If We Lived Here

by Lindsey Palmer

  Dylan rolled his eyes. “Isn’t your job to help me get into whatever college I want, not to tell me which school that should be?”

  “Touché. It’s just—”

  “If you’re worrying about me, please don’t. If I don’t get in to Columbia, I’ll just drop Annabelle. No point wasting time before she shacks up with some Ivy League douchebag next fall. I know of at least three freshmen girls who are dying to get into my pants tonight.”

  Emma was dumbfounded, even as she also knew that Dylan’s sudden brashness was just an act born of nerves. He was clearly feeling inferior to his high-achieving girlfriend, plus terrified that he couldn’t cut it at Columbia. About the latter point, he was probably right. But Emma restrained herself from saying so; she was the adult here, and it would behoove her not to rebut Dylan’s adolescent outburst with an insult of her own. Emma felt thankful that she was thirty, not seventeen, and that she’d found a boyfriend who didn’t seem threatened by her smarts. Then again, how intimidating could her intellect be when she spent her days getting ordered around by teenagers?

  As if right on cue, Dylan blurted out, “Are you going to help me with my essay or not? I believe that’s what my mother is paying you for.”

  “Yessiree.” Remembering that Dylan did need her help—quite badly, in fact—refocused Emma on her job. She started up her shtick: Since he’d expressed an interest in architecture, he might care to know that Columbia had a strong major in the subject. Perhaps he might write about his lifelong fascination with the city’s buildings. Or his excitement to take interdisciplinary courses with the design department and partner with Manhattan’s elite architecture firms for projects. As Emma rambled on, Dylan scribbled down her suggestions word for word, replacing his honest (but objectionable) reasons for wanting to attend the college with Emma’s facile inventions.

  Chapter 15

  “Okey-dokey,” Nick said, consulting the same worksheet as the thirty students in front of him, “we’ve figured out the best deal on an apartment within our budget, so now let’s look at our options for fixing it up. Joe the Handyman charges three dollars to patch up holes in the wall and five dollars to smooth out each bump in the floor, whereas Jack of All Trades charges four dollars for each. We’ve got ten holes in the wall and seven bumps in the floor. Work with your partners to figure out the best solution.”

  “Mister,” one of the kids yelled out—Carl clearly hadn’t trained them to raise their hands—“what kind of crappy apartment is this anyway, with so many bumps and holes? We shoulda rented the pricier one—it probably wasn’t all ghetto.”

  “Interesting point,” said Nick. “But for now let’s focus on the task at hand.”

  Nick felt vaguely bad about using his students to help him think through his apartment problems. He’d promised Emma he’d find a worker by this coming Saturday, the fifteenth, when they’d get the keys to the new place—and then schedule all the repairs by their planned move-in the following weekend.

  “Okay, who has an answer and can show us how they got it?”

  Sierra’s hand shot up, and she sashayed to the board, looking sure she was about to school all her peers. José let out a “Psst.” Nick swiveled around. “Mr. O’Hare, my dad could help you for cheap.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, he does construction and all kinds of stuff. I can hook you up, big-time.”

  “You’re his agent, huh?” The boy nodded proudly. “Let’s talk after class.”

  Nick checked Sierra’s work; she’d correctly chosen Joe the Handyman.

  “Now let’s furnish this pad,” yelled Lawrence. “We need a pair of La-Z-Boys, and we best get curtains, too. Block all them nosy neighbors spying on our business.”

  Nick felt a burst of pride—the kids were into this. And it seemed like Nick might now have a deal, too. “All right, where should we go to buy furniture? Kmart?” He knew this would elicit moans and groans, and he relished the happy chaos.

  Emma had offered to join Nick to pick up the keys to the new apartment, but she’d looked so content curled up asleep in his bed on Saturday morning that he left her to rest. She’d been working her butt off lately, taking on extra clients to fund their upcoming move. Nick had planned to start tutoring for the same reason, but he was still too tired, careening home after his two days back to school and collapsing for two-hour naps.

  At the address Luis had given him, Nick pressed the bell—the shrill buzzer made him jump. The landlord appeared at the door with a cigarette hanging from his lips. “Hey, hey,” he said, emitting a puff of smoke into Nick’s face in a way that, while seeming unintentional, still made Nick suspicious. His eyes burned. “Come in, welcome to my home base,” Luis said.

