Because he hadn’t wanted to drop Gwendolyn off to face them alone; because they’d never owned a car and so he’d forgotten, in the moment, that they even had a garage—to him it was a basement—and because dread always drained him of reason. All these things he thought but did not say. Gwendolyn removed her ski jacket—it was white with fur around the hood and underneath it she wore a black turtleneck and dark jeans, boots, her face scrubbed clean, no makeup, and slightly pink from the cold. Her lips were shiny with gloss, something from a clear tube that she’d put on just before leaving the car. He saw them all looking at her and then at the ground, not sure what to do—was it her beauty, how natural she was? Or the fact that they’d had so few visitors who were not family? Something froze them in place.
Gwendolyn moved toward Vishniak and said hello, kissed him on his cheek—then she tendered her hand to Barry. He lifted his gaze slowly from the floor, his eyes wider and darker even than usual, and shook. Barry’s eyes remained on Gwendolyn, so hungry, so lascivious, that Robert stepped in between them. “Keep your eyes in your own goddamned head,” he whispered.
“Fuck you,” Barry replied, and ran up the steps.
“I don’t know what’s gotten into that boy lately,” Stacia said, shaking her head. “He’s always running up the steps or down to the basement.”
“Tits,” Vishniak announced. “That boy is just helpless in the presence of tits. The nicer they are the more helpless he is.” He paused meaningfully, as if for Gwendolyn to take in the compliment. “Did I tell you about the time that Jayne Mansfield walked into the PO? Looking to buy stamps, I think, but she made a beeline right for yours truly —”
Robert rubbed his eyes. He was getting a terrible headache.
“Thank you for having me,” Gwendolyn said softly. “I hope I’m not putting you out.”
Stacia did not know what to do with such a display of manners. Was she supposed to admit that having a guest sleep over in a house their size was some trouble? Or acknowledge that with so many coming for dinner, what was one more mouth to feed? She put her hands inside her apron and took them out again. “I wouldn’t have told him to bring you if we couldn’t handle it,” she replied, and told Robert to take her bag to Barry’s room.
“Let’s get one thing straight,” Robert said. “She’s staying in my room.”
“I’m happy to stay wherever you like,” Gwendolyn said.
“Gwendolyn has her own place. You think we don’t fuck whenever we like at home?” Robert asked. “Don’t make me into a hypocrite.”
“A hypocrite!” Vishniak said, laughing. “Is that what they call it these days?”
Gwendolyn shook her head at Robert and frowned, then took her bag out of his hand and walked toward the steps. It was Hermès, named for Princess Grace. He’d seen it in a shop, more expensive than a month’s rent. He had brought a girl to this house who carried such a bag as casually as his mother carried out the trash. “I think I should stay wherever your mother says. It’s her house.” She walked up the steps, hand on the banister. He watched her until all he could see were the heels of her boots.
“Do whatever you like,” his mother said, “you always do.”
Had he actually won? Or might the issue not have been as important as he made it? He should have taken Stacia aside, just the two of them, and said something. He’d embarrassed Gwendolyn—she didn’t know how they talked to each other, didn’t understand that something came over him when he got into this house; he couldn’t always control his language or himself. He’d been here for five minutes and already he was making a mess of things.
“Tell the girl I made pound cake. I’m just cutting it if she wants a piece with some milk.”
“Her name’s Gwendolyn,” he said. “Not girl or girlie or hey you or you there. Proper names for purposes of identification! Give it a try. So civilized. So now.”
Stacia turned and walked away. “Just tell her, and don’t make a federal case.”
He found Gwendolyn sitting in Barry’s room on his bed, her bag at her feet. Barry sat next to her, clearly enthralled as they talked softly, though Robert could not hear about what.
Robert cleared his throat. “May I interrupt?” he asked. “Ma wanted me to tell you that there’s pound cake and milk downstairs for you, if you’re hungry.”
“Brilliant,” Gwendolyn said. Barry frowned as Gwendolyn got up to leave the room. He was staring at her ass. Robert felt furious, yet he remembered what it was like being sixteen. He wondered if Barry had been with a girl yet. He doubted it.
