Jonathan Tropper

by Everything Changes (v5)

  “On the contrary. It makes me feel young again. Alive.”

  “I’m young,” I say. “I don’t walk around with a hard-on all day.”

  He flashes his trademark grin. “You don’t know what you’re missing.”

  Hope calls, still irked about my waking her up last night, but more concerned about my not being on the way to work already. “Why are you still home?” she says.

  “My father dropped by,” I say.

  “Oh. But you’re going to work today, right?”

  “I’m not sure. I’m still feeling a little out of it.”

  There’s a pregnant pause on the other end of the line as Hope considers her options. “Zack,” she says softly. “What’s going on? Do I need to come home early?”

  “Of course not,” I say. “Everything’s fine. I’m just not feeling too well, that’s all.”

  “What are your symptoms?”

  “General malaise.”

  “What does that mean, exactly?”

  “I don’t know. I’m just feeling somewhat run-down.”

  “Does this have anything to do with that procedure you had?”

  “No.”

  “You’re making me very nervous.” In the background, I can hear the discreet clatter of a keyboard abruptly stop as Hope quits multitasking.

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. You’re acting strange. You don’t call me all day yesterday; then you wake me up sounding drunk, or stoned, or something. And now you’re skipping work for the second day in a row when there doesn’t seem to be anything wrong with you. I mean, none of this is normal behavior for you. Are you having doubts about us? Because if you are, you should just come out and say so.”

  “It’s nothing like that,” I say. “Jesus. Can’t a guy have an off day without the whole world coming down on him?”

  “I’m not the whole world. I am your fiancée,” Hope says in a thin, icy voice that can go either way. She might burst into tears, or she might coldly eviscerate me.

  “I know. I’m sorry.”

  Our frustrated silence is punctuated by the twelve-cents-a-minute overseas static.

  “Have you seen Tamara?” she finally asks me.

  “What?”

  “Tamara. I was just wondering if you’ve gone out to see her and Sophie lately.”

  This is a trap, a trick question, and I don’t know the right answer. But waiting too long will be an automatic disqualification, so I have no choice but to hazard a guess. “I did,” I say. “On Monday.”

  “You left work early?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You didn’t mention it.”

  “It wasn’t a big deal. Tamara was going a little stir-crazy, so I took Sophie to the park for a few hours.”

  Hope is aware that I check in with Tamara and Sophie from time to time. She’s less than thrilled with my retained connection to my best friend’s widow, but she’s never said anything about it, too proud to be unfairly cast in the role of the insensitive jealous girlfriend while Tamara and I nobly grapple with the larger, universally sympathetic themes of death and grief. And while this delicate dynamic grants me license, I make sure to keep the frequency of my calls and visits with Tamara a secret, because if Hope knew how often we speak and how much time we spend together, her instinct for self-preservation would override her pride, which would lead to a final, tearfully angry ultimatum. So I carry on my relationship with Tamara according to a nebulous formula being constantly recalculated to indicate the minimum amount of disclosure necessary to cover my ass while continuing the charade. Hope sees only the tip of the Tamara iceberg, its mammoth, faceted walls spreading out below the churning surface, lying in silent, deadly wait.

  “It’s not a big deal at all,” Hope says. “I’m glad you’re able to help her out. I’m just wondering why you didn’t mention it.”

  “I don’t know,” I say. “That night was Matt’s show and Jed and I got kind of drunk, and then my father showed up and I guess, in all the excitement, I forgot about it.”

  “Fair enough,” Hope says, but her tone remains unconvinced. “Listen, I have to go into a meeting. I love you and I don’t want to be a nag, so I’m just going to ask you one last time, is everything okay? With you, with us, with work. Everything.”

  I choose my words carefully. “Everything’s fine, Hope. Really. I’m just feeling exhausted, the kind of exhausted that movie stars get when they check into hospitals and their reps announce to everyone that they’re suffering from exhaustion. That kind of exhausted. Except I don’t have reps, so I’m just laying low for a day or two so that I can be well rested and happy at our engagement party. That’s all. Okay?”

