It Won't Always Be This Great Read online

  “Okay.” Then, “Shit, I’m such an idiot.”

  “It’s okay. Should I stay on the phone?”

  “No, it would look weird talking to him, holding the phone. I’ll just make him leave. I can do it because I think he’s smoked enough pot to make him pretty harmless.”

  “That’s not so comforting.”

  I hung up and started driving fast which, of course, goosed the images of my panic attack phase, so I went into my calm down routine: dropping my shoulders, telling myself to breathe, and visualizing the Zoloft dutifully handling crowd control throughout my nervous system. I turned on the air conditioning to keep me alert at the wheel. I settled down just enough to start thinking of past Newsday headlines about families being murdered in their homes. You know, the kind of stories that can really spice things up on Long Island. I pulled over and reached down to call 911, but not before thinking: At least I don’t have a name like Buttafuco. Of course, the second my hand hit the phone, it rang. Scared the shit out of me.

  Alyse, breathless, “You-ey just left.”

  Exhale.

  “How did you do it?”

  “I decided to, I don’t know, confirm his worst impulses by telling him I had to go to the bank and make a big deposit and then buy a dozen bagels for the weekend.”

  “Jesus, Alyse.”

  “I know, I know. But when I got off the phone with you, I went from panicky to pissed off in like two seconds.”

  Can you believe that? Panicky to pissed off in two seconds.

  “Anyway, I reassured him I’d promote his art. He thanked me and left.”

  Alyse sounded a bit cocky about how she handled things, so I said, “And Esme?”

  “She’s fine. Look, honey, I never should have let him come here. Jesus. I’m sorry.”

  You know, Commie, parenting is like basketball. A game of runs. One parent goes on a streak of doing great things with the kids while the other screws up. Suddenly, there’s a double digit margin in the “who’s fucking up the kids less” game. Then it switches to the other way around and comes down to the last minute, whenever that comes, when the kid opens his college acceptance letter or you find a vial of meth in the kid’s drawer. I don’t even know if meth comes in a vial, but I like being ahead in the parenting game because there are so many other areas of my marriage where I feel like I’m thirty points down in the fourth quarter and Alyse is smoothly dribbling out the clock.

  Alyse tried to steer away the conversation from her parenting crime, saying with mock cheer, “So, how was the rest of your day?”

  I stopped myself as I was about to tell Alyse about Ruth Kudrow. Quit while you’re ahead.

  “My day was . . . a day. I’m going to stop off at the office and hustle home before sundown.”

  “Okay. I’ll go check on Esme.”

  “Good.”

  “I love you.”

  “I love you too.”

  You know what, Commie? I’m going to give you a free pass on the thoughts I had driving back to my office.

  They weren’t much, really. Just middle-aged fantasies about torturing You-ey Brushstroke to within an inch of his life as if I were Jack Bauer from 24. I started imagining myself walking down the street knowing I could kill anyone I passed with my bare hands. And, frankly, I do have a short list of people I’d like to kill. (Really, if you don’t, you haven’t lived much of a life.)

  I only went back to the office to tell Arnie the story about Ruth Kudrow. If I wasn’t going to tell Alyse, then I was going to have to share it with someone. Arnie was finishing up with a TMJ case. The second the jaw-clicking patient left, I said, “Arnie, do I have a story for you.”

  XV.

  Upon hearing Ruth’s epic statement, Arnie’s face went blank. Then, as if the offices were bugged by the KGB, Arnie whispered, “That’s what she said? That she’d never had a dick in her mouth?”

  “Well, she said penis.”

  “Holy shit. How old did you say she was, ninety-six?”

  “No, no. Eighty-two.”

  “Whatever. So what did you say to her?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Nothing? Sure. That’s what I would have said. Nothing.”

  “Actually, I felt bad. I should have said something.”

  “What? Out of the thin air, a semi-lucid battle-ax says she’s never blown a guy and you think you should have had a good comeback? Jesus Christ, you should fill out one of those organ donor cards and leave your guilt to science.”

  “Well, thanks for saying that. I had the same thought, but it feels better coming from someone else.”

