The Middlesteins

by Jami Attenberg

“Give her a week.”

  Sure enough, a week later, there was Rachelle standing in front of him at the pharmacy, a prescription in her hand, herself with a slight case of the stink eye.

  “I’m not completely sure about any of this,” she said. She handed him the prescription; it was for Lopressor, a heart medication, and it was for his someday-ex-wife. If that action was meant to stab him slightly in the chest, it worked.

  “About what?” he said.

  Say your piece just the once and then let her do all the talking, Beverly had said. He had known that already; he had some understanding of what it meant to contend with an angry woman.

  “I don’t want them thinking your behavior, your actions, are excused. Because they are not.”

  “Of course not,” he said. He wouldn’t even begin to justify his actions to her, leaving his sick, emotionally unstable, diabetes- and heart-disease- and who-knows-what-else-ridden wife, because he knew she didn’t want to hear it. Even though in his head it made sense.

  Beverly understood! Beverly was the first person he had met who got it perfectly, Beverly with her mean drunk of a father, a military man crushed by time as a prisoner of war during World War II. “I had my sympathies for the man,” she said. “We all did.” Richard nodded. Their generation, his and Beverly’s, they all had family, and they all had heard stories from the war growing up.

  And then Beverly added—and was this the moment his heart skipped for her?—with a downtrodden yet dreamy voice: You never know what’s worse with the angry ones, watching them live, or watching them die.

  “With the b’nai mitzvah approaching,” continued Rachelle, “and with all the family in town, Benny and I want you in attendance of course. And we still would like you to recite the kiddush, obviously.” His daughter-in-law had an insistent formality, spine as straight as a rod, every hair in place, her nails a pearly pink, ironed, pressed, tightly controlled. She reminded him of the average Zoloft or Prozac customer. (He was no doctor, so he would never say anything like that to his son, but she seemed like she might benefit.)

  “I’ll be there,” said Richard. “With bells on.”

  “Don’t wear bells,” said Rachelle.

  “I would never wear bells,” said Richard. “It’s an expression.”

  “I know it’s an expression,” she said, suddenly flushed and flustered, her neck delicately purpling. This is hard for her, he thought. Why? In that moment of weakness, he made a grab for the gold.

  “I would like to see them before the b’nai mitzvah,” he said. “I could take them to services on Friday night? Or next week?”

  It was Beverly who encouraged him to suggest taking the grandkids to Friday-night services. If these kids were so important to him—they were; Richard practically shouted this—then he needed to think outside the box, this last phrase she relished dramatically. Sure, it was more fun to go to the movies or shopping or get pizza, but he was probably not allowed to be having fun yet with his two gorgeous grandchildren, not in his daughter-in-law’s eyes anyway. Friday-night services weren’t about having fun; they were about being contemplative. The subtler point was (and she was right, Richard could not deny it) that he was not an out-of-the-box thinker. He was completely in the box. (What was so wrong with the box? He had felt this way his entire life.) But by leaving his wife at the age of sixty, he had hurtled himself out there, out into the universe, out of the goddamn box. And if he had not done so, he never would have met Beverly. So it was up to him to do whatever it took to stay there.

  “Let me talk to Benny,” Rachelle said, and her skin returned to its normal (though possibly tanning-creamed) golden color. He had placed the power in her hands once again, given her something to decide upon. That’s where she likes to be, he thought. On top. And his mind briefly traveled to a sexual moment, not with his daughter-in-law, of course (although maybe she was nearby, down the hall or in a doorway watching), but with Beverly, vibrant-eyed, sensible yet magical, unavailable yet somehow still within reach, Beverly, his hands reaching up to her, and she waved her body back and forth on top of him, a greeting, an introduction of two bodies to each other, an explosive exchange of a specific kind of information. Beverly grinding on his dick, Beverly straddling his face, Beverly all over him all day and night long.

  Beverly!