  “Okay,” she says, mollified by my reference to the party. “I love you, babe. Call me later.”

  “I will.”

  Hanging up feels portentous, the powerful sense of an opportunity missed, although I have no idea what that might have been.

  The phone rings again a few minutes later, and, thinking it might be Hope, I pick it up.

  “Where the hell are you?” Bill shouts hysterically into the phone.

  Fuck. “I’m calling in sick,” I say.

  “You can’t disappear for a day and then call in sick!” Bill protests. “Hodges is on the warpath!”

  “Tell him I’m working on it,” I say. “As soon as I know something, I’ll call him.”

  “I’m not your goddamn secretary!” he screams at me. “You call him right now, Zack. I mean it. I don’t know what’s gotten into you, but if you blow this, you’re finished here. Do you read me?”

  “I’m already finished,” I say.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Okay,” I say, and hang up the phone. I’m thinking it might not be a bad idea to leave my cell phone home today.

  Chapter 22

  It’s unseasonably warm for October and there I am, in the middle of the working day, cruising down Houston in a Lexus convertible, top town, blasting Elvis Costello through the Bose speakers, looking every inch like someone who has his shit together. I catch a glimpse of myself reflected in the window of an electronics shop and, for a moment there, I almost fool myself.

  Matt’s waiting for me on the stoop of his Lower East Side building, dressed in jeans and a torn roll-neck sweater, his version of presentable, smoking a cigarette and fiddling with his iPod. “Hey,” he says, ambling over to the car.

  “Where’s Elton?”

  “Fuck.”

  He runs back upstairs and returns a minute later carrying a small brown shopping bag. “Elton,” he says with a smirk, tossing the bag into the backseat.

  The first time our mother saw Matt’s shaved head, she cried for days, telling him that nothing in her life had ever made her sadder than seeing her baby’s head like that. “Your husband cheated on you,” he pointed out. “Your sister died of breast cancer.”

  “This is worse,” she insisted through her tears.

  Matt shaved his head as a concession to his receding hairline, unbecoming for the front man of a punk pop band, and he refused to grow it back. But every time Lela saw him, she’d cry inconsolably. Matt’s girlfriend at the time worked in the costume department of Saturday Night Live, and in a moment of inspiration she brought home a wig created for an Elton John sketch that was bumped at the last minute. It was a near-perfect fit, and from then on, Matt would wear the wig when he went to visit Lela. They never discussed it, but somehow the Elton John hair was an acceptable surrogate and the issue was thus wordlessly resolved.

  We hit the FDR at top speed and it feels good, two brothers on a midday road trip, the wind flowing over the windshield to kiss the tops of our heads, the sun-dappled surface of the East River shining like sequins, and it’s so easy to imagine us in another life, one in which we’re both successful and better adjusted, able to positively impact ourselves and each other, our ambitions and desires manifest, and not muted by the restive inner monologue of discontent that is our birthright.

  Matt n
ames the bridges under his breath. The Brooklyn Bridge, the Queensboro, the Triboro, and, off in the distance, the Whitestone and the Throgs Neck. That was what Pete always did when we were kids in the back of Norm’s LeSabre, returning on Sunday evenings from visiting our grandmother in Brooklyn, heads on shoulders in the backseat, Norm and Lela singing along to Simon and Garfunkel and Frank Sinatra on WPAT-FM 93, the rhythmic bumping of the highway seams lulling us to sleep. It’s one of the only lingering memories I have of us as a family, of feeling insulated and complete.

  We’re driving along the service road in Riverdale when Matt suddenly sits up in his seat. “I don’t believe it,” he says.

  “What?”

  He points. “Look.”

  And there’s Norm, trudging up the service road, duffel bag over his shoulder, face flushed, panting lightly from his exertions. I slow down and we watch Norm from behind.

  “For an absentee father,” Matt says, “he sure is around a lot.”

  “He is rather ubiquitous,” I agree.

  “It’s like he thinks everything can be fixed through sheer omnipresence,” Matt says.

  “Like his erections,” I say. “He thinks he can condition us into accepting a new standard.”

