“Where are you going?” Imani asked.
Aviva disregarded her and peered into the trees. She stood there for a full minute. The glow of the house did not extend to where they were standing, and the woods were gloomy and endless. Finally, she turned around, walked toward Imani. She stopped in the middle of the dirt road, lowered herself to the ground. Then she lay flat on her back, arms perpendicular to her body. How much vodka had she poured in that Coke?
“What’re you doing?”
“Why don’t you crucify me?”
“What?”
“Since there’s no way I can change the essence of who I am,” Aviva said to the sky.
“You’re just gonna lie there in the road?”
“If you don’t like who I am, the question becomes to be or not to be.”
“Get the fuck up!”
“There’s no point. I’m white; I’m a Jewish girl who’s at least a semi-Zionist. I come from the Gladstone family. It’s the trifecta of everything you hate.” She was speaking in a monotone. “I should just expire.”
“I don’t hate Jews because that would be racist.”
“Jews aren’t a race.”
“Aviva, get up out of the road! Nothing is going to run you over out here. What’s a trifecta, anyway?”
“It’s from horse racing.” Aviva looked up at the moon. She felt silly lying in the middle of the road (and for having used a horse-related term). From her prone position, she checked the time on her phone. “How long have we been waiting?”
“This isn’t funny.”
A pair of headlights sliced through the trees. Imani glanced around nervously. The car headed toward them.
“Aviva, get up.”
“I’m sleepy,” Aviva said and closed her eyes.
“Get up, girl.”
“Lie down with me.”
Unable to take it any longer, Imani walked to where Aviva lay and pulled her inert girlfriend to the side of the road by her armpits. The heels of Aviva’s boots dragged along the dirt road.
Imani said, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”
Aviva started to laugh. Then Imani began laughing. Aviva wasn’t sure whether that had been an actual apology, but it was enough to ameliorate the hurt feelings. Clambering to her feet, she quickly kissed Imani on the mouth.
Their argument was unresolved, but Aviva could no longer bear to perpetuate it.
Following the main course, after the third ceremonial cup of wine (but before the macaroons, rugelach, and coffee), it was time to place the traditional glass of Manischewitz on the front steps of the house. Every year, Bingo used to say: Elijah never comes, he’s not coming, why bother? And everyone would laugh. Jay poured the glass, stood and, rather than delegating the task, availed himself of the opportunity to leave the table.
The first thing he did was peek in the guest room, then out the front door. He wanted to know if Aviva and Imani were still on the premises so he could cauterize the wound. Jay assumed they had made their way to the train station. He stepped out on the back porch and inhaled the crisp air. The clouds had parted, and several constellations were visible. From the roof of his office building, he had observed the recent eclipse and had vowed to increase his knowledge of astronomy. Placing the wineglass down, he surveyed the lawn and the stable silhouetted against the sky with its striations of indigo and violet, a wafer moon illuminating the woods and meadow. However much the temporal world might pitch and heave he felt secure with his back to the house as he stood between his querulous relatives and the flickering stars. He thought about his dead father, his diminished mother, his troublesome daughter. Whatever Aviva was going through, Jay was confident she would one day come to understand how a family could at once be a font of almost insurmountable exasperation but also of pride and the deepest security.
He pulled out a phone and texted her:
I feel terrible about what happened tonight. Please call me so we can talk.
Jay had wrenched the Seder back from the brink of a plague-like disaster. If he could make peace with his daughter and her sexuality (“Let the shift be temporary, please God.”), it would be a challenge to embrace her current girlfriend. Although Nicole had tried her hardest to make the evening a success before the arrival of the guests, her outburst at Marcy, however warranted, had embarrassed him.
Jay had received a report from an auditor tasked with taking a closer look at Franklin’s books and had been dismayed by what he read. And he had to fly to South Africa the following day because the ambitious Gladstone project over there had reached a critical point and his presence was required. This trip was going to cause him to miss the Obama dinner at the Waldorf. He was counting on face time with the president to enhance his chances of an ambassadorship.
All of this weighed on Jay when he returned to the table where, to his relief, hostilities had not again broken out. He cajoled the assembled guests to sing “Dayenu,” which they did in several keys simultaneously, and the Gladstone family Seder concluded—Next year in Jerusalem!—with some bruised feelings but without further incident.
After dinner, Franklin approached the host and whispered in his ear, “You should never have divorced Jude.” Jay was offended but not surprised and before he could respond Franklin beckoned to Ari and Ezra, and the three of them lumbered off.
Nicole was in the kitchen drinking coffee and commiserating with Bebe when Jay approached and asked if she was all right. She assured him that she had never been better and that this was the last time she was going to host a goddamn Seder since no one seemed to appreciate all the work that had gone into it, and instead the evening had turned into a burlesque of what it was meant to celebrate. Since it would have been unwise for Jay to underline her part in the meltdown, he chose to elide it. Instead, he told her how much he and everyone else appreciated what she had done, thanked her again for her efforts, and said they could talk about what was going to happen next year when the time came.
