“Where’d you get the doobage?” Phillip says.
“It was in Dad’s suit.”
“Dad was a stoner?” Phillip says. “So much about my life makes sense now.”
“Shut up. It was probably medicinal. They prescribe it for cancer patients.”
“I prefer to think that every once in a while Dad just liked to toke up and consider the universe.”
“Think what you want, just light the fucker.”
A few moments later, we’re sprawled at our tiny attached desks, while the three-dimensional letters of the Hebrew alphabet taped above the blackboard float over us in a smoky haze.
“Can you still read Hebrew?” Phillip says.
“I doubt it,” I say. “I know the letters, though.”
“Aleph, beth, gimel, daleth . . . ,” Phillip sings.
“He, vav, zayin, heth, teth, yod,” I chime in.
We sing the rest of the Aleph-Bet together solemnly, like a funereal psalm, and when we’re done, our voices echo briefly in the room.
“I miss Dad,” Phillip says.
“I do too.”
“I feel very alone. Like when I mess up now, he won’t be there to help me.”
“I guess we’re officially adults now.”
“Fuck that,” Phillip says, taking an extra long pull on the joint. He blows out a perfect ring and then blows a jet of smoke through it. When it comes to worthless frat-boy skills, Phillip is second to none. He can light a match with his thumbnail, open a beer bottle with his teeth, flip a cigarette from the carton to his mouth with a flick of his wrist, play the William Tell overture by flicking his fingers against the soft underside of his jaw, burp the national anthem, fart on cue, and dislocate his shoulder upon request.
“Do you think maybe that’s why you’re with Tracy?” I say. “Because you want to know there’s someone looking after you?”
Phillip lazily passes me the joint. “I don’t know, but I like that theory much better than the one that postulates I’m trying to sleep with Mom.”
The door to the classroom flies open. “What the hell?” Paul says. “Oh. Christ.”
“In or out,” I say.
“I should have known.” He steps into the room, closing the door behind him.
“We learned from the master,” Phillip says.
“Give it here.” Paul takes a drag and sits down in one of the chairs. “Damn! That is some strong shit. Where’d you get it?”
“Dad,” I say, indicating the blazer. “A gift from the beyond.”
“I wouldn’t have pegged Dad for a fan of the weed.”
“People can change,” Phillip says.
“People are who they are,” Paul says, leaning back in his little chair to take another generous drag. “I really miss him,” he says.
“Me too,” I say.
“Me three.” Phillip.
A ray of sunlight comes through the window, passing through the thick cloud of ganja smoke in a way that makes you think of God and heaven, and we sit there getting baked in our skullcaps and prayer shawls, three lost brothers in mourning, the full impact of their loss only now beginning to dawn on them.
“I love you guys,” Phillip says, just as the smoke alarm goes off and the sprinklers come on.
10:25 a.m.
FORTUNATELY, THE SPRINKLERS in the sanctuary are in a different zone and must be set off independently, so the worshippers do not get soaked as they evacuate the building. In the classroom, though, the water rains down on us as Phillip grabs what’s left of the joint, still lit, and swallows it whole, with the confidence of someone for whom joint swallowing is a routine practice. The sprinklers have also been activated in the hallway, and we run through the indoor storm, stopping at the fire doors that lead to the lobby area. Peering through the narrow vertical windows of the door, we can see the crowd moving through the lobby and out the glass doors to the synagogue’s front lawn.
“Just act casual,” Paul says. “Blend in.”
It seems easy enough, only because we’re too stoned to realize that three men dripping in their suits might stand out.
The air-conditioning is cold against my wet clothes. We discard our soaked prayer shawls and join the crowd moving out the doors and soon find ourselves standing in the parking lot, being warmed by the late-morning sun.
“What did you do!” my mother shouts, her heels clattering on the asphalt as she storms over to us. Wendy follows behind her, enjoying every second of it.
“Nothing,” Phillip says. “It was a false alarm.”
“Look at the three of you!”
“You guys smell like a dorm room,” Wendy says, wrinkling up her nose.
“You got high at temple?” Mom says, outraged.
“Of course not.” Paul.
“No.” Me.
“Who’s hungry?” Phillip.
In the distance, we can hear the wail of the fire trucks.
“Ah, shit,” Paul says.
Mom leans against a car, exasperated. “I blame myself.”
“That’s a relief,” I say. “Now can we get out of here?”
But just then Boner emerges from the crowd and comes striding purposefully over to us, brow furrowed, face flushed with anger. “What the hell, Paul?” he demands.
Paul shrugs. “False alarm, I guess.”
“And you three are the only ones who got wet.”
“It’s been that kind of week,” I say.
Boner steps right up into Paul’s face. “I smell weed.”
“You would know.”
The two childhood friends stare each other down for a moment and then look away. The rules have changed. Boner sighs. “You guys should get out of here before the cops show up.”
“That’s a great idea,” Wendy says. “Come on, Mom. I’ll drive.”
“Thanks, buddy,” Paul says, smacking Boner’s shoulder.
“Just go.”
“Thanks for everything,” I say, shaking his hand. “Good shabbos.”
