This Is Where I Leave You

by Jonathan Tropper

  ing 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

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  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 Jour­

  nal. 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. Th e 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?”

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  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 profi t.”

  “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 fl oorboards 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

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  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 profi t.”

  “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 com­

  plement 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 com­

  pany 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.”

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  “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 bit­

  ter 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 fi ghts, 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 advan­

  tage 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 nonconfrontational manner. Nothing has to be reso
lved 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 recon­

  sider 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. Inter­

  vening with reason and consideration demonstrates a dangerous cul­

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  tural 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, ev­

  eryone,” 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 sur­

  prise.” 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 130

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  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, six­

  teen 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 open­

  ing, 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

  10:00 a.m.

  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 fi ne.”

  “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.”

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  “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 waffl

  e fragments smeared

  across the tablecloth by Ryan and Cole.

  “Good, because, you know, adultery is probably not the best foun­

  dation 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 occasion­

  ally 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

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  never have. There was nothing technically wrong with it; tumescence and lubrication were both achieved on cue, his-and-hers orgasms dis­

  tributed 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 effi

  cient, you’ve

  learned what works and what doesn’t, and so foreplay, entry, and or­

  gasm can often be condensed into a five-to-seven-minute span. Good sex requires many different things, but in most cases, effi

  ciency 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 bra
in 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 consid­

  ered 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 ten­

  dency, 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 bud­

  get 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 134

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  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 ac­

  countant, 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 tooth­

  paste out into the sink and left them there to harden into little winterfresh 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.