Swell Page 9
“Tell me about it. I already failed Health once, fall term.”
They laugh for no reason.
“I’m surprised Tim let you in,” Kenny says. “I mean, the class is half over. Regina and I are pretty advanced.”
“I’ve driven a lot,” June lies, tonight having been only her third time. “Who the fuck is Regina?”
“You’ll see.” Kenny reaches for the bottle. “Still can’t get this thing to float?”
“I can…I just—I decided to change my message.”
“Too derivative?”
“Time to dial back on that SAT prep, Kenneth.”
He moves closer. His hair smells like burned wood, but how? June looks from him to the party and back again.
“Yeah, I was just over there making a delivery.”
“Of Cipro? Why would they want—”
“Not Cipro.”
“You deal pot too?”
Kenny squeezes his face as if pained. “Do you really think I’m that common?”
“Um.” June doesn’t know what to say. She doesn’t know the difference. Dealing this or that; who cares? Here she had Kenny cast as the stock nerd character and now he’s turning into someone with…layers. Plus, it seems to be getting warmer even though it’s night. Her heartbeat synchronizes to the pulse of the lighthouse. Not really, but it’s a nice line. Words matter. She bailed on what was Friday dinner and is now Shabbat. The lighthouse is named Ambrose. Kenny says it’s called a bonfire from the days when they burned bones.
“They who?”
Abruptly the party radio stops, which jacks up the ocean volume. June has to lean in to hear his whispered reply. “I don’t know, June. Let’s go back to my garage lab and research.”
“Think again, bad-dialogue man. You shot me with a BB from that garage window!”
An accident, Kenny claims. Or, alternatively, “That was my brother Ritchie.” Kenny strokes her collarbone, smiling. “Did you just call me bad-dialogue man?”
“I have a boyfriend,” June lies. Kenny’s fingertips are surprisingly callused.
“Oh yeah? What’s his name?”
“Jake.” It’s the first thing to pop into June’s head. Luckily, Kenny can’t see her best friend’s Friday-night uniform—tuxedo shirt, skintight red jeans, glue-on rhinestone eyelashes.
June heaves the bottle once more, aiming for a small silvery puddle the moon is making. Once again, after a few bobs, it’s riding the next wave in. They both dive for it, legs zingy with cold, tangling in the shallow, bubbled surf. June cannot let him get it. If it wound up at the party, if her message was passed around the fire for all those local girls to read—
Being popular means never having to say you’re sorry.
Bottle in hand, June races up toward her backpack, but her waterlogged Pumas are so slow. When she’s halfway there, Kenny catches her skirt and they tumble. Cool sand molds to June’s limbs. Her wet feet and shins are numb.
“Let’s make Jake jealous,” he says as she struggles unconvincingly beneath him. So he believes her fib? Perf! Knowing more than the antagonist makes the audience feel smart, ergo invested.
Kenny probes the gap between her front teeth with his tongue, says, “I expected you to taste like cinnamon.” Whether this means she does or does not is unclear. His flavor is beer-and-barbecue-potato-chip-ish.
“Bite me!” A stray voice carries from the party. This gives June the idea to do just that, bite, then run. A much-needed bit of drama? But then a second, more commanding voice—Tim’s?—shouts, “Listen up!” and she imagines being here with Tim instead of Kenny, underneath Tim and his big hero hands, her mouth on his Adam’s apple, rashy with stubble.
“Vampires turn into redheads after death,” that old lady at her house all day said.
“So that explains you.” Kenny pulls out a pack of glow-in-the-dark condoms. He’s working through a case of them, a gift from his dad for his perfect GPA. Well, almost perfect. Like he said, he has to repeat Health. Unzipping his pants, he mimics the horrible Queens accent of their teacher, Nurse Riva: “Leave a half inch of space at the end and slowly unrolll to the base of the pea-nis.”
June pictures Nurse Riva’s corpselike complexion, white as the chalk dust that smudges her vast polyester suit and settles into a fine sediment lining every surface from the hot-pink plastic fallopian tubes to her stained GOD BLESS AMERICA coffee cup.
In the back row, stoner types fake know-it-all boredom. In the front, embarrassed innocents blush. In the middle, the “immatour majority,” as Nurse Riva calls June and Kenny’s ilk, disintegrate into silliness. “I wanted a zucchini.” “Your cuke’s thicker.” Then come giggle fits, vegetable duels, condom balloons.