  Nick had expected hoarder-level squalor, but Luis’s apartment was as fastidious as a store display. “Wait here,” Luis said, then disappeared into a side room. There was nowhere to sit, so Nick stood with his hands in his pockets, perusing the room. The only décor was a Mexican flag, which spanned an entire wall, and a framed photo of Luis with his arm around a woman in a sparkly halter top, the kind favored by preteens; the woman didn’t look much older than that. The photo sat upon a sturdy bookshelf, and Nick crouched to scan the books’ spines. He was surprised to discover all the heavy hitters of the Western canon: Geoffrey Chaucer, John Milton, William Shakespeare, George Eliot, Herman Melville, William Faulkner, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry David Thoreau, Mark Twain—all Americans and Brits. Nick wondered if perhaps Luis thought George Eliot was a man. If Emma had been there, she would’ve been fuming about the exclusion of Edith Wharton, whom she believed had never gotten the recognition she deserved.

  “Ah, I see you’re admiring my library,” the landlord said, returning to the room. “Quite the collection, eh?” He stroked the spine of an essay collection by Thoreau.

  “You’re a civil disobedience man, are you?” Nick asked. “Ever been to Walden?”

  Luis narrowed his eyes. “No, I haven’t yet had the chance.”

  “It’s beautiful. Very peaceful.” Nick remembered back to his summers at B.U., when he and a few buddies would drive out to the pond, smoke joints, and spend whole afternoons back floating and cloud watching. “I can see how that kind of environment might convince a man to embark on a spiritual quest.”

  “Yes, Henry was a real man,” Luis said.

  “Think so?” Luis nodded brashly, and Nick let out a laugh. “I guess your idea of a real man includes slinking back to Mom’s house whenever you’ve got dirty laundry or an itch for homemade pie. Thoreau was a real mama’s boy. A bit of a hypocrite, some say.”

  Luis seemed to be searching for a response, and Nick couldn’t help himself: “So which of the Bard’s works do you favor most?” Luis adjusted his stance. “Mr. Billy Shakespeare, you have a favorite?”

  “I like his early stuff.”

  “Right, Richard III: ‘Now is the winter of our discontent’ and all that. I can see that. Although I’d peg you more as a King Lear kind of man.”

  “Yes, a great book. You’re a teacher, right?”

  “Right. Fifth grade.”

  “My sister and two of my aunties teach. Speaking of real men, that’s kind of a womanly line of work, no?”

  “I suppose some might think so. Although I’m sure you know that certain traditions hail Aristotle as the First Teacher. Plato taught him, and then he tutored Alexander the Great. I don’t think of those guys as too womanly, do you?” Luis was no longer making an effort to mask his scorn. Nick knew he was being an asshole, and getting himself into trouble, too. Had Emma been present, she would’ve diffused the situation minutes ago. “Anyway, I came for our keys.”

  Luis held them up and jingled them. “What’ll you do for them?”

  “I believe we already paid a pretty hefty sum.”

  “Just kidding, papi.” Luis held out the keychain. Nick went to take it, but Luis snatched it back. He re-extended his hand. “Kidding again. Here you go, all yours.”

  N
ick took the keys warily. “Thanks.”

  “The pleasure belongs to me.” Luis’s eyes bore into him, conveying zero pleasure. “I’ll stop by the apartment sometime and we can continue our intellectual discussion.”

  “Sure, see you,” Nick said, uneasy at the idea of Luis popping by for a chat. He decided he would ask Jose’s dad to install an extra lock on the door.

  “Everything’s set,” Nick told Emma, who lay sprawled across the three-seater, head in his lap. The Metro-North train was surprisingly sparse, considering the Jewish New Year began that evening. “I passed the keys to José’s dad, and he’ll fix it up while we’re gone. He was so much cheaper than every other guy I talked to—José really hooked it up.”

  “I’m so glad your students are such skilled operators, pimping out their parents.”

