Fleishman Is in Trouble

by Taffy Brodesser-Akner

  I asked her if I could walk her home. She didn’t say yes and she didn’t say no. We got to her building and went upstairs and I walked her to her bedroom. She lay down on her bed, on her side, and I patted her hair for a while. I got up to go get water, but she pulled me down. “I need you to stand guard for me,” she said. I sat on the edge of her bed until she finally, finally fell asleep.

  * * *

  —

  TOBY HAD TAKEN them to the Museum of Natural History after I left his apartment Sunday morning. He wanted to see the Vantablack again. He was getting hooked on disorientation.

  “I don’t see what’s so crazy,” Hannah said. But Solly was lost in it, crying.

  Afterward, they took the crosstown bus home so they could walk Bubbles. Hannah didn’t object to the bus like she usually did. It was either because she didn’t see anyone around whom she was embarrassed in front of, or because she knew her father couldn’t take anything more. The kids watched Ferris Bueller again. He hadn’t thought about dinner. This was what life was going to be like for him for the next ten years. Work, dinner, Ferris Bueller. Okay.

  “Can we watch Horse Feathers?” Solly asked, and the bottom of Toby’s stomach dropped out because the Marx Brothers made him think of Joanie with a pang of longing and HR-based fear.

  He told Solly to read until he came to tuck him in. He was hoping Solly would fall asleep on his own, but he didn’t, and so Toby went in and began reading him The Hobbit, which they’d started before Solly left for camp. He read by rote, not absorbing anything, no inflection in his speech so that he had to start sentences over again, not understanding any of Solly’s questions.

  “You know, I’m a little bit tired,” Toby said. “Can we read this tomorrow?”

  He sent Hannah to bed to read, too. She immediately made her body into her posture of resistance, but he wasn’t having it. “I’ve had a really hard day.” She acquiesced in what appeared to be signs of empathy. Maybe it was a good thing that Hannah was his now, and only his. He could make her into a good person.

  He lay down on his bed and stared up at the shitty stained ceiling. At the museum, they’d gone to the planetarium show. It was about everything that scientists don’t yet understand in the universe beyond Earth. A voice boomed out and talked about dark matter, which is a substance they know nothing about but that seems to bind objects in space into some kind of rhythm with each other. You can see the objects, but you can’t see the dark matter. The dark matter is the mystery, and yet everything depends on it—you can’t see it, but it drives everything into motion.

  “What was your favorite part, Dad?” Solly asked as they left.

  “I liked how he said that wherever you were in space, it felt like you were the center. I really related to that.”

  “Like as a planet?”

  Toby laughed.

  “I liked the fact that you can’t even see the thing that’s most important,” Solly said. “That’s just crazy.”

  “What did you like, Hannah?”

  “I liked that it was over.”

  “Come on,” Toby said.

  “I didn’t like the dark matter part. I feel like you can’t just decide something must exist because everything’s reacting to it. You can’t just give it a name and hope it’s true.”

  “But maybe the objects are just behaving in a way we don’t understand. Maybe nothing is making them act that way but themselves.”

  * * *

  —

  THAT SUNDAY, I called Toby after I walked Rachel home, but his phone went to voicemail because he was at the museum. By the time he called me back, I was lying on my hammock, stoned.

  He sat and listened to the entire story, silent. I wished I hadn’t been stoned.

  “That’s it?” he asked, when I finished.

  “She’s had like a full nervous breakdown.”

  He was quiet again.

  “You have to do something for her, Toby.”

  Still nothing. Finally, he said, “I don’t have to do anything for her.”

  * * *

  —

  TOBY WENT TO visit Nahid in her apartment, but when he arrived, something was different.

  “Toby,” she said. She kissed him hard on the lips. Did she change her hair?

  “I have an idea,” she said. “Let’s have lunch.”

  “Should I order?” he asked. Maybe she was wearing more makeup than she usually did?

  “No, I mean outside. Downstairs. I’m tired of this. I want to live my life.” She smiled, searching his eyes for acknowledgment of what a gift this was.

  Ah. That was what was different. She was dressed in clothing—full-on outdoor street clothing. Jeans and high-heeled boots and a sleeveless denim shirt and chunky gold jewelry.

  “Are you sure?” he asked.

  Outside, it was the first time they’d walked anywhere together. She was an inch taller than he was. He hadn’t realized that. She walked slowly. When they cleared her building she took his hand gently in her fingers. They went to the Thai place that they’d ordered from once. It was one, and the inside was fully booked. They ate outside, right there in the open.

  “Did you decide to go into medicine when you were young?”

  He answered her, but all the while he was thinking, Now, what kind of dumb question was that. It was like a date from 1992. Small talk. Politeness. It was like they were strangers now.

  He watched her looking at the menu. He almost wanted to explain it to her, but he stopped himself. He had to keep reminding himself that this wasn’t actually her first time out in the world. Her forehead had three horizontal creases that he’d never noticed before. Maybe the lighting in her bedroom wasn’t the best. Or maybe it was, when it came to this kind of thing. If you looked closely, she had about two centimeters of gray hair at her temples. She had said she was forty-five. She might actually be forty-eight. That’s almost fifty.

