It Won't Always Be This Great Read online

  Anyway, when I finally hung up on “my girls,” I went downstairs here to the cafeteria to get coffee and started thinking about this story I’ve started telling you and, well, I just don’t think I’m doing it justice. The whole episode was kind of life-changing and, I don’t know, maybe it’s because I’ve been carrying it alone in my head all this time, but I’m just all over the place with it. Also, it involves you to a degree and, I hate to say this but, even though we’re great friends, I realized I’m kind of assuming too much familiarity between us. Let’s face it, Commie, it’s been a long time since we’ve been super involved in each other’s lives.

  So look, I’m going to double back a little, just to the start of that Friday, okay? It’ll help you get the full picture of what happened and give us a chance to catch up.

  Well, a chance for you to catch—I mean . . . Sorry.

  My God.

  By the way, Alyse sends her love.

  IV.

  You don’t know Alyse too well. When I met her, you’d been kicked out of the frat and I’d become one of those weasels who gets a girlfriend and vanishes. I’m sorry for that and for being lax about keeping in touch. I was bummed you missed my wedding, but that’s no excuse. Not that you missed anything; even calling it my wedding is a joke. The minute I handed Alyse the ring, her parents mobilized into wedding planning as if they’d given birth to Princess Caroline of Monaco instead of Alyse Epstein of Nassau County. For all their preparation, they could have planned an invasion of Russia. Instead, it all led to one moment when I stood on the pulpit in my Calvin tux in front of two hundred guests listening to the rabbi’s stand-up act when suddenly, I had a thought:

  Jesus . . . I’m not even hungry.

  Yes, that’s what I thought at the biggest moment of my life. Another thing I’ve never told anyone until now.

  I wound up not eating at the reception. Nothing. I couldn’t compete. Packs of sixty-five-year-old diamond-studded yentas sprint to the Viennese table like Marion Jones and—poof!—the catering hurtles down those begging-for-mercy digestive tracts. It’s the sort of thing that makes you start dreaming of those Vegas weddings where you grab a chunky Verizon techie from Iowa as your witness and get the whole shebang over in a blinding two seconds.

  Anyway, Alyse. In the first days after my bottle throw, she kept asking me, “You’re so spaced out. What are you thinking about?” I ducked the question a few times before saying, “I’m thinking about what to say the next time you ask me what I’m thinking.” Alyse rolled her eyes, called me a “fucking idiot,” and that was that.

  Maybe you don’t remember Long Island girls, but it’s okay when they call you a fucking idiot. If they’re truly mad, they calmly lay it out in (weirdly) clean, (suddenly) unaccented English. And, believe me, it’s their civility that can really broil your mind. Not that Alyse is like that. She’s totally cool. Really.

  Amazing how different our wives are, huh? I think they’d get along really well if they got to know each other, but they are from different planets. And it’s not just the obvious stuff. But I gotta say, Commie, I do like that Southern humidity in Danielle’s voice. It makes me imagine her father being a preacher or something, although, when I told my mother I was coming down here to see you, she immediately said, “Don’t kid yourself. There are plenty of Jews in Charleston. And they’re very active.”

  So far, you’re the only Jew I’ve seen and you’re not too active.

  Sorry. Bad joke. Awful.

  I’m just saying, the girls down here seem like aliens who are anatomically identical to Earth girls. Like that nurse downstairs with the colorless hair and the bouncing crucifix. How exotic would it be to be married to a middle-American girl fully loaded with Jesus and two weeks’ vacation time? My mother used to say, “Marriage is hard enough without intermarrying.” Of course, she was wrong. It’s harder to be married to someone appropriate. The disappointments are built in. I once told my ex-rabbi that most divorces are due to irreconcilable similarities. He disagreed, but who cares? I always thought he wanted to shtup my wife anyhow.

  In a way, Alyse and I intermarried. We grew up fifteen miles and ten income tax brackets apart. Her family was all cocksure. Mine had this underdog mentality. Those are bigger differences than buying into Jesus or not.

