This Is Where I Leave You

by Jonathan Tropper

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

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

  “The moment’s passed.” She smiles and shrugs. I use my fi nger 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.

  1:00 p.m.

  Penny is teaching her first lesson of the day, and Phillip is late, natu­

  rally. I sit on a bench in the parking lot, watching the other skating in­

  structors 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 fi eld. 1:35 p.m.

  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 in­

  side. “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.”

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  “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 fi nding 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 wear­

  ing 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

  3:20 p.m.

  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 any­

  one’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 offi

  ce 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 equip­

  ment 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 158

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  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 ten­

  nis 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. Th ere

  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 when­

  ever 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

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  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 crash­

  ing 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 fi ghting back a smile that, unhindered, would split his face in two.

  3:50 p.m.

  Arlene’s fall effectiv
ely 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!

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  Tracy: That’s wonderful, Judd. If you frame this with a positive at­

  titude, 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

  4:20 p.m.

  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, fl ipping 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 perim­

  eter 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 mid­

  dle there. You may want to watch that. After all, you’re going to be get­

  ting naked in front of new women now.”

  “From your mouth to God’s ear.”

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  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 maga­

  zine. “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. Th at’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.

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  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 confi dence 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, ter­

  rified. 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 sunfl ower.”

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

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  “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

  8:45 p.m.

  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. Th e

  rest of us face the crowd like a rock band on tour, same set list, diff erent 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 ar­

  rive, and someone uninformed will ask me
again, and the cycle will re­

  peat. 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 166

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  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 fl atulence, 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-fi ber 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.