Reunion: A Novel Page 12

  “Oh my God,” I say. I kneel down in front of them. “Ell. Hey.” I put my hand on his knee, and he sobs even harder. I look up at Nell, who gives me the saddest of all smiles and shakes her head. But it’s not like she’s disappointed in me. It’s not even like there’s anything I’ll be held accountable for later when this is over. She mouths the words tomato plants and I find I am filled with relief and even, oh God, joy. This is not about me. This is not about me at all. This is about Elliot and his own crumbling world. Lucretius was right. There is nothing like another person’s pain to put your own life into perspective. My brother is in tears and all I can think is Thank God, thank God, thank God.

  24

  a proposal

  Elliot goes upstairs to wash his face or whatever it is men do after they’ve cried, and I make up the downstairs couch for him to sleep on. Nell watches me while I tuck sheets around the cushions and put fresh pillowcases on the pillows Sasha brought me. It’s strange being in this house that I don’t know, being with these people who are at once as familiar as familiar gets but also foreign. I can’t say I like the feeling.

  “Peculiar night,” says Nell.

  “Yes,” I say, picking up a pillow and fluffing it like I’m some sort of chambermaid.

  I’m dying to ask Nell for specifics about Elliot’s breakdown—there’s no way he didn’t fill her in—but Nell, attuned as she is to the ether—my ether—says, out of nowhere, “Rita is on the fence.”

  “On the fence?” I whisper the words and sit down on Elliot’s couch. “What does that even mean?”

  “She’s not sure she wants to be married.”

  Wait a minute. Maybe somebody is reading my mind. Maybe it’s Rita. If I believed in the supernatural, I might even think she’s gotten tangled in my brain waves, forever cursed to a life of unhappiness, a life of looking around and thinking, Maybe the grass over there is a little bit greener?

  “She’s approximately three kids too late for that,” I say.

  I think of Peter. I think of the adoption business. Then I think of this boy I once dated in college. We moved in together senior year to save on rent. A few months went by. He suggested we get a dog. I moved out the next day. He didn’t mean anything to me, and so, when he asked for a reason, it felt safe to be 100 percent honest. What I said was, “The dog. I knew when you talked about the dog. My first thought wasn’t ‘How cute.’ My first thought was ‘But then I’ll get attached to the dog and it’ll be so hard to leave that I’ll never leave.’ That’s when I knew.”

  Nell says, “Yeah, well.” She sits down next to me, ruining the fluffiness of the pillows.

  “The grad student?” I say.

  Nell nods. “But nothing’s happened,” she says. “Supposedly.”

  “Oh God,” I say. “It would be so much better if something had happened.”

  Nell owls her neck in my direction. “Excuse me?”

  “Easy, killer,” I say.

  “Tell me what you mean.”

  I bite my teeth together a few times, as if I’m searching for words. Finally, I say, “If something had happened, then she’d get over it.” Obviously, I am thinking of me. I am thinking of Billy. I am thinking of the shared wavelength Rita and I are currently riding. “But if it’s all just fantasy,” I say, “if it’s all just spiritual connection, then Elliot’s fucked. You can’t compete with the fantasy of a better life.”

  What I’ve said is completely at odds with the family’s stance on adultery. But before Nell’s mouth is able to drop open any farther, Elliot appears in the doorway. Normally Elliot is like this substance you want to be in a room with. Even while he’s pissing you off, you find that you’re kind of craving it. Here’s the thing, though. These last twenty-four hours, it’s been like his addictive quality is missing. I can’t quite put my finger on it.

  “I’m beat,” he says. He looks at the now-rumpled couch. “Thanks for making up my bed.”

  “Sorry,” I say, and scoot Nell off so that I can reassemble the sheets.

  “It’s fine,” he says. “It’s a place to sleep and I’m totally beat.”

  The story is, when I was a baby and was brought home for the very first time, Elliot punched Nell in the face. They’d been fighting over whose room I’d get to sleep in. Elliot wanted me in his. Nell wanted me in hers. A blow to the nose sorted everything out.

