Jonathan Tropper Read online

  Chapter 9

  When the divorce started to get nasty, Lela’s lawyer hired a private detective who secured testimony that Anna was not the first coworker Norm had slept with. This was supposed to somehow help Lela’s case, but what it did instead was get Norm fired, and his subsequent inability to stay at any job thereafter would become something of a dour family legend, referenced sardonically by aunts and grandparents in hushed kitchen conferences during holiday gatherings as Lela bemoaned his frequent failure to pay child support. What really infuriated her was that in most cases, Norm wasn’t being fired. He was quitting.

  “What do you mean, you quit?” we heard her through the walls, wailing on the phone to him. “You can’t afford to quit!”

  But he did, repeatedly, always believing he was being mistreated, or passed over, or disrespected, or, in one case, the target of a mob conspiracy.

  During this time, his visits started to become more sporadic, and more often than not we would find ourselves on Sunday mornings, dressed and waiting in the living room, awkwardly avoiding eye contact with each other while, upstairs, Lela desperately worked the phone, trying in vain to track Norm down. Eventually, I stopped expecting him, and Pete, as usual, followed my lead. But for a long time, Matt would get dressed every Sunday and sit sullenly in the living room, his jacket beside him on the couch, staring out the picture window and flashing accusatory glances at us when we padded by in our pajamas to get breakfast, as if our diminished expectations were the cause and not the effect of Norm’s negligence. He knew as well as we did that Norm wasn’t coming, but something in him, some incipient masochism, compelled him to relive the disappointment anew every week, as if he were consciously building a case to support the budding anger that would one day blossom like a mushroom cloud within him. After the vandalism began, Lela put him in therapy, but that seemed to make him only more sullen, and she could hardly be shelling out seventy-five dollars a session for something that didn’t seem to be having any effect.

  A little while later, Norm announced that he had accepted a position with a firm in Boston and, with a flurry of promises of a better life to come for us all, packed all his possessions into the run-down Nova he was driving and headed north. It was a small pharmaceutical company, but they were poised to take off, and he was getting in on the ground floor. And he wasn’t going to be an accountant; he was going to be a salesman—Massachusetts would be his territory initially—and it didn’t matter that he’d never been in sales before, that he’d taken some liberties with his résumé, because sales was all about forging relationships, about looking people in the eye and letting them know they could count on you, and that was Norm’s specialty. He was a people person, and who better than him to charm receptionists and lunch with doctors on the company dime? And after he’d proven himself in sales, he had his eye on a position with upper management. This was the start of a promising new career and the salve to all our financial woes. And we shouldn’t worry, because Boston wasn’t that far, really, and he would get a large apartment, the rents there were so much more reasonable than here, and we could come up for weekends, see the Red Sox and the Bruins play, and he would come down to see us as well, and maybe, once he’d accrued some vacation time, we could all go to Disney World.

  And we smiled our forced smiles and nodded by rote while Lela looked on silently, eyes frosted over in icy detachment. She didn’t have to say anything, because by that point we were already living with the painful consciousness of what he’d become, or what he’d always been that had been obscured by the veil of marriage and fatherhood. We knew that within a year, two at the most, he’d have been fired over some misunderstanding or another, or yet another inadvisable workplace tryst. Or he’d have quit because they were damn fools who didn’t know what they were doing and who didn’t appreciate the wisdom of his suggestions. But we listened as if we believed, exclaiming positively at all the right pauses. At some point in the disconnect, a role reversal had taken place, and we now humored him as if he were an errant son in constant need of stroking and encouragement.

  So we hugged him good-bye and watched him go, hoping in the manner of children that despite all we knew, this time things might be different. And for the first few months, it seemed as though they might be. Norm called regularly, telling us about his fancy new office with a view of the Charles River, and relating amusing stories of the you-had-to-be-there variety about his new buddies and his life on the road. Every other weekend he would drive down to New York to visit us, handing Lela his child support checks with a beneficent expression that made the veins in her neck bulge. We were living on Lela’s teaching salary, and the added money should have been a boon for us, but she resolutely banked the checks with a severe frugality, like a squirrel anticipating the inevitable frost of winter.

