by Mia Zabrisky
“Women always pig out when they’re miserable,” Cassie said, biting into a honey-dipped donut.
“So you’re miserable?”
“Miserable.” She giggled between bites.
“Sorry to hear it.”
“I like a man who’s sorry.”
“I like a woman who’s miserable.” He winked.
Cassie smiled. “Guess what? Sophie calls you the Goateed Man.”
He laughed heartily and turned to Sophie. “Didn’t I tell you my name?”
She shook her head.
“I’m Ryan”
“Oh.”
“I’m Cassie.”
“Hi. Ryan Waverly.”
“Sophie McKnight.”
They all shook hands.
Twenty minutes later, back upstairs, Cassie said, “God, he’s so interesting. And funny! Why don’t you ask him out?”
“Me? Why don’t you ask him out?”
“Me?”
“Oh c’mon, Cass. You two were flirting like crazy.”
“We were just talking.” She got a faraway look in her eyes, flopped down on the sofa and didn’t budge. Her hair was pushed up roughly behind her ears. “Maybe you should start dating again,” she said.
“That’s okay.” Sophie’s hands were chapped from doing laundry. “I’m not interested.”
“No?” Cassie’s voice was hopeful.
“At least break up with Billy first.”
“Oh God,” Cassie groaned. “Billy.”
*
The following afternoon, Sophie heard laughter coming from Ryan’s living room, and the hairs rose on the back of her neck. It was Cassie’s braying laugh with its distinctive little wheeze at the end. There was a loud thump, and then peels of laughter, and then the sound of bodies flopping against the hardwood floor. More laughter. The squeak of naked skin against the polished floorboards. Tumbling and wrestling. More laughter. Sophie couldn’t believe it—Cassie was fucking the goateed man. Her goateed man.
Feeling a low-level panic, she scooped up her car keys and went out for a drive. She stopped at Lisa’s Cafe and ordered a tuna sandwich, but the tuna had too many onions in it and would probably give her indigestion. By the time she got back to her apartment, the fucking had stopped, but now loud rock music was pounding through the walls.
Sophie made herself a cup of tea and tried to focus on her writing, which she’d been doing lately, therapeutic writing, just any old thing that popped into her head, but it was impossible to concentrate. The throbbing bass kicked at the walls, and during one of the pauses between songs, another sound rose up, a sharp and hysterical slamming, like a wooden cane being pounded against a wall. Bang-bang-bang.
Mandelbaum’s cane.
Instead of turning the music down, Ryan cranked the volume. The walls and floor vibrated. Sophie’s blood throbbed in her veins. Mandelbaum’s cane whacked the wall with rabid indignation. BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM!
She couldn’t stand it anymore. She scooped up her keys, hurried out into the hallway and knocked on Ryan’s door, which opened almost instantly. He was wearing jeans and nothing else, his body lean and tan. Beyond him in the living room, Cassie was crouched on a sofa, eating ice cream out of a box. Ryan offered Sophie the joint he was smoking. Cassie looked up and burst out laughing. “Sophie!”
“Enter, Cousin Sophie,” he said. “Join the party.”
Mandelbaum walloped the wall with his cane and an Andy Warhol print fell down.
“Holy shit, what is his problem?”
“Uh, maybe you should turn the music down?” she said sarcastically.
“I never get to crank my music,” he whined, and Sophie resisted a sudden urge to punch him.
“It’s not that bad,” Cassie said, pulling Sophie down onto the sofa with her. The apartment reeked of pot. The resin had steeped into every pore of every object in the apartment. Dirty T-shirts and crumpled jeans littered the floor alongside week-old pizza boxes and fast food wrappers, splayed books and empty CD cases.
“Cassie, what’re you doing here?” Sophie asked.
“Just hanging out,” she said. But then she whispered in her best friend’s ear, “You don’t mind, do you?”
“No, why should I?” she snapped, sounding a lot more upset than she’d intended.
“I figured you weren’t that interested.”
“Don’t be retarded.”
“Just checking.”
“What about Billy?”
“We had another fight. A bad one. It’s over.” Cassie pouted. “Want some?” She spooned some ice cream out of the box and offered it to Sophie.
“No thanks. I have to go.”
