Fleishman Is in Trouble

by Taffy Brodesser-Akner

  “We are going to do our best to get her back to her old self,” Toby said. “But depending on how far along the disease is, and it was probably exacerbated by her Vegas weekend, we don’t know if she’ll still have neurological symptoms. They might still be there. They might even be worse. But we could stop them from progressing.”

  His phone pinged. It was the director from Hannah’s sleepaway camp.

  We have one space for Solomon’s age

  He looked back at David Cooper and tried to focus. “We’ll get through this,” he said.

  He went back to the conference room to tell Solly the good news.

  * * *

  —

  JUST A FEW months ago, Rachel had wanted Solly to go to sleepaway camp for the summer, and Toby had fought hard to keep him home.

  “No fucking way,” she said one night. “He has to learn. He’s eight. That’s when Hannah went. That’s when he’s going.”

  “But he doesn’t want to go.”

  “Well, we don’t always get to do what we want. We’re supposed to lead them into adulthood, Toby.”

  “Oh, is that what we’re supposed to do?”

  Rachel’s annoyance at all this was compounded by the fact that Solly had also recently watched a Disney Channel show about tween figure skaters, two of whom were boys, and he had asked if there were figure skating classes he could take. “I’ll look into it,” Toby had said, and Rachel was silent, and yes, the phrase “this is too easy” did flash across Toby’s internal Chyron, because later that night, when Solly was in bed, Rachel said, “I’m sure we agree that he’s doing basketball this year.” This was how she spoke with her employees. She began all her demands and notions that weren’t up for debate with “I’m sure we agree.”

  “He wants to ice-skate. Why is that bad?”

  Rachel stared at him like don’t make me say it.

  “Come on, Rach.”

  “He wants to figure skate,” she said. “It’s not a great sport. He needs a great sport he can play his whole life. It’s our job to create a diversity of experience for him.”

  “Is ‘diversity of experience’ an agent thing? Because it’s not a real-life thing.”

  “You don’t get to decide everything, Toby. I’m his mother.”

  “And you don’t get to decide just because you’re paying for it! I’m not your assistant.”

  It was only in the last year that they both had begun to acknowledge that the money that Rachel brought in was money she somehow controlled. Back when she was an assistant at Alfooz, Toby had outearned her even with his starting salary as a resident, but the money was considered both of theirs. It went into a joint account that they both had access to. It did all these years later, too, but there had been a shift. The more she worked, the more money came through the door, and it was only six months into her new agency, and they had a savings account, one that could support them for two months if something bad happened. Then it was a year, and Toby’s med school loans were dwindling to almost half of what they had been. Then it was four years later and they were going to Europe and South America on vacations and putting money away for college. Their choices became easier. Their desperation left them. She wanted to go on a vacation (and so it was happening), she wanted a summer rental (and so it was happening), she wanted to redecorate (and so it was happening). He convinced himself that that was just the strong-willed woman he married. He bet Bartuck’s wife made domestic decisions like that. But then, recently, it became more overt: This is this money and here is how we’re spending it and if you want to be able to make those kinds of decisions, you should make this kind of money. It was never said. It was just beyond what was said, and he knew (and she had to know) that he wouldn’t be able to bear to hear it actually voiced, and so he tiptoed to the edge but never plunged into the abyss of it.

  “I just think that this approach to parenting, where we’re not supposed to know what’s best for our children, is ridiculous,” she was saying.

  “The kid should be able to do what he wants to do.” Overwhelm shook Toby before adrenaline did; the result was light-headedness.

  “I don’t want him to be made fun of,” she said, her hands in fists and talking through upper and lower teeth that were still clenched together. “Do you know what the kids will do to him if they find out he’s in figure skating camp?”

  “He likes it, though. And the gym teacher had said we should enroll him in some kind of full-body flexibility sport. Remember? At the last parent-teacher conference? Oh, wait, you weren’t there.”

  “Oh, yes, please persecute me for actually doing my job and giving us this life. We can’t all clock out at five, like you. I’d think I was married to a banker, except if that were true, well.”

  “How long have you been waiting to use that one?” he asked.

  “I would just hate for him to not even understand the implications of what he was getting into. That’s not me. That’s the world. And the world doesn’t really get him. Does he have as many friends as he should? I don’t think so.”

  But that was bullshit. Solly didn’t not have friends. He just preferred to be with his family, or reading one of his Star Trek books. “He has friends. How about Max?”

  “Max is only friends with him because I’m friends with Roxanne.”

  “Max is friends with him because he’s a delightful boy.”

  “Of course he is. But that’s not how this works. They’re friends because I put in the time with Roxanne. The parent encourages the friendship between her child and the friend whose parents aren’t nightmares. I put in time with Roxanne, therefore she suggests Max for a playdate since it might mean we can spend time together.”

  “You put in the time with Roxanne because you’re a social climber and you want to be invited to rich people’s houses.”