June’s giggling now as Kenny’s hands push under her skirt—short, navy, pleated. A hip look, back in her old neighborhood. But Kenny informs June “as a favor” that around here, people confuse it for part of a Catholic-school uniform. And that thought makes June too weary to move, though her mouth says, “No, cut it out, stop.”
“Don’t say that.” Kenny breathes heavily. “If you say that, you’ll be letting the terrorists win.” He yanks aside her sandy underwear, taking advantage of her laughing fit—that comment! She’s rolling around, practically gasping. And before she can either push him off or summon the fantasy of Tim again, it’s done. Too clumsy to hurt. Too quick to protest. Over without the O(rgasm).
The essence of anticlimactic.
“I made a mess inside June-ie!” Kenny crows, scooping up the bottle and chucking it jubilantly far, far into the sea. There’s that, at least. It’s on its way. “I made a mess inside June-ie!”
This reminds them both to check on their eggs.
“What the fuck?” Kenny says, suddenly on his feet, pants zipped. A bulky shape totters toward them, calling June’s name. “Is that—fuck! Is that your mother?”
In the dark, the globe of Sue’s belly appears eerily detached from the rest of her. And there must be some new kind of special effects, because her voice seems like it’s coming from her navel. “June? June? Are you here, June?”
“Go away,” June shrieks, thankful no one can see her whole body blushing.
“Ah, you are here…why didn’t you—oh, hello, Kenny.”
The way Kenny bows and says, “Good evening,” makes June go back to hating him. She already hates her mother, hunting her down in a way she’d never dare in Manhattan. Because? “You’re a psycho! Go!”
“Aren’t you hungry?” Mom asks. Behind her, a second shape moves toward them. God, not Dad too! No, Tim!
“Tim! For Chrissake! Are you following me?” Mom has the idiocy to object. “You are everywhere!”
Well, yeah! Of course! He’s the protagonist! Come to rescue her from no-good dealer/player/nimrod Kenny Mole-Kacy. It’s Mom who’s in the way. Not even a plot-advancing minor part, just some fat extra, slowing down production.
“I was just, um, checking on that bonfire,” Tim says, turning to look behind him. Oddly, the party seems to have gone the way of a Scout meeting. Ten or so kids now sit or lie on the sand, holding hands, doing what?
“Burning the bones,” June says, turning to Kenny. Alas, the dark schemer has slipped into the night. She wonders if it’s something bad like heroin or truth serum he’s dealing. At least that virgin thing is over with.
“Looks nice,” Mom says of the gathering. “Are you going?”
* * *
It’s not just June who doesn’t want Sue around. Sage also dismisses her. She wants Daddy. Only Daddy can put her and imaginary Ed to bed. “Only Daddy and Ed also love sparkles.”
So Sue retreats into the dining room to sit with the cross at her back. Or the contour of the cross. Rose must have taken the object with her to assisted living, leaving the dark shape on the sun-bleached green wallpaper. Without turning around, Sue can see it there, burning, over the hideous marble sideboard. Meanwhile, from the table, Rabbi Larry’s completed questionnaire stares.
What do you
know about Judaism?
One God. Persecution. The Ten Commandments. Holiday basics.
The broken door is distracting. The wind blows it open, then partly shut, with a sound like someone tripping up stairs. Out there, the fire and a weak comma of a moon are the only lights.
Why do you want to be a convert?
Home ownership. (If she has to be a fraud, she’ll at least be an honest one.)
Because I promised.
Love.
Are you being pressured to become a Jew?
Yes.
Her answers probably won’t stun the rabbi. “Given our history,” he said that first time they met, “we can’t afford to be exclusive.” Then he drove off to his Friday golf with Sy, Dan, and…Bob Baum. The rabbi had to remember this encounter. If the fact that she’s Sy’s daughter-in-law weren’t enough, her red hair should have clinched it. Sue regularly has to pretend she recognizes people who remember her from “the hair.”
