They May Not Mean To, but They Do: A Novel (29 page)

Joy went outside again. It was raining now. Good. She would catch pneumonia and die and everyone would have to stop lecturing her.

The raindrops were enormous. She could almost hear them as they hit the ground. They were cold on her arms, on her face, a shock in the steaming heat of the day. Her clothes were soaked through immediately, her pants sticking to her legs.

“Mom, come inside. What are you doing?” It was Molly. She ran outside.

“You’re barefoot! You’ll get a tick!” Joy said.

Molly pulled her inside and threw a beach towel around her.

“It’s only water,” Joy said. Her teeth were chattering. She let Molly rub the towel on her hair, her back, her arms. She obediently went into her room and put on dry clothes. When she came out, Molly handed her a mug of coffee.

“I can’t drink coffee. My digestion…”

Molly snatched it back. “Fine.”

“Where’s Danny?”

“Sulking in his bedroom.”

“He was very rude to me. I’m eighty-six years old and I deserve some respect.” Joy felt the tears and willed them back.

Molly sat across from her at the table, bedraggled, her hair wet and matted, dark circles under her eyes. “Yes, let’s talk about respect,” she was saying. “Respect for your husband, my father, Daniel’s father. Let’s talk about that. Since we’re talking about respect.”

“Why did you make such a fuss about the rain? It’s about a hundred degrees out.”

“Mom, it’s disrespectful to Daddy to invite Karl to Ruby’s bat mitzvah. That’s what Daniel is upset about. And so am I.”

“That’s ridiculous. Karl was your father’s friend.”

“He’s
your
friend.”

“Am I not allowed to have friends now? What is wrong with you two?”

Molly offered her mother a cup of tea, which Joy accepted. She did not want tea. It would make her have to pee. And the kitchen was humid and hot. But she could see Molly trying to be civil. It was important to be civil. She had tried to teach her children that.

“Look, Mom, you can’t bring him to the bat mitzvah, okay? You just can’t. It wouldn’t look right. I mean, it’s only been a few months. It might, you know, embarrass Ruby.”

“Ruby? You mean it will embarrass you two, although god knows why.”

“You think he can take Dad’s place?” Molly said, all pretense at civility gone. “Well, he can’t. Ever.”

She was shouting now, and Daniel stomped down the stairs to join in: “The body is not even cold. How can you do this to us?”

Joy looked away from them, her two beloved children, yelling and stamping their feet like toddlers. Graying toddlers. She tilted her head back and looked at the ceiling and wondered if it might fall in and shut them up.

“What has Karl ever done to you?” she said softly.

There was silence, just the thunder, closer now, and the rain on the roof.

“Did you know that Karl asked me to live with him?”

“See?” Daniel said to Molly. “See? I told you.”

“Mommy! You can’t. You’ll turn into a caretaker.”

“Your father liked Karl. Your father would have wanted me to have some companionship. Your father would be ashamed of you both.”

They shifted uneasily.

“Yeah, well, still, it’s just…” Daniel’s words trailed off.

“And whether I choose to live with Karl or not,” Joy continued, “one thing I can see clearly now. I cannot stay in this house one day longer. I am not welcome. I do not belong.”

And she marched out, slammed her door, and began packing.

52

Duncan smiled and smiled, but he did not say much. If he was overwhelmed, he could hardly be blamed. His family had gathered around him from the four corners of the earth, as Gordon put it. There were grandchildren, too, Gordon’s kids, now quite grown up: one of them, the daughter, in college; the son engaged and holding the hand of his fiancée. Freddie was overwhelmed, so why shouldn’t her father be? None of it seemed quite real. Laurel and Pamela wore colorful sundresses, not identical in pattern, but complementary, and identical enough: four spaghetti straps cutting into four plump white shoulders. Freddie, who was wiry and always had been, who wore gray and always had, knew she looked a little dreary beside them, a caterpillar beside two butterflies. Her brothers were somewhat more soberly attired, but still in vacation costumes—and they did seem like costumes to Freddie, the golf shirt and white pleated Bermuda shorts of her brother Gordon, a similar golf outfit on his wife; the jeans and big silver belt buckle, the chestnut-colored cowboy boots Alan wore. But they probably thought she was in costume, the same costume she’d worn since the age of six. Jeans and a T-shirt. Only the grandchild generation looked right. Perhaps because they were at the Third Street Promenade in a pedestrian mall filled with other young people.