  * * *

  At shul the following week—of course Rachelle had said yes to Richard’s request; there was no way she could say no to a grandfather sincerely wanting to take his children to synagogue, there was certainly a rule about that somewhere in some daughter-in-law handbook—Richard meandered lightly down the main aisle of the sanctuary, his two grandchildren, their tongues struck by silence since the moment they'd gotten into the car, shuffling behind him. He waved to the Cohns and the Grodsteins and the Weinmans and the Frankens, all the couples he had come up together with for the last twenty, thirty, nearly forty years. They had all gone to each other’s children’s bar mitzvahs and weddings and anniversary parties and thank God no funerals yet, but he supposed they would be attending those, too, until there was no one left.

  How would that feel? To be the last one standing? Who was going to make it to the end? Would it be Albert Weinman, who swam every morning and golfed every weekend and ate egg-white everything? Or Lauren Franken, who’d already had a double mastectomy, and joked that she’d gotten the hard part out of the way early and it was all smooth sailing ahead? Surely it wouldn’t be Bobby Grodstein, the way he smoked those cigars after dinner.

  He allowed himself to consider his practically-ex-wife, her supersized existence, the secret eating late at night (every night he could hear her opening cupboards and packages and crunching crunching crunching, echoing through the quietude of their home, their street, their town, their world, but he had given up on trying to stop her), the twice-weekly trips to Costco (even though he knew where all the food had gone, he couldn’t help but wonder out loud to her every single time she went, “What do you need?”), the flesh stacked upon flesh stacked upon flesh. No, she would not outlive him.

  Would it be Richard himself? He worked out a few times a week, not as hard as he could, sure, but those knees of his . . . His blood pressure was good, his cholesterol was a little high, but nothing he couldn’t manage with Lipitor. He took vitamins. He ate his RDA of fruits and vegetables, sometimes even much, much more than the RDA. During his last checkup, his doctor had given him a friendly swat on the arm before he left the room, clipboard in hand, and promised he would live a long life. “There’s no reason you couldn’t live till one hundred,” is what he said.

  Would he want to make it that long? Would he want everyone he knew to be gone? Except for his family, they’d probably outlive him: Benny, who he knew would forgive him eventually even if he had lost respect for him, and his sullen daughter, Robin, who was already too busy to visit him while he was still a fully functioning human being—what about when he was old and decrepit in a nursing home? He’d off himself before that happened. He’d off himself before he was wearing diapers. He knew it. He could prescribe himself the exact mixture he would need to send himself to a faraway dreamland, never to wake up again. For decades he had been facing the adult-diaper section in his pharmacy, studying the people who purchased them, their slow, miserable shuffle, imagining he could see right through their clothes to what was underneath. Your needs at the beginning of your life and at the end of your life were exactly the same. But Richard Middlestein was no baby; he was a man. (He felt like pounding his chest right there in the middle of the temple. Beverly!) He’d live until the day he was ready to die.

  If his grandkids didn’t kill him first.

  Because there were Josh and Emily, all three of them now seated in a prominent position close to the aisle and near the front of the room, just four rows from the bimah, and even though they were huddled over slightly, it was clear that they had their cell phones out and they were texting. (Middlestein thought texting was the same as Morse code, and the more people tex
ted, the closer America came to being a nation at war. “Think about it,” he’d told Beverly, poking his index finger on his temple.) He leaned across Josh and squeezed one of Emily’s hands—the hand that was tap-tapping—and rested his arm across Josh’s lap, and then, with as much restraint as possible, because he did not want to alert the Cohns and the Grodsteins and the Weinmans and the Frankens, all of whom were seated two rows behind him, that his grandchildren had apparently been raised by wolves, he said, “Put those away.” Josh, simple, scrawny, sweet-faced, looked instantly terrified and shoved his phone into his back pocket, but Emily was another story. Emily was so much like her grandmother and her aunt—at least in appearance, but Middlestein suspected it went much further than that—she was practically marked by the devil. She gave him a mean look, and was precariously close to opening her mouth, and what she might say, and at what volume she might say it, he could only imagine. If she were truly like her grandmother, it would be just loud enough so that everyone around them could hear but not so loud that it could be considered inappropriate. Nothing to ruin anyone’s reputation over anyway. Not like everyone hadn’t lost it on their spouse at one time or another.