  Don’t get me wrong. I don’t mind being Jewish. The values, the cultural shit, all good. The God business I could do without. But hell, make up five reasonable superstitions and you can start your own religion. What amazes me is that we still throw around the word Gentile. Jews make up .0001 percent of the planet, yet we insist on having a word for everyone else? Even the WASPS who own America are merely them. And the way we snicker at how they drink on sailboats with their emotions all plugged up their marble-shitting assholes—shouldn’t we aspire to that?

  My dad used to say, “Jews wear their emotions on their sleeves and WASPS wear their sleeves on their arms.” Not bad for a seafood wholesaler from Yonkers, huh? Not that my father was America’s Jew or anything. He was like us: Get your Bar Mitzvah money and end it. When I was a kid and we’d be sentenced to an hour at shul, he’d elbow me and say, “Baruch atah, I’m annoyed.” Then he’d call the cantor a “Hava Nagila Monster,” and I’d just lose it.

  The last meal I had with my father before he died was at JG Melon’s on 74th and Third. He left a 12% tip, so I slipped the waiter an extra five. I shouldn’t have done that. It’s bugged me ever since.

  Anyway, Alyse and I used to belong to a reform synagogue called B’nai Zion. So reform, we called it Jon-B’nai Zion. I hated it but kept quiet. Then, at a Yom Kippur service as a guitarist played back-up for the Torah reader, Alyse said, “There should be a sign out front: B’NAI ZION: WE MAKE JUDAISM LOOK EASY.” Soon after, we let our membership lapse. Holiday-wise, we’re pretty much down to Chanukkah. Even Passover got old: our kids singing Dayenu like it’s the Jewish version of 99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall.

  V.

  Alyse and I struggled to have a baby for years. I used to tease Alyse that she had “hamster-bearing hips.” Then, sure enough, three miscarriages. Not that her hips caused it, but it was awful. Three heartsick morning drives from the OBGYN’s office with a thousand Pampers boxes bulging out of every garbage bin we passed.

  Jesus. So much goes on with women’s bodies, but somehow they outlive men. Makes no sense to me.

  Charlie came just as we thought Esme would be an only child. We stopped at two because, let’s face it, having a third kid . . . now you’re just trying to get attention. Anyway, the miscarriages gave me time to come up with some fathering rules, like never tell people, “We have a little boy.” It’s a fucking baby. They’re all little. Never go on about how the baby slept through the night. It’s like waking up screaming in the middle of the night made no sense. And never ever go on about how I love baby poop because “it’s from my child.” Guys become dads and turn so subversively boring, but I never forget that no one really gives a shit about anyone else’s kids.

  Okay, Alyse and I did go ga-ga over Esme for a while, cooing like idiots, loudly asking our infant what she wanted at Starbucks, believing there should be a movie about our quest for a baby. But we got a grip pretty soon and started mocking ourselves, coming up with titles for our baby movie. Journey to the Placenta of the Earth. Afterbirth of a Nation.

  Anyway, I was a pretty confident father until my kids started having their own opinions and I started worrying that they’d think I was a schmuck. Why? No idea. But I found myself trying to make a good impression on my own kids, although I think the last of that feeling went away due to this story I’m telling you.

  I should mention that the headline events of the story got some news coverage. People still talk about it, mainly because no one knows I touched off the whole thing. It’s kind of thrilling having this secret. One crumb of world history, all mine. It gives me a little high. Losing that high is why I never
told Alyse. Any comment she’d make would change a story that’s so vivid in my mind. It’s a precious thing at a time when most of my past has gone all blurry.

  I took a gut course at Maryland on the Baby Boom where the professor said we’d always be cool because we’d always be the bulk of the population. Like when we’re eighty, kids would want iron-on wrinkles so they could look like us. But now, any coolness I felt in college is so distant, I can’t even relate to that version of me anymore. I look back at college like I look back on, I don’t know, Patti Hearst joining up with the SLA: a chapter in someone else’s life story. I attended Maryland, but I don’t feel it anymore. And I’ve tried, Commie. I was once in DC for a podiatric conference (a lot like the one I’m attending here this weekend) and stopped in at College Park so I could literally sniff around campus for a familiar smell to make me feel like a sophomore again, with fresh legs and a shiny future.