  Nell sucks in her cheeks in a way that both Elliot and I have come to know means she has something to say, which can only be to repeat my sacrilegious remarks from a moment ago. I’m tempted to call her a rat. I’m tempted to say, “You don’t know what you’re talking about.” But then I figure, Fine, let’s just get this over with. Now’s as good a time as any. Shoot. Go for it. Knock it out of the park. Action.

  She says, not looking at me, but looking at our brother, who is standing next to me, “You said something last night about getting high?”

  “Yeah?” says Elliot.

  “Sasha gave me this.” She holds up a small green medicine bottle. Not at all what I was expecting.

  “I don’t like pills,” says Elliot. “But thanks.”

  “Hit me,” I say, and hold out my hand.

  Nell hands me the bottle without making eye contact—a sure sign that we aren’t through with the previous conversation—and says, “It’s not pills.”

  I open the top and find two perfectly rolled joints.

  “Stan’s wives get more and more difficult to pin down,” I say. I take a sniff. “Dear Lord,” I say. “It smells like a forest of weed in here.”

  “Better,” says Nell, whispering now. “They get better.”

  “You just like her because she’s our age,” I say.

  Nell doesn’t respond to this, but Elliot takes one of the joints and inspects it.

  “Anybody have a lighter?”

  “Back porch,” says Sasha, who has materialized out of the blue in the doorway between the living room and dining room. She’s wearing a kimono that used to belong to Joyce, Stan’s most ancient wife. “Let’s get high,” she says, then flips off the light and heads outside.

  25

  a memory!

  You are fourteen years old. He is forty-nine. You know this because there are already plans in the works for his fiftieth at Benihana. You’re living—just the two of you—in the horrible high-rise near the duck pond. This is just after Nell has left for college and a couple of months before you and your father move into Joyce’s tattered stone manor on Woodhaven Road. Already, even that young—even before bills and rent and adultery—you don’t sleep well. You remember missing Stan Jr. and Lily, who were only toddlers when your father divorced their mother. You remember feeling guilty and weird about missing them, since you hadn’t shown much interest in either of them when they were living under the same roof. You remember thinking that emotions were unstable entities—not as they were happening, but as you recalled them in time. They were malleable things. Constantly changing each time you remembered them. They were not to be trusted. You remember trying to explain this to Stan. You have no recollection of his response.

  The memory you’re thinking of now, though, is very small. A speck. A smidgeon. But you think it merits inclusion. It’s Sunday morning. Your father is sitting at the kitchen table, reading the paper and listening to jazz. The condo smells like bacon, which makes sense because there are three pieces left on the counter. You eat them, then wipe your fingers on a dish towel.

  You say to your father, “I’m going for a bike ride.”

  He says, “Be safe,” but he doesn’t look up.

  You take the elevator down to the lobby and get your bike from the storage room. But then you have a thought. It’s partly out of laziness. (You remember thinking, But I’ll have to go to the trouble of putting it back.) But partly it’s something else. Partly you are entertaining the idea of a psych experiment. You only half comprehend the hypothesis—but it’s there, knocking about in your brain.

  You leave the bike where it
is and walk outside. You cross the street and count the stories of the high-rise from the bottom up. You stop at eighteen, which is your floor. You see a person leaning over the edge of the balcony’s railings. This is impossible. The only person in your condo is your father, and your father does not go onto the balcony. You think it’s a fear of heights, but you’ve never asked and he’s never said. It occurs to you that you are living with a stranger. You perform the count one more time. The person is still there. This time, the person raises its hand. Again, this is impossible.

  You take off running down the hill, toward the duck pond. As you get closer to the pond, you ease into a jog. You run around the pond four, maybe five times. Then you run back up the hill and pause at exactly the same spot where you were standing fifteen minutes earlier. You perform the count one final time. The balcony is now empty.