“Yeah, thanks, Boner,” Phillip says.
Boner gives Phillip a withering look. “That was the last time you call me Boner, you hear me?”
Phillip looks at me, and I shake my head. Don’t do it.
“I’m sorry, Boner.”
Boner lunges at Phillip, but Paul catches him and turns him around, whispering in his ear, while I drag Phillip toward Mom’s Jeep. “Jesus, Phillip. Grow up, would you?”
“I gotta be me,” he says, snickering.
Wendy looks over the roof of Mom’s car and smiles cheerfully at us. “You guys are so going to hell.”
Chapter 31
1:05 p.m.
I wake up in the basement with a start to find Alice lying on her back beside me, looking up at the ceiling. “He stirs,” she says.
I am momentarily disoriented. The last thing I can remember was coming downstairs to peel off my soaked suit. I haven’t smoked weed in years, and my nap felt as deep as a night’s sleep. “What time is it?”
“It’s just after one.” She turns onto her side to face me, resting her face on her hand. “You’ve been sleeping for almost two hours.”
“Where is everyone?”
“Paul went to work. Everyone else is out at the pool.”
“You’re not.”
“Neither are you.” She stretches a bit, the tops of her breasts rising and spilling out of her low-cut dress.
“What’s going on, Alice?”
“You seem to be staring at my breasts.”
“Your breasts are in my face.”
Alice props herself up on one elbow and pulls slowly at the neckline of her dress, stretching it down until her naked breasts emerge, round and whole. “You always liked my breasts.”
“What’s not to like?” I’m thinking that this is a dream, a strange, twisted, but not altogether unpleasant dream.
“I feel bad about how I reacted when I found out Jen was expecting. I should have been happy for you, and instead I just felt bad for me.�
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“A simple apology would have been fine,” I say.
“There’s nothing in the world I want more than to have a baby,” she says. “You know that, right?”
“Yes.”
She moves closer, so that her breasts are now dangerously close. The room starts to spin a little bit. What was in that joint, Dad? “Um, can you put those away?”
“In a minute,” she says. “First I want you to listen to me.”
“Okay.”
Alice takes a deep breath and looks me dead in the eye. “I’ve been trying to get pregnant for almost two years. I don’t ovulate regularly. My cycle never returned to normal when I came off the pill. I take a drug to make me ovulate, and my eggs have tested fine, but Paul won’t get his sperm tested. I was thinking, maybe I would increase the odds and you’d give me some of yours.”
“You want my sperm?”
“Yours seems to have what it takes.”
“What does Paul think about that?”
“Paul will never know. It will be our secret. And you and I will never know if it was yours or Paul’s sperm that did the trick. It’s perfect, really. Any baby that resembles you will resemble Paul.”
“There are so many things wrong with that idea, I don’t even know where to start.”
Alice rolls over, almost onto me, her face hovering inches above mine. “Won’t you help me, Judd? Please? Forget Paul, forget everyone and everything else. We liked each other a lot once; we used to come to this basement and have sex right here where we’re lying now. And maybe we were what we were then so you could help Paul and me with this now.”
“If you and Paul need my sperm, you can have it. But not like this. We can go to a doctor. I mean, Jesus, Alice, look at what you’re doing here.”
She sits up on the bed, flushed and angry. “I’ve been going to doctors for two years, Judd. That’s two years of needles and hormones and specialist after specialist. Do you have any idea how exhausting that is? I’ve been peeing on sticks and crying myself to sleep for two years. All Paul has to do is come home and screw me when I’m ovulating, and half the time he can’t be bothered to do that. He actually smoked weed today.” She starts to cry. “He knew I was ovulating and he came home stoned.”
“Hey, it’ll be okay.” I could never resist a crying girl. I don’t know what that says about me, but it’s probably not something good. I reach out to touch her shoulder, and she takes my hand, cradling it against her breasts, which seem to be drawing all of the light in the dim basement. “Please, Judd,” she whispers. Then, never taking her eyes from mine, she shimmies her way down the bed, dragging the waistband of my boxers down to my knees. Her tears are warm against my thighs. “Please.”
She pulls up her dress, and I catch a glimpse of a dark thatch of pubic hair just before she grabs hold of my shamefully hard cock like a stick shift and straddles me.
“Alice. No.”
And then she slides me into her, and she is drenched in there, probably from all that estrogen she’s taking, and I haven’t had sex in a very long time and as soon as her weight settles on me and she starts to move, I explode inside of her. She squeezes me between her thighs, rocking gently on me, her hand pressed down on my chest for support. After a moment, she tucks her breasts back into her dress and then leans forward to plant a quick, soft kiss on my lips. “Thank you,” she says. “Our little secret.”
Down below, I slide out of her with a soft, guilty plop.
2:00 p.m.