“Don’t go. Stay!”
“Stay Sister Sophie.” Ryan relit the joint.
Mandelbaum thumped on the wall.
“Oh man, this is stressful. Fine. I’ll turn the music down.” He picked up the remote and reduced the volume to a more tolerable level. “Beer, ladies?”
“None for me.” Sophie stood up, but Cassie pulled her back down again.
“Stay? Please?”
In the briefest pause between songs, they realized somebody was knocking on the door, a soft persistent rap-rap-rap.
“Who is it?” Ryan bellowed before pulling the door open.
Tobias Mandelbaum lay spread-eagle on the hallway floor, his cane clamped in his sweaty fist. The skin around his mouth was puckered, and his large ears were pressed flat against his skull like giant oak leaves. Sophie knelt breathlessly beside him. “Are you okay? Can you hear me? Call 911!”
Mandelbaum’s body was rigid. A vein in his neck pulsed and his hands trembled.
“Call an ambulance!” she cried over her shoulder, and Ryan, who’d been standing in the doorway, ran back inside for his phone.
Cassie loomed over them, her eyes wet with alarm. She wrung her hands together and whispered, “Is he dead?”
“No. He’s going to be all right,” Sophie promised, even though she didn’t have a clue. She massaged Mandelbaum’s chest but then realized he was breathing on his own and stopped.
He smiled at her. “What are you doing?”
“You looked like you were… dead.”
“Dead?” he sputtered. “I’m fine, I’m fine! I tripped on the damn carpet!”
Cassie and Ryan were standing in the doorway. Ryan held the phone up to his ear. “Do you still need an ambulance?”
“No! Just help me get back to my apartment,” Mandelbaum grumbled.
Ryan hung up and squatted down to help him.
“Not you!” he snapped. “Sophie.”
“Wow, if looks could kill,” Cassie said.
“I insist,” Ryan said stubbornly.
Mandelbaum shook his head and growled, “Get your stinking mitts off me!”
“It’s okay.” Sophie took his spindly arm and helped him to his feet. “Are you sure you’re all right?”
“I’m fine! I tripped, that’s all. Damn carpet.”
“Are you sure you don’t want us to call an ambulance?”
“My ticker’s fine,” he said. “Better than yours!”
“He’s fine,” Ryan said petulantly.
“Are you coming back?” Cassie asked Sophie.
“I don’t think so,” Sophie said.
“Please?”
She’d lost all patience with her friend. “Go smoke your pot, okay?”
Cassie gave her an icy look. “Sure. Whatever.”
Sophie escorted Mandelbaum down the hallway to his apartment, but right before they went inside, Ryan poked his head out the door and called to her softly, “Sophie?” She ignored him and went inside, but just before she closed Mandelbaum’s door she could hear Ryan say, “Be careful!”
*
She could feel the heat emanating from Tobias Mandelbaum’s body, but his fingers were as cold as popsicles. He was short and stooped and looked like a shriveled piece of fruit in his green cardigan sweater and tan trousers, his tennis shoes grimy with age.
“Welcome to my humble abode!”
“Everything’s going to be fine,” she said, lowering him onto the sofa. The apartment was pristine, not a dust ball in sight. Reproductions of sappy, weeping clowns hung straight as window frames on the walls, and the furniture looked like it had never been used.
“You’re a kind soul, Sophie.” His eyes twinkled and his silken skin wrinkled in a hundred places whenever he smiled. “My wife used to eat those Nabisco Sea Biscuits by the boxful. Oh, she just loved those crackers. You can’t get them anymore, unfortunately.”
Sophie didn’t feel like talking. She wanted to go back to her apartment, pour herself a stiff drink and plunk herself down in front of the TV.
“42 years, we were married. Estelle passed away last year, God rest her soul.” He shook his head sadly. “Are you married, Sophie?”
“No.”
“No? A pretty girl like yourself?” He squinted at her. “What happened? The bum leave you? The jerk. What is he, blind?”
She didn’t answer.
“You can tell me, Sophie.”
“I really should be going.”
His long yellow teeth met in an even smile. He took Sophie’s hand and coaxed her to sit down beside him. Then he brought his face up close. Shockingly close. “What if you could have any wish you wanted?” he said matter-of-factly. “I’m curious. What would you ask for?”
