Swell Read online

  Total concentration on Dan looks like this: The tip of his tongue pokes out between his thin lips. Heavy dark eyebrows scrunch. Eyes cast down. Under his breath, he wills his neurologist to pick up, pick up the phone. Not because he has a migraine. (If he did, he’d be in bed with the shades drawn, immobile.) Rather, this call is all about the migraine-to-be, its unknown properties. As with pleasure, the anticipation of pain is often more material than the real thing.

  Dan stares down at the planks of—oak? Pine? Ash? Neither of them knows squat about wood, only that a floor should not resemble a ramp. If this worries Dan, it’s his own fault for allowing his father to monopolize the contractors. Sue said as much in their morning spat. (The old man would have his own suite of rooms with faux stone paneling and Jacuzzi bath even if the floor above collapsed in the meantime.) Sue imagines Dan is taking a break from stressing about his impending headache to worry about the floor instead. What lies beneath but rot? He’s panicking. Rot and corpses. The whole thing will, any second, drop, releasing a cache of dead bodies to rain down on the dining/murder room below. But the actual scenario in Dan’s mind is surely darker. There is no one better at scaring himself than her sunny husband.

  Sue also suspects June’s been playing him, playing up those sounds in the walls. Just the house settling, Sy keeps telling them. Whatever that means, Dan says he’s glad of it. “Since unsettling pretty well describes the place now.”

  Apparently, the doctor’s answering machine has picked up again. “Dan Glassman here.” He sighs into the receiver. “The meds don’t work. Nothing works. I’ve cut out all TV, nuts, aged cheese, red wine…”

  Sea breezes rattle the red paper lanterns outlining the fireplace and all three screened beach views. This and more Chinatown schlock festoon the walls and shelves. Such a stark contrast to the solemn wooden bedroom set, you have to wonder: Did Rose buy these knickknacks before or after a Chinese man killed her son? And which is creepier? And if you’re Sue, you also have to indulge your worst self by putting these questions to your anxious husband every time you’re lying next to him, below the tomb-shaped headboard. Call it payback for years of putting his father’s desires over hers. That he nonetheless continues to beguile Sue is both a comfort and a puzzle.

  “…I’d appreciate it if you get back to me right away,” he’s saying, eyes moving up the wall to where a cheap print of a snaky Chinese river hangs crookedly. “Please call me ASAP, please.”

  “Oh, quit begging,” Sue says and grabs the phone from him. “Get another doctor if she won’t answer.”

  Dan’s small, bright eyes glow up at her. Not the Glassman brown you’d expect but turquoise and luminous, offset by his dark brows. One wink from one of those eyes can undo Sue. Yet Dan closes them, wrapping his burly arms around her thighs.

  “Sing for me, Suzy? If you sing—”

  “Not now.”

  Dan’s been asking Sue to sing ever since she made that long ago late-night call, choosing randomly from the Yellow Pages attached by a chain to the phone booth. Glassman Locks & Keys had a half-page ad and catchy taglines: #1 in the Tristate Since ’58! What Have You Got to Lose? This was back in Tribeca’s bad old days, early eighties. Hudson Street. At the mouth of the Holland Tunnel. Sue’s all-girl band, Visitation, had just played a club called Wetlands, and she’d locked her keys in the car. Dan found her out front, guarding the instruments with a can of pepper spray. Sue could tell he had not, as he claimed, heard of the eclectic (that is, pretentious) Visitation—uke, glock, flute, drum. But he was groggy and fun, insisting Sue sing for him before he’d jimmy her car open.

  All these years later, and Dan still sulks if Sue won’t croon on command. These days he seems put out by lots of things that Sue won’t do, like convert without a struggle. So much angst can’t be good for the baby. Or be friendlier. Would it kill her to chat with a neighbor? Why won’t she make just the tiniest effort with her hair and what she wears?

  Dan fingers the hem of her white maternity dress, a wrinkled hand-me-down from a friend who got it from her sister’s cousin, so he’s not completely out of line when he asks, “What’s this? A mummy costume? Haunted-house wear?”

  His image consciousness made sense back in Tribeca, a no-man’s-land they watched turn gradually and then rapidly posh. Commercial lofts were renovated for residential use. Vacant buildings morphed into chic spas, restaurants, and shops. On any given day in the 1990s, Dan could score a slew of contracts for Glassman Locks & Keys simply by putting on a suit. But here? In Rockaway?