  Even driving around now, I scan the radio for songs that might take me back. Any song off Yellow Brick Road gives me a warm shiver—until some honking prick in a shark-faced BMW jolts me back to the God-knows-what of now. My Little Town reminds me of the GE clock-radio my aunt bought me. (Hey, remember how my aunt sent me ten bucks for my birthday and then, a month later, I got mono and she sent me fifty? You told me to tell her I had leukemia. Maybe it would be worth a few grand. Jesus.)

  Then there’s Hello It’s Me by Tod Rundgren. The memory tied to that song has stayed with me to the point that—

  Well, forget it. That’s . . . no. It’s grotesquely personal.

  Commie? Hello?

  I guess I’m an asshole if I don’t tell you now. Okay: When I, you know, pleasure myself, it’s always to the same girl. Jenji McKenna. She was from Hagerstown. Great body. I barely remember her face, but in September of ’76 with that crazy-hot Maryland humidity, we were together at a pool. Hello It’s Me was playing as I sat with my feet hanging in the deep end. Jenji held my legs to stay afloat. Somehow, her left bikini top slipped down exposing her whole nipple. She didn’t realize it, so I leaned over and covered her up. She just smiled and said, “Thanks.” You never know when a moment will stick in your head forever, huh? Usually, I’m an unreliable witness to my own life. But that moment is so vivid, I’ve been doing my business to Jenji, and only Jenji, ever since. Imagine: I’m a monogamous masturbator.

  Kind of pathetic. Although, the volume of scenarios I’ve dreamt up for this one girl all these years? I beam her through time from the frat house to my podiatric office. “Oh yes, Doctor! Yes!”

  By the way, contrary to Jenji’s ecstatic moaning, I don’t refer to myself as “Doctor.” Never have. Most podiatrists are Dr. Blah-blah. Some even have license plates like PED DOC, as if the next driver’s gonna honk and yell, “Can you squeeze me in at ten?”

  Then again, my path to podiatry wasn’t the same as theirs.

  The thing is, Alyse’s Uncle Monte got me into podiatry school without my taking even one science course at Maryland—not chem, not bio, nothing. Monte was a guy who reached a point where he had to decide between the American dream or full-time alcoholism, so he split the difference. He liked working with wood, so he started designing barstools. Somehow, it caught on—mail-order, retail—until he was bought out by a home furnishing chain. A bazillion dollars later, he developed a bunion the size of a stuffed cabbage, had surgery, and was so blown away by this procedure that’s done eighty-five million times a day that he endowed The Carnegie Hill Podiatry School. Of course, it’s in Hell’s Kitchen, but whatever. Long story short, I got in without taking the boards or even filling out an application. It was like joining a fucking health club.

  I guess if Monte had been saved from drowning by a dolphin, I’d probably be at Sea World carrying a bucket of dead herring right now. But you know what? I happen to be a good podiatrist. I finished in the top 19th percentile of my class. Or the lower 81st, as Alyse says. She’s pretty funny. Anyway, if you had a foot problem, I wouldn’t hesitate to refer you to me.

  Granted, I may not be doing what I was put on this earth to do. Maybe I was meant to help the world in a bigger way. But then again, the idea of leaving the planet a better place than you found it? How the fuck do you do that? The planet was a mess when Mother Teresa found it and a bigger mess after she died. So, screw it. If not for my kids, I wouldn’t give a shit if the world ended tomorrow. At least I’d feel like I wasn’t missing out on anything.

  That was a little self-absorbed, huh? My inner censor is really enjoying its first day off. Anyway, Commie, you worked to make the world better. I wonder if you think you made an impact. If, of course, you can think or do anything that keeps up someone’s enrollment in the human race.

  I read on one of those ridiculously cheery medical websites that some doctors theorize that even in your . . .

  “And in this corner, from the Persistent Vegetative State of South Carolina . . .”

  Sorry. The website suggests trying to stir emotions, so I thought maybe making you laugh—or pissing you off—would help.

  Jesus, who came up with that term? It makes it sound like you’re so damn persistent that you just flat out refuse to wake up. Do they call it PVS? I swear, if I have to learn one more acronym, I’ll be right there with you.

  Good God.

  VI.

  Anyway, the second I met Alyse, the dice were loaded. We got serious pretty fast. After all the gold chains Alyse dated in high school, her parents loved me. I seemed like the kind of earnest kid who would try to support their daughter with a career I was actually interested in.