  But young Emily did not yell. She merely whispered, “I’m not done yet,” and then, in perhaps her most offensive act of the evening (and there were a few yet to come), shook his hand off hers with vigor. Middlestein pulled his hand back, stunned by her aggression. Josh turned to her openmouthed but did not say a thing, closed his mouth, turned away, faced forward, opened his mouth again, and turned toward her, and the two of them stared at each other, and then—this was the part that crushed Middlestein, that made him realize that it was possible there was no one left in this family he had a decent relationship with (And was it his fault? He had nearly convinced himself it wasn’t.)—Josh let off a short, staccato laugh, as if he were trying to control it but could not.

  Once he had bathed these little babies. Once he had bounced them on his knee and ran his fingers through their soft curls. These were going to be the children he would never argue with, never punish, whose curfew he would never have to worry about. He would never have to spank them. He would never have to disappoint them. All he had to do was spoil them rotten, overspend on every birthday and Hanukkah just to see their eager smiles. Now they revered their iPhones above religious decorum and thought he was a schmuck because he’d left his wife. Now they didn’t give a shit what he thought.

  Middlestein was devastated throughout the entire service. He could barely bring himself to sing the Shema, which had always been such a soothing prayer for him, a proclamation of his faith. It had always been so good to believe in something. Now he was distracted by the little miss down the row, with her eye rolling and sighing and the loudest page flipping this side of the Mississippi, her brother choking in his laughter, the Cohns and the Grodsteins and the Weinmans and the Frankens giving him rueful glances. It wasn’t enough that he had abandoned his wife, now he had ill-behaved grandchildren too? Shameful. He was shamed.

  Once he had counted their fingers and toes, just to make sure they were all there. Their nails were like dewdrops. This little piggy went to market, this little piggy stayed home.

  He sighed and closed his eyes and tried to achieve bliss: Beverly! What did her toes look like? He knew she got a manicure (and a pedicure) once a week from the Polish girls in the same mini-mall that housed his pharmacy. She strolled in afterward, her nails glowing coral, afraid to fish out her wallet from her purse. “I always end up chipping,” she said with that adorable British accent of hers, offering her purse to Middlestein. As he roamed through her sunglasses and cell phone and lipstick and checkbook and a paperback novel, on the cover of which was a dark-skinned man with bright blue eyes against some sort of Middle Eastern backdrop (it looked smart), a package of Wrigley’s peppermint gum (a classic and elegant choice if one had to chew gum), and a dozen pens (freebies from local businesses, he had a box of them himself that he handed out to customers, all bearing the Middlestein Drugs logo), he was touched by the intimacy of the moment, even if she was a complete stranger. There were three quarters at the bottom of her purse, and a tube of ChapStick. A plastic comb, also bearing the logo of a local business. Did she just say yes every time someone handed her something? Was she too nice to say no? Nobody needed that many pens.

  She was buying a greeting card, for a college graduation; on the cover there was a young man wearing a mortarboard in a hot air balloon, and on the inside, opposite a flap to hold a check, it read “Congratulations on moving on up in the world!” It was a dumb sentiment, but he carried only five different kinds of college-graduation cards in his display. (He had been trying to phase them out since 1998 but couldn’t bring himself to throw them away.) He suddenly wanted nothing more than to impress this British beauty, and all he had to offer were decade-old greeting cards.

  He waved the card at her. “Mazel tov,” he said. “Your son?”

  “Nephew. Michigan State.” She blew on her nails.

  “That’s a gorgeous color on those nails,” he said.

  She pulled her hands away from her face and cocked her head as she stared at them. “But it’s a bit bright, isn’t it?”

  “Nah, it’s perfect,” he said. “You should always wear that color.”

  He pulled a five-dollar bill out of her wallet.

  “I don’t like to be too flashy,” she said.

  “Add a little sparkle to your day, there’s nothing wrong with that,” he said.

  She straightened herself and stared at him meaningfully. “Truer words were never spoken,” she said. And then she collapsed slightly. “Life is so dull sometimes.” She gave him a wistful but (he was almost positive) flirty smile. “It’s as if I can hear the clock ticking off the minutes of the day.”

