Child of My Right Hand (11 page)

“Maybe I will advance money against your paycheck. But just this once, because you haven't been paid yet.”

Simon lifted his bleeding pater off the pavement.

“But why do you need so much? Fifty dollars for the movies?”

Simon dropped his dad like a hot rock. “What does it matter? It's my money.”

“No.” Dad braked and moved towards the exit ramp. “It's my money, which you want to borrow. Who is this Peter anyway?”

“A kid from school.”

Simon looked straight into Dad's eyes, daring him to ask more.

“Are you paying for him?”

“Why would I?”

“Just wondering why you need fifty dollars.” But Dad didn't say it very loudly and he didn't say anything else, like Is this a date? So Simon knew he'd get the money.

***

In Yevgeny's small waiting room, Simon sat across from Dad and flipped through an old
People
. Classical guitar runs ran towards them from the nearest lesson room. In another, a beginner played C, G, then A major scales on a piano, over and over again. Down the hall, in Yevgeny's studio, the tall redhead whose lesson preceded Simon's trilled some Italian aria. For reasons Simon didn't understand it seemed to be Little Italy week in Yevgeny's Kiev-by-Kenwood; his new piece was “Se Vuol Ballare,” from
The Marriage of Figaro
. Simon disliked opera. Musical theater, he loved. *NSYNC. He'd been telling his parents for years, but did they respect his opinion? No, they listened to Yevgeny who said Simon had a vone in a million instrument for opera, but too much jellybelly to dance.

Simon glanced from the photo of Jennifer and Brad (was he ever hot) down at the watermelon pressing out from inside his green Old Navy tee. He wore a collared over-shirt to obscure his middle, but there was no hiding that he was a fat boy with tree trunk thighs and a massive chest, when all he desired was to be skinny and cute like Brad Pitt or even better, like Jennifer Aniston. He also wanted his parents to get off their collective butt and find him an agent so he could become famous like the guys from his old school in 98 Degrees. But no, he had to sing opera, about which no one under sixty gave a rat's ass.

Down the hall marched Yevgeny and the soprano.

“…next weekend,” she was saying, “I have to…”

The soprano was bony-kneed, tall, and skinny. Yevgeny's dark eyes found Simon and his face splintered in a grin.

“Leave message on machine,” he said to the redhead without looking at her. “Simon, how heve you been? Everyting good?”

Simon turned to his father, praying he'd keep quiet. Simon followed Yevgeny to his studio, which housed a grand piano, floor to ceiling bookcases, a cassette recorder, and a large desk piled with newspapers and sheet music in half a dozen languages. Yevgeny's thick hair fell almost to his shoulders. He sat at the piano and played scales. Simon sang the ascending notes making the full, resonant sound Yevgeny taught.

“Not here, here,” Yevgeny had shown him years ago, sliding his hand from Simon's throat to his diaphragm. “Make sound like growling bear. Natural sound.”

They warmed up for ten minutes. Yevy kept after him to relax his jaw. “Why so tense, boy like you? You have girlfriend? Girlfriend make you tense?”

No, Simon wanted to say. But I hope to have boyfriend.

They skipped the recitative—what a relief, Simon didn't know the words yet—and moved to the main section of the aria. He didn't know what it meant, word for word, but Mom had explained this evil Count whom Figaro worked for was putting moves on his girlfriend. Figaro was pissed, but couldn't show it because the Count could have him killed, then really do the nasty with his true love. So Figaro had to figure out how to get the Duke or Count, whatever he was, without letting on how mad he was. Simon could relate. It was like fighting with your parents, who were always saying it was their house, their money, so they made the rules.

“Simon,” Yevgeny asked. “You ready?”

He nodded and Yevgeny played an intro, swaying over the keys then looking up through his dark hair.

Simon sang, “Se vuol bal-la-re, si-gnor con-ti-no.”