  Well, I showed them.

  As you recall, I was a journalism major. Remember that semester when I wrote sixty-six articles for The Diamondback? Which, by the way, was the top-rated student newspaper in the country that year. Man, I loved making twenty-five calls to get the truth about some story. I read All The President’s Men and then saw the movie about five times.

  During spring break, senior year, I decided to tell Alyse my plan. I rehearsed the whole speech in front of a mirror: I’d apply for jobs as a reporter in several mid-size cities. For a few years, we’d have to live in Omaha or Tucson or Louisville while I built up enough clips to get a job at the Times. I was going to tell her how journalism tapped into my inquisitiveness and wide-eyed wonder, qualities of mine Alyse admired. I was going to tell her that all the great things I’d accomplish wouldn’t matter without her.

  I took her out to dinner at Gusti’s in Georgetown. Alyse called it Dis-Gusti’s, but that’s not important now. She’d just gotten back from spring break with her family in Barbados. You remember how tan girls got before SPF? Well, she was not only crazy tan, but she actually smelled like the Caribbean. So, at dinner, inhaling that scent, I was like: How am I having dinner with this girl, no less dating her? I remember looking at her thin brown fingers. Most girls at Maryland had stubby fingers with livid red nails. Brr. Alyse never gets manicures. I still look at her hands.

  Anyway, there I was, dizzy in love with my very own Hawaiian Tropic girl. I’d decided, God knows why, to tell her my plans after the appetizers arrived. But after the waiter took our order, Alyse went off script like people always do.

  “So honey, what’s the big thing you wanted to talk about?” she asked.

  I derailed right then and there.

  “Well, while you were away, I thought a lot about what I want to do after graduation, you know, and I realized . . . I have no idea.”

  At that moment, my future shifted into Alyse’s navigation system. I know that sounds bad. I’ve met other guys in the same boat and for them, it has been bad. But me? I don’t share their daily fantasies of dipping my wife in cement and tossing her in the Long Island Sound. I like Alyse World. I’ve never wanted to escape it.

  And let’s face it, everything in American life pushes guys toward escape. When Gwyneth Paltrow gets married, pulpy slobs from coast to coast feel palpable d
isappointment as if they’d truly had a shot with her. I wonder if Cindy Crawford ever sees some middle-aged guy and thinks, I’ve probably ruined his life. All those fantasy girls staring at you from every magazine rack . . . Arnie recently said to me, “I’ve never met Jennifer Aniston, but I feel like I’m already tired of fucking her.”

  Kind of mean but, at one time, you’d have laughed at that. You had some laugh. From anywhere in the frat, I could hear . . .

  How the hell could this be?

  You know, listening to myself here, I’m wondering if I used to spin my wheels like this back in college. Probably. The world always struck me as too complicated. I used to have that stale thought about living a simple life as a fisherman. But then I realized that, while the average fisherman waits for a striped bass to bite into a perfect rectangle of squid miraculously floating in the middle of the ocean, he’s probably plotting the perfect murder just like everyone else. Maybe it’s the brainless fish who’s lucky. At least he’s not having panic attacks from swimming out too far. I say that because I once had a run of panic attacks where I couldn’t even drive on a highway. I tried lots of cures I didn’t believe in. Yoga, meditation, acupuncture. Finally, I ate shit and became a poster child for Zoloft. Those dull yellow pills made me feel more like me than I’d ever felt before. The doctor said my serotonin receptors were off so that anything potentially life-threatening, like driving, set off my fight-or-flight instinct. Now I see the guy twice a year for ten minutes and happily fork over $120. Alyse thinks I should change my AOL address to Email Zoloft.

  Anyway, let me move it along here and get back to that Friday. Thank God, right?

  Alyse snaps awake at 5:30 every day as if she’s got a job on an oil rig. I should mention that she does work and make money. She’s an agent for unknown visual artists. She displays their stuff on a site called Arteteria.com. She has a great eye. Or so I hear. I have no taste in art. Zero. Picasso seems all whacked and random while some seascape hanging in a Best Western blows me away. I said that to Alyse once and she looked at me like I was the nut who put a hammer to The Pieta. (That made it more interesting in my eyes, but whatever.)