  Matt looks at me like a small, perfectly formed flower just sprouted from my nose. “Okay,” he says slowly. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, but you need to come up with a better analogy, preferably one that doesn’t involve Dad’s schlong.”

  “You just called him ‘Dad,’ ” I say.

  “No I didn’t.”

  “Sure you did. You said ‘Dad’s schlong.’ You see. His diabolical plan is succeeding.”

  “It was contextual.”

  I grin. “Whatever, man.”

  “Fuck you. It was.”

  I pull up alongside Norm, keeping pace with his trudging gait. He’s completely focused on his walking, eyes straight ahead, head bowed into the wind, and it takes a minute for him to realize he has company. “Hello, boys,” he says, beaming at us as he sucks wind. “Great to see you.”

  “What are you doing here?” I say.

  “I thought you might need a little backup.”

  “What are you talking about, Norm?”

  He steps off the sidewalk to lean forward over Matt’s door. He’s sweating in his decades-old Members Only windbreaker, and underneath it I can see the same red sweatshirt he wore yesterday. “I’m here to help you get Peter’s money back.”

  “How do you even know about that?” I say.

  “Now, don’t overreact to this,” he says. “I heard you on the phone with your mom.”

  “I was upstairs in bed. How could you have heard anything?”

  “He’s staying with you now?” Matt says incredulously.

  I shush him. “Not now.”

  “I listened in on the downstairs phone,” Norm says.

  “You’re a guest in my house and you’re eavesdropping on my phone calls?” I say, furious.

  “So he is staying with you,” Matt says huffily.

  “I just wanted to hear her voice again.”

  “Then you should have called her,” I say. “Jesus Christ! You’re out of control, Norm.”

  “Let’s not overlook the larger issue here,” Norm says.

  “Oh. And what’s that?”

  “Someone screwed Peter.”

  “Fuck off, Norm. Someone’s always screwing Peter,” Matt says. “And we’ll handle it, like we’ve always handled it. Without you.”

  Norm stands up straight and looks down at us. “Boys,” he says. “I’m sure it hasn’t escaped your attention that I didn’t ask your permission to come with you today. The reason for that, in case you were wondering, is that I don’t need it. I’ll bottom-line it for you: it’s not your call. I took a subway and two buses to get here.” He leans all the way forward now, forearms pressed against the car door, his head hovering directly over Matt’s, his expression stark and determined. “I’m not turning back,” he declares emphatically. “So, having freed the two of you from the onus of that decision, you should now be able to make the one decision concerning me that you are, in fact, in the position to make.”

  Matt looks at me, his eyes wide and smoldering with indignation. No fucking way, he mouths to me. I look at Norm, peaked and flushed from his walking, his features contorted into a rictus of grim purpose. I sigh. “Hop in.”

  “I don’t fucking believe you,” Matt mutters to me.

  Norm can’t fit in the Lexus’s backseat, so he sits up on the seat back like a returning hero at his parade, face turned pleasurably into the midday sun like a dog, while Matt slinks down in his seat sulking, and in this unsightly manner we leave the service road and navigate gracelessly through the business district of our old neighborhood, toward our childhood home.

  Chapter 23

  Pete gets off at two on Thursdays, so the plan is to stop at the house to say hello, then pick up the Mustang and drive it over to the Diamond Hardware store that Satch runs. At that point, I’ll explain the situation to Satch, who, I’m hoping, is open to reason and is not as prone to violence as he was when we were kids. In the meantime, Matt will stand in the background with his game face on, flash his tattoos, and look menacing. There’s no obvious role for Norm, who was a last-minute addition to the roster, but I will discourage any ad-libbing. Beyond that, I have nothing concrete in mind, except the notion that it seemed like a much better plan on the drive up.

  Before any of this can happen, though, there’s the matter of Norm’s reunion with Lela and Pete, which is something I’d pay good money to not be present for, but I can’t see any way out. I’d love to wait in the car, but we can’t just spring Norm on Lela, even though that would surely be his preferred modus operandi, given the choice.

  “What the hell is that?” Norm asks as Matt throws on the Elton John wig.

