s hair, red like hers. Happy, healthy, runs like the wind.

  “The only thing you did right,” said her mother, and she’s laughing at her, come on now, she’s just teasing, but you know what? She really wasn’t.

  Sierra slid back into her car. “I must have done two things right if I have a car like this,” and she revved her pristine engine, put it in gear, tight as a wire, and sped off, thinking, This must be what it feels like to have a penis.

  Sierra’s husband bought her the car, though he couldn’t afford it, and a convertible didn’t make sense in the New Orleans heat. “Sierra gets what Sierra wants,” he said. “That’s right,” she said. The car was slightly used, so she couldn’t brag too much on it. Although it was in great condition. Or had been.

  Sierra’s husband let her do what she wanted most of the time. She was supposed to be a real estate agent, that’s why she wanted the car. She had pictured herself whipping around town with her clients, showing charming, rustic cottages and condos. She even bought herself a pair of leather driving gloves. After she got her real estate license, she started working with a downtown firm. Although she was certainly a people person, it turned out she had no patience for the endless paperwork. And her follow-up was terrible. Client after client faded away. She told no one about the failures of her career. Instead, she went to the gym.

  Sierra’s husband never questioned why she had three gym memberships. Why question a body like that? If he had asked, she would have told him that one was for her basic workout, one was a boxing gym, and one was for yoga. The truth was, one was for Candice, one was for Tiffany, and one was for Maya. All her instructors. All her girls.

  What Sierra found was that she was better at being a lesbian than a straight person. Holy Mother of God, did she love to make women come. Her husband was this huge slab of meat and he adored her and loved to grind himself into her and everything was explosive, sure, but who did Sierra get to grind herself into?