by Joshua Braff
I walk to the phone and dial my father’s number. There is no answer. I hang up and my mother hands me one of her leather-bound books and points to a paragraph. I know this one well. The thirty-nine categories of verboten activities on the Sabbath: sowing, plouwing, reaping, winnowing, spinning, weaving, making two loops . . .
“This is your defense? A book from the sixteenth century?”
. . . trapping, slaughtering, flaying, writing two or more letters.
“Not everything that is thought should be said,” she says in her pious, calm tone. “And not everything that is said should be repeated.”
“Just stop.”
“I love you, David.”
“You love me?”
“But you’re pushing me in ways I won’t be pushed.”
“I apologized for being late.”
“I want to go,” Debra says. “I want to see his apartment.”
“We’re going,” I say. “You should be able to see your father, regardless of what I did.”
My mother walks out of the room, into the bathroom. I wait for the door to slam but it doesn’t. Upstairs I grab my shoes, a sweatshirt, my mother’s car keys off her dresser, and my camera. I run out to the car, start the engine, and my sister opens the front door of the house. I roll down the window to hear her.
“Me too. I want to go.”
I know it’s stupid but I open the door and she’s in.
“I can’t believe I’m doing this,” she says.
I am my father. A kidnapper. I pull out of the driveway just like yesterday, just like he did.
“What am I doing?” she says.
“He wants to take you to lunch. Lunch! Okay, Deb? He loves you!”
“She loves us too,” she says, looking back at the house.
“It’s going to be fun. Forget all the other crap and let’s just feel good. It’s Saturday and it’s nice out. Right?”
She doesn’t answer me.
“Deb?”
“What?”
“I won’t take you if you don’t want to go.”
“Just don’t ask me,” she says. “Just go.”
“Okay. I won’t ask anymore.”
She nods, still staring out the window. I turn the radio on—“Crocodile Rock”—and face her. “She’ll get over it.”
“She’ll hate me.”
“No.”
“I’m nervous,” she says.
“Stop thinking about it. Wanna play twenty questions?”
“No.”
I lower the music. “I’m thinking of an animal.”
“Do you think she knows we’re gone by now?”
“It’s not a crime to see your father.”
“We took her car.”
“She’s not using it. I’m thinking of an animal. Not a human. Please. Do it. Guess.”
I look at the back of her head, her long dark ponytail. A sinner today, a villain, an accomplice to a crime. She tugs on her seat belt.
“Hello?” I say.
“Okay, okay,” she says. “Is it a zebra?”
“No. It isn’t. Ask if it lives in or zoo or something.”
“Does it live in a zoo?”
“No.”
“I don’t care. A monkey. Do you think she knows by now?”
“No. It’s not a monkey.
“Is it a cat?”
“In a way.”
“Is it a tiger?”
“Yes. Wow. That’s it. That was fast. It’s a tiger. All right, your turn.”
“I don’t want to play. I have a stomachache.”
“Does it live in Africa?”
“No.”
“Does it have a tail?”
“No. It lives in New Jersey and its yelling my name right now, running around the house looking for me.”
I laugh. “Trust me,” I say, giving her shoulder a light shove. “She knows where you are.”
Apartment W
“YES?” SAYS MY FATHER.
“It’s David,” I announce through the intercom. A long silence follows.
“You’re here?”
“Yes. I have Debra.”
“Where’s your mother?”
“She let me drive.”
“Into the city?”
“I did fine. I’m a good driver, Dad.”
“I thought she was driving.”
“Should I park?” I say.
“No, no need. I have to get out of here. I’ll just get in with you.”
EAST 70TH ST., the sign says and underneath in small letters, EAST JERUSALEM WAY. I somehow justify my stint as kidnapper with the Semitic-sounding street name. As if my mother would be relieved. Watching me from the car, I point out the sign for Debra but she’s climbing in the back. My father emerges wearing a dark suit and a reddish tie. I don’t know why he’s so dressed up.