  “Glad I could help. That’s maybe the third time in my life I’ve ever said the right thing.”

  The truth, Commie: Can you see why I think Arnie is basically the greatest guy in the history of the world?

  Arnie then dissected the whole story like he lived for this kind of thing. “So, an old lady in a home has regrets about sex.”

  “I guess. The ‘God, what a life’ line sounded pretty, I don’t know, rueful.”

  “Giving head seems like a fairly realistic goal. Even at 82, it’s not too late. There’s a guy out there for every fetish you can think of, and about forty million you can’t.”

  “The devotion people have to their perversions is scary.”

  “I assume this Ruth is a widow?”

  “Yeah. She told me they were married 47 years but slept in separate beds for the last ten . . .”

  “Wow, she’s full of too much information.”

  “She once told me her husband was on ‘tranquilizers’ and was a crazy hypochondriac. She told me about how she once took him to a doctor for a paper cut.”

  “She probably signed a Do Not Resuscitate form on him.”

  I paused a second before adding, “The funny thing is, Ruth was probably a pretty hot number as a young woman.”

  “That could be the source of her regrets. She was in her prime dating years before pussy was even popular.”

  “Nice, Arnie.”

  “In a way, you can see why blow jobs were on her mind. There’s been lots of talk about ‘the act.’ It’s not some secret thing only done by sluts anymore. It was a compromise for girls who didn’t want to put out when we were in college. Nowadays, you hear all about how kids don’t even count it as sex. And they have these fantastic rationales like ‘friends with benefits.’ It’s an accepted practice with its own label. Ruth probably spent the last ten years in waiting rooms reading magazine articles about this stuff and feeling like she missed out on all the fun. It’s everywhere: That show Boston Public had an episode about girls giving blow jobs like it was a pat on the back. For all we know, twelve-year-olds are sucking each other off in games of Spin the Bottle.”

  My face curled up like a chow’s.

  Arnie caught himself. “Not to imply that Esme is . . .”

  I laughed. “Of course not. Although, I’ll tell you, some girls hit puberty at nine these days. How do you deal with that?”

  Arnie grinned, “First, you gotta lower the age of consent.”

  Laughing, I said, “I can’t believe I’m laughing at that.”

  “Don’t worry, you got time before Esme, you know . . .”

  “Develops a hankering for big hairy—?”

  Remember before, when I told you I didn’t want to be a cliché father? This was another example. I’m not worried about karma sticking it up my ass for making a dicey joke about my kids. Hell, when Esme was a baby, a guy I play ball with asked me how she was doing, and I said, “She’s great. Walking, talking, great boobs—just like her mother.” I was a little stunned I said it, but I didn’t feel bad about it. A bunch of years later, I even told Alyse the story. She found it funny, thank God.

  Speaking of Alyse, Arnie asked, “Did you tell Alyse the Ruth blow job story?”
r />   “No. I was about to, but I think I’ll hold off. She’d find it really sad.”

  “It is sad. But Ruth’s regret is nothing out of the ordinary. Let’s face it, maybe one in ten million people wind up feeling like they’ve had a satisfying sex life.”

  Oh man, Commie, here goes. I’m going to let you in on another thing I’ve never told anyone in this whole wide world.

  The truth is . . .

  You know what? I changed my mind. I’m not going to tell you this one. I’m just . . . not.

  XVI.

  When the Ruth discussion finally ran its course, I realized that Arnie hadn’t done his usual Friday thing, leaving work early to Shabbat-shalom everyone at the Orthodox shul and then go in to the city for Chinese. When I asked him about it, Arnie grimaced and explained, “My last talk with Rabbi Schwacter didn’t go well.”

  “Why? What happened?”

  “It’s so stupid,” Arnie said. “We were discussing different views of God, and I guess I got too comfortable because I joked about how odd it was that the Christian God had only one kid.”

  “What’s wrong with that? It’s funny.”

  “Tell me about it. It was so funny, I didn’t even notice that the rabbi wasn’t laughing. I just kept going, joking about Jesus’ percentage of body fat; how the Jewish God has a surprising lack of business sense. Finally—finally!—it hit me that Rabbi Schwacter was scowling like he knew my whole conversion deal was bullshit. So, bottom line, I’m avoiding him and the Orthodox crowd a while, hoping any damage I did just blows over.”