  “I can’t imagine a woman like you, with nails like those, would ever be bored.”

  “I keep myself busy,” she said. “I have hobbies.” She said “hobbies” with a bit of spite. As much as he had hated his ex-wife’s ire and venom, he did find a woman with an edge extremely attractive; they were so fearless. “But lately I’ve found myself just waiting for something to happen.”

  Did this gorgeous, witty, well-read, nicely groomed, age-appropriate, mostly organized woman really just walk into his pharmacy and lay out an invitation for him to flirt with her? Had he done anything good that day to deserve this moment?

  “I noticed there’s no ring on that finger,” said Middlestein.

  “I noticed there’s no ring on your finger either,” she said.

  Ante up, Middlestein.

  Down the aisle Emily flung herself into a coughing fit, a grimacing Josh patting her on the back, and then Beverly’s smile gave way to a vision of his any-second-now-ex-wife. She had been hovering somewhere in the back of his mind and then pushed her way to the front, knocking Beverly over until she returned, timidly, to a dark space out of frame. Edie said nothing, she just stood there, her hands in fists, her presence enormous. Everyone in the temple sang, and so did Richard, and he looked at his grandchildren, and Josh was singing, and Emily had her arms crossed and was staring into space. An angry young girl. She looked at her grandfather, sneered, and turned back toward nothing in particular. Richard faced forward, folded his hands together, rested his forehead on them, and began to pray on behalf of his (if he had to be honest with himself now that he was in an actual conversation with God here) long-drawn-out-legal-battle-until-she’s-his-ex-wife. Because she was sick, she was very, very sick, in the head, in the heart, in the flesh, and even though he could not watch over her anymore, it never hurt to ask God for a little help. Here he was, in his house of worship, asking for help for her. Because now that he was really being honest, he’d give up Beverly in a second if he knew that it would heal Edie. But he knew that nothing would make her better. That’s what he knew that no one else did, not his daughter or his son or that little grimacing monkey two seats down. That Edie didn’t care if she lived or died.
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  Middlestein almost felt like he might cry, and where better to do it but here, under the watchful eye of God? He had seen so many people cry over the years in synagogue, in this long life of his, particularly during the Kaddish. He was born a few years after the Holocaust had ended, but it seemed like it dragged on for years, the wailing and the moaning, gradually fading to tender streams of tears accompanied by a choked-up sound, the sadness trapped in the heart and the chest and the throat, resolving, years after the fact, into just a whimper, for some faraway soul. (Could they even remember what their lost loved ones looked like anymore?) Then there was Vietnam. There was cancer. Heart attacks and strokes and car accidents. A surprising amount of cliff-diving accidents. (Six.) Suicides, hushed. Old age. Bankruptcy. Runaway children. Hands clenched across the heart, as if the white-hot force between the palms could make a miracle happen. If one believed in miracles. So many wars over the years, sons and daughters came and went. Pray for them, and pray for Israel while you’re at it, too. (Everyone always should be praying for Israel.) Hold on to hope. Hold on to love. Hold on to your family, because they won’t always be around.

  Where better to cry?

  But where worse to cry than under the watchful eye of the Cohns and the Grodsteins and the Weinmans and the Frankens? They didn’t need to know how bad it was. He didn’t want them talking about him later in their living rooms, over a nightcap of fat-free snacks. Worrying or judging, he didn’t know which, and it didn’t matter; either way would make him feel weak and helpless, and even after all these years of being in each other’s lives, what did they know anyway? They didn’t know anything about him.

  Or to cry in front of Emily, who was now slumped on her brother’s shoulder, looking in profile a little dreamy, less like the Middlestein women and more like her mother, her petite chin, the smooth drop of her forehead, the pink swell of her lips, the furious blaze of her eyes temporarily dampened, as if she had pulled herself deep underwater, and was holding her breath until she turned blue. She must have felt him staring at her: she suddenly shook her head, and the eyes were relit. She had remembered she was supposed to be mad at him. No, he would not cry in front of Emily either.