  You cross the street and take the elevator to the eighteenth floor. Your father is sitting in the same position as when you left him. He puts the paper down and looks at you. You’re sweaty. It’s Atlanta. You look at him.

  He says, “You went for a run.”

  You say, “A bike ride. I told you.”

  The two of you look at each other for an impressive amount of time. You feel the psych experiment—whatever it is—has gone in your favor. You feel that a hypothesis has been proven.

  “Okay,” he says.

  You think, My god. You think, That was easy.

  Peter says addicts begin to recover when they pinpoint the birth of their addiction. Well, as best I can tell, this is mine.

  26

  the back porch before bed

  Can I just say,” I’m saying, while someone is lighting up the second joint, “that I’m sorry about earlier.”

  “She’s high,” says Nell. “You can tell. See, watch; see how she’s tapping her teeth?”

  “I’m not high,” I say. “I’m just checking to make sure I can still feel them.” I tap a few more times. “And I can. So, ta-da, I’m not high.”

  “You’re high,” says Elliot. “We can tell because you’ve now apologized a dozen times.”

  “Seriously?” I say. “I didn’t know anyone could hear me.”

  We’re all outside, sitting in the dark, trying to remember to whisper so as not to wake up Mindy, who’s asleep in the bedroom above us.

  Sasha says, “I know, I know. Mindy explained everything. She said she was eavesdropping. It’s a habit she picked up last year. We’re working on it.”

  I nod and try to remember that I’ve already apologized and not to do it again. Then, just as quickly, I forget what I’m trying to hold on to. I should become a pot smoker. I should smoke pot before bed instead of considering drugs like Paxil. List making? On pot? Impossible. I could wake up at three in the morning and not know what year it is, much less what’s troubling me in my real life.

  Year. Last year. What Sasha means is it’s a habit Mindy picked up when they were both still living with our father. Our father. My father and Mindy’s. And Nell’s and Elliot’s. Nelliot’s father. The man lying on that lonely slab in a funeral home thirty minutes away with his head under construction. Tomorrow the ex-wives arrive, and their horde of children. The day after that, we’ll drive to the home and look at his body. The day after that—who knows?

  Actually, I’d make a terrible regular pot smoker. I get twitchy, like I’m getting right now. And I get paranoid—not like I think people are talking about me, but like I think I sound stupid. I hate sounding stupid. I hate not being able to control the words that are coming out of my mouth. Like, for instance, right now, sitting cross-legged on the concrete porch, looking up at Nell and Sasha, who are rocking back and forth on the swing and who are saying something very serious to Elliot, who is sitting cross-legged across from me, I am trying very hard to pay attention to the topic of conversation and trying very hard not to blurt out something irrelevant like, “What about Stan? When are we going to talk about Stan?” But apparently I’m doing a piss-poor job of following along and staying quiet, because now Sasha and Nell, up on high, are looking down at me, not at Elliot, and I realize I’ve asked my questions aloud, even as I specifically was telling myself not to.

  Elliot reaches over and takes a joint from my hand. A joint that I didn’t realize I was holding.

  “Kiddo,” he says. “We are talking about Dad. We’ve been talking about Dad for the last hour.”

  It’s not fair: a funeral. The star of the show isn’t even able to defend himself. Stan doesn’t want all his wives in the same room, gabbing. He probably doesn’t even want us in the same room. On the same porch.

  “Oh,” I say, still looking down at my fingers, trying to remember which muscle is responsible for making them move. “I’m sorry.”

  “We know,” says Elliot. “You’re very sorry.”

  “And very stoned,” says Nell.

  I look up.

  “Where did you come from?” I say.

  Nell gives me this You’re adorable smile that lets me know I’m behaving every bit as idiotically as I fear.

  “I need to go to bed,” I say. I grab at my forehead. “Can I sleep here? Is this a bed?”

  Elliot says, “Take the couch. I don’t think you’ll make it upstairs.”