She folds the paper and lays it atop her stack of books—Dan’s bar mitzvah Bible, Midrash texts, Jewish Conversion for Dummies. Studying them has unexpectedly brought her pleasure but a competing impulse says to torch them in that beach fire. The hubris of men! She’ll show them! If it’s a Jew they want…
Sue gets to her feet to try and fasten the door, then sways, momentarily losing her footing. For a second, she actually forgot she was pregnant. Impossible. When did she last feel the baby move?
A starling unleashes a lengthy song—pure tones, assorted clicks, bits of melody, and even mimicry of the back door knocking open, banging shut. Sue thinks about how she’d score these sounds. Castanets, piccolo. A wooden stick attacking a timpani? Out on the lawn, there are no birds, but, dimly, she can make out other fluid forms. Blacky coming through the hedge, plants pushed around in breezes, Tim’s friends taking off again. “Later, Butter.” “Take it easy, man.” They toss a—ball? Hat? Keys?—casually between them, gliding in the limber, uncomplicated way of boys, the boy Dan vainly craves. Vainly and in vain.
Sue prays for her unborn daughter to kick her.
Two
Today Is Yesterday Tomorrow
Saturday, June 15, 2002
NEVER MIND THAT an asteroid just missed hitting the planet. The radio report was cut short for “Breaking news: President Bush on the White House lawn urges Americans to exercise!”
“What kind of exercise?” Sue asks, completely missing Dan’s point. When there is space junk zooming toward you, it’s nice to have a heads-up. (Ditto rogue waves, hijacked planes, pandemics.) Dan wishes he had brought the radio out here onto the stoop. Sue said she only needed his help “for a sec” and now it’s been at least fifteen minutes.
But someone needs to hold the instructions if she’s going to hang the mezuzah properly. “Shoulder-high on the doorway.” Whose shoulder? Hers. At the bottom of the upper third of the right doorpost. So-and-so inches from blah-blah. Let her just cut away some more ivy. The plant is enveloping the house like a net.
“Or maybe it’s what’s holding the place together,” Dan says, still distracted by the idea of an asteroid big enough to destroy a major city yet small enough to avoid detection.
Sue suggests he make himself useful, so Dan adjusts his stance, shielding his bikini-clad wife from the sporadic parade of beachgoers, dog walkers, and haunted-house geeks who travel down this city street. Warm day; warm for June. Every head does a double take at the profile of the pale baby bump ballooning between the two halves of her swimsuit. Not sure whether to wave or swear at the rubberneckers, Dan alternates between both while Sue hacks away at the plant.
“That’s a very good knife you’re wrecking—is that…from the set Aunt Ruth gave us?” A wedding gift he still feels is too nice to use, almost two decades later.
“No,” Sue says. “Not that I’d care.” She despises Ruth (famously overheard saying “interfaith marriage is doing Hitler’s work”) and is indifferent to objects in general. “I found this one in a drawer.” Perhaps the mezuzah is like a prophylactic charm meant to protect them from the next time Rose and Bibi appear—tomorrow? The day after? The day after that? Because they’re back. And Sue is not happy.
At seven thirty, Dan heard the Ford Fiesta rumble into the driveway; everyone else was still asleep. First thing Monday, he planned to find a new doorbell (what was Sy thinking?), but first thing Monday is far away when you’re listening to the digital “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow.” Dan rushed outside to greet the pair to spare the sleeping people more of it. With all the sand in his bed, the shuffling in the walls, the birds in the ivy, and pre-party nerves, he’d been up for hours already. He’d shaved, made coffee, and was two items into his shopping list—ice, cheese…
Dan opened the door still holding the pen.
“Ready to sign up?” Bibi asked, standing before him like a glam fortune-teller—dark hair swirled into her usual turban, full makeup, sheer mauve tunic, and harem pants. At the bottom of the stoop, Rose sat in her wheelchair, glaring up at the aide. Dan could see straight down through the no-color hair to her hot-pink scalp—Like a baboon’s butt is what came to mind. Nonetheless, Rose’s outfit killed. The highlight: an old red cowboy shirt whose white fringes matched her white pants, oversize white sunglasses, white pocketbook. “Aren’t you looking smart today, Rose? I think you’re getting younger.”
You could study how the comment unfolded her, could see her posture improve, a flush rush to her cheeks, a gleam of teeth. “So far this is the oldest I’ve been!” Only Rose’s round brown eyes messed with the good vibe, fixed unblinkingly on Bibi, a few menacing beats too long. “No beauty help from Sticky Fingers over here. First my bracelet, now my lipstick.” Rose’s dry, colorless mouth puckered. “Consider yourself warned.”