  He asked her if she’d ever worked. She said she hadn’t, which was fine, because she never wanted to. Her degree was in accounting, which was boring. She loved costume design, but it seemed hard to break in. He didn’t know what to do with that.

  “Do you have any interests? Like, hobbies?”

  She laughed. “Of course I have interests. I read a lot. I have hobbies. I took a drawing class last year at the Met. It was interesting; it was all about shadows. I was thinking of taking a painting class, too.”

  He couldn’t think of a follow-up question that didn’t sound completely patronizing, because honestly, that was how he felt. He felt patronizing.

  “Well, this is something,” she said.

  “How does it feel?” he asked.

  “It feels scary. And right.”

  She reached across the table to take his hand. He squeezed hers back. He never realized her arms were so hairy. It was a dark, thick hair that grew somewhat wiry toward the wrist, like a man’s.

  He tried to look back at her in the eye, but he suddenly couldn’t bear her. What was he doing here? What had he thought he liked about her so much? She talked, a vapid prattle of superficial nonsense: Paris, the dance lessons she was thinking of taking. He nodded and ate, but he was quiet for the rest of the meal, and so was she. She was newly shy, and newly confused, sensing an annoyance from him. He felt bad about it, but that’s what sunlight does sometimes. It shows you what you couldn’t quite see in the dark.

  At least that was what he told himself as they said goodbye. They stood on the sidewalk and he shook her hand and touched his phone and pretended he had an emergency at the hospital. He walked in the direction opposite her building quickly, and he didn’t stop till after he turned a corner.

  * * *

  —

  “SO WHAT HAPPENED?” I asked Toby on the phone. I’d loved the Nahid story—this prisoner trying to gain freedom for herself through
the random secret fucking of men in her apartment. It was like a dirty fairy tale.

  “She just wasn’t who I thought she was,” he said.

  “What was she?”

  “She was just regular.”

  I was heading into the city. My train was about to go into the tunnel. “I have to go,” I told him.

  “Okay, talk later.”

  “Have you ever considered that you’re kind of an asshole?”

  But he didn’t hear me. The day after I saw Rachel, I had come into the city again to bring her to a doctor. He said she was okay, but she was dehydrated and exhausted. He gave her an IV, then sent her home with antidepressants and a sleeping pill.

  “That’s it?” I asked him.

  “Well, she should see a good therapist, it looks like,” the doctor said. “But she’s otherwise healthy.”

  I brought her back to her apartment, and sat on her bed again. There were real estate listings for Los Angeles on her computer.

  The doorbell rang. A weary young woman—it was her assistant, Simone—came into the apartment with an armload of manila folders.

  “You have to sign all of these,” Simone said. “And we have to schedule your week.”

  Rachel got up to find her lucky signing pen.

  “How’s it been going without her?” I asked.

  “It’s been a disaster. I mostly convinced everyone she had a family emergency and couldn’t be bothered.”

  “But she didn’t.”

  “Yeah, but that’s the only thing that’s forgivable.”

  “I hope she knows how loyal you are,” I said.

  “I don’t know if she really thinks about people’s values like that,” she said. “I think she only thinks about what is in front of her face at any given moment.”

  Simone left with the signed papers. Rachel asked if I could stay a little longer. She was going to go back to work, she told me. She had been on vacation long enough. She had to check in with all her clients, but mostly, she had to get a week’s worth of sleep so that she could reenter her world and do some damage control. She’d read the article in Variety about Alejandra going back to Alfooz. She couldn’t let that happen again. “I’m going to get my shit together, and then I’ll call the kids.” She didn’t want to hear anything about them. She didn’t want to hear where they were, or what they were doing. “Not till I’m okay.” She asked if I could stay while she took a nap. “I can sleep if you’re standing guard over me,” she said. I put my hand on her foot. As she fell asleep, she whispered, “I always liked you.”

  * * *

  —

  I SPENT THE REST of the week coming into the city and going to the movies. There was a Diane Keaton retrospective at Film Forum. The ticket taker told me he’d never seen a more dedicated Diane Keaton fan. Then I’d leave and check on Rachel, who was now at home, with a nurse/minder she and I had hired to sit with her while she slept. She kept saying that she would call the kids if she could just get a few more hours of sleep.

  I was watching Baby Boom when I got a text from Seth. He wanted Toby and me to come to his apartment Saturday night. It was important, he said.

  That Saturday, Adam said he wanted to stay home with the kids. “They’ve been with the babysitter a lot this week.” This was the closest he would get to registering a complaint with me. Toby asked if I wanted to go together, so I picked him up in a cab. We hadn’t spoken in days.

  “You’re very quiet,” Toby said.

  “I’m just tired.”

  He was annoyed. “Why are you so unhappy?”

  I shrugged. “I’m really just tired.”