Gwendolyn stopped at the doorway and kissed his cheek, then walked gracefully down the steps.
“They wanted Gwendolyn to sleep in your room,” Robert said, coming in and sitting in the chair in the corner, “but I talked them out of it.”
“I don’t think Stacia much cares,” Barry said. “She hardly cleaned this room. Not like she scoured the rest of the house. I don’t think she ever expected Gwendolyn to sleep in here. And now you’re beholden to her, you know. You gotta do every damn thing she asks for the rest of your trip. On account of how grateful you are to be able to screw your girlfriend in your own house.” Barry smiled. “If you ask me, you’re the one who’s screwed.”
“You mad at me?” Robert asked, taking Gwendolyn’s bag in his hand and standing up.
“Not mad,” Barry said. “I just want to know how the hell you do it. You’re not such a prize, you know.”
“Do what?”
“Get a girl like that.”
“A girl like what?” Robert asked, walking toward the door.
“Perfect,” Barry said. “Fucking perfect! In every way.”
A few hours later, Gwendolyn came back from the bathroom in cotton pajamas he’d never seen before, tops and bottoms. “Hands to yourself,” she said, when they got into bed. “I just couldn’t. Not with everyone so close.”
“The walls are thick,” he lied. “No one can hear.”
“Good night, Barry!” Gwendolyn yelled cheerily toward the opposite wall.
“Good night, Gwenny!” Barry chimed back.
Gwenny? When had that happened? “Okay, okay,” Robert said, “you made your point.”
She allowed him exactly as much physical interaction as was necessary for two tall people to sandwich themselves like sardines into a single bed. Most of the night he stared at the ceiling, head pushed against the wall, feet hanging off the end, then got up and went to the bathroom, jerked off, came back to bed, and slept the rest of the night on the cold floor.
Robert couldn’t ever remember Gwendolyn sleeping through the night. Always she got up, came back, tossed about, ground her teeth. But in his ancient child-size bed she slept like a corpse. She was up early, too, while he slept late, because he had taken until almost dawn to finally doze off, and now it was past ten. He dressed and washed quickly, knowing that she was alone with them, and dashed down the steps. He found Gwendolyn in the kitchen, at the sink, using tweezers to get at the last pinfeathers on a large duck.
In the last few weeks, Gwendolyn’s hands had begun to shake, but now she was steady as a surgeon. She wore a pink gauzy blouse, very loose, a type that she owned in many different colors, with a pair of much-worn jeans, skin peeking through the knees, and a pair of flip-flops. She could dress modestly, and still the lines of her body were apparent to him, every curve of it, as if she were standing there naked in the kitchen. He told himself this was not a time to be turned on, not now, but he’d gone two days without touching her. She had rolled up her sleeves and tied her hair back with a rubber band from the newspaper his father now sat at the kitchen table reading.
His father was reading in the kitchen? Robert was shaken from his erotic reverie by the oddness of this detail. It was strange enough to see Vishniak home in the middle of the day—had he taken the day off? No, it was a holiday. Stranger still that he was not reading in his chair with the TV on. All this togetherness in such a tiny space, yet his mother was not yelling, or orderin
g anyone out. She stood at the opposite counter, cracking eggs into a bowl of warm noodles.
“Robbie!” Gwendolyn exclaimed. “Your mother’s going to show me how to make all kinds of things today, all your favorite dishes.”
His mother did not turn around, only continued her mixing.
“There’s just about another cup left in the pot,” Vishniak said, raising his face from the paper. He pointed to an empty coffee mug on the table. “I saved it for you.”
Stacia turned around, stood behind Gwendolyn, and said calmly: “When you’re done with that, you can start cutting up the carrots and onions.”
Jesus, who were these people?
“Stop daydreaming!” Stacia said. “Since you got a car with you, Mr. Big Shot, go get extra chairs from Lolly, then pick up your grandmother and bring her here. She’s helping me.”
His grandmother loved this American holiday, even if she replaced turkey with duck, and runny cranberry sauce and tasteless mashed potatoes with kishke and kasha wrapped in pastry dough, recipes passed down through the generations, spoken only, never written down, the official Oral Torah of his family. The Oral Torah of food. Were they going to induct Gwendolyn? No, he feared, they would merely let her see the extent to which her membership was impossible.
