It Won't Always Be This Great Page 3

  So, yeah, Alyse gets up at 5:30 and I get up at seven, but the solo ninety minutes in bed aren’t restful. I feel guilty that she’s up and functioning while I’m just lying there. I tell myself not to feel guilty, that I make a nice living, that I’m a good father. But still, I am just lying there.

  Like I said, I felt good from hoops the night before. It’s weird. Some nights, I feel like I always did, quick and smooth. Other times, my body doesn’t come to the gym with me. But that night, I blocked a few shots by thirty-year-old pishers, blew by them with crossover dribbles—

  Jesus. A good rationalization just hit me for staying in bed after Alyse gets up: Between me, the kids, and her destitute artists, these are probably the best ninety minutes of her day. So really, I’m doing her a favor. Why didn’t I ever think of that before?

  Anyway, I get out of bed and slog downstairs to the kitchen, kiss Alyse, which, from what I hear, very few husbands do in the morning, but out of love or superstition or whatever, I do—grab Newsday and a coffee and plop myself down in the breakfast nook. I read about the pathetic Knicks. Fuck ’em. Ever since they fired Marv Albert, I’ve loved seeing them lose.

  After about fifteen minutes, I humped it upstairs to wake up my kids. Esme is twelve and, I swear, I’m scared to go in her room.

  Scared. That’s a bit much. I’m tentative. Esme’s at that tween age where there’s a whole world in her head I don’t want to know about. Let’s just say I try not to think about how my friend Joey Annunziata felt up both Dana Sanders and Erica Hiller at my bar mitzvah reception. Imagine: I invite this Catholic kid and he winds up groping two different little girls while I stand with my grandfather as he machetes a loaf of challah. The American Jewish experience in a nutshell.

  Anyway, Esme’s room is at the end of the hall, part of an add-on we did a few years ago. The Mafioso contractor, Bennie Liotta, did an amazing job for a price (again, I just don’t want to know how he did it). Anyway, I crack open her door a tiny bit and call out, “Ezzie!” The name Esme was Alyse’s idea. At first, it sounded like Pig Latin to me, but I got used to it. Charlie was my idea. Solid name, no?

  Only her foot stuck out from her comforter, a turquoise bracelet around her tiny ankle. “Ezzie?” I wait until I hear her say, “I’m up!” to enter. Then I watch her eyes open, big, dark pools like that actress who shoplifts.

  Charlie is eight and so innocent it kills me.

  “Charlissimo, what happens when you snooze?”

  Charlie, all croaky, said, “You lose,” then asked what the Knicks did last night.

  “Speaking of losing, 116-85.”

  “They suck.”

  “Yes, but try not to say ‘suck’ around other adults, okay?”

  “How about ‘they blow?’”

  “Not so great either. How about ‘They stink?’”

  “I don’t love it.”

  The first time I picked Charlie up after he was born, I actually whispered to him, “We are going to have so much fun.” A gurgled bubble came out of his mouth, which I interpreted as, “Definitely.” For a while, he was a bad sleeper, but when he was like, six months old or so, I started keeping a radio near his bed and I’d turn on games for him, especially when the Yankees were playing and, I swear, he’d fall right asleep. It was so cute. During the off-season, I actually played tapes of old games. Toward the end of that phase, when he was around two, his eyes would get heavy in bed and he’d say, “Yankees . . .”

  Actually, another funny thing: For a little while, Charlie was wetting the bed and was real upset about it. So one day, I told him I’d gone through a bed-wetting phase too. I didn’t, but I wanted to make him feel better. Charlie’s jaw dropped. “Really, Dad?”

  And I said, “Yup. And that was before wetting the bed was cool.” I think that was the first time Charlie ever got a joke. And guess what? He never wet the bed after that. So you see, I don’t parent by the book, baby. In fact, when some TV parenting guru advised reading to your kids at four months old, I thought it was so stupid that, one night, I read aloud to a four-month-old Esme from In Cold Blood. Alyse laughed her ass off.

  Anyway, back to Friday. I made the kids pancakes. Charlie scarfed ’em down. Esme complained about carbs. Her metabolism races like a Ferrari, and her legs look like twigs in her UGGs, but still she’s on fat patrol. Raising a daughter is a logistical nightmare.

