“Glad to hear it.” He delivered the expected response and halfheartedly patted her ass.
Adam dimmed the lights, and Becca stood in front of the candlesticks, a wedding present from his sister, the blue and white ceramic slightly chipped. He’d never noticed that before. Becca ushered in the Sabbath with circular arm motions that culminated in covering her eyes. She always let her hands linger there for a minute to pray away her fears and take stock of all that was good — “blessing the hell out of life,” she called it. She sang the prayer over the candles; as usual, it sounded like a Joni Mitchell song, pre-Court and Spark.
If the boys were here, Adam would feign disapproval while they teased Becca about her weekly Joni impersonation. But tonight the sound of her chanting — earnest, soulful, and a bit off key — impaled him. He’d heard her sing for the first time almost thirty years ago, when the staff of Camp Kehilah celebrated Shabbat two days before the campers arrived for the first session. Now the soft candlelight framed her curls, strands of gray flecking a shade of red that meant the hair would lose the rest of its pigment soon. Fine lines fanned out from the corners of her small blue eyes. Still, she didn’t look much different from that fast-talking BU freshman he’d fallen in love with at first sight.
It occurred to him then that Becca was built like — well, Georgia. Same small breasts and waist, same round hips and wiry hair. But Georgia, a quiet observer, would never have helped him lead a dining hall packed with a hundred and seventy-five kids in a light-bulb-rattling rendition of “Dodi Li,” or enrolled in a pole-dancing class to shake her middle-aged booty with abandon.
“Earth to Adam.” Becca interrupted his thoughts. “You going to do the kiddush?”
He could detect the tightness in his voice as he raced through the blessing over the wine. In two weeks’ time, when the boys returned home from camp, would he place his hands over their heads and murmur the blessings, or would his family have been decimated by his reckless stupidity?
Sitting across from Becca, chewing her fresh-baked challah, he could barely taste what might be the last Shabbat meal as he knew it. He half listened as Becca described her road trip to Baltimore with Hannah the next morning for a women’s drum circle she’d talked Hannah into trying. Becca had embraced the Landmark Forum, veganism, and the La Leche movement with passion. She’d studied the Torah with their rabbi to prepare for her adult bat mitzvah ceremony the year she turned forty-five. She’d filled notebooks with bad poetry and trotted off to exotic locales to attend writing seminars that only confirmed her lack of talent. She didn’t care; she loved the energy.
Thank God for Becca’s new hot yoga class; she’d fallen asleep with her reading glasses perched on the end of her nose and a copy of The Audacity of Hope splayed across a sexy black camisole. She’d worn a skirt with no panties to dinner, and he knew she meant business; he’d have had to feign some horrible ailment to spurn her overtures. His bones ached from the exhaustion of living with his secret. Eighty-three more hours and he’d find out what he’d done. Eighty-three hours ago would have been Tuesday morning. He’d just given his office manager, Lizzie, a month off to help out with her grandchildren in Arizona. Her son had electrocuted himself to death last month.
He peeled down to his boxers, swallowed a couple of Dramamine, and waited for the usual wave of drowsiness to engulf him. He dreamt about a bat. He and Becca used to sneak off to an empty cabin at Camp Kehilah to make love. One night they fell asleep and woke at dawn to find a bat perched on the torn blue-and-white-striped mattress. Eleven months later, a hysterical Becca called his college dorm to tell him she’d read that bats’ teeth are so small that they can bite people without their feeling it, that bats are the most rabid animals in the world, that she and Adam should have their spinal fluid tested for exposure, that rabies makes you die a neurological nightmare of a death. If they experienced no symptoms after a year, they’d be safe. For the next month, he called twice a day, subsidizing his phone bill by bartending at a small tavern just north of campus.
Adam awoke from his batmare at 3:15 a.m. Gonorrhea aside, he couldn’t shake a vague feeling of dread, as if he’d been bitten by something rabid long before he slept with Georgia.
Becca’s alarm sounded at the crack of dawn. She fumbled around for her yoga clothes, and when she kissed Adam goodbye, he could smell her body lotion and a hint of garlic from last night’s chicken. The thought of Georgia jumped out at him the way Jason used to when they were playing hide-and-seek. He’d first met her at a barbecue hosted by his neighbors Tad and Nikki, when he accidentally squirted ketchup on her white tank top; she laughed, and her breath smelled clean, like seltzer water or air.