  “Hey, whatever works.” Nick ran his fingers through Emma’s hair and surveyed the passing landscape through the window. Once again he found himself swallowing his thoughts—there was no need to tell her about the exchange with Luis. Emma had enough to worry about. They’d been on the train for less than an hour, on their way to her brother, Max’s, for Rosh Hashanah dinner and an overnight stay, and already she’d gnawed her fingernails down to the quick. Nick got along with Max all right, his wife, Alysse, wasn’t too bad if you ignored some of her more inane comments, and the kids could be fun in small doses. What Nick disliked was how Emma let her brother get to her, and how she sometimes acted around him. Usually so self-possessed, with Max Emma wilted into a wimpier version of herself; she was constantly rationalizing her life choices and apologizing for who she was, as if her brother were some kind of bastion of the right way to be. If you asked Nick, Max was the one who should admire Emma. While Max had taken the safe route of law school, married boring but dependable Alysse, and skulked back home to his parents’ house, Emma had ventured out into the world and taken risks and bets and plunges of faith to figure out who she was and what she wanted to be. So what if she hadn’t quite landed on all the answers yet? So what if she occasionally stumbled? She always got back up, and with a wry grin on her face. If Max were to trip and fall, he’d probably cry himself into a puddle of pity until Alysse came along to hoist him to his feet, then rebuild his confidence with a pep talk about how big of a man he was. The image made Nick laugh. He leaned over to kiss Emma. “I love you,” he said.

  “I love you, too,” she said, jerking herself upright in the seat. She yawned and stretched her spine like a cat, extending her arms to maximum wingspan. Nick loved watching his girlfriend’s movements, so guileless and unpredictable. She hunched over her bag, rummaged around, and then pulled from it Edith Wharton’s book of Italian gardens, her comfort reading. She collapsed back in her seat, legs tucked into herself, and cracked the book’s spine to its centerfold: an illustration of a lush garden in Florence. Her sigh was almost postcoital. Nick didn’t get the book’s appeal, but Emma said paging through it made her feel like she was living in another world. Some men might’ve been bothered by their girlfriends ignoring them to lust over an alternate existence, but Nick didn’t take it personally, especially considering that most of the so-called gardens in their daily lives consisted of small squares of concrete at the backs of bars. Who wouldn’t want to escape to a villa in Florence? As long as Emma didn’t start poring over books of suburban houses with sprawling lawns, Nick felt fine.

  The train slowed to a stop. “Hastings-on-Hudson,” Nick read through the window, the sign’s bold, italicized lettering like a frantic shout. “Two more stops.”

  “Are you ready for the wildest New Year’s celebration ever?”

  “Yep, and this time I even remembered my flask.” Nick did think it was kind of a bummer that Jews celebrated their New Year by drinking bad wine, sitting through interminable services, then meditating for days on all their sins—pretty somber stuff.

  “Oh goody, you can sneak some swigs to the kids, give them a first taste of the traditional New Year’s Day hangover. Alysse would love that.”

  “It would give me something to repent during the ‘I’ve been so bad’ service.”

  “Kol Nidre. Because that would be your only sin of the year, right?”

  “That’s right.” Nick smiled, but felt a lump in his throat.

  When they pulled in to Ardsley-on-Hudson, Emma was barely off the train before her niece and nephew came charging at her and handcuffed their arms around her legs.

  “Hi, guys,” she said. Nick relieved her of her bag.

  “Shanah Tovah,” screeched Aimee, wishing Emma a happy new year in Hebrew.

  “Look, I’ve got a shofar!” Caleb produced a child-sized ram’s horn and honked it in Emma’s ear. Nick was reminded of why he liked his kids older, and what a relief it was to wave them good-bye at three o’clock each day.

  “Did you guys say hi to Nick?” Emma asked. Aimee hid shyly behind her leg.

  “Poopyhead goy boy,” shouted Caleb.

  “What’s that, buddy?” Nick smirked at Emma, not sure he’d heard right.

  “You’re a poopyhead goy boy!”

  “That’s not very nice, Caleb,” Emma said, then whispered to Nick, “Apparently the reverse SS has arrived in Westchester, on a manhunt for non-Jews.”

  Alysse approached the group on the platform. “Hey, guys.” She extended her signature minimal-body-contact hug to both of them in turn. “Did you kiddos give Auntie Emma and Mr. Nick a nice welcome?” Caleb nodded innocently, the little shit. “Good, good. Come on, everyone, it’s almost sundown!”