You know what it was really like? Simon thought, and it was so weird. He was singing and thinking at the same time as if he were two different people. The person stood apart from the instrument, which filled the room, the tone rich, round, and large, like the low notes on the organ in the Plum Street temple in Cincinnati. It was like being gay, and someone who doesn't know asks about your girlfriend and you have to smile and pretend whoever she was really was your girlfriend. Or it was like asking Peter to hang out, the movies, whatever, and hoping he understood that what you really wanted wasn't going to the movies. Slow, devious and smart was Simon Barish, just like Figaro.

Now Yevy glanced up at him, the instrument him, peering through a mask of hair, playing with just his left, his cupped right hand signaling near his throat, open up, open up, the fingers unbending like an old man's, because here came the high note, the F which he couldn't hit but Yevgeny said he could, Ef only he vouldn't tighten his throat and jaw.

“Il chi-tar-ri-no le suo-ne-ro, si.”

He sang and tried not to strain and imagined putting his hand on Peter's shoulder as if it meant nothing, Peter shyly covering his mouth with his hand,

“Le suo-ne-ro si!”

as the F expanded out of the other Simon's throat like silver underwater bubbles floating up to the light.

When he finished, Yevgeny grinned “Not bad. Vhat you think?”

“I hit the F,” Simon said, coming back to himself.

“Yesss.” Yevgeny laughed. “Pretty damn good, for American boy. Now this time,” he winked, “even better.”

***

It happened so fast Simon didn't know what he'd done. One moment he was dumping a basket of nuggets. Several had lodged in the corner, and Fry Guy always got every one. He raised the fryer basket, shook and shook harder. His left forearm brushed the heat lamp; his skin sizzled like meat. Simon screamed, dropped the basket, and stared at his smoking arm as Helen came running.

“It was so hot,” he was saying hours later to Peter in the back of Mom's minivan driving to the movies, “it didn't hurt. The skin just bubbled and fell off.”

“That is so weird.”

“Look.” Simon turned on the overhead reading lamp. He moved his arm until the mini spotlight illuminated his hairless forearm (shaved that morning), and let the light play the length of the pink scar. It ran for maybe six inches, the width of the coil, swooping and graceful, before doubling back on itself.

“It looks like an S.” Peter touched Simon's wrist with a slender finger. “S for Simon, Super Simon.” Peter smiled and covered his mouth with his hand.

“I wasn't feeling very super. I was screaming and running around. My arm was smoking,” Simon made a face like Jim Carrey in that movie. “Then Helen, that's the manager, asked where it hurt most, did I want to go to the emergency room, and I realized it didn't hurt much at all. My skin just singed off. Like eyelashes.”

“That is so weird,” Peter said.

He liked the way Peter said weird. “That's why we could pick you up. I got off early.”

“And because your mom is so nice,” Mom called from the front, glancing in the rearview.

Simon rolled his eyes and grinned at Peter, who didn't look away or cover his mouth. Simon remembered the shock of the burning coil then Peter's cool finger, and his heart beat faster. He wondered, if he touched Peter's hand in the movies in the dark, would Peter hold his hand or pull away? He was betting, hold his hand?

Genna dropped Simon and Peter in front of the Rialto. As they entered the theater side-by-side, Simon inclined his big face towards Peter and whispered. Peter smiled. Watching, Genna felt so happy and fearful for her son, she had a crazy notion. Buy a ticket and sneak in to watch the boys watch the movie. Simon was seventeen and this was his first date. Oh, how she loved her big strange boy!

She remembered little Simon, so cute and serious, imploring her, “Please, Mommy, don't sing!” Re-imagining him tonight in the back seat with Peter, ten times as large as his former self though still cute, she smiled, then put the Town and Country in gear. Instead of turning towards home, she started out of town towards Indiana. Genna had always enjoyed driving. But since last winter when she drove night after night, the Woman Who Drove, she craved the van's quiet, the plush front seat, the whispering of rubber rolling over empty blacktop. She couldn't think as well if she weren't in the car, or perhaps she thought simultaneously of too many things unless half her mind was occupied with the minutiae of locomotion: steering, signaling, which way to turn, how fast, how slow, her life's problems weeded by the dialectic of pedals, gas and brake.