Adam tossed and turned for hours, trying to go back to sleep. He hadn’t stayed in bed this long since Isaac brought home the rotavirus from preschool, and then a lot of throwing up was involved. This morning he felt like that big oak tree in the front yard had landed on his chest. He didn’t move, except to pee twice. Still no burning or any other signs. A raging caffeine headache roused him from his bed at one in the afternoon.
He took his coffee up to the attic and began looking through old photographs. He pulled out an album his mother had given him before she started losing her memory: 1960, Adam wearing a pointy hat and blowing out three birthday candles; 1970, Adam becoming a bar mitzvah; 1974, Adam practicing a 1-4-5 chord pattern on his cousin’s Gibson.
A loose wedding photo fell out of the album: Becca grinning, wearing a flowered wreath around her head and a long veil that came down to her ankles. He found another photo taken under the chuppah: Adam standing between Becca and his mother, whose pink suit hung on her formerly plump body. She’d lost fifteen pounds since the fitting, the day before Adam’s father turned fifty. The day he died.
Adam pulled out Becca’s old summer camp album and pored over photos of the two of them posing with their favorite campers. Becca wore a brown two-piece bathing suit and friendship bracelets up and down her forearms and in clusters around her ankles. The kids idolized her, and every guy at camp wanted a piece of her. He’d felt lucky that she was his.
The last two pages of the album were filled with photos of Becca and the fireman who broke her heart. Timmy Carver. Her grand love, borderline obsession. Adam once overheard Becca announce to her book club that she’d married him because he fit like an old pair of Birkenstocks, but that Timmy was the one that got away. How absurd — Becca boiling bratwursts and guzzling beer with the firefighters of Minocqua, Wisconsin. Who the hell lives in Wisconsin?
An old fury grabbed hold of him. He shoved the albums into the cobwebs and went downstairs to make banana pancakes, leaving a big puddle of batter on the counter; he’d feast on his Timmy Carver anger like a German shepherd on a porterhouse. Becca’s words swirled around in his head. An old pair of Birkenstocks. The guy with the guitar, every summer camp has one, an NJB, a nice Jewish boy. Well, maybe this NJB wasn’t so N after all. The phone rang.
“Dad, it’s me,” Jason said in his man-boy voice.
Adam practically jumped through the phone line. “Hey, big guy! How’s it going up there?”
“I slalomed today.” Jason’s excitement bubbled under his matter-of-fact delivery of the news.
Adam imagined the camp’s lethargic motorboat pulling skinny Jason as he squinted into the Maine sun, his nose red and peeling. “Way to go, J.”
“Where’s Mom?”
“Up in Baltimore,” Adam said, playing the abandoned husband. Ridiculous. He’d wanted her to go, not to mention the fact that he might have given her VD. “With Hannah.”
Jason handed the phone over to Isaac, newly smitten with some seventeen-year- old sailing instructor. Isaac reminded Adam of himself, the guy with the guitar and minimal athletic ability.
“Listen, steer clear of bats,” Adam warned Isaac impulsively.
Isaac laughed. “You sound like Mom.”
“Do I?” Adam could picture Isaac shaking his head, ponytail bouncing back and forth over his
shoulder.
“You’ve never heard her give the bat lecture?” Isaac raised his voice an octave. “You see one of those flying rodents, boys, and you run like a bat out of hell. One bite can ruin your life, and you won’t even know it until it’s too late.”
Adam could just see Becca waving her finger at the boys. “Now I’ve been properly bat-tized.”
“That’s just wrong, Dad.” Isaac chuckled. “So wrong.”
The Timmy Carver anger hadn’t even lasted through the phone call; Adam couldn’t touch his stack of pancakes. Becca was the love of his life, even if he wasn’t hers. Besides, Timmy died last fall. He glanced at the clock. Seventy-two more hours. Seventy-two hours ago, he was standing in line at the Greek deli on 20th and M, perusing the City Paper, debating whether to splurge on the gyros or have the salad. Dressing on the side. He wasn’t fat, but the week before, his doctor had given him a stern talking-to about his cholesterol, in view of what had happened to his dad. He went with the gyros, double order of lamb.