  Rachel stared at him for a cold two seconds. “He needs to go to sleepaway camp so that he can grow and become independent.”

  “Why are you so eager to get rid of them, Rachel? We wanted them, remember?”

  “That’s not what this is about. It’s about interrogating exactly why, when other children are finding independence, ours seem to want to crawl back into the womb. God, you make me into such a monster.”

  Later that night, as they found themselves in the usual chilly détente that followed their fights, he wondered who was going to restore things to the normal state of tensions. Rachel was sitting at the kitchen table, on her laptop, and Toby wondered if she wondered the same thing. Hannah came into the kitchen while Toby was making dinner. “I’m glad you’re both here,” she announced, standing stiffly. “I would like an Instagram account like literally every single person I know has. I am being left out of everything and everyone comes to school every day in the middle of all this stuff that happened on Instagram and I am clueless.”

  “You don’t need Instagram,” Toby said. He set the oven to preheat. “It’s stressful and you’ll have that stuff in your life forever. We’re just trying to preserve a little sanity for you before we can’t anymore.” He rinsed off a few drumsticks and washed his hands. “You are going to thank us for this one day.”

  Hannah started screaming. “I am such a loser and this is so unfair.”

  Rachel finally looked up from her computer. “Maybe we should reconsider.”

  Toby whipped around to her. “Rachel!”

  “She’s making a good point!” Rachel said. “I don’t like it either, but she shouldn’t be made to feel different from the world we’ve pushed her into.”

  Toby stared at Rachel. “She will be twelve in less than a year. We have always said she can get an Instagram account when she’s twelve.” Then, to Hannah, “There are good reasons for this.”

  “Yeah, so that I’ll have no friends, which is what you want.”

  “No,” he said. “There are stu
dies that talk about kids your age and anxiety and social media—that this will not be a good thing for you. It will make you feel bad, even though it’s something you think you want.”

  “Don’t tell her what she thinks she wants,” Rachel said. “She knows what she wants. She’s not an infant.”

  “Don’t undermine the thing we already agreed to.”

  Hannah broke in. “Has anyone considered the amount of anxiety I have knowing that everyone is hanging out without me? Have you considered that?”

  Rachel considered this. “It might be true. You know, Miriam Rothberg told me that she wasn’t going to let the kids do it, either, and then she read that the anxiety of everyone else having it was worse than the anxiety that the thing actually gives you.”

  “We’re not the Rothbergs,” Toby said, holding a raw drumstick in his hand.

  Rachel let out a one-note laugh with her nose. “I’ll say.” She looked over at Hannah. “Let me talk to Dad about it privately,” Rachel said, a wink in her voice, and before Toby could really think, he turned around and threw the raw chicken leg at Rachel’s computer. It hit the screen and slid down onto the keyboard, leaving a trail of God knows what.

  Rachel and Hannah recoiled in disgust, their top lips curled up against the tips of their noses. He saw then that Hannah was being poised to grow into his enemy. He wouldn’t have it.

  “You’re an animal,” Rachel said, and went to the cabinet under the sink and took out a Clorox wipe to get the raw chicken juice off her computer but left the leg on the floor. Rachel turned and walked out, and Hannah did the same in an identical goose step.

  * * *

  —

  IT WAS UNAVOIDABLE. They had to pick up their clothing from Rachel’s place in order to pack. Even if he could rationalize to them the need for new clothing, he didn’t want to waste money on new suitcases.

  Hannah pouted the whole way.

  “He can’t come to camp with me.” She had a vile look on her face. “He will humiliate me.”

  “Hannah. He’s your brother.”

  They arrived at the Golden. The doorman, shiny and navy with badges and braids like a war hero, was on the phone while a deliveryman waited. Toby didn’t recognize him. He must have been new. These were the gray areas. Did the doorman now have to call up? Let’s not figure this out right now. He began a confident walk toward the elevator and the doorman didn’t notice.

  He sent the kids upstairs with the key while he went to the basement storage to get the suitcases.

  He took his time. He didn’t want to go into her apartment. He didn’t want to see it. He didn’t want to sit on the furniture chosen by Luc the penguin decorator in shades of white and beige, and he didn’t want to stare at the large-scale modern paintings chosen by Rene the art consultant in peaches and taupes. But he lingered and they would be wondering where he was, so he finally went upstairs to the ninth floor and walked a dead-man-walking march to the front door.

  Now the door made a noise and Toby jumped. Hannah said, “Took you long enough,” and grabbed the suitcases from him. Toby told her she should pack them both up, and that he had to take a call from the hospital but would be waiting downstairs.

  * * *

  —

  HIS CONVERSATIONS WITH Nahid had started the same way all the others had. She had reached out to him on Hr. He had used Seth’s rules of sexting entry, which were as follows:

  Resolved: Women are in absolute control of themselves one hundred percent of the time.