  “You try fashionizing this huge, itchy belly!”

  “If you’d let me.” Dan reaches a hand up the cuff of her sleeve. “I fantasize you in a red low-cut—”

  “Fashionize, not fantasize.”

  Dan shoots off one of his lethal winks. “So what is your fantasy these days?”

  Sue slips away, not about to describe the hot ice cream truck driver, how his crotch in the truck lines up right with her face. Not now, anyway. She can’t afford to be derailed from the reason she’s slogged up all those stairs. The visitors. Dan said he’d deal with them. “Uh! Why can’t you ever do what you promise?”

  “I—there’s so much to figure out—the byzantine way my father runs this business, it’s…I can’t be having migraines!”

  Sue was as stunned as anyone when Sy chose his wife’s shivah to announce that Dan would take over as owner of Glassman Locks & Keys. Later, it occurred to her that he might have had some tax incentive. But there, in his Brooklyn Heights brownstone, Sy seemed to make the decision impulsively, as though the old narcissist couldn’t bear to cede attention to anyone, even his deceased wife. If it meant transferring all shares of the company to his son, so be it. Nothing really had to change. Sy kept his CEO title, his cushy office and beleaguered secretary. And what a nice bit of drama he’d dished up, tapping a fork on his low stool to quiet the mourners for the big announcement.

  “Estelle, may she rest in peace, was so proud of Dan for following in the footsteps of her great-grandpa Henry”—inventor of the first key-duplicating machine. “On this sad occasion, I’d like to add”—snotty tears gumming his throat—“I’d like to say, without my son…”

  “Dan?” Sue says now, spitting into her handkerchief. “Are you even listening?”

  “What if I start having headaches all the time? What if I have one in the middle of negotiating—”

  “Focus, Dan. I’m telling you, this woman gives me a really bad feeling.”

  “She’s a world-renowned neurologist—”

  “Not your doctor!” Sue points with the confiscated phone out the window. “Rose! I’m talking about Rose and her…person. You promised you’d see them out and you didn’t and now look! Get up! Look!”

  Outside, the waves, previously absent, bounce up spray. The lifeguard’s gone home, inspiring the next-door Mole-Kacy boys to do some illegal surfing. Heaving long boards bigger than they are, the dark, shaggy tribe cut across the Glassman yard and stream through the beach door. Only the pimply oldest brother, Kenny, remains in street clothes—chinos, gray windbreaker. As his brothers whoop and weave toward the waves, he is creeping, creeping up behind June.

  “Watch out!” Dan inhales, no doubt picturing their daughter’s long, wan face when startled, the gap between her front teeth. And he’s unnerved by June’s miniskirt. “Not a successful windy-day garment. What is she doing down there anyhow?”

  “Smoking.”

  “What?”

  “On the lawn, Dan!” With the phone still in hand, Sue adjusts his head downward to where Rose sits before the bent cherry tree, sucking a cigar and tippling a tiny airplane-size bottle of Sambuca.

  Under the tree, Sage (and, no doubt, imaginary Ed) pretends to smoke and drink too. Cherry twigs as cigarettes chased with ketchup.

  Personally, Dan says, he’s entertained, even touched by the solid, ancient figure in a housedress and hoodie who insisted he aerate her lawn with his golf shoes. “Did she tell you about the ti
me the ocean met the bay?”

  “Yes, and the time before that and the time bound to be.” Not to mention corrupt politicians and bootleggers, tides of hypodermic needles, fires, plane crashes, the star-crossed Golden Venture (now an artificial reef down in Boca Raton), “and a whole stream of awful jokes, which is proof she’s been here six hours too long.”

  “I-invited-them-for-dinner-don’t-kill-me,” Dan blurts.

  Even the baby writhes in frustration. Not only have no flowers arrived, he’s using Rose as a pawn in their feud. “How could you? On Shabbat too!”

  “Shabbat?” Dan laughs the way only Dan can laugh, a roar that requires his whole head, neck, and torso—which is to say, largely. “Shabbat? I had to force you to go to my parents’ house every Friday night for nineteen years. Now, all of a sudden—”

  “I’m converting! In two days. For you!”