The Town and Country nosed past housing developments which soon became farmers' fields that would someday yield more developments. This afternoon she'd phoned her brother Billy. Forty-three years old, and frankly never all that smart, Billy had done extremely well: senior executive vice-president of the largest commercial bank in St. Louis. Billy had employed his charms and the power of Daddy's connections, who were happy to do for the son what they couldn't or wouldn't do for the father. Or maybe Billy was brighter than she gave him credit for. He was certainly personable and athletic. In high school, he'd starred in football, basketball, and golf, and still shot in the seventies. Then there was Billy's smile. Billy smiled, and the heavens applauded. His dark hair was now attractively silver at the temples, and he possessed, oh, she didn't know, a certain social grace, which made even the jocks he'd hung around with in high school content to lose to him. Billy had also inherited their mother's elegant jaw and long limbs.

In high school, it would have been easy to hate him. He was homecoming king his junior and senior years, for God's sake, and although she was a year ahead everyone thought of her as Billy's sister, not the other way around. But despite it all, an all which had included freshmen girls accosting her to gush, “Ooh, you're Billy's sister. What's he really like?” she didn't hate him and never would. Billy was warm-hearted, a good brother and a loving son, who supported Daddy in a manner to which he'd happily become accustomed.

As adults, sometimes even Genna had trouble remembering that Billy was the younger sibling. Credit the Rolls, the bank job, the twin girls in private schools, the stay-at-home wife, the large house in Ladue.

Genna's minivan purred past corn fields stubbled brown. Smoke plumed from a chimney on the next rise. After the rain on Election Night, the weather had turned; for the first time all fall, the wind blew coat-piercingly cold from the north. That's what had prompted her to call Billy. Although the families rarely gathered at Thanksgiving, Genna wanted to. And because she needed Daddy there, and in the eight years she'd lived in Ohio she'd only coaxed one visit out of him, she'd thought it best to ask Billy to invite them to St. Louis.

“Delighted to, Sis.”

Sis, what he'd called her since always. In high school, he'd tried out Sissy—he had a crush on the actress—but she wouldn't respond. For a year or two after she finished her degree, he'd called her Doctor Sis, which she had rather liked.

“Carolyn's whole family is coming, I can sure use some back-up.”

Then in her study and now in the front seat of her dark van as she passed a welcome sign, Indiana—The Hoosier State, Genna imagined the ironic twist of her brother's lips. He barely tolerated Carolyn's parents, especially his mother-in-law.

“Will Daddy be there?”

“Of course,” Billy answered. “With Gwen.”

Gwen, whom she'd never met, was Daddy's current friend. Women of a certain age and social class found Daddy excellent company; there had been quite a few friends since Doris died twenty-two years ago next May.

“If you want,” Billy added, “I'll invite the aunts. It'll be a proper family reunion.”

“What will Carolyn think?”

“She won't much like it. Damn, I put up with her family year-round, she can put up with mine on turkey day.”

In the awkward silence, she heard Billy sip from an ice-filled glass.

“I'm kidding, Sis. Do you want to stay with us?” He hesitated. “It might be a bit snug.”

What nonsense, a snug six-bedroom house. “We'll stay at the Holiday Inn. The kids like the pool.”

“Great, Sis. It'll be fun.”