She leaned back. “Um… I really have to go.”
He shrugged and dropped her hand, and for an instant she felt an unexpected nakedness on her palm and fingers. He waved dismissively. “Just a thought.”
“What do you mean?” Sophie asked. “A wish?”
“What if you could make one wish, and it would come true?”
“Well,” she said, getting up and backing toward the door. “I guess I’d ask for my old life back.”
“Your old life? With your husband and everything?”
“How do you know about my husband?”
Mandelbaum shrugged. “I know a lot of things. I know about the divorce. I know about the custody battles. I know about the accident.” He began to cry. Not sob. But there were tears pooling in his eyes. “He’d been drinking that weekend when he came to pick Jayla up. He was stinking drunk, wasn’t he? You begged and pleaded with him, while he laced up Jayla’s Nikes and helped her on with her jacket. Jayla, isn’t it? He was drunk and pissed off, and he threatened you. Didn’t he, Sophie? Oh, it’s a terrible thing. You tried to call the police, but he took your phone and smashed it to bits.” He stood up and wagged a finger in her face. “Your daughter looked up at you with big scared eyes and said, ‘Mommy?’ And you reached for her, but Peter pushed you away. He shoved you away!” Mandelbaum picked up his cane and shook it furiously. “He scooped Jayla up in his arms. You chased him out of the house and across the front lawn, and you grabbed your little girl by the arm and pulled, and Jayla screamed. She reached for you, but your fingers slipped apart. Peter locked her in his car and you ran around trying all the doors. Behind the glass, Jayla’s face was wet from crying.” He waved his scrawny arms in the air. “He backed out of the driveway, tires squealing, and you stood there screaming for him to stop. You ran after them as they sped away. You chased them all the way down the block, trying to save your daughter, and then you fell and scraped your elbows and knees on the asphalt. Screaming Jayla’s name. And the Toyota disappeared down the street, and you never saw your little girl again. There was a terrible accident. And now they’re dead. Peter and Jayla.”
She stood, frozen and shaking. Catatonic with fright.
The tears were spilling freely from his eyes now, dripping off his nose and chin. He lowered his voice. “But it wasn’t your fault, Sophie. You did everything you could. You have to stop punishing yourself for something you had no control over. How about a cup of coffee?”
She couldn’t catch her breath.
“Easy kid. I know. I know.” He took out an embroidered linen handkerchief and mopped the sweat off his brow. He wiped the tears from his eyes. “You want a cup of coffee? A glass of milk? Warm milk? We could heat it up and put cocoa in it.”
“How do you know what happened that day?” she gasped. “You can’t possibly know all those details! They weren’t in the newspaper.”
“Even if I explained, you wouldn’t understand.” He grabbed her sleeve. “I’ll grant you one wish. Don’t be hasty. Think about it.”
A shiver shot across her heart.
“One wish,” he repeated.
“One wish? A wish? What the hell is this, some kind of a joke? What’s going on?” she said furiously. “How do you know all these things about me? Who’s been talking to you?”
“Nobody,” he said firmly. “I know because I know.”
“How?” she shouted. “How do you know?”
He gazed at her as if he were trying to memorize her face. “Is it a deal? Do we have a deal, young lady?”
Sophie gave a frightened shriek and tore out of the apartment as if her hair was on fire.
*
That evening, she bolted her front door and fell asleep on the sofa. She woke up around midnight in terrible pain. This phantom pain, this imitation labor, slowly faded, and a murky image of Jayla appeared. Mommy? After a moment, Jayla’s blurry face imploded on itself. The more she tried to visualize her, the hazier she became. Her beautiful little girl was disappearing from her memory.
Sophie’s pulse points throbbed as she struggled to conjure up Jayla’s face again, to force a clearer image, but nothing happened. Nothing. How could she forget what her dead daughter looked like? How could she?
She stared miserably at the radiator hissing in a corner of the room and reached for her pills, but the prescription bottle was empty. She would have to schedule another doctor’s appointment. She needed something stronger to help her sleep. Oh God, when would this grief ever end? She got up and tore through the entire kitchen, looking for something to drink, but the last of the wine bottles was empty.