Jay found Franklin savoring a postprandial smoke in the backyard with Ari and Ezra. They greeted Jay, and Franklin offered him an impressive looking cigar.
“It’s Cuban,” he said. “The best.”
Jay politely declined and asked the twins if they would mind giving their father and him some privacy. Franklin indicated they should scram.
“Let’s go, Casper,” Ezra said to Ari, and the two of them dissolved into giggles as they wandered back to the house.
Jay peered into the darkness, uncertain how to begin. The stables were behind Franklin and what Jay wanted to do was go down there, check on the horses, and not have this conversation. He wanted to mention Franklin’s crack about Jude but realized that would only serve to muddy the waters of what he had come outside to say. His cousin, who seemed to enjoy Jay’s discomfort, regarded him askance and waited. The surrounding woods pressed toward them.
“Sorry about Nicole,” Jay began. “She’s under a lot of stress.”
“It happens,” Franklin allowed. He took a puff of his cigar and blew a smoke ring as if to show how unperturbed he was. “Could you believe that little shvartze in there?”
Shvartze, Yiddish, literally translates as “black,” but there’s a stink to it. A dated, lower-class word used by uneducated Jews. Raised in Sands Point, Franklin should have known better. Whatever Jay thought of Imani’s behavior, that term was repugnant to him. He had heard Franklin use it before and it always made him squirm. But this was not the time to lecture his cousin about the pernicious effects of casual racism—it wasn’t as if the man possessed the psychological tools to change—so he let it go.
“She’s a kid,” Jay said.
“An animal,” Franklin said. “Which reminds me. You know who Christine Lupo is?” Jay said he was familiar with her but was unclear on the connection between the Westchester County District Attorney and Imani. “Christine believes in tra
ditional values, not the left-wing bullshit Aviva’s friend subjected us to.” Jay let that go. “She’s running for governor and Marcy and I are going to host a fundraiser for her.” This information surprised Jay since Franklin, for all of his opinions, had never involved himself directly in politics. “I know you’re a liberal and all, but I think you’d like her. She’s a lovely lady, and you and Nicole should come.”
Jay let that go, too. “I never received those reports I asked for,” he said.
Franklin did not immediately respond to this shift in the conversation. Instead, he took another puff of his cigar and exhaled the smoke in an unruly swirl, rather than the more relaxed ring. He looked at Jay appraisingly as if sizing up his current appetite for conflict.
“We had a delicious meal, and now I’m enjoying my Havana,” Franklin said. “You sure you don’t want to leave this for another time?”
“Would you rather I tell you in an email?”
“Tell me what?”
Now it was Jay’s turn to relish his cousin’s discomfort. He had always envied the relationship between his father and his Uncle Jerry, two men of strong will whose dialectical qualities complemented each other and led to the creation of a stronger whole from which the entire family continued to benefit. Jay and Franklin were meant to honor that fraternal tradition.
“Bebe and I have commissioned a formal audit of the family’s operations in Asia.”
It had taken Jay several days to prepare himself to impart this information because he was expecting pushback but Franklin didn’t blink.
“I could have you audited, too.”
“You’re welcome to do an audit if you think I’m hiding anything.” Franklin nodded as if he was considering the possibility. “We didn’t want to go down this road, but you’re not giving us any choice. It isn’t that we don’t trust you, so please don’t think that. It could be a mistake by the accounting department, or who knows what. We’re discharging our fiduciary duty.”
Another drag of his fat cigar, another exhalation of smoke. Franklin forced a noise out of his gullet meant as a disparaging laugh.
“You think you’re King Pharaoh,” Franklin said, “coming in here swinging your staff around, smiting the Jews.”
“Would that make you Moses?”
“Of all the bulrushes in the world, you had to walk into this one,” Franklin said conflating Exodus and Casablanca in the voice of Humphrey Bogart.
Jay nearly laughed but refused to let Franklin believe he had disarmed him, although the Bogart impression was considerably better than many of the others he did.
“No, I don’t believe I’m like King Pharaoh at all.” He awaited Franklin’s response, which arrived in the form of a question.
“What do you guess our fathers would say?”
“They’d be disappointed,” Jay said. “Highly disappointed. But those two didn’t keep secrets from each other.”
“Someone’s keeping secrets?” Franklin asked, the implication laughable. “Why do you even mention your sister? Don’t pretend this isn’t all you.” He tapped the ash off the end of his cigar.
“I just don’t want you to be surprised, Franklin. I’m glad you were here tonight. I didn’t want to have this conversation in the office because it’s personal.”
Jay waited to see if his cousin would respond. Instead, Franklin jammed the cigar in his mouth and looked toward the woods. Jay had done all he could do. He gave Franklin the opportunity to behave honorably. For a full minute, they stood on the lawn, wordless as two ghosts. Marcy appeared at the door and beckoned to Franklin. The drive back to Long Island would take more than an hour and she was ready to leave. As Franklin trudged toward the house, Jay waved agreeably to Marcy and thanked her for coming.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Nicole was sitting up in bed pretending to read the Spinoza biography when Jay emerged from the bathroom in a Penn T-shirt and pajama bottoms. Her hair was loose, and her face scrubbed clean of makeup. The stress of the evening was gone—several cups of coffee had fought the chardonnay to a draw—and now, in a chemise with the covers pulled to her waist, she exuded tranquil radiance. When Jay slipped in beside her, Nicole put the book down and turned off the bedside lamp. She caressed the inside of his wrist with the tips of her fingers.
