Witz

by Joshua Cohen

And us? she says, looking to the seat where the

  wine’s rested itself in a seam.

  What? he’s distracted, peers over the wheel into the headlights’ saving arc.

  Nothing, she sighs you’re not listening, never, then sinks down in her seat, water from the flowers soaking her sweater through the paper and plastic they’re wrapped in.

  He glances from his watch to the time of the stereo display.

  Or the frequency, there on the dash.

  He leans over once to peep at her watch and she thinks he’s trying to kiss her.

  His office is empty, and Israel, who’d hired him just last week, is still sitting in traffic. Why? What do you consider your greatest strengths? Your greatest weaknesses? Where do you want to be in the practice in five years? In ten? The chair had been comfortable and the knot of his tie was of the appropriate size. What judges have you appeared before? What kind of hours have you been used to working? Have you brought sample briefs? His underwear had been new and clean, his socks, too. There’d been too many questions, and he’s expecting even more of them tonight, and more personal. You are married, is that correct? Does she work? Do you mind? Why no kids?

  Still, it couldn’t have gone better, then the invitation for Friday night dinner. He’d answered a resounding yes to it all.

  And he shows his gratitude through lateness, just perfect. An apology’s required, but he’s feeling more: maybe he’ll offer to wash dishes, or take out the trash.

  Why the fear, he already has the job. Never sure.

  Hanna, she’d hired Israel for husband already knowing the faults.

  Why all this waiting when he has no workwise reason to wait, when he has a home and a meal, hot, and guests, yes, probably guests already, them waiting, too, and a wife and kinder only waiting for him who they themselves have no waitwise excuse—courtesy not having any priority over the coming of Shabbos?

  He’s waiting in fear, Israel, out of fear.

  His guests and new junior partner, what’s his name and the girlfriend, the wife.

  Fear because of cancers, because he thinks he has cancers, because he knows he has cancers, because he has cancers.

  And why does Israel have cancers?

  Because his mother had had cancers and his mother’s mother had had cancers, his mother’s father, too, then their own parents as well, and then their parent’s parents had all had their own cancers and yadda and blah unto the most rarefied generation; everyone he’s ever been related to all the way back probably forever since even Adam, he’s thinking—whose death at almost one thousand years old isn’t accounted for in the detail that would seem to befit the first death, naturally caused—had had cancers, and then died of them weakened and feeble at whatever unripe young age.

  And then fear for his own kinder, too. As those of his wife’s family who didn’t die of cancers, who’d died of anything else, if they’d only lived longer, lived long enough, if the Germans and Russians, among others, didn’t do what the Germans and Russians have been known to do, always, then they, too, would’ve eventually died of cancers, he’s sure of it, has to’ve been—it’s in the family, a blackbox heirloom kept in the basement, locked in an attic’s suitcase, a trunk at the foot of the stairs.

  Inherited, dust to dust.

  Why? Because. Cancer is a waiting matter. A working matter, only of time.

  Why, because you have to wait on your cancers, patience patience patience—having cancers like having guests, expecting husband to father himself home with the challah, in time for the motzi and wine.

  Why, because you have to work at your cancers, slowly, patiently, nurturing them, allowing them the room to like you know grow. Like in any relationship, like with wife and kinder.

  Israel has all the cancers, and they’re all his kinder: some intelligent, others stupid, some handsome, others ugly, some tall others short, some embarrassing, others to pride. To shep nachas over and above, kvell the tears. To forget—though it doesn’t matter which in the end. Why, because they’re his.

  Because he feels it, he knows it, deep down in the cells. He has cancers of the heart and the liver and kidneys and lungs all two of them then the throat and prostate and that that’s testicular, too, leftleg cancer, rightleg cancer, which he feels down to his toes that have cancers of their own to cope with. To deal, with the bladder control, the hairloss; imagining the mirrored shame, hurting as if a reflection of the pain disembodying, gotten under the skin despite the pills, despite treatments. He has eye cancers, nose cancers and ear cancers, brain cancers—and cancer. His cancers have cancer and those cancers have cancer, his tumors everywhere have tumors themselves and those tumors, tumors; tumors unto tumors unto tumors unto tumors unto the umpteenth generation, why not. In his office, Israel sits in what most would think perfect physical shape, recently evaluated, relative doctor signedoff on as maybe, nu, a dessert overweight, like most he could stand to lose say ten, twelve pounds, no more meals after snacks, though in generally satisfactory overall health, except for the—anyway thinking himself, maybe even wishing himself, dead away.

