The Smart One (18 page)

Kenny was pacing, angrily. “I thought I had that fucking job sewn up, but my agent told me she just found out another guy came into the picture.”

“What does that mean?”

“Apparently there’s only ‘room’ for one of us.” He used air quotes to illustrate his disdain. “And that talentless fucker used to work for Jon Stewart.”

“You know the guy?”

“He’s a dick.”

“Is he funny?”

“Not even a little.”

“So what are you worried about?”

“Did you hear what I said?” Kenny shouted. “He worked for
Jon fucking Stewart
!”

“Don’t get mad at
me
.”

Kenny angrily pulled off his white T-shirt and threw it on the floor. He grabbed another shirt from his drawer—a red one—and started waving it as he talked. “The guy ass-kisses his way into every job. Never wrote a single funny line in his life, but has a resume I’d
kill
for.”

His threw the red shirt on the bed and sat down. “If I don’t get that job my career is
fucked
.” He balled his fists and banged his knee. This, I knew, was the flip side of his funny. If Kenny wasn’t coping, he was angry. There was no sad and disappointed, no sullen and melancholy. He was either fine or he was furious.

I should have remembered that Kenny’s temper needs to run its course and that I simply could not comfort him, but I felt like he needed me, and so I approached.

“You’ll probably get the job, Kenny. Letterman wants somebody who can write funny jokes, not someone who can kiss his ass.”

He sneered. “How would
you
know?”

“Because you don’t get that successful by surrounding yourself with sycophants.”

“The great and powerful Oz has spoken,” he said.

“Don’t be so sarcastic.”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s mean and it makes you sound like…”

His eyes got wild. “Like my father?”

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.” I sat down on the
bed next to him and rubbed his bare back to try to soothe him.

He grabbed my wrist. “Don’t do that unless you mean it.”

I stood, but he didn’t release me.

“Let go,” I said.

He stood too, still holding me tightly by the wrist.

“Do you want to fuck or not?” He put the index finger from his free hand between my breasts and hooked it around the towel. The slightest movement and it would give and fall to the floor.

“Don’t do this,” I said.

He didn’t move either hand. He just put his face into my neck and kissed it. Then he licked it. I shivered. He breathed into my ear, “Well?”

My head rolled to the side. “Well what?”

“I’m still waiting for an answer.” He nibbled my earlobe.

My breathing started to quicken. “What was the question again?”

“Do you want to fuck or not?” His finger tugged the slightest bit at my towel.

Every cell in my physical being said yes. My flesh was ignited and my crotch pulsated in anticipation.

“No,” I said.

“You sure?”

I paused. It was the moment of reckoning and I couldn’t make a decision.

“I don’t know,” I finally said.

That was all he needed. He jerked his finger forward and my towel fell to the floor. Within seconds he had me pinned to the bed by both my wrists while he sucked and bit my nipples. I writhed against him, moaning, expecting the excruciating ecstasy of anticipation to continue until I was begging for mercy, like last time. But he kicked off his pants quickly,
rolled on a condom and entered me hard, his eyes black and unfocused. He thrust angrily, holding onto my breasts while he pushed and pushed as if trying to hurt me, until one final violent plunge so deep he succeeded. I cried out and he was done.

He rolled off of me and covered his eyes with his arm. “I’m sorry,” he said, but remained hidden. He wouldn’t even look at me.

I got out of bed without speaking and went into the bathroom to clean off and get dressed. When I came out, he was asleep, his mouth open, his arm still covering his eyes.

I put my travel bag on my shoulder, grabbed his car keys, and left.

The hotel concierge gave me easy directions to the hospital, so I was able to follow them…despite the fact that mascara dripped into my eyes as I drove. Goddamn him. I knew, of course, what I was getting into with Kenny. I knew about his temper, but it wasn’t supposed to be like this. He wasn’t supposed to take it out on
me.