  Meanwhile, through all of this, Alyse was on the phone with one of her artists, a twenty-three-year-old Balkan immigrant living in Brooklyn with the obviously fake name of You-ey Brushstroke. I’m serious. Y-O-U hyphen E-Y Brushstroke. Alyse said he’s a “talented nut.” He’d had a scholarship to RISD, where he made a collage of his dorm room door, ripped it off the hinges, and turned it in as his freshman project. After they explained the concept of private property, he moved on to public property. He stole twelve stop signs, welded them into a bouquet, and under each STOP, he spray-painted the words, GROOMING FLEAS. What did it mean? No idea. But sometimes now, when Alyse or I get nit-picky, one of us will say, “Stop grooming fleas.” Anyway, when You-ey was expelled, the project was written up in an art journal. Alyse read it and immediately contacted You-ey.

  “You-ey, that sounds amazing! That’s true. Everything in the city does speak . . . Where did you get the YIELD signs? Actually, don’t tell me . . . Hauling all that here on the Long Island Railroad? Today? Okay, why not?”

  Charlie and I looked up like: That whacko is coming here?

  Esme whispered, “Mom, I want to meet him!”

  Funny. Even in a tiny little family. Cliques.

  Alyse covered the phone and whispered, “I have a feeling I’m going to make a fortune off this guy.”

  Anyway, we got the kids off to school. Public school because I wanted my kids to meet a black person before they turned thirty. Alyse went along with me out of some vague kids-of-the-people populism.

  Hey, am I sounding all negative about Alyse? Because that’s not the case. The truth is, I feel weird having so few complaints about my wife. I mean, shit, the average guy I know? If his wife was one cup size smaller, he wouldn’t have married her in the first place.

  Okay. So. As I went upstairs to get dressed, Alyse said, “Remember to try to get home before sundown. It’s don’t-piss-off-the-Orthodox night.”

  Once, I did piss them off and learned my lesson.

  VII.

  About nine years ago, I was sitting on a bench eating a take-out cheeseburger and reading American Podiatry Magazine when, suddenly, I see this bony kid in a yarmulke gawking at me. It doesn’t dawn on me then that cheeseburgers are inherently unkosher, and the kid, maybe fourteen, is so skinny that I finally just say, “You want a bite?”

  I know. How stupid am I? Still, my heart was in the right place. I actually held out the burger to him. The kid looked at it like it was radioactive and said, “Aren’t you Jewish?”

  That’s when the whole non-kosher thing landed on my head.

  More accusingly, the kid repeated, “Aren’t you Jewish?”

  Waving the burger, I said, “Not according to your definition.”

  Well, this kid’s legs went liquid for a second, and then he just bolted.

  That night, I told the story to Alyse and she winced. “You know, he’ll probably tell people what you said.”

  “So what?”

  “So what” turned into an office visit from . . . Nat Uziel. Years earlier, a toe on his left foot had gone rogue and started climbing over the next one. I had to perform a procedure—perform (as if it’s a ballet). Anyway, I had to break the toe and realign it. The procedure went fine, Uziel thanked me, and even offered me a discount at Nu? Girl Fashions. Now, I assumed some other toe flipped out, but when he came into my office, he just looked at me coldly and said, “Not according to your definition.”

  I did a full-body spasm. “That’s why you wanted to see me?”
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  “Yes, that’s why I took the ferry from my vacation home in Fire Island to see you.”

  Lamely, I said, “Wow, word really gets around, doesn’t it?”

  “The boy you rebuked with your vicious barb was my son, Jason.”

  Until my mind hit the brakes on the words vicious barb, I went into full defensive panic mode. Then the absurdity of that exaggeration grounded me.

  “Look, Mr. Uziel, I’m sorry, but I don’t feel my statement to your son was vicious. Pointed, perhaps, but not vicious. Just visualize the situation: I was quietly eating my lunch when, out of the blue, a total stranger asked me if I was Jewish. Frankly, with the way the world is, I was offended by the question.”