“Fine, I’ll get Cece,” he said, pouring himself some coffee. It was cold.
“I’m not done yet,” Stacia said. First he could get her best screwdriver and some WD-40 from a neighbor who’d borrowed them weeks ago. The front door had been squeaking, she told him, a sound imperceptible, Robert believed, to everyone but her and the German shepherd next door. But she had several other tasks for him as well.
“If I’m going to do all that, I should have gotten started yesterday,” he said. His brother was right; he was now her slave. He lowered his voice. “I have that other thing, too, you know.”
“What other thing?” Gwendolyn asked, looking up.
“Nothing,” he said.
“You have plenty of time for everything,” Stacia replied. “They won’t be here until four.”
“Barry?” Robert asked. “Where’s he?”
“Over at Victor’s,” his mother said. Victor Lampshade was Barry’s best friend, a boy almost seven feet tall at age sixteen, with an enormous head of bushy blond hair. Standing together, they reminded Robert of the number ten. While Robert ran around doing Stacia’s bidding, his brother likely lay stoned on Victor Lampshade’s basement floor, counting ceiling tiles and listening to Jimi Hendrix—how did Barry always get out of everything?
“Victor’s coming for dinner,” Stacia said. “His parents and Ocky are in Miami and he didn’t want to go.” She snorted, a noise reserved for those who flew to warm climates for no apparent reason other than enjoying themselves.
“Three main courses!” Gwendolyn chimed in. “Chicken, duck, and brisket. Twenty people! Have you ever heard of anything so wonderfully generous?”
Robert’s parents looked at her as if she were speaking a foreign language, then they looked at each other. The idea had never occurred to them. The adjective and all its implications. Generous.
His appointment was with Dr. Oppenheim, his grandmother’s physician, long ago retired. He had agreed to see Robert as a favor to Cece—just as he’d once filled out Robert’s college medical forms, claiming to be the family doctor though he’d never seen Robert before as a patient, had only heard about him over the years.
Dr. Oppenheim’s office was across the street from the seafood restaurant where Robert had gone with Donna Cohen. Today, the doctor was opening up the office just for him. Attached to the corner house, it was at the basement level: a dark pair of rooms, reception and examining. Once bustling with patients, the rooms now sat empty. According to Cece, Dr. Oppenheim’s wife had died the year before, and he was about to put the house on the market and move to a retirement home.
The elderly doctor wore a coat and tie and stood very straight as he shook Robert’s hand. He’d come from Germany in the early 1930s, settled in Southwest Philly, near Cece and Saul. A man with luck and a skill, Cece had said, but most of all, excellent historical timing. His wife was American born. They’d moved here when everyone else moved, and never had children of their own, but he was the practitioner of record in Oxford Circle. As a kid, Robert had heard that Oppenheim gave a peppermint sucker after an exam, and that he could be cruel. But what child doesn’t think a doctor, by definition, is cruel?
“Ah, you got so tall. The grandmother is so short.” The doctor chuckled, directing him into the examining room, telling him to strip to his underwear. Robert obeyed, standing in pale blue boxer shorts, his eyes watery from dust. This seemed an ideal environment for his task. Surely whatever was wrong with him would manifest here.
The doctor came back a few minutes later and asked Robert what was wrong exactly. Robert tried to describe the occasional, mysterious episodes, moments when he was sure that his lungs were closing. Often this feeling seemed to be aggravated by dust and cigarette smoke, sometimes cold weather.
The doctor shook his head. “Can’t hear you! Hold on!” he called back. “Hate hearing aids! Hate the buzzing.” He went to a drawer and took a long trumpet out of his desk, then held it to his ear.
Was he being examined by a Victorian doctor in a stage play? “You’re the only doctor I have any record with!” he yelled. “They tell me I need documentation. Years of it.”
“Documentation of what?” the doctor asked, his voice low. Only Robert had to scream.
“You tell me!” Robert replied. “Something’s wrong with my lungs!”