  But until that wish might be fulfilled, finalizing him, naming him tensed in the past, Israel names himself, his own tumors—some he gives his kinder’s names and some names he thinks are his kinder’s, some names he would’ve like to have named them: Rubina, yes, Josephine and Batya, Evan and Jake—Jacob, to her—Josef or Joseph and Justin and Samuel, Simon and Steven or Stephen, and Benjamin, yes, Benjamin ben Israel Israelien; he’d always hoped for a boy, they all had, women crying out for a son, for Israelien cancers to come.

  Why does he name them? To master them. To ignore.

  Israel’s been sitting and naming his cancers, knowing them more intimately than he knows his own kinder, Hanna suspects. While he should be heading home, he reclines, swivels, tilts renal papillæ aching kidneyways to the left in his chair, hunches to count his cancers on his cancerous fingers with cancerous numbers kept orally in the black, deep into the carcinogenically latestage early evening, then thinking, maybe my cancers should have the honor themselves, their own cancers, too, and those cancers’ cancers, it’s only proper—and, soon enough, quarter after advanced, surgically halved, and with Maintenance spilling their own diagnoses in all the languages of Queens far dark down the hall, everything would seem cancer, cancerous, carcinogenic: his chair, his computer never unpacked, still in its box on the floor, and the quarky, panging computer things inside the computer still in its box on the floor, too, and his fountainpen and the dark though washable ink that it looks like cancer anyway, and the door’s a cancer door, his desk a cancer desk, he’s thinking the elemental material of the universe is cancer and that the fundamental quality of the universe is how cancerous it is: how the planets are nothing but tumors, mere carcinosarcomatic growths, verrucous hunks of whirlwinding storm, resistant to all terraformed, their surfaces ringed by heavy clouds of melanoma as malignant as hell; and how space, the orbital push and pull of everything it’s really only this cancerous tissue that’s always thickening and thinning into itself then perpetually expanding out then falling in cancerously until death and everything, it just dies. And then the cancers themselves come to death. And then death itself dies. And then what, he’s still late.

  And still sitting, slumped, wasted, waistexhaled all unbuttoned notch expansion, slippers off without socks and in an even more comfortable chair at the head of the table, his, looking down the seats and settings at his kinder, his friends and guests, his new employee, the mensch’s girlfriend or wife unknown be thy name, and laughing at whatever his wife’s laughing lipstick at if only because she’s laughing at it and healthily, strong—the lipstick that says I’m still red and angry, but this is how I want to look to love you with company curious—Israel looks down at his plate and considers the chicken and he knows, don’t ask him how he just knows, that this chicken has cancer, that his chicken died of cancer and died for him from cancer, expressly, painlessly quick. He cuts his cancer with his cancerou
s cutlery (presents and the plates, too, and all of it from relatives who’d died how, give you one guess), then chews his cancer with his cancerous teeth, swallows his cancer, washes it all down with a glass of cancer from his cancerous glass, wipes his cancerous mouth with cancer metastasized as a napkin, its darkening starch, and then swallows again cancerously feeling the swallowed cancer, the throat cancer, mingle carcinogenically with the stomach cancer its gastric adenocarcinomatic manifesting intestinally and beyond, making for an even stronger, an even more weakening, more carcinogenic cancer cancering all and then turns more to the left, leaning, reclining as if appearing to rest but really in pain says to his Hanna: Hanna, it’s all so delicious and thank you, then across the table to his right and further down toward the kinder to the Feigenbaums there, Mister Feigenbaum now nursing with napkin and ice his head, the wound incurred through the oven, would he sue—him shifting uncomfortably in his seat with the urge to loose himself, sick—Misses Feigenbaum, whatever her name is, maybe Faye, he forgets, make sure she gives you the recipe: chicken, slaughtered and shipped, still feathered a little, frozen in the freezer, defrosted in the fridge, giblets removed for their own preparation (don’t forget to preheat), delicious offal reciped to a malignant perfection; motherchosen last day the seasons stained out of the book, made with prunes, raisins, all sorts of fruity sweetnesses—and cancerous, has to be, these secretions expressed from the bake of its carcass, whose last breast has been excised for the removal of its diseased bones from his plate to his wife’s, and how he sops the seep up with a hunk of the challah he’d bought, those two loaves as if the salted halves of the heart, the kidneys, the lungs, the gizzardy liver, how they all must be bad for you, too.