  And that’s when I realized it was past sunset, called Alyse, and started my fateful Friday night walk home.

  Actually, Commie, I’m going to take a break here and grab a little lunch.

  You need anything?

  It would be really funny right now if you said, “I’ll have the turkey club.” Like the big Indian guy in Cuckoo’s Nest. Ahh, Juicy Fruit.

  Okay, I’ll be back soon.

  XVII.

  This might surprise you, but when you throw a bottle of horseradish through the window of a retail establishment, things happen pretty fast. Alyse came into the den holding the phone. She had her hair in a ponytail and was wearing a tiny black tank top with white Converse All-Stars and peach sweatpants by Juicy. I know they were by Juicy because the word “JUICY” is on the butt.

  Commie, why didn’t we think of that when we were in college? Could you imagine how much money we could have made back then by simply coming up with the idea of billboarding girls’ asses? Even if we’d just put a big U on the left cheek and a big M on the right, we could have made a fortune. Ass-vertising!

  Frankly, it’s your fault. I was never entrepreneurial, but your family was. How much did your brother rake in scalping ACC Tournament tickets? Two grand? Three? I can look it up. I still have a portfolio of my clips from The Diamondback, and the story I did on your brother’s scalping is in there somewhere.

  I guess, looking back, I shouldn’t have used his name in the story. Not that he said he was talking off-the-record. Plus, I took notes right in front of him in the dining hall. It wasn’t like I took three cabs so we could talk on deep background in an underground garage. In the long run, getting expelled worked out pretty well for him. And I’m glad we patched things up.

  Okay, Alyse comes in looking just so beautiful—maybe or maybe not more penance for her parental screw-up with Esme. By the way, Esme was having dinner at her friend Harley Binder’s house, so the floor was open for further discussion of the You-ey incident. I could have brought it up, but I didn’t. I also could have just closed the case by telling Alyse it was no big deal, forget about it. But I didn’t do that either. I was just sitting on my lead in the parental competence basketball game. Plus, as you can imagine, I was a little preoccupied.

  “I just got off the phone with Meri Katzen. You won’t believe this: Someone threw a bottle of horseradish through the window of Nu? Girl Fashions.”

  I was lying on the couch in the den with my foot propped up on pillows, my ankle surrounded by two bags of frozen peas. In the high-thread count warmth of my fully-alarmed and conscientiously appreciating home, I felt safe enough to seem only mildly curious about the horseradish news from Meri Katzen. Yenta. Meri’s an interior decorator constantly moving swatches of gossip from home to home. She’s so full of news, Alyse and I call her Reuters.

  “Horseradish?” I said. “Who threw it? A disgruntled ex-employee?”

  “I guess that’s possible. But Meri said they suspect anti-Semitism.”

  “Why?”

  “It was that Mossad Kosher Horseradish.”

  “That’s so weird. I saw a bottle of that in Carolina Lewis’ kitchenette today.”

  “It’s not so weird. That’s one of their promotional strategies, just giving it out to synagogues and nursing homes and whatever other Jewish-leaning places. The other marketing scheme—and the reason they suspect anti-Semitism—is that they won’t sell their product to anyone they view as anti-Israel. Meri told me that, on their website, they list 62 countries they won’t do business with.”

  “That’s all?”

  “I know it seems low.” Alyse shook her head. “Like a Palestinian on the Gaza Strip is saying, ‘Gee, I wish I could get my hands on a bottle of that horseradish.’”

  That was actually a pretty funny comment, but I only said, “Ah-huh,” and that’s when, as I mentioned before, Alyse asked, “What are you thinking about? You seem distracted.”

  “Oh, nothing. Just my ankle and if I’ll ever play hoops again.”

  “You’ll play. Just ice it tonight, go ice/heat, ice/heat tomorrow, then hit the gym and rehab it. And soon you’ll be back on the court screaming in agony from your next ankle sprain.”