“I’m ovulating.”
From the corner of his eye, Jay could see her lopsided smile. It was a look that in its earlier iteration had placed him in her thrall. But the events of the evening had so taxed his nervous system that he would have preferred to sleep alone and only chose not to because he believed it would have exasperated Nicole.
She said, “We can make a porno.”
“On Passover?” He laughed.
“You don’t want to show our son how we created him?”
“That’s perverse.”
“Come on, Jay. Where’s your sense of humor?”
Nicole rolled on her side and faced him, head propped on her palm. She did not appear fatigued in the least. It was as if the outburst at dinner had exorcised an entire gang of demons and left her in a state of alert relaxation. She reached for a bottle of lotion on her night table and squirted a dab on her palm.
“I’m spent,” he said as she slid her hand beneath the sheets and began to stroke his retreating penis.
“Could I have been a better Jew this evening?” Her hand was a metronome.
“I’m flying to South Africa tomorrow night,” he said. “I’ll miss the Obama dinner.”
He expected the announcement of his projected absence would cause Nicole to conclude her exertions but whatever disappointment she may have felt was not reflected in any cessation of her hand motion. Up and down his shaft she labored, from the root to the tip, flicking the glans with her thumbnail and stroking his balls, her enthusiasm undiminished by the ongoing lack of tumescence.
“I’ll represent the family,” Nicole said.
Why wasn’t Jay responding? She kissed his neck, redoubled her efforts. His condition remained invertebrate. After a couple of minutes, she took a break, still holding his uncooperative penis in her hand, but no longer moving.
“Is something wrong?”
“I told you,” Jay said. “I’m wiped out.”
Undeterred, Nicole released him. She opened a drawer in her nightstand, removed a blue pill, and handed it to him. He asked her what it was.
“It’s medicine for erectile dysfunction.”
Placing the pill on his nightstand, he said, “I don’t have erectile dysfunction,” despite current evidence to the contrary. The implication offended him since it called to mind both their age difference and his perceived inability to attend to his wife’s needs, neither of which, in Jay’s mind, were rooted in a physical cause. “Where’d you get it?”
“My internist had samples lying around. I told him we weren’t having regular sex.”
“Our issue isn’t biological.”
She was not sure how to respond to his declaration. They had reached that point in sex play where the initiator’s plan had somehow gone awry and now either both partners would tacitly agree to ignore whatever discomfort was afoot and start fucking, or one would determine that the other had crossed a line thereby destroying what remained of “the mood.” She was baffled by what seemed to be happening. Hadn’t she just produced the Seder to end all Seders? Yes, Marcy and Imani had conspired to destroy it, but Nicole had done all Jay could have reasonably expected. Transformed her home into a temple of culinary Jewishness, provided everything from the finest gefilte fish (her mother-in-law’s recipe, no less) to the best macaroons (as identified by the food critic of the New York Times), and put up with his irritating relatives. Now he was off to South Africa, another business trip, and he had not even told her how long he would be away. She thought of her own family, her barely extant relations with them. The men she had slept with cycled through
her consciousness, and her complicity in those loveless liaisons. Her condition now, though materially superior, left her bereft and longing for not simply a rebirth but an actual baby. The modeling career, the time with the House Ethics Committee, what had it amounted to? She began to tremble. Had she engineered this reaction as a means of manipulating her husband or was this bodily vibration legitimate? No, no, she concluded, it was legitimate, thereby permissible, and she did not attempt to bring it under control.
“Are you all right?”
He caressed her arm, and she tried to relax.
“I’m still a little upset about tonight.”
“Thanks again for everything you did,” Jay said. “I know you put yourself out and I appreciate it.”
She took this as her opening and informed him, “I want a nursery in the house, I want to get up at 2:00 in the morning for a year, and I want my tits to sag from breastfeeding.” His answer, which she expected, was to say nothing. “I know we’ve talked this thing into the ground, but I’ve been thinking about it, you know, and it’s nonnegotiable for me at this point.” In hopes of weakening his resolve, she had imbued the previous sentence with hints of softness, understanding, and a not-to-be-trifled with love, the one thing she had to give.
“I don’t want to upset you,” he said, “and I certainly don’t want to fight, particularly after what happened tonight. But that isn’t going to happen. I don’t want another child. The end.”
“What if I were to have one with someone else?”
“What?”
“I get someone else to impregnate me, I raise the baby, you don’t have to do anything, and if the unthinkable happens and we split up, I have a baby that you bear no responsibility for. And saggy tits.”
The Hazards of Good Fortune Page 25