Freddie wearily followed the group into another shop. They seemed to be drawn to chain stores that also had outlets in their own countries. Duncan was a bit pale, but he shambled along behind them.

“Are you okay, Dad?”

He did not answer, but smiled, grabbed her arm to steady himself.

“Well,
I’m
exhausted,” Freddie said. “Maybe we should go sit down somewhere,” she said to her siblings, all of whom were trying on sunglasses.

They wanted to sit outside. It was winter where they lived. Wasn’t the sun beautiful and warm here in Los Angeles?

The beautiful warm Los Angeles sun beat down upon them. Freddie never sat in the sun as a rule, and certainly not in July. The air, even in Santa Monica, so near the beach, was blazing hot, dry as dust, and still. But her siblings were ecstatic. What a good time of year they had picked. What a perfect vacation. They began to trade tales of vacations that had gone wrong. Food poisoning, sharks, terrorism, cyclones, earthquakes.

They did not mention heart attacks. But that’s what Duncan had. The paramedics came and hustled him away in an ambulance. Freddie sat next to him, holding his hand. The rest of the family followed in a caravan of rented cars.

53

Joy was dressed and packed. The garbage bags, undisturbed since their arrival, could stay and rot for all she cared. She had stuffed her clothes and pills and creams into her California roller bag. She had called Mr. Bailey and he said he and Mother would be right over to drive her to the station.

She waited on the porch swing and pictured her apartment, dim, stuffy, mail piled high, Ben’s dirty dishes in the sink, though he had not even stayed there yet. It didn’t matter. It had to be better than staying here, where no one wanted her, where no one made room for her, and where, she now realized, no one trusted her.

“This is ridiculous, Joy,” Coco said. “You don’t have to go, and you certainly don’t have to take a car service. If you insist on leaving, let me drive you. I’m driving Molly to the station anyway.”

Molly was going back to California to be with Freddie, whose father was in pretty bad shape in the hospital.

“That’s quite all right.”

Coco stood in the doorway. Danny appeared behind her.

“Mom, come on. You’re acting crazy.”

Joy narrowed her eyes. “Don’t you dare call me crazy. The first step to sending the elderly to a home is saying they’re crazy. Well, just forget it. I’m not going to a home. I’m going to
my
home in New York. Since you’ve taken over this one.”

“Now you’re being paranoid.”

“Me? You’re the one who is paranoid, all this fuss about a simple invitation to a bat mitzvah.”

“She has a point,” Coco said. “What is the big deal?”

Danny stormed back inside, followed by Coco saying, “Well, really, Daniel, you’re being silly…”

“I have choices,” Joy yelled after them.

“She’s moving in with him,” Danny was shouting inside. “You didn’t believe me, but you hear her.”

“Oh, so what?” Coco said.

Joy dreaded the arrival of Mr. Bailey and his car. Her heart was hammering and her vertigo was sweeping in like nauseous fog. She was arguing with Danny, her dear sweet Danny. Why? Over Karl? I don’t want to live with him, she wanted to call out. I just want to invite him to my granddaughter’s celebration. I want someone there I can lean on, literally lean on the red walker that is just like Daddy’s walker; I want to smile at someone and be proud and have him see how proud I am instead of seeing a problem who has to be taken to the ladies’ room, who has to be helped down the stairs to the street, who has to be transported the three blocks from the synagogue to the restaurant.

Cora and Ruby came outside and settled themselves on the swing, one on either side.

“You can invite whoever you want,” Ruby said.

“I’m inviting a friend,” Cora said, “so I don’t see why you shouldn’t.”

“Yeah, Daddy’s being silly.” Ruby sounded like Coco, dismissive; even her gesture, hands held up in mock surrender, reminded Joy of Coco. Without thinking, Joy said, “He is not.”

Molly was the next to perch on the swing to try to talk her out of going back to the city.

“You’re one to talk,” Joy said. “
You’re
leaving. I don’t see why. You’re not a doctor. It’s not as if you can do anything for the old goat.”

Molly gave her a baleful look.