  The drawer was opened and never shut and hung like her mouth.

  A door hangs open on its hinges, Hanna shuts it, wipes clear its glass with a cuff.

  The screenedin porch’s door’s open as well.

  Everything open she needs to shut, she won’t stand for open, which makes her feel slightly ill, mistaken. It’s the pregnancy, her fat with a scapegoat. Let us grow bloated and blame.

  With everything shut, everything’s perfect, as if nothing ever went soiled, gone spoiled, as it was and has been clean forever, without taint; she’s talking to herself pure from the very beginning—all that’s dull the life and the knifing made sharp upon the whetstone of her tongue, foods wrapped to keep in her skin, how she’d always served, never served herself, never been served herself, that’s if you forget Wanda and how in her high mighty she daily does. Which is terrible, makes her feel what, slighting, mistaken, and ill. But now she opens a drawer, and leaves it open to feel it, the sin.

  In the drawer are the towels, and there folded responsibly, neatly, under the towels, the rags, the ripped pieces of old white dress shirts gone inked, skiddled underwear spangled with monsters. Patched together and held torn with sop. Rags once engaged as veils to hide the about to be wed, the knotted napkin she’d held with her husband for dancing at their reception, then once slit a hole with scissors it’s for knowing each other later that night, while hiding the nakedness, pleasure. And under all the rags folded below the towels at the very rooting bottom of the stack and there almost stuck to the plastic lining of the drawer is the Rag—the dirtiest rag, the unmentionable, the secret, the rag best forgotten, for mistakes made and of them.

  This had been a napkin, from her wedding, their wedding, from the banquet or maybe it was a cateringhall she didn’t want it at but—a long story—from the table, from the very placesetting of the mensch she’d thought of as her father, zichron l’vracha as they say, when he was still alive and married himself to her mother: once white (the tablecloths had been offblue, as if ordered prestained, used or rented), this unwashed, neverwashed Rag’s unmentionable as much say as her underwear’s sexy or not, it’s a secret; at most she shakes it out outside, or now in winter off either the screenedin or windowed porches; how she can’t ever wash it, mustn’t, she needs it like this, needs the history, the past and its record of stains and grains—if it were to be found, she thinks it would turn her, sully reputationwise, ruin the marriage, though who would find it, Wanda, and then know what to do with it once found and, nu, why would that or they matter, why should they? The Rag’s soakedup the seas, the sevenfold oceans, encrusted with everything spilled and stained until the stains they aren’t stains, grains or seeds or the cancel of blackmail—they’re the Rag itself, its weep into form. It’s shvitzsoaked, stinks of spoiled milk and meat together—it’s scandalous, isn’t it? when they’d first moved in—after lawschool, even after loans paidoff, through ten years of their runging up the ladder—it’d hung on the oven, that was years ago, two stoves in the past; now it’s stained with everything since, thinking, it’s tough even to think about: it’s bloodcaked in seven species’, it’d wiped up muddy footprints from the tile floor, it’d sopped up overflows and drippings when a lid was unfastened; how she’d strain and shray for Israel who’d loosen and how some liquid would always spurt out, or, slicing a vegetable, like a head with so much between the ears, some seeds would leak all over the formica, to be wiped up always with this.

  Now, the Rag’s as hard as a plate and its corners, its edges like blades, as sharp as a shard—as if a piece of the glass it’d wrapped that Israel had broken underfoot at their wedding (whose wine had been cleanedup with whatever’s around).