  Matt flashes me a look that says he will not abide any remarks from Norm on the subject. “Just go with us on this one, Norm, okay?” I say.

  “You look ridiculous,” Norm says, prompting me to wonder, not for the first time, how he’s made it to the ripe old age of sixty without getting the shit beat out of him repeatedly. The man has no filter.

  “People in glass houses,” Matt says venomously, “should shut the fuck up.”

  Norm defensively rubs the pitiful remnants of his failed hair transplant, but refrains from any further comments.

  “Now, just stay in the car,” I say. “Matt and I need to tell her you’re here.”

  “Got it,” says Norm, checking his teeth and patting down his pate in the rearview mirror.

  Matt and I deliberately crowd the door frame when Lela opens the door. She’s in sweatpants, a white blouse with a faded floral pattern, and an apron, and I instinctively know she will consider this the worst outfit possible for facing her ex-husband again, but there’s nothing we can do about it now.

  “Hi, Mom,” I say. “There’s something we need to tell you.”

  “My Lord,” she whispers, looking past us to the car. “Is that Norman?”

  “Yes.”

  Her breath catches in her throat and she leans against the door frame for support. “What’s he doing here?”

  “He just kind of showed up,” I say.

  “We can’t seem to get rid of him,” Matt adds.

  Lela’s hands operate on instinct. One flies up to gingerly assess her hair, combing it desperately with her fingers, tucking loose ends behind her ears, while the other absently pulls at her apron, smoothing out her blouse underneath it. “He’s so . . . old,” she says, her fingers now worrying the weathered contours of her own face self-consciously.

  Behind us, the car door slams. Norm has apparently done all the sitting still he’s capable of, and he now exits the car and comes up the walk, his face hyperbolically solemn, his gait slow and formal, milking the gravity of this summit meeting. A peculiar half smile twists at Lela’s thin lips, her brows arched, her eyelids at half-mast. The al
ien expression transforms her, and I realize I’m seeing, for the first time, a side of my mother that has nothing to do with being a mother, the part of her that was all of her before she and Norm procreated and, ultimately, destroyed each other.

  “Hello, Lela,” Norm says somberly. “You look wonderful.”

  “Hi, Norm,” she says, her voice stronger and steadier than I would have thought possible. “It’s been a long time.”

  He nods, but before the scene can play itself out any further, there’s a loud whoop from inside the house and Pete bursts through the front door in nothing but his underpants, eyes wide, tongue hanging out of his gaping mouth, and, leaping down the porch stairs in one bound, throws himself into Norm’s arms. “Daddy!” he shouts, hugging Norm fiercely. “I knew you’d come back! I missed you. Look, Mom. It’s Daddy. He came back.”

  “Hello, son,” Norm says in a choked voice as he hugs Pete and pats his shoulders. “I missed you too.” He holds Pete at arm’s length to look at him, shaking his head back and forth, and suddenly his eyes are brimming with tears. And then he lowers his head and emits a high, strangled wail that seems to suck the energy out of his body, and he collapses against Pete, who isn’t prepared for Norm’s full weight, so they fall to their knees, locked in their embrace, Norm sobbing profusely into the hollow of Pete’s neck, Pete looking concerned, rubbing Norm’s shoulders and saying, “Don’t cry, Daddy. It’s okay. Don’t cry.” And on the porch next to me, my mother says, “I’ll get some coffee,” and then bursts loudly into tears.

  Later, Pete, Matt, and I throw a baseball around outside while Norm and Lela speak in hushed tones about God knows what on the living room couch. She’s not necessarily happy to see him, but there’s no trace of the antagonism and bitterness I would have expected from her. And rather than being pleased with this unforeseen turn of events, I find myself taking offense at the way she’s let him in so easily, while I’ve been struggling, for her sake, to keep Norm at bay. After years of indirectly nurturing the anger in me, she has wordlessly invalidated my acrimony by effortlessly letting go of her own. Having been anchored in her rage for my entire adult life, I am suddenly cast adrift, with no idea of what to do with my own ingrained resentments. And I know these are all selfish and petty emotions, so on top of everything else, I get to feel like an asshole.