The Wonder Spot (22 page)

I say, “The good thing is . . .”

“She finally feels like she deserves to be happy.”

. . . . .

Jack calls and says that he wishes he hadn't told me about M.P.'s old boyfriend.

I say, “I understand,” and I do. There are things that two people say in the middle of the night that don't make sense to a third at breakfast.

. . . . .

The next few times I ask, Jack tells me that Mary Pat is great, and then she is good, and then she is fine, and then she is okay.

Saturday night, at four
A
.
M
.,
he calls me from her apartment. I know without asking that he is sitting in the dark; I can hear it in his voice.

“I blew it,” he says.

I say, “I'm sure you didn't.”

“I did,” he says. “I blew it.”

“How?”

“I just blew it,” he says. “I blew it.”

“Try to remember that we're having a conversation,” I say, “and your goal is to impart information.”

He says, “I should've proposed to her at the Boathouse.”

When I don't answer, he says, “In Central Park,” as though to clarify. “That was the perfect moment.”

I force myself to say the consoling words: “I'm sure you'll have another perfect moment.”

“No,” he says. “She said that was the perfect moment, and we can never get it back.”

“Hold on there,” I say. “You've known each other for, like, twenty minutes.”

He doesn't answer, and I hear how irrelevant these words are to him. I'm worried that he's going to hang up and propose now. “Just bear with me,” I say. “Forget about perfect moments for a minute. Do you really want
Mary Pat
to be your
wife
? You want
Mary Pat
to be the
mother of your children
?”

“Yes,” he says.

I do not ask him if he thinks he would be happy with Mary Pat. Happiness, I realize, is beside the point. I realize, too, that he doesn't
want to figure anything out or to feel better. He wants me to help him win Mary Pat.

“Okay,” I say. “Here's what I think you should do. Don't ask her to marry you. Give her room. Try not to need anything from her for a little while.”

How can I tell that I have said something he wants to hear? The silence is just the same, but I know.

I imitate our father's calm authority: “We'll figure the rest out in the morning.”

. . . . .

I've only called Pete a few times in my life, and as soon as I hear his hello, I remember why. He has settled in for the night, his feet by the fire, Dostoyevsky in hand, Lila's head on his lap; a phone call is breaking and entering.

We talk, but only about one percent of Pete comes to the phone. You get close to Pete by swimming or clamming or fishing, by weeding his garden or singing while he plays guitar.

Every exchange is more strained than the last until I get to the emergency of my brother's love. When I finish, Pete says, “I don't think there's anything you can do, Soph.” He is sympathetic but resolute; I imagine this is the voice he uses to tell clients a house is beyond restoration.

“You don't understand,” I say. “I think he's going to propose to her.”

“They all propose,” he says.

For myself, I say, “Did you propose?”

He laughs. “No.” It occurs to me that I have never known Pete to have a girlfriend.

I say, “How are you?”

“You know,” he says. “Okay.”

“How's Lila?”

He says, “How are you, Lila?”

What I hear in the moment of quiet that follows is Martha's Vineyard in winter—the clouds in the sky, the wind on the beach, and the cold that stays on your clothes even inside.

. . . . .

Jack does not return my calls. I ask my mother if she's heard from him. She has. She says, “I can't wait to meet Mary Pat.”

. . . . .

I know how hard my little brother is working, and I am reluctant to worry him. But when he asks me what I think of Mary Pat, I tell him everything. “He's losing weight,” I say. “He doesn't sleep anymore.” It occurs to me that this is how cults weaken the will of initiates.

Robert says, “It sounds like he's in love,” and adds that the world's most coveted state is characterized by unrelieved insecurity and almost constant pain.

The effect of his words is to remind me that it has been a long time since I have been in love.

“What about you?” Robert says. “Have you met anyone?”

He always asks, and I always have to say no, and I say no now. For the first time, he says he wants to introduce me to someone he knows, a pediatric heart surgeon.

“That's good,” I say. “I have a pediatric heart.”

He says, “Don't talk about my sister that way.”

Before we hang up, I say, “Are you in love?”

“No,” he says.

I ask if his wife knows.

“Of course,” he says. “Naomi's the one who told me.”

. . . . .

When Jack finally calls me, at work, he says, “Can you meet me?” instead of
Hello.

I say, “When?”

He says, “Now.”

Before I can ask where, he hangs up.

Even though it's six
P
.
M
.
on a weekday, I assume Homer's, and I'm right. Jack's at the counter, his head bowed.

His face looks haggard, but his body is surprisingly buff.

He says that he can't sleep or eat or think or write.

“Apparently you can work out, though,” I say.

“She won't call me back,” he says.