Replacing the receiver, she remembered Billy in high school. Short, nearly-black hair, his slash of a smile. Twenty-five years later he employed the same cheery teenage phrases. Great, Sis. Genna checked the illuminated dashboard clock. She'd been driving for forty minutes. Tipton Professor Disappears in Indiana. She sometimes imagined she could drive for days and no one would notice except Simon, who'd wonder why his laundry wasn't done. No, Jack would miss her. So would Lizzie, and Sam would miss his morning runs. Jews, she thought, searching for a place to turn around, at least the Jews in Jack's family, would never suggest a close family member stay in a motel. Cultural difference, she thought, directing the Town and Country into a cutout in a farmer's field. Genna reversed, then started back towards Ohio. A full moon just above the treetops spilled light across the bare fields. Beautiful in an empty way, she thought. Like Marla. Then she put that woman out of her mind and drove towards Tipton where she planned to sip chai in a coffee house until Simon and Peter's movie let out.

***

When Genna and Simon came through the kitchen door Jack was in the family room watching
Saturday Night Live
with Lizzie. He bounced up from the couch as if there were a spring attached to his substantial bottom, and Lizzie's eyes swung towards him, as if to say, Don't get all crazy, Dad. Then she looked back to the screen where the president was being lampooned. Jack and Lizzie had spent the evening together, as they frequently did before boys and teenagerdom had snuck up the Barish driveway. Over the years they'd had such fun; Lizzie was the easy child, which might have been nothing more than Lizzie fitting in around Simon's vast psychic shadow. Competing with Simon must have been like trying to arm-wrestle an earthquake. Lizzie couldn't have known what to grab or which way to push. From time to time they'd worry, lying in bed before sleep, that Lizzie was too out of touch with what she thought or felt, though wasn't it remarkably convenient that she was so undemanding.

But Jack had always thought Lizzie's easiness was more than how difficult Simon was. She was more like him. More like Genna, too. (Though Simon looked more like him than tall, lithe Lizzie ever would.) Better at school. More athletic. More psychically and perhaps, more genetically in tune; if their DNA were unraveled and lined up side-by-side then sequenced, any lab tech could look and see, Yes, yes, I see how we got there from here.

That evening, even if she hadn't been attuned to her dear old dad (or Boppa, as she'd taken to calling him, introducing Jack with a smirk to her new eighth-grade friends as Boppa Barish; “Isn't my Boppa a cuddly old bear?”), she couldn't have missed how upset he was. Every ten or fifteen minutes he'd jumped up to check the driveway to see if Genna were returning.

“Maybe Mom decided to go to the movies,” Lizzie suggested after his third or fourth trip upstairs. “Or maybe she's out driving.” He looked at her warily. As a family, they hadn't discussed the events of last winter, but the kids must have their suspicions. “You know how Mom likes to drive.”

“I guess that's it,” he'd said, and pulled her close. “How's your new school? Tell me the truth now.”

“The kids tease me about Simon.”

“You want me to talk to the principal?”

“Dad.” She regarded him with that new, half-pitying teenage smile. “I've been teased my whole life about Simon. I can take it.”

What a heartbreaker she was going to be some day. Those dark, dark eyes. He said, “I love you, Lizzie.” Then, remembering hearing Lizzie use the word, Jack added, “You're the bomb.”

She laughed. “The bomb.” She shook her head. “I love you, too, Boppa.”

Now, with Genna and Simon's voices falling down the stairs, he suspected Lizzie was right. Genna had been out driving. But why, and with whom, if anyone, he hadn't a clue.

Jack hurried up the basement stairs and nearly banged into Simon who was coming down.

“How was the movie?”

“Awesome.”

“Awesome good or bad?” he called after Simon's broad shoulders as they dropped from view. Simon didn't answer, instead headed for the couch where he demanded the remote from his sister.

“NO!” Lizzie shouted. “I'm watching this.”

Jack abandoned the kids to their nightly battle for electronic dominance. In the kitchen Genna was pouring a glass of white wine from last night's bottle.

“Where were you?”

“Sipping chai in Java, the new coffee house.”

“For two and half hours?”

She glanced at him, gray-eyed, over her glass. “I lost track of time.”