  “Why? Obviously it was a Jewish boy asking the question.”

  “I don’t see why anyone of any faith has the right to ask me that.”

  “Can you see why a sensitive, religious young man would be taken aback at the sight of an older Jewish man eating a cheeseburger?”

  “I wasn’t wearing a yarmulke or a Star of David. And I was reading the American Podiatry Magazine, not the Talmud. So he couldn’t know I was a Jewish man eating a cheeseburger unless he was an expert in racial profiling. So no, Mr. Uziel, I don’t see why he would be taken aback by the sight of a man eating a cheeseburger.”

  Shockingly, Uziel considered my point, so I threw him a bone.

  “That said, your son is at a vulnerable age in a complex world, and it does him no good to be on the receiving end of a barb, vicious or benign, from any adult. If it would help, I’d welcome the chance to see him and offer a secular but sincere apology.”

  Uziel slumped and said, “I think it would be best if I let him know that you are a good man regardless of your eating habits. But I appreciate the offer.”

  “Well, if you fail to convince him, my offer stands.”

  “I’ve never failed at anything.”

  I swear, he said that. I’ve never failed at anything. That statement provoked me a little. So when Uziel got up to leave, you won’t believe what I said to him: “You can pay at the front desk.”

  He glared at me before being embarrassed at not getting the joke. A weak smile and he was gone.

  I fought to concentrate on my next patients. My head was buzzing because, let’s face it, confrontations like that are so rare. And the fact that I dug in and stuck it to him! Uziel intended to rip me a new one, then tell me my practice would be boycotted by his people for life. Instead, he wound up explaining to his miserable kid that I was actually a good person. On top of that, he later brought his eleven-year-old daughter Audra to my office with a case of recurrent plantar’s warts.

  I was wound up, so instead of going right home, I drove around replaying the event in my head and feeling warmly smug. I even came up with a more realistic golden rule: Do unto others just slightly worse than you would have others do unto you. I intoned it aloud in my car while burning onto the Grand Central Parkway, where I made the mistake of actually analyzing my emotions.

  It dawned on me that I was in a blind rage and had been since hearing those two words: vicious barb. My calmness with Uziel: resentment. The fact that I was so (unusually) articulate in talking to him: fury. “You can pay at the front desk?” Pure pissed-off-itude.

  Well, anger is not my thing, and suddenly my head started swimming. I looked down and saw I was doing 92 miles an hour. Heat surged into my face, sweat popping. My throat constricted. It was my first panic attack, although I didn’t know it at the time. What I did know was that I had to get off that road, but I slowed down so abruptly that a car rear-ended me. A BMW, of course.

  Oddly, the collision killed my panic. That’s how screwed up I was: A car accident calmed me down. When the BMW guy cursed me out, I just said, “Look, I’m a good guy and I’m sure you are too. Why don’t we do what we have to do and not kill each other?”

  Well, get this: By the time we finished exchanging information, the guy apologized and confided in me, “My mother killed herself four years ago. My father called me this morning asking if he could sell her suicide note on the Internet. I’m just saying, I’ve had a shitty day and I’m sorry for losing it like I did.” So, I—

  Oh, me? No, I’m just an old friend . . . Do you attend to Mr. Moscow all the time or . . . ?

  . . . Well, thanks. You have a nice day too— Whoa! Watch your step!

  Jesus. Guy almost did a header right into the heart monitor. You know, I still find male nurses a weird concept. You’d think they’d come up with a more PC term for these poor schnooks.

  Okay, let’s see. The kids eat, go to school. I threw on a cashmere overcoat that Alyse had gotten me from Barney’s for my forty-fifth birthday and checked the pockets for gloves. (I lose gloves every other day.)

  I left for work, but as I got in the car, I had this tiny nagging feeling eating at me. When I feel like that, I literally have to stop and ask myself: What’s bothering you? I rummaged around my head until I tracked that morning’s angst back to when Alyse said about her psychotic artist, “I have a feeling I’m going to make a fortune off this guy.” Yes, I’m embarrassed to say, the thought of Alyse making “a fortune” bothered me. I know of a few divorces owing mainly to the wife out-earning the husband. After the husbands took their wives to the cleaners, they were ostracized from cliques that sucked to be a part of in the first place. I read somewhere that men who earn less money than their wives tend to die younger. It makes sense—all that stress and crippled self-esteem. But I told myself it didn’t make sense for me; I was still the breadwinner in the house. The kids have iPhones, we take vacations to Paradise Island, Disney World. Who paid for all that?