The doctor thumped his chest, listening to it with a stethoscope. He looked in Robert’s ears with a tiny flashlight, stuck a tongue depressor into his mouth and held down his tongue, then shined his light again. He made Robert cough. Then he asked him to step onto a scale, an ancient one, then run in place for five minutes and count backward from a hundred.
“Your grandfather suffered with hay fever,” Oppenheim said when Robert was done. “Your family had the first air conditioner in Southwest Philly. We all went over to look at it. Enormous machine. Size of a refrigerator. People thought the Kupferbergs had come into money. But it was needed, after that time they brought him home in the ambulance. You were a very small boy.”
He’s old, Robert thought. The past and the present are the same thing for him. He wondered if he could use this to his advantage.
“Anyway,” the doctor continued, “maybe hay fever, maybe dust.” He paused. “Not bad enough to get you out of Vietnam.”
“What about my lungs?!” Robert yelled louder.
“You ever had pneumonia?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Childhood respiratory infections?” he asked.
“I don’t know. I guess. Probably.”
“I suppose I could X-ray, but I don’t hear anything.”
“What about a specialist?!” Robert shouted. Of course he didn’t hear anything.
“Get dressed,” the doctor said. “Meet me in the living room.”
Robert was happy to get his bare feet off the freezing linoleum and did as he was told. Upstairs, the house looked almost exactly like the house he’d grown up in but with the steps on the other side. The furniture was ornate and dark; the room depressed him. The doctor sat in a wing chair. In front of him on a round table sat a blue china teapot, two cups.
“I don’t have much time,” he said, but noticed Oppenheim hadn’t brought his trumpet.
“Good, I’ll pour the tea. It’ll warm you up. Sit down. Relax.”
Robert did as he was told, his leg jiggling up and down impatiently.
“I know why you’ve come,” the doctor said, placing the tea in front of Robert.
“I have no medical history!” Robert shouted. “It’s a problem. But then, it could also be a solution —”
“You’re not the first to ask,” he said. “They’re very suspicious now. A few months before the physical, you suddenly
have a condition, they ask questions.”
“But if I had a history?!” Robert shouted. “If it was a condition from years back —”
“But you don’t,” the man said. “You don’t have a condition. As far as I can see.”
“Then what have I been feeling all these years?”
“Allergies, to dust,” he said. “I told you already.”
“There was no dust in my house growing up,” Robert said. “She cleaned night and day.”
“Some say that can be the problem,” he replied.
“So if I’d grown up in a dirtier house, I wouldn’t be sick?”
The man smiled mysteriously. Had he even heard?
“You’re retiring,” Robert said, trying another tack. “Moving away.”
“It took me years to get my medical license in America,” he said. “I die without scandal.” He paused. “I love this country.”
Robert put his head in his hands.
“Maybe it won’t be so bad.”
“Easy for you to say, old man,” Robert said, and stood up. The doctor got up, too, smiling politely as Robert turned and left.
CECE MET HIM AT the door in a hot pink dress, slippers, an apron. She lived in a small garden apartment. The salty sweetness of constant baking had become part of the walls, the carpet, the furniture, as if his grandmother lived inside a giant loaf of bread. He bent down and kissed her. “Come in the kitchen,” she said. “I’ll make you an omelet.”
“We’re eating dinner in less than two hours.”
“You’re hungry, I know you’re hungry. I’m making you lunch.”
He shrugged and gave in. He was hungry, actually. She brought out a bottle of milk. There was already a glass on the table. She scooped out a slice of homemade apple strudel that had been sitting on the stove, and brought over several slices of rye bread and a block of butter, as if he might expire from starvation while waiting. Then she got eggs and cheese out of the refrigerator and bent down to pull out a frying pan. Her kitchen was kosher, unlike his mother’s. That was the one rebellion that he’d noticed in his parents’ generation: they ignored the dietary laws. In old age, Cece could not be as scrupulous about her kitchen; she was losing her sight to cataracts and glaucoma. In her own place, she could manage by feel, though she admitted to sometimes confusing her pots. And she had to put her hand over the flame to tell how high it was, which made Robert nervous. She cradled the bowl in her arms and whipped the eggs with a fork.
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