“I know how that feels.”

He misses the jibe. “We had a fight,” he says.

“About what?”

“It wasn't really a fight.” He tells the waiter, “Just coffee.”

“He'll have pancakes and bacon with that.” To Jack, I say, “Or do you want eggs?”

“I don't want anything,” he says.

I tell the waiter, “He'll have the pancakes.”

Jack doesn't even seem to hear.

“You seem like you're in a coma,” I say, and as soon as I say it, I feel sick. Our father was in a coma for days, and I have said
coma
the way people who don't know anything about it do, which is like calling out,
Can we get another coma over here?

I say, “I meant stupor,” but Jack is in such a stupor, he didn't even notice my
coma.

When his pancakes come, he pushes the plate aside. He sighs, and sighs again. His voice is so quiet, it's as though he's talking to himself when he says, “I can't hit her.”

“Sorry?”

“I can't hit her,” he says, and I realize how tired and desperate he must be to say these words to me.

“And you want to hit her?”

He shrugs. “She wants me to.”

“In bed,” I say.

“Of course in bed,” he says. “Where else?”

“Oh, I'm sorry,” I say. “Of course, she wants you to hit her in bed. And you can't. Go on.”

“She thinks it means I don't love her.”

I say, “Can I hit her?”

“Sophie.” His voice is a reprimand. “Her father used to beat her.”

I think,
She probably deserved it,
but then I turn back into a human being.

My brother's face is so tired and so sad it makes my face tired and sad. “Buddy.” But even as I say, “If I were you, I'd try to get out of this
thing,” I know that nothing I say, no matter how wise or well put, will separate him from this woman.

“It's not like I have a choice,” he says.

I say, “Of course you do.”

“She's been seeing someone else,” he says. “Some guy she works with.”

I am about to say,
A victim?
but I correct myself in time: “A survivor?”

He defends Mary Pat even now: “She would never go out with a patient.”

There are so many things I could say about Mary Pat. I could call her the one word you save for occasions such as this, the only sacred profanity. But my brother loves this woman, whoever she is, and deriding her would only deride him for loving her.

What else is there to say? I tell him that I've been editing a celebrity diet book at work. I say, “News flash: Eat less, exercise more.”

When I slide the plate of pancakes in front of him, he says, “I'm not hungry.”

“Do you think I care if you're hungry?” I say. “This has nothing to do with hunger. Hunger is beside the point. Hunger is a luxury you can't afford.”

I pour syrup over the pancakes. When I cut into the stack, he says, drily, “Leggo my Eggo,” repeating a commercial circa our childhood.

“You need a nap,” I say.

He eats one bite, and then another.

While he finishes his pancakes, I plan the future. I will walk him home, and up the stairs to his apartment. He'll lie down. I'll shop for groceries. I will take him to a movie and out to dinner. In case my father is listening, I think,
We will look after each other.

M
Y
MOTHER
is at her bereavement group, and I am on the phone with a distant relative I don't know, an ancient guiltress, who says she's sorry about my father but turns out to be a lot sorrier that no one bothered to let her know at the time, so she could've come to his funeral. She keeps saying things like, “Is it so hard to pick up the phone and dial?”

I am saved by the beep of Call Waiting and ask her to hold on a minute, please. She says, “This is long distance.”

A second beep. “Well, nice talking to you,” I say, and, “I'll give my mother your message,” though I don't think I will. “Good-bye.”

The other call is Dena, and I launch into an instant replay of the guilt festival I've just attended, which fascinates me now that it's over, but not Dena. I hear indulgence in her, “Uh-huh.”

I say, “She didn't even know my name. It was like the guilt equivalent of anonymous sex—”

Dena says, “How are you?”

She is asking big, but I answer little: “Fine,” I say. “How are you?”

This she treats as a digression, as though I am a patient inquiring after my doctor's health. She allows only a few questions about her life before switching back to mine. “Have you talked to Demetri?”

I haven't.

“Good,” she says. “When are you coming back to New York?”

I make my voice casual: “I don't know.”

I expect her to laugh when I tell her that I have an interview at
Shalom
, the newsletter we grew up not reading.

She doesn't say anything.

I wait and then say, “I should get ready,” even though my interview isn't for another three hours.

She says, “Bob,” her nickname for me and mine for her since high school, “you're living in Surrey,” and she says these words with the sympathetic authority of one familiar with Surrey's social opportunities—the kids smoking cigarettes outside the skating rink; the housewife returning a nylon nightie at Strawbridge & Clothier; the mustached neighbor walking a miniature schnauzer named Pepper.

I say, “The good thing about being nowhere in your career is that you can do it anywhere.”