  Finally, I told myself: Stop. Thinking. About. Crap.

  I tuned to WINS hoping its latest version of horrible news would wipe out my puny fretting. There was a report on gangs in Cincinnati who target Prius drivers for car-jackings. Since the Prius makes no noise, it had become the car of choice for drive-by shooters. Eco-murder. Love it.

  But then there was the next story, Commie: a report on how rich people clone their dogs so they can basically have the same dog forever. That was the first time I heard about the cloned Australian Shepherd who bit a toddler’s pinkie off at the knuckle and ate it. Sound familiar, Commie? The maimed kid, the dog imprisoned in some shelter, the lawsuit against the Korean veterinarian . . . ?

  Well, just thinking about the lengths people go to trying to control their little lives—money, time, travel—and it never works out.. It kind of put another wet towel on my post-basketball buzz, which pissed me off. I started thinking: If only I got dressed two minutes earlier, I’d have listened to rock and roll on the radio and missed what Alyse said about making a fortune and missed the clone story and I’d still be on my high right now.

  I flicked off WINS, turned to a classical music channel, and scolded myself: When you feel good, just keep the fucking world out of reach.

  VIII.

  I go through that kind of thought processes all the time, recounting the pinballing events that lead to depressing moments. I’ve tried telling myself that maybe those little events delayed me enough to miss crossing paths with some drunk driver running a light. Maybe those moments saved my life. But theoretical stuff like that doesn’t work for me, not on any gut level anyway. Sometimes I do my event recounts aloud with Alyse right there. She laughs and I feel a little better. Once, she described me as “inwardly mobile.”

  By the way, that morning, I did not take note that the cloned dog story took place in Hilton Head. I want you to know that. Right here in South Carolina.

  I pulled into the office parking lot during what I assumed was the final movement of a symphony by Dvorak. I figured it was the final movement because it was getting a little loud. That’s the extent of my musical knowledge, even though my parents did splurge to take me to Young People’s Concerts with Leonard Bernstein . . . (My moth
er: “You need culture.”)

  I went back to Philharmonic Hall exactly once as an adult. Alyse and I lived on the Upper East Side after college, in the building that was used as the exterior for where The Jeffersons moved on up. I loved the city. Alyse worked in an art gallery, so I got to go to parties with lots of chain smokers floating above reality, discussing airy philosophies. I think pretentiousness is underrated. It’s being down-to-earth that makes people boring. What I miss most about the city is the privacy. Not like suburbia where, God forbid, you’re depressed and take a walk past all the French doors with everyone peering out: Gee, Margot, does he look suicidal or what? In the city, you pass the same people in your lobby every day and never acknowledge their existence. It’s the peak of civilization.

  Anyway, Arnie and I arrived at the office the same time that morning. The only difference is, he came straight from one of his martial arts classes. He’s a black belt in something. (Like I can keep track of those Asians and their nutty belts.) Arnie likes to say, “I can kill a man with my bare hands and, someday, I hope to do so.” I believe him. He’s tall, All-American looking, and always incredibly fit.

  Still, every time I think I have problems, I think of Arnie and take comfort. For his first marriage, he did “my civic duty and married a nice Jewish girl from New Rochelle.” He also cheated on her forty times before her friends did a kind of yenta intervention, as if it were crucial she knew what a sap she’d been. After a divorce and a few of years of Olympic-level dating, Arnie married Fumi. She’s smart and beautiful but, wow, what a nut! It isn’t just that she refuses to leave the house without wearing a surgical mask, or that she eats virtually nothing but French toast, or that she has a compulsion to spit in elevators. She also likes to scream at Arnie for no reason. She’ll show up at the office and go ballistic. Patients forget their bulging discs, hop off the table, and scurry out.