“David?” he says, from twenty feet away, and right behind him comes Brandi.
“Marty, wait, Marty!” she screams. She’s running in heels, trying to get her enormous handbag over her shoulder.
“Who’s that?” Debra says.
“Friend of Dad’s.”
My father opens the door. “Go, David,” he says. “She’s drivin’ me nuts.”
“What do you mean?”
“Drive. Punch it.”
“You gotta wait for her, Pop.”
“No, no. She’s got other plans.”
Too late. Brandi opens the back door and gets in next to Debra. Out of breath and wide eyed, just glaring at the back of my father’s head. “Hey, asshole.”
“I explained this to you, Arlene.”
“Oh, blow it out your ear.”
My father spins and points at her. “Watch your mouth. My daughter’s in the car.”
They look at each other and Brandi offers her hand. “I’m sorry. Hi. I’m Brandi.”
“I’m Dena.”
“Happy now?” my father says. “Good, be happy.”
“You have your father’s eyes.”
“Do you mind if we go have a family day now, Arlene?”
“I’m not sitting on that couch all day, Marty.”
“Then go to a movie. A museum. It’s New York City, for crying out loud.”
“I want to be with you.”
“It’s a goddamn family day. What’s so hard to understand?”
“It’s okay, Dad,” I say. “She can come with us.”
“Thank you. Thank you for saying that. Finally, a nice person.”
“Where to?” I say.
Silence.
“I’ve heard so many wonderful things about you,” Brandi says.
Debra clears her throat and sits taller in her seat. “How do you know my dad?” she says.
Here we go. Stomach burn. I glance at my father but he’s looking out the window.
“We work together,” Brandi says.
I see Debra nodding.
“At the Imperial.”
Through the rearview my sister’s eyes meet mine. I put the car in drive. No one is talking. Debra sits with her hands in her lap and my father’s still sulking like a six-year-old.
“Where are we . . . uh . . . ?”
“The Queens Midtown Tunnel to the L.I.E.,” he says. “Take that to the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway and I’ll guide you from there.”
“Queens?” I say.
“It’s a surprise, a family surprise.”
“I wanted to see the apartment,” Debra says.
“I’ll bring you back later, baby.”
“Is it your father’s grave?” I ask, and he looks disappointed.
“We’re going to a cemetery?” says Brandi.
My father turns to her. “What? You don’t like the plan now?”
“You never said a cemetery, Marty.”
“You can wait in the car, Arlene. The Queens Midtown Tunnel.”
“Where’s that?” I say.
“Just go straight. Turn right at the corner.”
“I really hate cemeteries,” Brandi
says, and my father starts shaking his head.
“I do too,” my sister says.
“It’s Saturday, Marty. And we’ve got the kids. Let’s go the beach, Jones Beach.”
For a moment all I hear is the sound of the highway. I try to think of a question to ask, to dilute the tension.
“Maybe Debra and I will go shopping instead,” says Brandi.
“Terrific,” my father says. “Just leave her with me and you go right ahead.”
I find Debra in the mirror, smiling. Brandi sits forward on the seat and faces her. “Can I see what your hair looks like when it’s down?” she says.
Debra shrugs and looks at my father.
Brandi reaches to remove the ponytail holder. “Just for a second. It’s so beautiful.”
The hair comes down over her shoulders. My father turns to see it and can’t help but grin. “My God,” he says, “You are your mother.”
Brandi fluffs it like a hairdresser and reaches for her purse. “I know we’ve just met,” she says.
It’s lipstick that comes out first. I wait for Debra to reject the idea, but she doesn’t. What I see in the rearview is a fifteen-year-old Hasidic girl with her lips puckered and ready. Eight seconds in the car with Brandi Lady and the Jew laws get tossed out the window.
“Does it come off easily?” Debra asks.
“Oh yes,” Brandi says, uncoiling the stick. “It’s the eyeliner we’ll have to scrub at. Okay . . . face me . . . lips like this . . . good . . . perfect. Don’t move. And here we go.”