I FALL IN love twice on the way to meeting Jen over at the Marriott for a drink. The first time it’s a girl walking her dog. She’s wearing white shorts and a tank top that hangs just high enough to reveal a tan swatch of flat belly, and she’s got mussed blond hair and great skin, but beyond that, she just seems cool and laid-back; a dog person, but not one of those intense dog people who French-kiss their dogs and have their pictures in their wallets and buy them birthday cards. Her dog is some kind of terrier, and if I asked her, she would tell me that he’s a mutt, and how the minute she saw him at the shelter, she knew she would be taking him home. She’s laughing into her cell phone, nice white teeth, and even though I can’t hear the laugh, I know if I did, I’d like it. She looks like someone who doesn’t sweat the small stuff, who would be happy going for pizza and a movie or just taking a long walk before going home and climbing into bed. The dog will not sleep with us, because the noise of our lovemaking riles him up—she may be just this side of reserved in a crowd, but in bed her sexuality flows uninhibited. And when we’re done, lying sweaty and spent on the damp, twisted wreckage of our sheets, she entertains me with stories of her experimental lesbian phase in college, before padding naked into her studio to work on the latest book cover she’s been commissioned to design, because she’s a much sought-after graphic artist and she has deadlines to meet.
The second woman is in the car next to mine at a traffic light. She’s dark-skinned, with long black hair and eyes the color of coal, and she’s drumming on her steering wheel and singing along to whatever’s on her radio. When she sees me watching, her sheepish grin is warm and direct, and I can tell that she’s one of the nicest people you’ll ever meet, fun and approachable and never a bad word to say about anyone. In fact, the only times we’ll argue is when I’m trying to convince her that someone is a real asshole and she just won’t see it. It will frustrate me, but then she’ll smile and I’ll remember why I’m with her, what a good and generous soul she has, and how she makes me a better person and how all of my friends are in love with her, and how good she is to my child, how she sings off-key in the shower, making up silly lyrics when she doesn’t know the real ones, and how, when I’m feeling down, she wraps her arms around me from behind in bed and runs her lips over my shoulders, humming lightly into my skin until I’ve decompressed.
Then the light changes and she’s gone, just like the dog-loving graphic artist before her, both of them headed back to sexy, softly lit, uncomplicated lives. And me? I’m mourning my father and having sex with my sister-in-law and falling in love with strangers on the way to see the wife who slept with my boss and is now simultaneously divorcing me and having my baby. I feel like the driver who spends that extra second fussing with his cell phone and looks up just in time to see the front of his car crash through the guardrail and drive off the cliff.
2:17 p.m.
THERE ARE DARK shadows under Jen’s bloodshot eyes, and she nervously stirs her glass of ginger ale in the Clubhouse Grille, situated in a recessed portion of the hotel lobby. The only other patrons are a group of flight attendants a few tables over, laughing and drinking in their blue uniforms, their little suitcases lined up like sentries. There is a wedding this evening at the Marriott, and the lobby hums with industry as vendors scurry around in a state of controlled chaos. Party planners streak past, speaking urgently into headsets; flowers are carried through on trays; skinny kids dressed all in black tear silently across the floor in their sneakers like slacker ninjas, carrying bulky photographic equipment. Jen is nauseous and exhausted and wants to talk about our marriage.
“Yesterday was the first time you’ve asked me anything related to us,” she says.
“We don’t talk very often.”
“I know. But we’re going to be parents, Judd, and I think we’re going to have to get better at talking to each other.”
“So this baby is your free pass, is that it?”
She offers a wan grin. “I know it sucks, but yes. You’re going to have to come to some kind of terms with me so that we can work together here.”
“Maybe I don’t want to work with you.”
She puts down her glass and looks at me. “What does that mean, exactly?”
“I didn’t want this baby. I once wanted a baby with you, but that was before I knew who you really were. Our dead baby was the one I wanted. This baby . . . doesn’t feel real to me. It doesn’t feel like mine any more than you do.”
Jen studies her drink for a long time, and when
she looks back up at me, her eyes are filled with tears. For an instant I flash to Alice’s tears, dripping down her face and onto my belly, but I banish the memory before it can make me too queasy. One train wreck at a time, I always say.
“I think that may be the ugliest thing you’ve ever said to me.”
“You wanted me to talk about it. I’m talking.”
I don’t remember what I just said, and I have no idea if I even meant it. I just know I wanted it to hurt. In the day or so I’ve known the baby is mine, I have managed to avoid doing any concrete thinking about it. It’s still completely unreal to me, but if I said that to Jen, she would nod sympathetically and keep talking about being parents together, and I’ve got a splitting headache as it is. The fragments of my fractured life are spinning in my head like a buzz saw, and I feel moments away from coming apart in a very real and permanent way.
“Do you want to know why I started seeing Wade?” Jen says softly.
I consider it for a moment. “Not really, no.”
“When our baby died, I was grieving. I needed to mourn him. You acted like everything was fine. Well, maybe not fine, but not so far from it. No big deal, Jen, we’ll just make another one.”
“You’re exaggerating.”
“Not by a lot.”
“So you worked through your grief by having sex with Wade.”
One of the ninjas drops a steel pole, which rolls thunderously across the marble floor. Jen jumps. The kid curses and picks up the pole. A party planner materializes to admonish him, somewhat severely, I think.
This Is Where I Leave You: A Novel Page 18