In a panic, she got dressed, grabbed her keys and headed next door. She pounded on Ryan’s door until it swung open.
“Sophie? What’s wrong?”
“Does there have to be anything wrong?”
“No. Are you all right? Come on in.”
She went inside and looked around. Cassie appeared to be gone. “I need a drink. Or some of that pot you were smoking. Anything.”
“Cool. Have a seat.” He fetched her a beer and handed her a joint.
Sophie wanted to get wasted. She wanted to obliterate this gnawing fear, to wipe the slate clean. Blank slate. She would get a lobotomy. A 1950s frontal-lobe lobotomy.
“I need to ask you something,” she said.
He stood with a practiced, insolent slouch, as if he’d memorized all of Clint Eastwood’s earlier pictures. “Sure.” He sat next to her on the sofa. He took the joint and inhaled deeply. He squinted and nodded understandingly. “Go ahead. Shoot.”
She shifted around uncomfortably, feeling dumpy in her gray T-shirt that used to be white and her outdated pre-washed jeans. Her hair needed trimming. She hadn’t put any makeup on, no earrings. “Look,” she told him, chickening out. “I just want to get wasted.”
“Me too,” he said with a grin. “But that’s not entirely true. Is it?”
She shook her head reluctantly.
“You wanted to ask me about Mandelbaum, didn’t you?”
She eyed him suspiciously. “How do you know?”
He shrugged. “So what happened?”
“He knew things. About me. Things he couldn’t possibly have known.” It dawned on her. “Holy fucking shit. How did he know every single thing about that day, down to the last detail? He knew about Jayla’s Nikes. And what Peter said. He claimed he could grant me one wish. A wish. What’s that about?”
“Okay, look.” He tamped out the joint in the ashtray. “Sophie, understand something. He may seem like a harmless old man, but he’s not. Far from it.”
“What
do you mean?”
“Like I said before—you’re vulnerable. Don’t give into temptation.”
“I thought you meant, like, sexual temptation.”
“No. Mandelbaum’s a dangerous dude.”
“Dangerous?”
Ryan nodded solemnly. “Very dangerous. Stay away from him. Just forget about his bullshit sales pitch. Okay? That’s my advice.”
“Sales pitch?”
“One wish. Ignore it. The dude is evil. Okay? Do you believe in the Devil? Heaven and hell? Quantum physics? Parallel universes? This guy is a portal. Okay? Understand?”
A brutal headache had lodged itself between her temples, while fright and excitement collided in her stomach. “What’s going on?” she practically shouted. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“Just listen to me,” he told her solemnly. “Whatever you do, don’t ask him for anything. Okay? Trust me. You don’t want to make a wish.”
“Wait a second. Are you saying it’s true? Are you telling me he could actually grant me one wish?”
His face darkened. He took her beer away. “Sophie, you’re not listening to me. He did something to me. Mandelbaum.”
“What?” she said with alarm. “What did he do to you?”
“Never mind.” He shook his head. “You won’t believe me.”
“Just tell me.”
“Nobody ever believes me.”
“Please!”
“Okay. Fine. I can’t die. I’m immortal.”
“What?” She looked at him with utter disbelief before she burst out laughing.
“Go ahead and laugh,” he said angrily. “I was born in 1939.”
She guffawed. “Yeah, right.” She laughed so hard she could feel huge waves of relief washing through her. It felt good to be laughing; but then, all of a sudden, it felt terrible to be laughing. She felt like a monster. She was coming unglued. The laughter turned to sobs. She was losing her grip. She was freaking out.
“Sophie? Calm down. It’s true,” Ryan said softly. He waited until she had composed herself. “I knew you wouldn’t believe me. Nobody does.”
“That would make you… seventy-plus years old?”
“Let me show you something.” He got up and fetched an old-fashioned leather-bound photo album from a bookshelf, sat down and started pawing through its musty pages. There were pictures of Ryan with his family, all of them dressed in 1940s and 1950s garb. There was a newspaper article from 1959 with a picture of Ryan posing with a college rowing team. “That’s me at the Regatta on the Charles River. I graduated from Harvard in 1960.”