He thought about contacting Georgia, because he’d been a jerk to her. After lecturing Isaac and Jason ad nauseam about safe sex, how could he have been so stupid? He should apologize. Sorry, Georgia, for practically hanging up on you when you called to tell me that I might have ruined my life. Sorry, Georgia, for assuming that you’d been waiting patiently for some arrogant fuck to grant you a quickie. Sorry, Georgia, for bolting out the door before I’d even buckled my pants.
Georgia. Funny woman to select for a fling. She wasn’t younger or prettier or smarter than Becca. She wasn’t desperate, but he had a sense that unlike Becca she’d be happy with whatever he could give her, a kiss, a night, or a slim offering of remorse after acting like a jerk. Becca was never satisfied. She picked through every peach at the grocery store to make sure she selected the best one. She’d renovated their kitchen twice, hectored principals to make sure that the boys got the best teachers, and switched exercise regimens every six months to challenge her metabolism. Women both envied and snickered at her, and men lit up around her, especially when she pranced around in her sexy Catwoman costume at the neighborhood Halloween parties.
He spent the next four hours flipping between infomercials, a fly-fishing show, and an old Court TV documentary about the Menendez brothers. He drank tumblers of ice water so he could revel in the small consolation that he was still pissing without pain. At five, he showered. He scrubbed his thighs, up to his groin, harder and harder until his skin turned raw. The physical pain was a relief. He squirted a blob of Becca’s shampoo on his hand, closed his eyes, and inflicted the same scrubbing on his head; cutting into his bald spot with his fingernails.
“Hey.” Becca materialized, water streaming down her shoulders.
He recoiled. “You scared the holy fuck out of me, Becca.” He jumped out of the shower and wrapped himself in a towel. “What were you thinking?”
Becca stood there under the spray looking like a little girl whose brand-new dress had just been splattered with mud by the playground bully. She turned off the water and dried herself off.
He wanted to grab her so badly, but her nakedness scared him. He was afraid to touch her. Despite his squeaky-clean skin, he’d never felt so filthy. “I’m sorry, I’m just out of sorts.”
Becca still looked hurt and confused. “What’s up?” She moved to hug him.
He backed away. “Work stuff,” he grumbled.
“The schmucks who kept you from your fiftieth birthday trip to Israel?” Becca switched moods deftly, angry now. “You just tell them that you’ll have to charge them double if they’re going to be unreasonable.” Any enemy of Adam’s was an enemy of hers.
Becca wasn’t a great listener; she was too quick to offer a solution or an opinion, which annoyed him. But he was in no position to be annoyed. “I guess I shouldn’t let them get to me.”
She ran her hand down his back. “Let’s go out.”
They snuck tomato, mozzarella, and basil sandwiches into an art theater and endured a movie about a skinny Japanese businessman who fucks his cheeky Australian tour guide somewhere in the outback and then dies. Agitating as hell. Not that Adam could have concentrated on that new Bruce Willis movie anyway. He took Becca’s hand, and after a few minutes she leaned over to whisper, “A little lighter, babe. I can feel my bones kissing.”
They walked through Chinatown, now McBarnes and No-bled out. Depressing. They didn’t talk until they were facing each other over cups of Häagen-Dazs, licking Rum Raisin and Java Chip off their respective spoons.
“Tell me about Baltimore,” Adam said.
Becca grinned, flashing one of her dimples. “You’ll glaze over if I start describing chants and homemade drums.”
True. “How’s Hannah?”
“Crazy nuts planning Goldie’s bat mitzvah.”
Adam could tell that Becca was about to launch into one of her speeches about how smart and lucky and spiritually grounded they were to have bar mitzvahed Isaac and Jason in Israel, avoiding the Goodbye, Columbus syndrome. He headed her off with a report on Jason’s new waterskiing feat and Isaac’s recitation of Becca’s bat-out-of-hell warning.
“Do they know about that?” Adam bit down on a piece of Heath bar.
“You mean our rabies scare?” Becca laughed.
“I can’t believe you dumped me after that.” The petulance in his voice served as his tired ploy to make her proclaim her love for him, to swab an old wound. He was an asshole to ask for this.
Becca looked flattered. “You won in the end.” She could barely suppress a smile.
“I was the consolation prize,” he moped.