  It must be the weed, but right now, my brother is the light of my life. He is everything that is decent and good in the world. All I want is for him to be happy. All I want is for Rita and him and those three gorgeous girls to be happy. I’d give up everything for the guarantee. I’d give up all my toes. And, I don’t know, I’m looking up at Sasha and it occurs to me that she’s the most generous, loving hostess in the world.

  “What a mother!” I say, perhaps assuming they are following my thoughts.

  “To bed,” Elliot says. “Get.”

  “I love you guys,” I say.

  “Same here,” he says. He pushes at me with his foot. “Get some sleep.”

  I’m trying to stand up, trying to keep myself from saying anything else, trying to get inside the screen door and onto the couch before I do anything else adorable (read: embarrassing). But it’s too late; even while I’m telling myself not to, I’m already saying it: “What if I wet the bed?” And then, just like that, waterworks.

  “Oh brother,” I hear Nell saying. “I’ve got this one.”

  I feel an arm around me and then I feel the air-conditioning of the inside and it feels like we are floating across the wood floor. I feel a cushion under my thighs and then under my shoulders and then under my head.

  I’m crying now, but I’ve already forgotten why. I’m afraid I’ve been left alone in a dark room in a strange city, and I’m about to call out when I feel a cold washcloth on my forehead.

  “You’re okay,” says Nell, her hand on my cheek, the washcloth on my forehead. “It’s okay. Don’t talk.”

  “I do,” I say.

  “Shhh.”

  “I really do,” I say. “I really do love you.”

  “Of course you do,” she says.

  “You’re my best friend,” I say. I am falling back, melting back into the pillow. My brain weighs fifty pounds, but the weight feels good because it’s resting so perfectly on this perfect pillow.

  “Get some sleep,” she says.

  “Am I yours?” I say.

  “Get some sleep,” she says again. “Shhh.”

  And I do get some sleep. I get the sleep of my lifetime. I get the first full night’s sleep I can remember in years. The sleep itself is wonderful. The sleep itself is this transformative experience, like swimming in a cold bath of liquid rejuvenation. It’s the dreams I don’t like. Matt Damon is nowhere to be found. Instead, a telephone call. Crying. A limb being removed. My brother circling but not talking. Sasha and Mindy weeping, whispering. And Nell, Nell at the center, standing in front of me, a phone in her hand. “We can be together,” she’s saying. “Now we can be together. You and me.” I’m shaking my head. I’m trying to talk; I’m trying to tell her no, no, that’s
not what I meant. She’s pleading with me. She’s screaming now: “You said you loved me.” I’m shaking my head still and I’m trying to make her understand, but my mouth is gone. My lips are still there. The hole to my mouth is still there, but it’s just a giant cavern, it’s just a hole leading nowhere and to nothing. There is no tongue, no larynx, no voice box. All I can do is shake my head.

  I wake up to what sounds like a gunshot. I sit up in bed. Sasha is sitting in the chair next to the couch. It’s sunny and I realize I’ve slept later than I wanted. It’s the fear of all youngest children, to be the last to wake and therefore the only one to miss the thing you don’t even know you’re missing.

  “Did you hear that?” I say.

  Sasha puts down the newspaper.

  “Hear what?”

  I rub my eyes and stretch my arms out in front of me. My body is not yet prepared to be awake.

  “Like a gunshot?” I say. I’m groggy, but at least I’m not high anymore.

  She smiles and looks back at her newspaper.

  “Your father had that,” she says.

  “Had what?”

  “Exploding head syndrome.”

  Maybe I am still high, because I’m pretty sure Sasha’s just made the most tasteless joke in the world.

  She looks up suddenly.

  “Oh my God,” she says. “That’s not what I meant. I didn’t—”

  I must be giving her a hateful look, because suddenly she’s sitting next to me, holding my hand.

  “Your father had a syndrome. He saw a doctor for it,” she says. “I haven’t thought about it since…” She trails off, then shakes her head and takes her hand away. “You must think I’m a monster.”

  My mouth tastes like a burned-down forest. “Are you saying there’s actually a thing called exploding head syndrome?”