  If, therefore, a woman says anything that a seventh-grade boy could interpret as sexual or respond to with “That’s what she said,” that is the woman’s outstretched invitation to sex talk.

  Toby and Nahid’s second day of texting went like this:

  HER: How’s your day been?

  HIM: Went to moma.

  HER: There’s an exhibit there of movie costumes.

  HIM: I’ve heard good things about it.

  HER: You have to come sometime.

  HIM: Sure

  HER: No, really, I want you to come

  Was this it? Was this his chance? It seemed a little on the nose, and he didn’t want to come off as a complete perv, but a lot of this shit was on the nose, right? He considered his next move for an entire thirty seconds. Then:

  HIM: [embarrassed face emoji]

  He waited while she considered her response, and in that maybe twenty-five seconds (or three minutes or two seconds, he couldn’t say, he only experienced that time as a fever), he experienced regret, shame, revulsion, self-loathing, and then:

  HER: Nothing wrong with coming [purple devil emoji]

  In his experience, which, yes, was brief, okay, but still, the sexier and steamier it got via text message and app, the less likely an actual in-person encounter would be. And it was something of a relief that embarrassment and shame still existed on this level; it was what kept all the single, available people in New York from grabbing each other and dry-humping on the streets. His animal brain preferred the sexier interactions, even if they didn’t lead to dates. Yes, real-life encounters are good, and yes, one should probably always opt for a real-life encounter, lest one wear his wrist ligaments down to nubs from chronic and alarming amounts of masturbation. But the phone stuff, man. He loved it.

  All that to say that it did not seem, from Nahid’s immediate and aggressive sexual relationship with Toby over their smartphones, that they would ever actually see each other. How could the human parameters of shame ever permit it? She was so…verbal in her wants. She was so…articulate in her texts. She wanted him to bend her over the bathroom sink so they could both watch her come in the medicine cabinet mirror. She wanted to pretend their kids were on a playdate together, and that she just needed him to change a lightbulb for her in the bathroom, and that while he was on the ladder, she would unzip his fly while the children knocked at the door begging for a snack—“Just one minute, honey, I have some screwing to do here.” She proposed that she was a fighter pilot who was so horny she couldn’t complete her mission unless she was riding his dick while flying her plane to save her country, him seated beneath her like he was her booster seat. There was something alluring about her strange creativity, about the bizarreness of her requests, and the lack of self-consciousness. But also, there were evolutionary biological factors outside his logic and reason working at this. They were the factors that made him call the yoga-teacher-performance-artist-babysitter. They were the factors that made him change his shirt twice, and toy with a blazer, but it was hot out, and in the mirror, he felt he’d looked clownish, like a boy pretending to be a man, and open the shirt one more button (then close it, then open it again).

  “Where are you going?” asked Hannah, who had settled in for a romantic evening on the couch with her phone.

  “I’m going on a playdate,” Toby answered. He was fixing his hair in the mirror. He heard the doorbell ring and Solly open it and greet the babysitter.

  “With a girl?” Hannah asked.

  “Yes.”

  “That’s gross.”

  “I know. Someday you’ll understand.”

  “It’s not because it’s kissing a girl. It’s because you’re my father.”

  “Who said anything about kissing?” Toby put his hand to her forehead and left.

  He practically jogged to the West Side. He practically skipped. He practically flew. Look at me, he said to all the lazy couples in the park. Look at me going to get laid. He told her doorman who he was. The doorman said she was expecting him. He arrived on the fourteenth floor. He was trying to think of a good opener, like maybe telling her she really lived on the thirteenth floor and who was she kidding anyway, which was his best fourteenth-floor joke. But the door opened before he knocked, and he was barely through the front door before his pants were around his ankles, his h
ands inside her, her hands on him and inside him, his mouth on her nipple, her finger in his rectum, which was not something he loved but it felt too new in the relationship to really nitpick. He pulled back to look at her face for the first time, since it was her one body part she wouldn’t show him in texting, and she had lips that were plump and pink and hair that grew in every direction and dark eyes and skin one shade darker than olive. She was lovely, and most of all, she was not a gang of men conspiring to rob him and she was not a teenage boy playing a joke on him. He had no more questions. He closed his eyes and submitted to her.

  * * *

  —

  HE DIDN’T TAKE a cab home, even though he knew he risked annoying the babysitter by running late. No, instead, he stomped through the park, feeling big and tall and virile, like he owned this city and that it was all for him and that, once again, he was at the beginning of something profound and new and that smelled like sunshine.

  He thought of Nahid in her bed, lying atop the top sheet. She was tracing his shoulder with her finger.

  “So what do you do all day?” he had asked her.

  She laughed. “That’s your pillow talk?”

  “Sorry,” he said. He was embarrassed.

  “Oh, don’t be. Who knows what to say in these situations? I don’t work.”