  Hanna replaces the other towels atop, takes the top placed to do the dishes, with which to dry them, Israel’s undershirt shmatte—with it draping each object as if magic or fragile, to decide: which is a bowl and which is a plate, deep and with a stiffly high lip she’s not sure; only to scrape whatever’s been missed by the dishwasher, the machine and not Wanda, her neither—sauce stuck, a crumb caught. Holding a serving of silver, a platter, up to the light; the last to be replaced before darkness, the darkness of its appropriate drawer: she looks at her face looking at her, as if asking whose fault, misdirection; the platter’s edge a rose garland, she likes how it frames her face, which in turn frames the eyes: for a lighter brow, she tilts from; for fuller lips, she tilts toward. That stain, the remains of the afternoon, the morning’s meal ingrained: reflected at forehead, this mole made from a freckle, a kinder’s pox or the swelling of hives, must scrub it away—steelwool as if it’s been shorn from her thighs, grown between them…

  Hanna replaces the knife from the floor to the sink to the towel to dry at the edge of the sink and now to its own drawer again, which she shuts; she takes a new towel from the other, adjoining, runs an edge around each tine of a servingfork, finished with the drying; until, she’ll begin a new meal, which begs a new wash.

  Batya, still the lastborn though soon, soon enough, to be usurped in that position, standing awkwardly intoed, flexkneed, pudgy, and whiningly shy with her head held down to rest on a shoulder, her hands holding each other, behind her, her hands in her hands, or maybe they’re just stuck together, they’re bound—her hands are always shvitzing, they’re sticky, like stuffedup spinnerets with the webbing, the silkgum, all tangled. She’s tight in a onepiece pajama outfitted with feet, which zippers down her front as if a metallic mark for incision, her gutting—the spill of her feelings.

  Her little rodent eyes say she’s left out of preparations, how that makes her feel: excluded and Hanna, never not a mother, notices, hands her a glass to put away on her own. Batya makes it three, four steps, drops, eternity, floor and the glass shatters into they’re millions of shards, not enough hands to finger them falling: a tint to drink, a prism to sweep, under the baseboard, the pantry, the refrigerator, the islands topped in formica, shored in with grout; under the profane weekday table, under the oven the stove, the dishwasher, hard by the trash’s full bag waiting to be taken outside—flung, the glass throws the light, the outside’s last light streamed in and, too, the overhead light, all over the kitchen, glistening upon the tile, which once was white, illuminating shades she’s never previously known.

  Her moth
er goes not forgetting today’s towels in hand to the laundryroom, for a broom, for a mop, remembering, too—not only drawers—to shut that door behind her, as Batya trips into hiding, upstairs. In the laundryroom, Hanna tosses the towels to the washingmachine. And then, begins the cycle again, to be made new again—saving the dryer for later.

  Hanna sweeps the light into a pile, mops as she yells upstairs, put on your shoes! steadying the dustpan with a slipper, then the bucket coldwatered from the laundryroom’s sink, rooting around under the refridge Israel says then the freezer nextdoor to the fridge for what’s stray; she slices her hand, holds it, opens a drawer, roots for the Rag, holds the Rag to the seethe then walks upstairs to her youngest daughter calling her name, so concerned she leaves the drawer open.

  And then, wending her way to her own bedroom from the room Batya shares with a sister, soon to be made that of the newborn—they’re in the process of moving Batya and Josephine out, down the hall. This is called, Acting out. This is called, Pregnant; what’s that the doctor told me again—I’ve been through this before. Despite any comfort, the tickle of a feather the tear of a pillow, the stroke of her hair a whispery word—an upheaval. Weekly, the lingering suspicion: this house is a mess. A certifiable wreck.

  Though the upstairs is left in pitch—the air a modest enough gown over her skin—she knows her way, the touch of space off the walls, each give in every bum floorboard, the yield of the blue wall-to-wall. Hanna touches the door-post, the jamb, the mezuzah affixed thereupon, then kisses at the fingertip that touched and the kiss becomes a sigh as her hand’s wiped on the hem of her skirt. Her pregnancy weighs heavily; she feels with both hands at her puff, bruised with bloat, her filled wineskin of incredible ephahs and kavs, drunk with fat it feels, like she’s thirsty, hungry, too, the yen always for—breathing enormously, long and deep gulps of air’s inhouse twin.