It felt like a betrayal of the worst kind. Worse than when he’d slept with Joey back in high school. Worse than Jonathan’s infidelity. It was more personal than those. I was right there in the room with him and I didn’t matter as much as his anger.

How could he? I thought his feelings for me were bigger than that. What an idiot I’d been.

I parked the car in the hospital’s visitor lot and took a look at my face in the rearview mirror. It was a mess—red and puffy from crying, mascara dripping down my cheeks. Cleaning off the black streaks with a tissue I’d dug out of my purse did little to help. My nose and eyelids had that swollen look of someone whose heart had been kicked and beaten.

I went through the big glass doors of the hospital into the open lobby and barely got a second look. I guess they were used to seeing people cry. I tried to use that to center myself and gain some
perspective. As trampled as I felt, it wasn’t as if I’d lost someone I loved. Or was it? No! I refused to give in to the melodrama of that thought. I was not in love with Kenny Waxman. I was not.

I stopped in the ladies’ room and wet some paper towels with cold water, pressing them against my face in an effort to get the swelling down. I didn’t want my mother to know I had been crying because she might worry that it meant her prognosis wasn’t as good as she’d been told. Afterward, a check in the mirror demonstrated only the tiniest improvement.

My face, I decided, needed a little more time to get back to normal. So I went into the gift shop determined to spend a few mindless moments inspecting silly knickknacks. The trick was to distract myself so I wouldn’t start crying again, as if overpriced teddy bears, snow globes, and collectible figurines could push Kenny to the back of some mental shelf in my brain where I wouldn’t notice him.

The gift shop had a few personal hygiene items, so I bought a tube of mascara, since I had left mine in my bag in the car and needed another application. For my mother, I chose an African violet in a trophy-shaped planter inscribed “World’s Greatest Mom.”

Back in the bathroom, I did the cold water trick again before applying the new mascara. I had some lipstick in my purse, so I rubbed a bit onto my cheeks before running it over my lips. Standing a couple feet back from the mirror, I thought the result wasn’t bad. I looked good enough to pass. I flipped my clean hair over my head, ran a comb through it, and flipped it back. I was ready.

I smiled broadly as I entered my mother’s room. “Hi, Mom!” I chirped.

She was watching TV with the sound too low to hear, and turned to face me. “Beverly! I told your father not to make you come.”

“He didn’t
make me
do anything.” I leaned in and kissed her on the cheek. She smelled clean and powdery.

My mother held my face in her hands and looked at me. “What’s the matter?”

What in the world had made me think I could fly in under Mom radar?

“Nothing. I’m fine. I bought you a plant. Where do you want it?”

“You’re not fine. You were crying. Not over me, I hope—I feel as healthy as a young colt.”

“You look great, Mom.” I glanced around the room. There was a curtain dividing it in half, with Mom’s roommate hidden on the other side. The walls were a pale blue and the two bedside chairs were upholstered in purple vinyl. I imagined someone thought it was cheerful, but it was a wasted effort. There was simply no way to make a hospital homey.

I glanced up at the television. Oprah was on her couch talking to a woman in a bright suit. I tried to listen for a second and realized the voices didn’t match up with the mouth movements.

“Mom? Are you listening to
Oprah
dubbed in Spanish?”

She picked up the remote and looked at it. “I can’t figure how to work this thing. All the channels are in Spanish.”

“Did you call someone?”

“No, it’s all right. I don’t mind.”

I tsked. This was so like my mother. She didn’t want to bother anybody, so she was in bed watching television in a language she didn’t understand.

“Mom, you’re
paying
for this. You’re entitled to watch it in English.”

She waved away my concern. “There’s nothing to watch anyway.” She clicked off the TV and patted the empty space next to her. I put the plant on her nightstand and sat.

“Did you see Kenny?” she asked.

“He picked me up at the airport,” I said, pretending to be interested in the controls that worked her bed.

My mother leaned forward and moved a lock of hair from my face, forcing me to make eye contact. I quickly looked away so she wouldn’t press me. I didn’t want to have to answer any questions about the past couple hours of my life.