  “Sounds like a plan.”

  “Excuse me?”

  Sounds like a plan.

  Alyse and I have this bug up our asses about expressions like that. If someone says “Been there, done that,” Alyse wants to squeeze their head. She really went nuts recently when a jewelry store opened on Stratification called Bling! “Can you believe it?” she’d said, her strong coffee eyes bouncing, her perfect pink lips suspended in disbelief. “Bling! Don’t white people realize that by the time they learn a hip-hop expression, it’s too late? I feel like going in that store and asking, ‘Excuse me, do you know what’s going to be in this space when you go out of business next month?’”

  The funny thing is, Alyse would actually do it. She’s not only funny, she’s got cojones.

  “What I said was: ‘That sounds like a good course of action.’”

  “Right. I thought that’s what you said.”

  I laughed a little. Even if you don’t feel like laughing, you have to give it up to your marriage’s little inside jokes, don’t you think?

  “By the way, Meri and Ira are joining us tomorrow night.”

  “How did that happen?”

  “She asked if we wanted to have dinner and I told her we already had a reservation so she invited herself. She even called the restaurant and changed the reservation.”

  “Ah-huh.” My mind was a somewhere else. Alyse knew it.

  “Still thinking about the end of your basketball career?”

  “Oh, no. I was thinking about Nat Uziel. The cops must have pulled him out of Shabbat services to tell him about the horseradish.”

  “Mm. Maybe he’ll walk over there and the broken glass will do something bad to his feet.”

  “That would be great.”

  “No reason we shouldn’t benefit from some alleged anti-Semitism.”

  “Alleged? So it may not be anti-Semitism?”

  “I just said ‘alleged’ because of your investigative journalism background.”

  I looked up at Alyse. It was a little odd she’d say that. I wasn’t sure if she knew that my idea
s of being a reporter had been scrapped for her. Maybe she always saw that as one of the conversational no-fly zones in our marriage. Actually, it was the only one.

  Well, that’s not true. We never really bring up relationships we had before we hooked up. “Hooked up.” Another expression to lose.

  We probably don’t discuss other relationships because she had so many more than me. In all—

  Forget it.

  Anyway, where was I? I was lying on the couch and—

  Look, it stands to reason she would have had more exes than me. First of all, what guy wouldn’t have wanted to date her? For God’s sake, people tell her she looks like Phoebe Cates! After Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Phoebe Cates became Miss Jewish Universe in perpetuity. People ask me what my wife looks like and it would be so easy to just say “A less Asian-looking, five-foot-five, more delicate version of Phoebe Cates with a slight bump on her lightly freckled nose and a cleft in her chin that seems to vary in depth from week to week.” But I just can’t do it. It would sound like bragging. Shit, it’s not like I designed her face. Anyway, that’s what she looks like. So, of course, she left a trail of bodies behind her. One of her exes, by the way, wasn’t Jewish, and I get the feeling the breakup demolished him more than all the rest. I think vaguely knowing your wife’s past, rather than in detail, can save your life.

  Another reason she dated so many guys is because that’s what kids do in suburbia. Especially upper-middle class suburbia. Maybe because there’s nothing else to do, and there’s no daily tussle with the outside world to distract them. But, by the time they get to college, these kids are black belt masters of dating. You and I used to talk about this at Maryland. How we couldn’t believe that clunky, unathletic Long Island or Pikesville or Mainline Philly guys with C averages and nothing but preset, black-hole futures in their fathers’ businesses, had no trouble asking out the hottest girls. But ultimately, the answer is simple: It’s what they do.

  For me, stockpiled in twenty-four-story Electchester Towers with cab driver fathers and switchboard operator mothers, old couples, widows, even a smattering of blacks, girls seemed a million times stranger than they do now, and I still find my own wife totally inexplicable at times. I don’t know. I took the bus to school with the eleven hundred other kids in my graduating class. I took the bus home, carrying a reserve quarter in my pocket in case some “hoodlum” asked me for money (my mother: “If they ask for money, just give it to them.”). I threw down my books and played basketball. Every day. Girls were on my mind, but really not on my schedule.