It’s a Boy
THE CEMETERY IS CALLED LIEBERMAN and Wise. It’s set on a very green and mildly sloped hill that blocks the sight of a gun range on one side. A new addition to the neighborhood apparently. The popping of rifle bullets is sporadic and relatively banal but a strange sound to hear in a field of head-stones. My father leads us up a narrow path of small white rocks and leans over to touch a plaque on the grass. “Joseph Tuschsky was my dad’s partner,” he says. “The theater they bought was called the Drake, July 1929. I was ten.”
Brandi steps toward my father, puts her hand on his shoulder. “Happy birthday, Mr. Arbus.”
“This is Tuschsky,” my father says. “I’m telling a story about Joe Tuschsky. Can’t you read?”
“Yes . . . I can read, Marty. Jesus, you’re right back at it, aren’t ya?”
“Arlene, please.”
“Where’s your father’s plot?”
“He’s over there, we’ll go in a second, I’m telling a story.”
“Then go ahead.”
They are a strange couple. The Borscht-belt Jew and his Marilyn Monroe. When I look at my sister she’s twenty-two years old with the lips and the eyes and her hair now brushed. I take my camera out, and point it at her. Click.
“Don’t, David, don’t,” she says, holding her palm out the exact way my mother always does.
“You look good.”
“Liar.”
“You look normal. Give me a pose.”
“Please don’t take my picture.”
I move toward her with the camera high and she squeals and runs behind my father. Click, click, click, her face lit up with joy.
“I’m telling a story.”
“Tell him to stop.”
“Can you let her be, David?”
“Sorry.”
“Tuschsky was connected in Los Angeles. He had an uncle who produced movies, cowboy-type movies, and when he died the contact stayed fresh because of another man named Don Micklin.”
“Is he here too?” Brandi asks.
“No! He lives in West Palm Beach.”
My father raises and drops his arms, then walks about fifty yards up the path we’re on. “That’s him, right there, you can see the name. You don’t want to hear the whole story, I don’t care.”
We all get close to the plot and Brandi kneels to touch the engraving. “Happy birthday, Mr. Arbus,” she says. “I hear you were quite a man.”
A deep, deep breath from my father. “You both have about ten relatives on this plot, not including my mother. She wanted to be in Jersey with her sisters. My aunt Gertrude, my father’s sister, is somewhere out there, toward those sycamores, along that fence there, ya see where I mean?”
“What’s that sound?” Debra says. “Fireworks?”
I point the camera at my grandfather’s plot. The engraving, the yellowed grass, the small stones left on top. Click.
“Micklin and my father got first-run movies for years. Tell me if I’ve told you this story already. I ran the projector with Chaplin and Errol Flynn films and everything Lionel Barrymore did in those days.”
“Lionel Barrymore?” Brandi asks.
“The contact wouldn’t run dry until the early forties and my father and Uncle Joe started getting films from another source. I’d be the one who went and picked the canisters up at a trucking yard in Jersey City.”
A family of five walks by us. The man and the boy wear yarmulkes. “Shabbat shalom,” the man says to my father, who ignores him.
“Shabbat shalom,” Debra responds.
“Tuschsky was very kind to me, never once treated me like a kid. He was a big drinker and he liked to gamble all day but that son-of-a-bitch was never afraid to put his arm around me and even used to kiss me . . . on my forehead. Something my father would never ever do.”
My dad kneels on the grass before his father’s plot. “Happy ninety-first birthday, Papa.”
Brandi steps closer to him and waves Debra and me toward her. It’s awkward for me. Staged sentimentality. I don’t really move but then my sister’s hand is out and I take it and we all end up behind my dad.
“Family is the only thing that matters. These two people right here are my children. Your beautiful grandchildren,” he tells the stone. “You met David a while back but he’s changed a lot. He’s a man now. Look at him. I know he’s gonna make me so proud out there . . . with his old man. And this, this person over here is my girl. I don’t get to see her as much as I used to, as much I need to. My God, she’s growing up so fast, Papa.”