  “That’s not entirely accurate.”

  “For your father, then, your mother’s memory, whatever.” Neither Dan nor his father seems to care, really. It was Dan’s mother, Estelle, who pushed all these years. Sue is in the ignoble position of converting for a dead person.

  Again, Dan’s hand reaches out to grab her, but Sue moves aside. She will not be seduced into relinquishing the phone.

  “You want to call someone, call that daughter-in-law, Maureen, to come and get these people. Dinner, Dan? Really? Rose thinks this house still belongs to her.”

  “That’s why I thought dinner—we’ll talk.”

  Sue leans her forehead on the glass. Down below, the vigorously watered garden still looks lifeless, just lifeless and wet now. The slick cherries drop from their feeble branches at random intervals. “Your friend Tim wants to spray poison on that tree; did you hear him? Poison, and Rose agrees. Speaking of, what’s with Eve? I mean, what did Eve do that was sooo terrible?”

  “Eve?”

  “Aren’t the Jews all about education?”

  “Look, I’m sorry. I should have asked before inviting Rose but I thought—”

  “You always do that!” Sue snaps. “You apologize then go on to explain why you’re right. Don’t say you’re sorry if you’re not sorry!”

  “But I—”

  “And don’t think daisies can fix this!”

  Sue’s florid, overheating. It’s her temper. It never serves her well. Of course daisies could fix this, at least temporarily. When Dan reaches for her this time, she doesn’t resist. But she wills him to notice how her wedding ring digs into her inflated finger, to notice and understand her. It’s a question of integrity. Who will Suzanne Ainsley Glassman, the Jew, be? If an old lady arrives at your house unexpectedly and refuses to leave, you should not be the one who feels like the stranger.

  * * *

  Rose is still there, jabbering to her dead relatives in the cherry tree. If Tim hadn’t sobered up, he’d doubt his own perception. But it’s real and it’s happening. From back on his own side of the hedge, he can hear the old biddy blasting the Glassmans as thieves and cafoni. Bibi, meanwhile, strikes a pose if Tim so much as glances over. So he gets busy unpacking his new Malibu garden lights. But the not-looking is its own distracting activity. And when the phone in his board shorts vibrates, Tim spends an irrational second wondering why Rose would be calling him.

  Right away, the connection, as usual, fails. (Fear of brain-zapping waves nixed plans for a Rockaway cell tower. Typical.) Tim sprints into his house and retrieves the now-ringing cordless. Chris D., at the firehouse, wants a surf report. “Fast! A new visual while I’m stuck here cleaning the john.”

  There on Tim’s splintery back porch, all it takes is the slightest lift of his chin to spy whitecaps, veiny as rib eye. A couple of kids bob around on their boards, wiggly, loose black teeth in the big Atlantic mouth. “Southwest winds are putting on some texture and bump.”

  “I hear a but.”

  “Well, the tide’s coming up so it’s a bit deep, kinda weak. The better spots might be pulling in some plus peaks, but still I bet they’re kinda dumpy.”

  “You going out?”

  “Nah. Friday, you know. Bad luck for sailors and surfers.”

  “How am I supposed to live vicariously through a total lightweight?” Chris D. asks over the suctioning sounds of his plunger.

  “I got stuff to do.”

  “That sleek black helper chick? Yeah, baby.”

  “F you.” Tim’s tense. His face itches. Rose’s reappearance has reminded him of things he can’t or doesn’t want to remember.

  The toilet flushes. “Okay, well, guess I’ll pick you up at eight. Can’t have the widows seeing you in that auto-school junker.”

  “About that—”

  “No way are you bailing on the widows. Denise McClary needs screens and…”

  Now it’s Dan Tim spies, freshly showered and khakied. Holy crap! Quarterback? He glides out the tricky back door balancing an hors d’oeuvres–laden wicker tray. In his whole life, Tim’s never served anyone anything more complicated than a pizza bagel. And he probably dropped it on her lap. Whoever she was, which he was too wasted to recall.

  “Hey, you still there, Timmy?” Chris D.’s asking.

  “The name’s Tim.”

  Rose and Bibi flutter to attention at Dan’s approach.

  “Tim. Timmy. What’s the diff?”

  “The diff, Chrissy, is that Timmy would hang up on you, whereas Tim is just going to say, ‘Later, dickhead.’”