“So when is your surgery?” I asked.

“First thing in the morning. Thank you for the plant. It’s lovely.”

I shrugged. “Are they letting you get some rest?”

“You know what they say—the hospital is the last place in the world you can get any rest. Seems like someone comes in to poke at me every fifteen minutes.”

“You’re not nervous, are you? Dad said it’s a simple procedure.”

“The whole thing is ridiculous. I feel perfectly fine. I wanted to wait until we got home to have this done, but your father insisted.”

“Where
is
Dad?”

“He’ll be back, soon. He went down to visit Sam, who’s been alone all day. Renee was too distraught to get out of bed today.
She’s
the one who should be in the hospital. She’s a wreck, Beverly. Thank God Kenny is here. He’s a great comfort to her.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Who knew he would grow up to be such a mensch?”

“Mm.”

“I honestly don’t know how he’s holding it together. This has to be harder on him than anyone.” She lowered her voice to a whisper. “His own
father
. Can you imagine?”

I nodded, trying to think of a way to change the subject. My mother grabbed a tissue from the nightstand and wiped her nose. I grabbed one too and dabbed under my eyes.

“How do you and Dad face Sam, knowing what he did?” I blew my nose.

My mother patted her hair while she thought about her reply. “It’s like two different people, Beverly. The senile old man in that hospital bed is not…not the same Sam who could have done that terrible thing.”

But he is
, I wanted to say. He
is
the same Sam.

The phone rang, and my mother picked it up, saying
hello
with the drawn-out theatrical intonation women of her generation reserved just for answering the telephone. I wondered if they were taught it in school when they were young, or if it was some affectation they learned from the movies.

When she heard who was on the other end, my mother’s voice went back to normal. It was clear she was speaking to Renee, whom I surmised was feeling better and ready to make a trip to the hospital. When she got off the phone, my mother asked me if I would mind running down to Sam’s room and getting my father. Renee needed a lift to the hospital because she wasn’t able to reach Kenny. Of course, that was just as well since I had his car.

“You want me to go to Sam Waxman’s room?” I asked, feeling a shiver.

“Yes, dear. It’s just two flights down.”

“But—” I stopped. It hadn’t occurred to me until that moment that I’d ever have to face Sam Waxman again, and the thought was making me hyperventilate. “Can’t we just call down there?” I said.

“Do you know how much they charge for calls? It’s robbery.”

“I’m sure Dad will be back any minute. Why don’t we just wait?”

My mother fluffed a pillow behind her back. “I’d go down
there myself,” she said, “but they don’t let patients get on the elevator without a nurse.”

“How about if
I
just go and pick up Renee?” I said, rummaging in my bag for the car keys.

My mother sighed and clicked on the TV. The news was on in Spanish. “If that’s what you want, dear,” she said, turning her attention to the unintelligible broadcast.

I stood, the weight of guilt tugging at me. I wished my mother would get angry and yell at me, tell me I was being a sniveling little twit. But just bearing it silently—the way she always did—was more than I could handle.

“Okay,” I said, rolling my eyes as I dropped Kenny’s keys on her nightstand. “I’ll go get Dad.”

As I walked down the corridor to the elevator thinking about seeing Sam Waxman face-to-face, my body began to float away. I was disassociating, growing taller and taller as I moved away from the sound of my own footsteps. I couldn’t tell what force was propelling me forward. It simply didn’t feel like I was the one making my legs move.

At last I reached the elevator, which was larger than the average prison cell and not much faster. I had plenty of time to study the framed “Patients’ Bill of Rights” posters on either side of me, though the language made my eyes glaze. Two doctors behind me talked about lab hours and a woman in front of me holding a stuffed penguin looked lost and tense. She turned and asked me if I knew where the children’s ward was. I shrugged, and one of the doctors behind me answered, explaining that she needed to go back down to the lobby and take another bank of elevators.