  Seth was still in Williamsburg, the same loft, now worth a kajillion times what he bought it for in 1999. His home looked like if Wired had a home and garden issue. The furniture was now all slick, 1980s leather, and the tables had been imported from Denmark and Sweden. There were nap pods in the corner and velvet bean bag chairs. There were beams on the ceiling now that hadn’t been there the last time I’d seen the place. Seth’s art was gallery-purchased—a painting of Winged Victory, but made out of garbage; a Coney Island mermaid photograph, made into a funhouse mirror painting. Construction had created two more bedrooms and a second bathroom. There were motorized window shades that adjusted themselves for climate control.

  It was a strange crowd—not just Seth’s friends from the bank but also his parents and sisters. Everyone was more dressed up than they should be, maybe just by twenty percent. It was like being at a bar mitzvah.

  “The TV used to be over there, right?” I said. “I can still picture it.”

  Seth found us. He was wearing a suit. “Heeeee­eeeee­eeyyy,” he said. He seemed nervous.

  “Oh God,” Toby said.

  “What?” Seth asked.

  “You’re going to propose tonight, aren’t you? In front of all these people? You’re such a dick.”

  I looked around. He was right. Suits. Seth’s parents. It was true. We were at a surprise engagement party.

  I saw Vanessa in the corner, greeting people. “Does she know yet?”

  “Not yet. Any advice?”

  “We’ve already given you our advice,” Toby said. “We are happy you ignored it.”

  Seth squeezed our arms and said, “Here goes.” Then there was the sound of spoons hitting glasses.

  “Can I have your attention?” Seth asked. He waited till everyone was quiet. “I’ve had a lot of parties through the years,” he began. “This place has seen everything from toga parties to math lectures. When I was thinking about what I wanted the theme of this one to be, I realized that I wanted it to just be about this incredible woman I’ve been seeing. All the lectures we used to have here for Art Club and Physics Club, for those of you who remember, they all were to celebrate something that we didn’t understand. Today, we are here to celebrate something I still don’t understand, which is love.”

  “Are you crying?” Toby asked me.

  I watched Vanessa watching him, her face a lovely pillar of confusion, her piano teeth proliferating when she finally understood what was going on. Seth—beautiful Seth, whose hands had been on just about every woman in this room at some point—got on his knee, like a fucking idiot. “Vanessa, please spend your life helping me learn the other things I don’t understand.” She put her hands over her mouth and he took one of them. She nodded as he put a ring on her finger. The place exploded in applause as they kissed.

  Seth came over after their parents and friends hugged them and squealed and opened champagne. “Do you think I’m being stupid?” Seth asked.

  “Marriage always reminds me of that old saying about democracy,” I told him. “It’s the worst form of government, other than all the other forms of government.”

  “Shall we curse you for good luck?” Toby asked.

  “You know,” Seth said. “Everything the Beggar Woman said was true. She said you were good, Toby. She said Libby would never be happy.” Out of simple decorum and this being his engagement party, nobody reminded Seth what she’d told him, which was that he’d never truly have love.

  “She said you would make the world better,” I said to Toby.

  “But that was only when I had money to give her.”

  * * *

  —

  LATER, THE GROWN-UPS left the party and it was just Toby and me. We were sitting on the floor the way we did all those years ago in Israel, but we kept adjusting our positions because nothing felt right or good in our joints anymore. We could feel every day of all the time that had passed.

  “I’m just lost,” I said. “I’m sorry. I think I have to figure out what to do with my life.”

  “There’s someone at home who loves you,” Toby said. “Don’t you know how I would have killed for somebody to love me? You’re loved, Elizabeth. Do you understand how special that is?” Then, �
��And you’re talented. You should write that book.”

  “Maybe I will,” I said. “Maybe I’ll write a book about us.”

  “What about us?”

  “About all this. What you’ve been going through. Our summer.”

  “Maybe. But how would you end it? Rachel is still gone. There’s no ending yet.”

  “Maybe this is the ending,” I said.

  “God,” he said. “Imagine that. Don’t end it here. It’s a bad ending. Engagements are bad endings.”

  “Or maybe I can wait for Rachel to figure shit out and come back to the kids, but I don’t know. What will her coming home do? You can’t unleave.”

  “That’s good. I like a nebulous ending.” He hadn’t wanted to hear about Rachel or the time I was spending with her.

  “Or maybe it’ll end with her returning,” I said. “I think I like that better.”

  “So she just comes back?” he asked.

  “Maybe.”

  “What does she do when she comes back? What does she say? What happens?”

  “I don’t know. She’ll just appear. It will be raining outside and you’ll hear a key in the door and the creak of the hinge and you’ll turn around and suddenly she’ll appear in the doorway.”

  “And then?”

  “And then the book is over.”

  “But what happens after?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. I was crying again. “I don’t have an imagination for that. But I can’t wait for her anymore.”

  Toby leaned in like he was going to tell me something, but then suddenly his lips were on my lips and our mouths were open and hot and dry. We sat with our mouths open against each other, not moving, not kissing either, just kind of resuscitating each other, our eyes closed and our noses touching. When finally Toby pulled his face back, my mouth was still open and my eyes were still closed.

  “You are still you,” he said. “You are still crazy and dark and good. I can see it. You haven’t changed as much as you think you have.” I closed my mouth, and I felt tears down my cheeks. After a long moment, he said, “May God grant them happiness.”