Howie and Carly don’t appear for Sunday bagels until close to noon. But when they do emerge, they are so beautiful: clothes flowing, all different colors. Silk. Linen. Velour. Fabrics none of us wear. And skin, showing out of all different places. It’s cold in the house but Papa stokes the fireplace in the dining room and flaps and folds of fabric loosen and drape as the temperature rises.
“I love seeing you all around the table like this,” Carly says warmly. “This is what family is all about.” She leans forward to grab a bagel and I search her open collar for a line of cleavage. I love seeing you like this, too. But when she sits back I notice her eyes are red and swollen.
“You’ll be our practice family, OK?” Howie says. “And the little ones are our practice kids.”
“Take ’em away,” Papa says, handing his friend a section of the paper. “And read the op-ed piece by Milton Friedman. Calls LBJ an interventionist. Wants a complete withdrawal from the war on poverty.”
“Gimme that,” Howie pulls the page from Papa’s hands.
“Where were you last night?” Mama asks Howie, passing him a piece of Grandmother’s Famous Cranberry Bread.
“I went into the city for a bit. Mmmmm! This is incredible, Princess.”
Amanda, still clad in her nightgown and curled in her chair, looks wonderingly at Carly. “You have puffy eyes,” she says timidly.
“Shhhhhh.…” Mama hushes her. “It’s not polite.”
“Do you need a hug, Carly?”
Carly nods, closing her eyes. Her tears come quickly, in a big stream down her cheeks. She’s so raw it hurts. I look down at my bagel, a weird fist of shame pressing inexplicably inside me.
“Oh, honey, what happened?” Mama asks, standing to join Amanda and Carly, who have come around the table to wrap themselves in a standing hug by the fireplace.
“It’s nothing,” Carly sniffles. “Don’t worry.”
“It’s my fault,” Howie says. “I hurt Carly’s feelings. We’re working through it, but it’s hard.” He stands to join the hug.
“Can we not discuss it with the group?” Carly pleads.
“But it’s family,” Howie objects.
“No, Howie. Please.” She looks as if she’ll cry again.
“Cranberry bread?” Papa asks.
“What happened?” Amanda repeats.
“I wanted to spend some time with a new friend last night,” Howie says, “and Carly is feeling a little jealous.”
“I’m not jealous.”
“Hurt.”
“Ouch,” Carly says softly. “That’s all I want to say. Ouch.”
“Where did you meet a new friend?” Amanda can’t help asking. For the rest of us, it’s a slow-motion car crash we can’t prevent.
“Actually, at your dad’s office,” Howie says, like that makes this all a bit easier to swallow.
“Not Joyce?” Papa sighs.
“Re-Joyce!” Howie trills in a tone rife with admission, apology, and reverie. I recall the woman at the reception desk listening in on our conversation, blushing when Howie said her name. Joy to meet you, Joyce.
Carly leaves the room and Papa makes angry eyes at Howie. I’ve never seen him do that to an adult.
“Too much?” Howie asks.
“Might be,” my father replies.
“I’ll go talk to her.”
“No,” Mama says. “Let me.”
“Well, I reserved the court for two o’clock,” Papa says, clearing his dishes. “Still game?”
“Never more,” Howie says, shaking off the mood that has soured the room.
“Good, because you could use a beating.”
“Can I watch?” I ask.
“You never come to the Y,” Papa notes, rightly.
“I know, but I want to see you play.”
“I think he wants to see you play,” Papa pats Howie on the back on his way to the kitchen.
“My game is ten times better when I have a cheering section,” Howie assures me. “I prefer taller and blonder. But you’ll do.”
* * *
It’s true, I don’t care about racquetball. I bring a pile of comics but take breaks now and then to peer through the Plexiglas porthole when there’s a heavy thump and Papa or Howie bounce off the wall. Howie shouts “FUCK!” every time he misses a shot. Papa says “Lucky, boychik,” the few times he does.
After the second game they emerge, drenched and winded.
“Who’s winning?”
“I came close that first game,” Howie says to me, slick with sweat. “Fifteen-twelve. The second was tougher. Your old man’s a killer. Killer instinct.”
“Come on,” Papa urges. “We only have the court for another twenty minutes.”
They’re out in seven. Howie’s breath is labored and he’s wheezing. Papa, on the other hand, is bouncing, ready for more. My father is hairy, weedy, and lithe. I think of him as strong, but with a toughness more mental than physical. His style is to cajole rather than menace. To outsmart rather than outmuscle. Howie is how many years his junior? Cut like a G.I. Joe doll! Ready for action! And now sliding to the floor in an exhausted pile.
“What was the score?” I ask, proud of Papa but totally disoriented by the scene.
“Fifteen–zip,” Papa says, nonchalant in victory.
Hearing all that grunting on the other side of the wall, I pictured Howie clobbering him. “Zero?” I ask Howie, lying in a puddle of his own sweat on the dusty black linoleum.
“I’m fucked.”
“You’re all muscle, no lungs,” Papa tells him. “You need to change your workout. Less iron, more running. Condition yourself for the long haul. Endurance! Come on, let’s get a schvitz.”