She says, “Bob.”

“Yeah?”

She hesitates. “Good luck.”

. . . . .

I'd only been with Demetri for a few months when he asked me to go to Los Angeles with him.

“Come with me,” he said, and my heart stopped hurting for the first time since my father's death.

I was thrilled quitting my job, thrilled giving up my apartment. It seemed like the first real risk I'd ever taken. I felt like I was kissing life right on the lips.

I started to panic the week before we were supposed to leave. Suddenly I heard everything everybody had been saying and not saying about Demetri: Dena had called him a pathological narcissist; my older brother had said, “There's no there there”; my younger brother had sighed.

But it was the idea of my father that I couldn't shake. I knew what he would've thought of Demetri—not that he would've said so. He would've said,
What are you going to do in Los Angeles?

“What am I going to do in Los Angeles?” I said to Demetri.

He didn't know I was saying the
Dear
of Dear John. He told me I would spend my days fantasizing about the sex we'd have that night, and then that night we'd have it.

. . . . .

All my life, I've seen
Shalom
on our mail table, and now that I want to read it, it's gone. My mother threw it away, and the garbage men have come and gone. Everyone she calls has thrown theirs out, too. She's sure she saved the issues announcing my brothers' bar mitzvahs: We spend the hour before my interview fruitlessly rummaging through drawers stuffed with the memorabilia of childhood—sponge paintings of snowmen, compositions with sentences like, “The bird hops across the lawn.”

My mother feels terrible about throwing out
Shalom
and insists on driving me to my interview. Lately, she's been giving me career pep talks, though she herself has not held a job since before my thirty-three-year-old brother was born. If I'm interested in journalism, she says now,
Shalom
is as good a place as any to start. “It's all about networking,” she says. “And expanding your skill set.”

“Well,” I say, “you would know.”

She starts to apologize, and I stop her. I tell her that I know she's trying to help, though her advice seems to be cutting off the air supply in the car and that's giving me brain damage.

I change the topic: Does she know Elaine Brodsky, the publisher I'm about to meet?

When she says, “I've known Elaine forever,” her voice boards the
Mayflower
, a bad sign.

“Are you friends?” I say.

She says, “We're not close,” her way of saying she dislikes a person. I hope it's one-way; my first boss was a disgruntled ex-girlfriend of my older brother.

We park in the lot for the Professional Offices at Manor, a concrete box with windows tinted brown like sunglasses. My mother says she'll wait for me; she's brought an old
New Yorker
to read, as she did during my violin lessons in high school.

As I get out of the car, she wishes me good luck and says, “You'll be fabulous.”

The walkway is encrusted with ice; even in low heels I'm slow and
unsteady, a toddler learning to walk, an old woman afraid of breaking a hip.

A moment after the receptionist announces my arrival, out comes Elaine Brodsky in an inexplicably familiar kilt with an oversized gold-tone safety pin.

In her office, she says, “How's Mother?” Her voice isn't as cold as my mother's, but it isn't warm. She says, “I was so sorry to hear about Dad,” like we're all one big unhappy family.

She's somber for a respectful moment before launching into the exciting happenings at
Shalom
.

I try to mirror her enthusiasm for their new volunteer staff—a cub reporter from the Hebrew school and a secretary from the Jewish Home for the Aged: “Wow.”

She says, “We're helping each other.” Then she turns the topic to me: She just loves my publishing background! Do I like to write? That'll certainly come in handy, as I'll be doing most of the reporting myself.

It is possibly the best interview I've ever had. I can tell she's going to offer me the job. In a few minutes I will again be one with the working world.

She wants me to meet
Shalom
's current editor. After she dials his extension, she hands me the most recent issue of “The Weekly Newsletter Serving the Jewish Community of Greater Philadelphia” and she says, “Hot off the press.”

I read the headline of the lead story:
MRS. JACOBY'S FIFTH-GRADE CLASS LIGHTS THE HANUKKAH MENORAH
.

The fifth grader in me knows that however desperate I am to get a job I am more desperate not to have this one, and once Elaine is off the phone, out of my mouth these words come: “I don't know anything about Judaism—is that a big part of the job?”

I'm as stunned as she is. The man who would have been my predecessor walks in and we shake hands, and then Elaine Brodsky is saying, “Give my best to Mother.”

Mother and I drive home.

I'm lying on my bed when I spot Elaine Brodsky's kilt on Molly,
the doll my grandmother Steeny brought back from Scotland for me. Molly sits on a shelf along with Gigi from France, Frieda from Germany, and Erin from Ireland, each dressed in her country's native costume. I haven't noticed the dolls for a long time, and now that I do, they seem to sing, “It's a small world after all,” about mine.