  How Tim misses the old days when you could really slam down a phone. No matter how hard you press an Off button, it’s just not gratifying.

  Timmy, Timmy.

  Timmy would be over there distracting Rose so as to drain all her miniature Sambuca bottles. Timmy would have his own bottles, too, of course, stashed all over his mother’s house, much larger bottles of Stoli. Timmy visited his mother often, so often he wound up living with her after Alicia, his wife of two months, chucked him out. Last straw: He’d left Alicia stranded during a hurricane to “check on my mother.” In the end, even Tim’s mother had moved away from Timmy.

  Eight months, three weeks, five days—longer than his marriage.

  “Hello. Um, Tim, hey,” Dan calls. Who knows how long he’s been standing there, electric-blue polo and matching eyes, the tray held out to him over the hedge.

  Tim smiles, rising. His knees ping from squatting over the Malibu garden-lighting cables. Walking over, he pictures himself through Dan’s eyes—baggies and flips, unwashed, unshaven, prickling, damaged face ablaze. Tim positions his elbow to cover the mustard stain he’s just noticed on his shirt, which only spurs Dan to ask if his arm’s injured.

  “Oh, no. Just fell asleep,” Tim lies, shaking his elbow hokey-pokey style.

  Dan can’t be more than six or seven years older, but he’s got the steady eye contact and thin, braided leather belt that clearly makes him the adult in this scenario. Even his neck is thick in just the thickly authoritative way Tim used to daydream his absent dad’s would be.

  They chat about the Malibu garden lighting—manly voltage and wattage—while Tim devours all the remaining fancy blobs from the tray. Then Dan flicks his GI Joe jaw. “Quick question?”

  “Sue already asked.”

  “Sue?”

  “Yeah, yeah, no worries; I’m certified to teach driver’s ed and also to drive government vehic—”

  “Ah, you scared me. I was inviting you to Sue’s conversion party. It’s a surprise. I thought she found out.”

  “No! No!” Bibi’s voice interrupts from across the hedge. “I won’t touch that.” Tim’s heart revs. It’s ridiculous how nervous Rose makes him. The aide scoots her slim yellow hips backward, away from the old lady.

  “Maybe the aide’s sauced too.” Dan laughs, mimicking Bibi’s movements with the tray balanced on his head. You can tell he’s the rare large man who can dance well.

  “Just listen,” Rose pleads.

  Tim strains to decipher the conflict but Dan’s loud rasp wins out. “It’s my dad
’s party, really, not that he’ll help with it. What I’m even serving? No idea. The house looks like a war zone. Sue—” As Dan says his wife’s name, his smile collapses. You can see he’ll have his dad’s mouth before too long. The grooves for Sy Glassman’s puppet-like jaw are all there, if faintly, framing his skinny lips. That Tim’s own missing father could right now be walking around wearing Tim’s future face has never even occurred to him.

  “So you’ll come?” Dan asks. “Sunday, noonish? No circumcision required.”

  An invitation from the Glassmans? “Are you kidding me?” This was the last thing he’d expected. And the most welcome. “Yes!”

  Dan seems startled by Tim’s enthusiasm. “Oh…it is a great excuse to get to know the neighbors. Let you all inside the Murder House to see there are no poltergeists. Am I right?”

  Tim contemplates the familiar brick monstrosity looming behind Dan’s head. The starlings that nest in the ivy sound miked but even they could be phantoms. They’re nowhere in sight.

  “Am I right?” Dan repeats, more tentatively.

  Tim holds up two empty palms. The sky weighs a ton. Aside from his infancy in Ohio and the two-month marriage spent in Dayton Towers (Far Rockaway), Tim has lived his whole life here, next door. “Honestly? I’ve only been inside once.”

  “You’re not serious?” Dan hugs the empty tray to his chest.

  “Yes. I am.”

  “And that time?”

  “Some other time.” The night of the Golden Venture. That’s twice it’s appeared in one day, after Tim has pushed the scene from his mind for years and years. “Let’s just say I wasn’t invited.” Let’s just never say I busted through the back door after hearing a gunshot to find Gary falling onto his suitcase, blood spurting from his eyeball, while Rose put the smoking gun in a dead Chinese man’s hands.