Naturally, Bibi denied all charges. What would she want with Rose’s bracelet or used cosmetics or any of the other ridiculous things she’s been accused of stealing—a hunk of Gorgonzola, a cheap Chinese fan! This house! “Do you see me moving in here? Maybe if you’d stop spitting out your meds and put in your hearing aid, you wouldn’t be so paranoid.”
Determined to stay out of it, Dan gathered the rolled-up newspapers lying at his feet. Not the Times and the Journal (he had never got around to rerouting them) but the Post and the Wave, both addressed to Vincent Impoliteri.
“Did you hear about the asteroid?” Dan asked, picturing the president being briefed on the threat and calmly continuing with his one-handed push-ups. Were there newspapers piled high in their former Tribeca mailroom? he wondered. For sure, the real estate agent would clear them when showing the place. But who’d be looking at it? Secretly, Dan had begun to hope no one, finding comfort in the option of returning. Against all reason, Dan had felt…safer there.
Descending the stoop, he was struck with the fun-house sensation that the stairs were separating themselves from the house. On closer inspection, the concrete was, in fact, severely cracked and gouged.
“Might be the Mole-Kacy boys smashing them up with their nunchucks,” Rose says, as if this were a real possibility.
This launched Bibi into a play-by-play of yesterday’s struggle to carry the wheelchair up the stoop—Rose nearly toppling to her death and Kenny Mole-Kacy to the rescue. “To be clear, that is not part of my job description. There’ll be no heavy lifting today.”
“Today is yesterday tomorrow,” Rose sang. “But okay, wheel me round back. I want to check how my garden’s coming.”
Fast-forward three hours and ten degrees and the stress over this, plus the house and the impending party (bread crumbs in the oven! He completely forgot!), and Dan’s really not feeling this mezuzah thing.
“Some day of rest,” he says, envying all the neighbors passing the house en route to the beach—“We should do like those people!”—toting striped umbrellas, wheeled coolers, inflatable whatnots. Instead, Sue has him grunting over the intractable ivy. The stuff may look romantic, but, they’ve discovered, it bores through the grout between the bricks, not
to mention serves as a convenient highway for all manner of small creatures. At their feet, a pile of the shredded vines oozes with snails, ants, and aphids. “‘Six days do your work, but on the seventh’…”
“I was resting,” Sue reminds him. “Until I saw those women. At least you could have warned me.” First thing in the morning, there they were again—Rose and Bibi by the tree. Sue was so startled, she splashed steaming tea on her thigh. And with Dan gone (to the store), she had to literally fight off the aide’s medical assistance.
Should have taken it, Dan thinks, scanning the cockamamie bandage Sue has fashioned for her burn from toilet paper and duct tape.
“Look, I don’t know what went down with this house and Rose and Bob Baum,” Sue says. “But after yesterday? Why, why would you let them back in?”
“I’m a decent person?”
Already Dan can hear Rose invoking her Jewish friends the Baums if and when she sees this mezuzah. Any mention of Judaism leads Rose right to her “double-crossing” Jewish friends, the Baums. Had that dweeby Bob with his corduroy bow ties really helped Maureen trick Rose into selling her house?
Sue wipes a sweaty hand on Dan’s polo shirt. “If I had seen Bob at temple, I—”
“Temple?”
“Temple, synagogue, whatever. I assume the Baums belong to the same one as Sy.”
“You skipped your OB appointment? For temple?”
“Bob would know who I am, wouldn’t he?”
“Who are you?” Temple? Mezuzah? Up half the night reading Dan’s old bar mitzvah Bible with a mug of tea and a highlighter like it’s a college text on which she’ll be graded? (Sue is the daughter of two professors, after all.) “The question isn’t rhetorical.” Dan really doesn’t know. Factor in Sue’s bikini and bandaged leg, the explosion of rusty curls, sun-bleached eyebrows, and a glitter-mermaid forearm tattoo (courtesy of Sage), and a Jewish pirate is what she most resembles—“Just slap on an eye patch, grab a parrot, and you’re ready to set sail to Israel with Ed.”