When my mother calls, “It's Dena,” I pick up the phone.

She says, “How was it?”

“Great,” I say. “Amazing.” Then I tell her.

She laughs, and tries to make me see how hilarious the interview was. I do for about one second. Then I remember I am living at home with my mother in Surrey, and I will be living here forever. Lying on my canopy bed, looking at my costumed dollies, talking on my Princess phone, I can feel myself aging at an accelerated rate. Soon people will mistake my mother and me for sisters.

Dena says, “You need to get out of the house.”

“Where should I go,” I say, “the drugstore?”

“Go downtown and see a movie,” she says. “Go to my house.” She likes this idea so much she repeats it, and now it's an order: “Go to my house.” She tells me she's calling her mother as soon as we hang up.

Recently Dena started liking her mother, or at least seeing why someone else might.

“I'm calling her right now,” she says.

. . . . .

The Blumenthals live in the only real mansion in Surrey, the house all other houses aspire to. It's old and vine-covered, with a pool hidden in back. There's a big formal living room no one uses, and the dining room ditto, but there are also rooms that seem private and warm—a little alcove with a window seat, Mrs. Blumenthal's dressing room with its deco vanity, and the library with its fireplace.

Growing up I envied their kitchen most, which had anything and everything you could want—white-papered packages of cold cuts, fresh rye bread, and bagels from the delicatessen, Coke and Tab and Sprite, Doritos and Fritos, Mallomars and Oreos, ice-cream cones covered with a helmet of chocolate and nuts, and at least two flavors of Häagen-Dazs, usually chocolate chocolate chip and butter pecan; if
what you wanted wasn't in the kitchen, it was in the butler's pantry. I'd go home comparing their staples to ours—leftover chicken, celery, and vanilla ice milk.

The Blumenthals' housekeeper did the shopping, cleaning, and what little cooking there was. Her name was Flossie, and everyone seemed to like her better than they liked each other.

Dena's sisters, Tracy and Ellen, identical twins were both gymnasts and both cheerleaders. Dena called Ellen shallow and Tracy witchy, but they were indistinguishably fascinating to me. When the three sisters found themselves together, always by accident—to watch television or sit by the pool—the mood was reluctant forbearance.

Their father occasionally announced that he wanted them to behave like a real family, and he would suddenly decide that they were all going to Florida to play tennis or to Utah to ski; he'd insist that they were going to sit down as a family for dinner, though he himself would be the one missing the next evening.

In a pearl-gray cashmere sweater large enough to fit over his belly, Dr. Blumenthal gave the impression of being expert at his own comfort. I don't think I ever saw him without a drink in his hand—a beer after tennis, a gin and tonic by the pool, a martini in the evening, a Bloody Mary on Sunday, and so on. He could be convivial or blustery—often convivial then blustery.

Mrs. Blumenthal seemed immune to both. Taller than her husband and lithe, she carried herself like the great tennis player she was. Her hair was long for a mother, frosted a color Dena called “Surrey blond,” and with her regal demeanor made her look a lot like her Russian wolfhounds before they got old.

She was always reading in a big armchair by the fire or on the white divan in her pristine bedroom, with a cup of tea or a glass of wine and an ashtray on the table beside her. She'd ask me if I was reading anything I loved, and if I was, she'd write down the title.

This afternoon when she opens the door, she's holding her place in
Madame Bovary
. She kisses me on both cheeks and says, “Sophie”; she has a throaty, smoker's voice.

“Hi,” I say. She's asked me to call her Stevie—short for Stephanie—but I can't bring myself to call her anything but Mrs. Blumenthal, so I avoid calling her anything.

As I follow her into the library, she says, “What can I get you to drink?”

I ask what she's having.

“I haven't started yet.”

I say, “What would you drink if . . .” I try to think of a crisis that would make her feel as bad as I feel now. “If Dr. Blumenthal said he was leaving you?”

“Champagne,” she says, deadpan. Then: “I think we're in a brown mood—scotch, bourbon . . .”

“Bourbon,” I say, though I can't tell the difference.

We sit in the big armchairs by the fire, and she lights a cigarette for herself and one for me. “Let's talk about money,” she says.

“Okay.”

She says, “Are you in debt, Sophie?”

“No.”

“Good.” Then: “I'm assuming your father left you something.”

“He did.”

She asks how much, and I tell her. I can't tell whether she thinks it's a little or a lot. “And how much would it cost you to move back to New York?”

“I don't know.”

“Well,” she says, “think about it.”

I tell her that my father specifically asked me not to use the inheritance for living expenses; he wanted me to use it toward a down payment on a house or for a trip—something momentous.