Debra bends to hug him, and I wish I’d done that too.
My father is silent for a minute and stands, his cheeks lined with tears. “Okay,” he says, “I love ya, and I just wanted to say hello and happy birthday. So, good-bye for now. We’re gonna go do something fun. Right?”
“Right!” says Brandi.
We walk back down the path toward the car and I notice that Debra and Brandi aren’t next to us. When I look back at them their faces are so close, their noses practically touching. I lift my camera and decide to call this one The Hasid and the Stripper. Click. Top five this week:
5. Smashed TV
4. Styrofoam Wig Head
3. Old Man with Hand in Garbage Can
2. Burnt Orange Sun Setting between Skyscrapers
1. The Hasid and the Stripper
“David,” my father says.
“Looks like Deb and Brandi are friends,” I say.
“Yeah, yeah,” he says. “She can be a nightmare, that one. You wouldn’t believe what she was laying on me all night.”
“What do you mean?”
“Go ask her. It’s what we were fighting about. Or go ask Ira. He’ll tell you.”
“Why can’t you tell me?”
“They want to upgrade, like everyone else, just go and turn the place into a goddamn peep show. Big plans, big ideas, put the film peeps in, the live peeps in, just turn it all into a big fuckin’ gyno exam. I tell them over and over, nothing brings the scum in faster than the peeps, but they don’t care, they see dollar signs in their sleep. And Abromowitz, this shmuck I’ve known forever, has Ira wanting to buy his inventory. Guy’s in the dildo biz. I told him I’d come over tomorrow but I’ll tell you right now, I’m not a opening my wallet for shit. You should come with me. It’ll be good for ya.”
“Dad?”
“What?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
&n
bsp; “We’re in the mood to see some boys,” Brandi says. “Debra says she wants to get whistled at.”
“No, I don’t,” she says. “I never said that.”
“Arlene, don’t turn my little girl into someone she’s not, okay?”
“Little girl? She’s not exactly a baby.”
“Let’s get back to city,” my father says. “How ’bout a movie?”
Debra’s smile fades as she glances at me. “I think we’d better get back to Newstead.”
“What?”
“The car, mom’s car,” I say. “She wouldn’t drive us, ya know, the Sabbath and all. I ended up taking it without, really . . .”
“What are you telling me?” He looks at Brandi, his eyes blinking. “What did he just say?”
“I think he said he took the car.”
“It’s Shabbat,” Debra says. “We don’t drive.”
“We borrowed it,” I say. “I’ll call her. I’ll call her right now.”
My dad has his hands on his head. “From where? She can’t pick up the phone anyway. Christ, David. That was stupid. Get in the car. I’m driving, move over. Move!”
“It’ll all work out,” Brandi says.
“You know who’s gonna pay for this. Right?”
I look at my father as I get in the passenger seat. “Sorry.”
“Yeah, me too!”
Debra looks chastened and stressed. She starts rubbing off the lipstick with the back of her hand. It’s smears up onto her cheeks and nose and now her sleeve.
“Um . . . that’s not really how I’d do that,” Brandi says, looking for a tissue in her purse. “Stay still. Let’s keep it off your clothes.”
“And off your mother’s car,” my father says, sitting up to find her in the rearview. “She looks like she’s been punched, Arlene.”
“Stay still,” says Brandi. “Let me get your eyelids.”
“She’ll probably call the cops.”
Grand theft auto. Kidnapping. Speeding. Cursing. Hating. I’ll tell them I was inspired by my own father. He also ignored her and we flew out of there, leaving the smell of rubber on the driveway. I ignore her and I’m going to jail. Why’d you do it, kid? Why’d you steal your mama’s car? Because she’s a killer of fun. A murderer of energy and glee. She says no, you can’t, the same way her grand rabbi says she can’t and won’t and shouldn’t and, “Don’t!”
I just yelled that as loud as I could.