“Are we really talking about this?” Becca dabbed her mouth with a napkin.
He swirled his spoon around his ice cream cup. “I was there for you when you were freaking out about the bat, and then you took off with Mr. Aryan of the Great White North.”
“Oh, God. It had nothing to do with the bat!” She did smile now, a little patronizingly. “On second thought, it had everything to do with the bat. You were so incredibly sweet and loving, and that scared me more than the rabies.”
“What scared you?”
“That at nineteen I’d met the man I was going marry.” She touched her pinkie to his cheek with such tenderness it gave him chills.
So the bat had cemented their relationship by scaring her off? Adam’s head hurt. “Maybe we could have had this conversation thirty years ago.”
“It wouldn’t have changed anything.” She wiped a glob of chocolate from his chin and licked her finger, her eyes warm. “We’re here, aren’t we?”
“You’re right.” Sitting across from Becca, he felt the way he had when his father bought him a guitar they couldn’t afford. Her unfailing belief in their marriage, normally something he drew strength from, made him feel even punier. He turned away and tossed his ice cream dish and spoon into the trash can behind him.
They drove home in silence. Adam spent the balance of the evening drinking water, peeing, and checking himself. He called his mother, and when she confused him for his father, he hung up. Becca made four attempts to beckon him to their bed before she gave up. He fell asleep on the couch with his clothes on so that his morning hard-on would be safe from Becca’s hands.
He awoke late. Becca was already downstairs. He tuned his guitar, but couldn’t muster up the energy or the attention to play anything. Becca went for a long walk, thumbed through the Post, and fixed them a bowl of tuna salad, which they scooped up with long rectangular crackers sprinkled with all sorts of seeds. Adam couldn’t bring himself to tell her that a caraway had lodged between her front two teeth.
He couldn’t breathe. “I’m going to the office.” He rose and kissed the top of her head.
“Oh, babe. Well, if you have to. But don’t forget, we’re meeting Hannah, Danny, Maggie, and Eric for the fireworks at seven. It’s a Solonsky night. No Amy and Leon, though, too late for the baby. Who would have thunk?” she prattled on as he headed for the door.<
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Adam sat in his steamy Subaru for a second before he started it. The heat offered him a welcome distraction. After a few minutes, he turned on the ignition. The clock read 12:45. Forty-five more hours until he’d know. Forty-five hours ago, Georgia had called him. If he hadn’t spilled ketchup on her at that party, he never would have thought to hire her. If he’d had the balls to tell his client that their video could wait until after his birthday trip to Israel, he would have been circling Ben Gurion airport with his family that night last April. If he hadn’t had a bad chimichanga once at the Mexican restaurant where he’d parked his car, he would have eaten there and not at the trendy bistro half a block away where he’d bumped into Georgia. Dayenu. History in the subjunctive. A term he’d heard in a movie once.
He thought back to the boys’ childhood, when Jason could never resist the urge to smash Isaac’s elaborate Lego constructions. Becca blamed it on sibling rivalry, but Adam understood the impulse to destroy something beautiful. To soil his marriage with a night he barely remembered beyond a maroon bra. Now he knew that he’d been afraid. Afraid to turn fifty. Afraid that if he didn’t knock over his near-perfect Lego life, God would destroy it on His terms. Slowly, as with Adam’s mother, who’d put a brand-new pair of heels in the freezer and a melting carton of ice cream in her shoe rack. Suddenly, as with his dad, whose arteries blew out while he was brunching at the twenty-dollar-a-head Palm Springs restaurant he couldn’t afford. Explosively, as with his assistant’s son, who suffered one unlucky jolt while trying to fix his air-conditioning unit on a 110-degree desert afternoon.
Adam fiddled with the vents so that air blew on his perspiring face. He put the gear shift in reverse and backed out of the driveway. As he pulled away from his house, he glanced in the rearview mirror long enough to spot Becca standing in front of her faded hydrangeas, her hands hidden in the pockets of thirty-year-old overalls stained with fresh dirt and the orange paint they’d used to fix up the Camp Kehilah counselors’ lounge the summer they met. Her curls were tucked into a straw hat she’d begun wearing only recently, after her skin started sprouting big brown spots. She waved, or maybe readjusted her hat; he couldn’t tell for sure.
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