“Oh, I didn’t mean that. Of course you have to go back to be with Freddie. I’m selfish, I admit it, but I look forward
all year
to spending this time with you, Molly.”

“But if you’re not even going to be here, what difference does it make if I go home to L.A.?”

“I have to be honest,” Joy said.

*   *   *

Ben climbed into Mr. Bailey’s old limo next to his grandmother and Gatto.

“Stay here, Bennie. You have a whole day before you have to be back. I don’t want to cut your time in the country short.”

He shrugged. “Mom’s leaving, you’re leaving, it’s awkward now anyway. Everyone is so upset.”

He carried her bag up the steps to the platform.

“You’re a good boy,” she said, but she might have been talking to the dog.

She was silent then, until they were on the train. “I was having a temper tantrum,” she said. “That’s all.”

“So was Uncle Daniel. And Mom, too.”

Ben thought back to his own temper tantrums.

“Do you see red when you get angry?” he asked.

“I think that expression has to do with bulls and the red cape the toreador swishes around.”

“But I see red. I always saw red when I had temper tantrums when I was little.” A soft dark red screen, behind it the grown-ups above him talking and talking, hollering, but no sound coming through, just the rush of blood in his ears, red blood—that’s how he remembered his childhood tantrums. And he’d had quite a few of them.

“At least your father and I don’t kick,” his grandmother was saying. “You were a kicker.”

He sensed that she had started to cry and he turned away, staring out the window at the weedy cliffs rushing by. Then he turned back and wrapped her in his arms and let her weep against his chest. He wondered if this was what it meant to be an adult, to be on the other side of the tantrum.

54

Joy decided she was not speaking to either Danny or Molly.

“I have never played favorites,” she told Natalie proudly when she got back to New York. “I’m not going to start now.”

Natalie was the only one of the girls in town. She never left New York City, nor could she understand those who did. But since neither Joy nor Natalie wanted to venture out in the heat, they might as well have been in different countries. They were speaking on the phone, each in her air-conditioned bedroom.

“I’m surprised they didn’t follow you into town. As chaperones.”

“First they want me to stop grieving. Then they think I’m not grieving enough.”

Joy was angry, but the silent treatment was difficult for her to maintain. She wondered how Freddie’s father was. And she wanted to tell Molly about the deliveryman (the turkey burger she ordered was too dry, but she put sliced tomatoes on it and microwaved it and it was delicious), the same deliveryman she’d given the scarf to. She’d asked if he was cold and wanted another scarf, and they had laughed and laughed. Then, too, she wanted to call Danny to tell him about the letter Ruby had written her and stuffed in her suitcase begging her to send candy to camp immediately, it was an emergency, this way it would be there when Ruby arrived, and it should be flat and hidden inside a magazine or book. Danny had done the same thing when he went to camp. Some things never changed.

Joy gave the telephone a poisonous glance. Never mind. Let them stew.

“She needs space?” Molly said when Ben answered the phone. “What does that mean? She’s not my boyfriend. We’re not twenty.”

“Mom,” Ben said, “she needs some time on her own.”

“
You’re
there.”

“Just give her some time. It’s hard to be an old Jew, remember?”

Daniel called a few minutes later.

“She’s so sensitive. Honestly,” he said when Ben said she could not speak to him because she was too upset, and he hung up, his feelings hurt.

Joy was relieved that Karl was still in Rhode Island with his son. She could not imagine speaking to him, either. She was happy when Ben went out. She spent the day quietly, adjusting the air conditioners, looking for her glasses, reading the newspaper, petting the dog. The coffee shop delivered her meals. In the late evening, when it was less hot, she took a short, careful walk, Gatto under her arm. She could not remember the last time she had spent a summer day in the city. She could see the sunset between the buildings.

Coco called to try to make peace. Joy told Ben to tell her she would let her know if and when she was ready to negotiate.

When Freddie called, though, Joy got on the phone.

“I’m so sorry, dear. I hope your father recovers very quickly. It must be a nightmare for you. All that family. Family is a nightmare, isn’t it?”

She pictured Freddie surrounded by all her brothers and sisters. And nieces and nephews. And Molly. Was Molly standing right beside her?

“Is Molly there?”

“Yes. Do you want to talk to her? She’s very ashamed of herself. Aren’t you, Molly?”