“Oh! It’s so humiliatin’! I feel like a Samsonite after the Steelers give it a good wailing…”
“Yeah, only you didn’t hold up as well as those pretty suitcases in the commercials,” Papa digs just a bit more before climbing the stairs to the locker room.
* * *
I stuff my comics and clothes in Papa’s locker and wrap a scratchy Y towel around my waist. They’re already in the steam room, so I pry the heavy metal door open and the heat is so strong it makes me swallow and hold my breath.
“I should be hearing about that grant any day now. Get you on staff, earning your keep.” Papa’s there, somewhere deep in the steam. I try to call to them but when I open my mouth the air blasts my tongue. I turn to leave.
“Jefe, I’m honored.”
“But you can’t fuck my secretary.”
I decide to stay, invisible in the scalding mist.
“Because…?”
“Because? Do I really need to tell you because? You really think you’re that different?”
“I’m a human being. You’re a human being. You have the niños. Makes it more complicated, I know. But if we’re being honest with each other, then it’s not so complex. It’s being human.”
“Oh,” Papa’s voice cuts the heavy mist. “It’s clearly not complicated for Carly.”
“She’s going to be a sex therapist. She understands.”
“Understands that you’re a selfish prick. That you can’t keep it in your pants, even on your honeymoon. And you can’t keep quiet about it, either.”
Papa’s words cut, and the anger in his voice twists my stomach into knots.
“That’s the voice of your father, man. This is a different time. This is our generation. I can’t hide anything from her. I love her.”
“If you love her, you protect her. You don’t cheat on her. And if you do, you don’t tell her.”
“Wow. Where do I start with that? Everything you just said is based on false assumptions. First: It’s not cheating. We committed to each other, to be together, yes, but also to have an open marriage. We acknowledge that we’re human beings with human desires, not to deny our natural instincts. That’s why Carly is a part of any exploring I do—not in the bed, necessarily, but in the setup and arrangements. Second: We don’t lie about it. I don’t know how to be anything but honest, especially with Carly. I can’t hold all that shit inside. I don’t know how anyone could. One day of deception and I’m a mess. Two days, and I’m on a collision course for the cuckoo’s nest. How can I do that to the woman I love?”
“You just do, you asshole,” Papa says angrily. The verbal shrapnel makes me flinch. “You don’t rope her into it. You carry your own water. Every time you get a hard-on for another woman you don’t tell your wife. All that’s going to do is hurt her. Carry your water. You don’t talk about it unless it’s going to affect the relationship, permanently. That’s when you need to bring it up.”
“Well, that’s how they used to do it. And how did that go? Repressed masturbators and guys sneaking around on women they say they love. And then everyone ends up divorced or, worse, in separate beds. We do it differently. We tell each other the truth.”
Papa snickers. “You know what?”
“What?”
“You’re stupid.”
I let loose a desperate pant in the heat of the steam. “Lou?” Papa calls. I don’t answer, willing my invisibility powers into action. He pauses, sighs. “Did it ever occur to you that you could just be monogamous? Is that even on your groovy radar screen?”
“You know what monogamy is?” Howie asks in the fog. “Monogamy is racism.”
“Ha!”
“I’m not joking. It’s a moralistic, puritanical, fabricated judgment of our nature. And it’s a violation of our human rights. We’re trying to cure it.”
Papa laughs for a long time. “You know how long I’ve been married?” he asks when he catches his breath.
“Ten years?”
“Fifteen.”
“Beautiful.”
Isn’t it?
“You want to know what marriage looks like after fifteen years?”
The heat of the schvitz closes on me, but I want to hear more. I try to hold my breath against this scalding air.
“Never mind. I don’t need to talk about it. You can judge for yourself.”
“Maybe you should,” Howie proposes, spinning my heart in my chest round the other way. I’m not sure I want to hear the answer.
“Maybe. But I carry my water. It’s what we have to do.”
“Do we?” Howie asks.
“Well, I do.” Papa pauses. “Your revolution is a lot harder to support. Plus, it’s a lot harder when I have your wife living with me. Takes a lot of the fun out of it when she shows up at the table looking like she’s sitting shiva.”
The steam is crushing me. I grab for the door and escape to the cool BO of the locker room. My arms and legs are bright red, my throat scorched. My chest constricts, asthma attack looming, even with no dogs in sight. Slipping on the tiled floor, I make for the stairs down to the pool, skip the mandatory shower, and jump in the deep end.
The water is a reverse shock, the exact opposite of the schvitz. My body convulses once, marrow solidifying, and then a second time when my superheated balls recoil at the new exposure as the towel falls away, surfacing in a nappy white swirl among the Sunday morning lady lap swimmers. A whistle shrills and echoes off the walls of the pool room. “ADULT SWIM!” the lifeguard shouts. “Outofthepool!”
The lady lappers have stopped and are bobbing around me like wet raccoons in goggles and rubber caps.
“Come on!” one of them screeches.
Slowly I let my body slip under the surface. Opening my eyes I see the metal ladder, a few feet away through the rippling ice blue. I try to swim the gap, insides still on fire, skin shivering. But my lungs give out a few feet shy and I surface again.
“I said outofthepool!”
I dog-paddle a few more feet, reach for the ladder and try to close my ears and my mind to the gasps and cries that follow my naked ass into the stairwell and up to the locker room, invisible no more.