I was only in a hospital once as a kid, when I had broken my leg badly and required surgery. I was six and don’t remember much about the accident, except that I had gone over the handlebars of my bicycle, and that my father had been the
one to take me to the hospital. The only thing that was vivid about the whole experience was my humiliation at having to go into a stroller when I got home. I wasn’t able to walk for a week, and I guess I was so small they didn’t bother with a wheelchair. One day, when I was sitting in the backyard with my mother, a group of kids were playing in Kenny’s yard. This was before we had a fence, so I had a clear view. They yelled over that they were playing “family” and said I could be the baby, since I was in a stroller. I was hot with shame, but I agreed, because my loneliness was unbearable.

The kids came and got me, wheeling me across the grass to Kenny’s yard. I was happy for company, but the kids tired of the game after only a few minutes and ran off to play something else, leaving me there alone. I cried for my mother, but she had gone back into the house and didn’t hear me. After a few minutes Lydia came out the back door and asked me what happened.

“Shall I take you back home?” she said after I told her. “Or will you stay and keep me company? I’m feeling very lonely today.”

We went inside and had cookies drenched with syrup, and played checkers. She told me over and over how happy she was that I was keeping her company. I went from feeling abandoned and miserable to lucky and proud. Lydia would have made a wonderful mother.

When we finally reached the second floor, the elevator stopped without opening. I glanced around at the hospital staffers in the car to see if they were concerned that we were stuck, but their expressions were unmoved. Finally, the elevator gave a little hiccup and the doors slid slowly open, making my stomach cramp into a knot. I didn’t want to exit.

“Second floor,” someone in the elevator said. The woman holding the stuffed animal moved to the side and I stepped out.

Waxman was in room 244, and the arrow on the wall directed me to the corridor on my left. I walked down the hall listening to the sound of my heels on the hard tile floor bringing me back into my body as I ticked off the room numbers I passed—238,…240,…242…

There it was: 244. I stood outside the doorway for a few moments, breathing in the hospital smell, which reminded me of that crisp synthetic scent you get when you open a Band-Aid wrapper. I listened for my father’s voice from within, but all I could make out was the hum of electronics and the low murmur of a television. Slowly, I peeked my head inside and looked toward the bed, where I saw a husky man with thin red hair combed over a shiny bald head—definitely
not
Samuel Waxman. But it was a double room like my mother’s, with a drawn curtain separating the two halves. I listened carefully, and didn’t hear any voices coming from the other side of the curtain.
Maybe I don’t even have to go in,
I thought. Maybe I could just go upstairs and tell my mother he wasn’t there.

“You looking for Waxman?” the red comb-over man said.

I hesitated, deciding how to answer.

“Who’s that?” came a familiar voice from behind the curtain. It was him. “Who’s there?”

His voice. It sounded so ordinary, so benign. For a moment, I doubted my assumptions about his guilt. This was Sam Waxman from next door. He couldn’t possibly have murdered a woman and stuffed her body in an industrial drum. Or my precious schnauzer, Stephanie. Who could be so evil? Certainly not the little man who was once so tender he had searched all over to buy me a tiny gift I had coveted.

I was no more than nine at the time. Our families were vacationing together in the Berkshires. In the lobby of the hotel there was a giant Christmas tree that mesmerized me. I
thought it was so grand and yet delicate I couldn’t get enough of it. But I felt guilty coveting something so Christian, so I tried to admire it when no one was looking. One ornament in particular captured my attention. It was tiny Santa inside a glass ball, and one day I got so caught up in looking at it I didn’t even hear anyone approaching. But suddenly Mr. Waxman was by my side. He whispered, “I like Christmas trees too,” and I felt relieved to know it was okay to admire it. And as if that wasn’t enough, after we got home he gave me a present when no one was around. It was a Santa ornament just like the one I had admired on the tree.

The red-haired man in the hospital bed cleared his throat to get my attention. I took a deep breath.

“It’s Bev Bloomrosen,” I said to the curtain. “I…I was looking for my father.”