On Election Night, Jack had returned long after all returns were in. The next morning, he explained he'd lost track of time while celebrating the levy's victory. He said, “I was worried.”

“You have nothing to worry about.”

Or was that,
You
have nothing to worry about. Jack was unused to such obliqueness. The old Genna would have blurted what was on her mind. He almost said, You have nothing to worry about, either. Instead, he replied, “I'm glad you're safe,” and emptied the Chardonnay into his own glass.

Later, with their television tuned to a
Golden Girls
rerun, Genna and Jack sat up bolstered by large pillows. On the screen, gravel-voiced Bea Arthur was explaining to Rose that Blanche went through men as if they were a box of chocolates, sometimes not even bothering to unwrap them before eating.

“How was Simon's date?”

“I don't think he'd call it a date. But it went extremely well.”

“I wonder,” Jack moved his right leg closer to Genna's left, “if we can get in trouble if Simon becomes sexually active.”

“How?”

Their knees touched. “For pandering.” He dropped a hand on Genna's upper thigh. “These boys are all underage.”

“I don't see how.” Genna turned towards him, and if she'd noticed his hand or felt his knee she gave no sign. “Unless every parent of a sexually-active teen could get in the same trouble.”

“Don't be naive.”

“It's been a long time since I've been naive.” She placed her hand on his knee.

Jack glanced at his wife's hand then back up at her face. “How about horny?”

“Watch the television,” she said, smiling, “and give the kids a chance to fall asleep.”

Later, much later, since it had become almost impossible to out-wait the children, who tended to stay up later than their parents, nor did it seem plausible to enter their rooms and order them to sleep so their parents could have a noisy sex life, they'd made love quickly and quietly—efficiently came to mind—and were about to fall asleep when Genna said, “I spoke to Billy. We're invited to St. Louis for Thanksgiving.”

Jack snapped awake and wondered if this was why she'd come on to him. “You know I don't like going there.”

“Of course, I know.” Her voice sounded disembodied, blooming out of the dark. “But they're my family, and I'd like the kids to know them.”

Jack thought about the first time he'd met her parents, the Judge pickling himself, her mother thin, almost gaunt, wasting away but still elegant, as if trying to disprove the adage about the impossibility of being too thin or too rich, which they clearly weren't although the Gordons liked to pretend otherwise. Lying beside Genna he had a sense, sudden and brutal, of what he had felt arriving for the first time in that funky, falling down manse, feeling so completely the outsider, the Jew, with a capital J, New York New Money, which he had decided was better than no money at all.

In the short time he knew Doris, he'd come to like her, perhaps more than Genna did.

“Jack,” Genna whispered, her voice floating towards him so feathery light it would not have moved tracing paper in front of her lips, so gentle, in fact, he would not have sworn he'd heard it until she added, “Are you still awake?”

“Barely.”

“I want to learn about my biological father. I'm going to ask Daddy.”

“Good,” he murmured, but didn't ask, Why now? Not because he thought he knew (he didn't), but because he could feel sleep advancing so rapidly he couldn't form words. “Good,” he repeated, and looped an arm over her breasts, gave the right one a friendly squeeze.

“So I want you there, and I don't want you to make a scene.”

“Unh,” Jack mumbled, and then he was gone, pressed up against her. And if she explained herself it was only to the dark and his slumberous embrace.

***

Mom and Dad bundled them into the car pronto, crack o' dawn, the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. Simon had often observed to Lizzie, when he was condescending to speak to her, how totally gung-ho Mom and Dad were about school. You had to do this, blah-blah. You had to do that, blah-blah-blah or the sky would f-ing fall and you'd be grounded until you were twenty-one—unless it interfered with their travel plans. Then it was fine to ditch for a day or two or three. So it had been up and out at seven, the minivan loaded the night before. Simon had stumbled into the garage carrying blankets and pillows and claimed the back seat (Lizzie always said she couldn't sleep in cars, anyway). Fine, Mom called from up front, but she had it next.