  For most of the drive to the house, Alysse went on about what a shame it was that so many people now resorted to using store-bought chicken stock in their matzo ball soup instead of making it traditionally with the carcass; Nick thought either way of consuming animal flesh was a shame, but he held his tongue. “Oh, and I hope you’ve thought through your Rosh Hashanah resolutions,” Alysse said, a sparkle in her voice like she was the inventor of this idea. “Personally I’m hoping to keep our mudroom more organized. They say it takes ninety days to create a habit, so in three months we can have a group checkin to make sure we’re all sticking to what we said we’d do.”

  Nick could tell from how Emma was working her jaw that she was on the verge of spewing some serious invective. He squeezed her hand. He was always encouraging her to stop looking for every opportunity to be offended by her sister-in-law and instead to focus on the humor of Alysse. For example, her driving. Nick had assumed Alysse would be one of those by-the-books obeyers of the speed limit—that is, until he’d first gotten in a car with her and discovered the woman’s Danica Patrick alter ego. It turned out, Alysse was a speed demon, weaving in and out of traffic like a fiend. What Nick found most entertaining was how entitled she seemed about it, her nose wrinkled in perpetual annoyance, as if the cars around her were deliberately dawdling in order to hold her back.

  “I think resolutions are a great idea, Alysse,” Nick said from the backseat. “I certainly have some goals for my classroom, helping the slower kids get up to speed and all that.” He nudged Emma at the word “speed,” trying to get her to crack a smile.

  In the rearview mirror, Nick saw Alysse set her lips into a line. Nick suspected she considered him a sort of prop, on the scene temporarily, someone to be tolerated only until Emma woke up and found her real partner—some kind of mensch-y, good-family-breadwinner Jew, like Max. Never mind that Nick had been around for years. It was obvious where Caleb had picked up his insult—well, at least part of it.

  Nick braced himself as they stepped over the threshold of the Feit front door. It was Emma’s practice to begin each visit to her brother’s house with an updated inventory of everything that had been altered from her childhood, cataloging all the new blasphemies Alysse’s homemaking had wreaked upon Emma’s nostalgic vision of her former home.

  “What’s that smell?” Emma blurted out. Nick sniffed it, too, the air shellacked with a strange sweetness.

  “Oh, it’s a hoot,” said A
lysse, either not noticing or choosing to ignore Emma’s tone. “Yankee Candle started a line of Judaica candles. This one’s Apples ’n Honey. I bought Freshly Baked Challah, too.”

  “Do they also have Latke?” Emma said under her breath. “Miraculously makes your house reek of oil for eight full days!”

  “It’s very festive, Alysse,” Nick said. Emma rolled her eyes.

  Max appeared in the foyer, donning an apron that read, “Schmaltz happens.” “My lovely sister and her beloved! Hello, welcome, make yourselves at home!”

  Nick was glad Emma didn’t take the bait, insisting that it was her home. “Hi, dork,” she said, hitting her brother on the arm, then following him back into the kitchen. Nick was left behind with the two kids. Alysse had disappeared, too; she had a tendency to desert visitors with her children, likely assuming anyone would consider it a privilege to babysit her progeny. It was actually something Alysse and Emma had in common, a wholehearted devotion to their own agendas.

  “What are we gonna do now?” Caleb asked. He and his sister peered up at Nick.

  Nick dredged up the tricks he’d used ages ago as a camp counselor intended to simultaneously entertain and exhaust children: He bounced Aimee and Caleb around on piggyback rides, timed them in three-legged races around the living room, and challenged them to a dance-off; still they begged for more. With no sign of relief from either parent, Nick longed for a drink. From experience he knew that Max tended to make a big deal of drinks before dinner, acting as if it were a massive inconvenience to dig out a beer from the fridge. (This made Nick wonder if somewhere along the way Emma had complained to her brother about Nick’s drinking.) The way Nick saw it, if you were going to pop out a few kids and set up house in Westchester, you may as well embrace the Cheever-Yates-Updike tradition of middle-class suburban debauchery, or at the very least treat yourself to an occasional five o’clock cocktail.

  No booze in sight, Nick thought up an alternative remedy. Ignoring the kids’ protests, he pulled their squirming bodies onto his lap, then whispered in their ears, “Can you two keep a secret?”