28

Woe Is Us

LATE SUNDAY AFTERNOON Joel finally texted back, will call Mom. I refrained from word choices such as For Chrissake, took you long enough. Instead, I wrote back, Come for dinner tonite? Frankels & beans?

That worked. It was what as kids we’d called our Sunday night suppers with Heinz and Hebrew National, a family tradition . . . when the Frankels were still a family.

Nick had hockey every Sunday night. He led up to his departure with the weekly grousing about the bumpy Everton ice, the know-nothing refs, and why did he let Reggie talk him into signing up. “Have fun,” I said. “Don’t get any teeth knocked out.” I added that his timing was good: Joel was coming for dinner and no doubt he’d had had quite enough of Frankels singing the blues.

“A pity to miss that,” he agreed.

 

Only when pressed and after a beer, and with me avoiding parental topics, did Joel confide that he’d kept a third date with Leslie, Stuart’s ex-sister-in-law.

“Did the subject of Stuart come up?”

“Nope.”

“Never? Even though his mothers put you two in touch?”

“Maybe on the phone before we met. I can’t remember.”

“Did you get any impression about whether Leslie likes him?”

“Stuart?”

“Does she hate him?”

“Do you?” he asked.

“He deserves it.”

Here was where a brother who didn’t want to talk about his own personal life moves the conversation forward with “Who picked the fancy beer?”

I said I did; it was brewed in Brooklyn.

There was a pop from the saucepan, a knockwurst bursting its skin. “Dinner is served,” I said.

We helped ourselves from the pots on the stove then took seats at the kitchen table.

“Where’s the housemate?” he asked.

“On campus, playing hockey. The faculty-staff game is every Sunday night. He’s the goalie so he has to show.”

“Decent,” he said.

“Speaking of not so decent, have you heard from Dad?”

“Nope. Only Mom.”

“How’d that go?” I asked, knowing full well every sentence they’d exchanged.

“She called him, you know.”

“She warned me she might . . .”

“She told him, ‘Don’t go around telling everyone we’re not getting divorced. Because we are. I’m not the one who has anything to be ashamed of! This isn’t the 1950s.’ ”

“Ironic,” I said, and pointed to my 1950s Formica counter, where my mother’s Eisenhower-era lemon squares were defrosting.

Joel muttered a hrrmmmph that sounded like a rebuke.

“Can you translate that?” I asked.

“It meant you should move back to Brooklyn.”

“Because Mom bakes me cookies?”

“No. What’s here for you? Everton Country Day? Mom dropping by every two minutes?”

“And what would I be going back to?”

“New York! Stuff to do and see. First-run movies! Public transportation.”

“Why don’t you move to Brooklyn if it’s too claustrophobic here? Or Boston? Or, I don’t know, Honolulu, Hawaii? Aren’t you in the same boat as I am?” Then, for good, illogical measure, I threw in “Plus dating a woman whose family I wouldn’t want to sit with at your wedding!”

“Well, that makes total sense.” He leaned over and gave me a friendly cuff on the shoulder. “What else ya got?”

“Not much.”

“There’s always the old favorite, How about taking some courses and working toward a degree? Shouldn’t you have a PhD by now? And a couple of kids?”

I said, “You don’t get that from me. And Everton makes perfect sense for me now. I have a house, a job I mostly like, a very good tenant—”

“That’s how you think of him? A tenant?”

Ignoring that, I moved on to “I have a car; I have what New Yorkers would consider a yard. And even if Mom is underfoot, what’s better: being a mile away or spending a fortune getting up here when she needs a little . . . boost?”

“You call this a boost? She told me she slept here.”

“Only one night! And only because we’d had too much to drink so we couldn’t drive her home, and we weren’t going to let her walk in the dark, in a blizzard.”

Thus, conversation was reset to the weather forecast and the batch of new plowing patrons, old faithfuls who were once on his paper route. I cleared the plates, and from the sink, I heard, “Mom likes your tenant.”

I said, “She told you that?”

“Obviously.” Then—as if it were the logical follow-up to a Nick compliment—“I told her he was gay.”

I squeaked, “You did? Why?”

“You know,” he said.

“No, I do not.”

“I think it was after she said she hoped you weren’t falling for him. Or maybe the other way around—Nick falling for you. I figured I’d throw her off the scent. It’ll save us both her stewing over the Gentile factor.”

Where to start refuting, correcting, scolding? I huffed first about my own various troubles, then the paternal trauma we’d all suffered the day before, plus his buddy Brian Dolan’s showing up to investigate some murders that might have been committed in my cellar. “And after all that,” I ranted, “that was her takeaway? That was her big overriding worry? Nick isn’t Jewish?”

Joel shrugged—a yes if ever I’d seen one.

“Did she tell you he sat there and listened to her tales of woe? What guy does that? Nick, who saved my job—”

“She thinks we saved your job—”

“Who always pays his share of the mortgage on the first of the month and never leaves a dirty dish in the sink? Not that anyone’s falling for anyone. It’s just the principle of it. The prejudice. After Stuart? Jewish! What kind of selfish hippie husband would he have been?”

“I said all that, believe me. I also said, ‘Good luck with the Jewish husband campaign, Ma. Good luck in this century, in Everton, Massachusetts. And, let’s face it, ticktock.”

I didn’t love any of that, but what was there to contradict? “Did she believe you when you said he was gay?”

“She’ll forget about it. And when the time comes, you can tell her I made it up to throw her off course.”

“When what time comes?”

“Gee. Let me think on that. Oh, I’ve got it: when you two are sleeping in the same bed.”

“Not gonna happen. We work together. It’s against the rules.”

“I’m sure. And there’s a nanny cam recording your home life for the board of trustees?”

I abandoned the table to plate the lemon squares, which were still a little glacial. “These need more time,” and then, glancing at the clock, I asked, barely audibly, “Think we should call Dad?”

“No! Why would we?”

“Because we were a little brutal yesterday?”

“Aren’t you the enabler! He’s got Tracy”—pronounced as scornfully and dismissively as two syllables could be spoken—“for all his needs. She’s probably saying right now, ‘What horrible, selfish children you have. Don’t they want their father to be happy?’ ”

“Okay. We won’t call him. I don’t want to be an enabler.”

He asked if he could take dessert to go—needed to hit the hay . . . late night, then early plowing, not to mention the sanding and the shoveling. At the door, he said, “About Brooklyn? Maybe I was thinking happier times. You got back here and, whammo, the job, then the Stuart thing imploded, then Mom and Dad split. Plus your haunted house . . . speaking of which, I don’t see why you have to give a crap about who died here fifty, sixty years ago. Now get a good night’s sleep. You look like hell.”

I said, “Gee, thanks,” then threw out, “You’re gay. I’m telling Leslie before she gets in too deep.”

“Ha! This is Massachusetts. You gotta do better than that.”

 

Against Joel’s advice and my own better judgment, I texted my dad. I typed, erased, typed, revised, and finally came up with only Dad—not the easiest lunch I ever had but better to know.

Uncharacteristically, he answered quickly. Why did I get the sense that it had been dictated by Tracy? Maybe it was the use of full sentences and its pedantic tone. You’re right, Faith. It wasn’t the easiest lunch for me, either. I need some time to settle in at Tracy’s & to let our conversation at lunch metabolize. I’ll be in touch.

 

Let our conversation metabolize? What did that mean? I’m the one who will be in touch when I feel like it. I, the professional scribe rarely at a loss for words on paper or screen be they personal or professionally shopworn, did not write back.