  And after about a year the visits started becoming more sporadic, and Lela began having to fight for her checks, and one day I called Norm’s apartment and the phone was disconnected. We heard nothing from him for a spell, during which time Lela assured us that Norm would resurface. “He’s like a bad penny,” she said. “He always turns up.” I didn’t know what that meant, but he did resurface five months later, living in London, of all places. I was eighteen, and a month away from my high school graduation. Although I didn’t like to admit it, I’d been harboring hopes that he would attend, and see what a success I’d become in his absence. “I’ve met a wonderful woman,” he told me, his voice distant and hollow over the long-distance connection. “Her name is Lily, and she’s a singer. We’re getting married and I’m going to manage her career.”

  “You’re getting married?” I said. “When?”

  “We haven’t set a date yet,” he said. “She’s a real bohemian, so we’ll probably just have some wacky private ceremony on the beach.”

  “I didn’t think there were any beaches in London.”

  He laughed, too hard. “Yeah. Well, I guess you’re right about that.”

  “I’m graduating next month,” I said.

  “I know,” he said. “I feel terrible I can’t be there. But this opportunity came up and I just couldn’t pass it up. I hope you understand.”

  “It’s okay,” I said, because really, what the hell else was I going to say. I wished it was Matt and not me on the phone, because Matt would have simply cursed and hung up on him. But as soon as Matt had heard “London,” he’d stormed upstairs and sequestered himself in his room, and I just didn’t have it in me. I was the soft touch, and Norm knew it.

  “Listen, we’ll come stateside as soon as we can, okay? I’m dying for Lily to meet all of you. You’re all I ever talk about.”

  “Why didn’t you call to tell us you were leaving?”

  He sighed. “Everything just happened so fast,” he said. “I met Lily and then she was leaving, and I just couldn’t let her disappear like that, so I flew with her, and the next thing you know, I’m living in England.”

  “Just like that,” I said.

  “Yeah,” Norm said with a chuckle. “Just like that. Listen, give my love to the boys, okay? And tell your mother I’ll send you all some money as soon as I get myself set up here, okay?”

  I hung up in a daze, and Lela, who’d been listening from her chair in the kitchen, put down her crossword puzzle. “If there’s one area in which your father is completely reliable, it’s in being unreliable,” she said.

  “He’s still my father,” I said defensively.

  “He’s gravy,” she said dismissively. “All flavor and fat. No meat. Expect nothing. Then you can appreciate him without letting him hurt you over and over again.”

  I nodded, struggling to swallow the lump in my throat as she stared at me, tasting the bile of her own resentment, her eyes daring me to cry.

  Chapter 10

  When we were kids, Matt had this cherubic face, spaghetti-straight blond hair, plump pink cheeks, and our mother’s soft blue eyes. I would stand by his crib for long stretches of time, watching him sleep, relishi
ng his baby smells, infatuated by the sheer perfection of his composition. Now his head is shaved, his arms heavily tattooed, his face gaunt and violated at various junctions with metal knobs and bands, and he storms angrily across the stage in torn cargo pants and a ratty Sex Pistols T-shirt, singing songs about masturbation and suicide pacts. I sit in the back at a merchandise table loaded with CDs and T-shirts, watching my little brother stomp like God as his band, Worried About the WENUS, plays through their scorching set at Kenny’s Castaways.

  Jed was sitting with me until about twenty minutes ago, at which point he selected one of the young, barely dressed women dancing nearby, seemingly at random, bought her a few drinks, and eventually disappeared with her into the bathroom. He considers groupie sex a perk of his devoted service to the band. Worried About the WENUS plays mostly to college crowds, touring up and down the East Coast in search of a record deal, and Jed is a passionate fan of college girls. Or, at least, he used to be. Ever since Rael’s death, the whole thing seems to have become a joyless affair for him. He still comes, still hooks up with these girls, but I get the feeling he’s no longer fully inhabiting himself at these times, watching himself like he watches the television, waiting for something, the music or one of these young girls, to ignite something within him. You don’t think of loud, shameless nihilism as a positive attribute, but since he abandoned it, Jed seems only half-alive, as if he’s only coming here and getting laid out of force of habit, or nostalgia for when he gave a shit. Somehow, when we’re in the apartment, his stupor is somewhat less obvious, or else I’ve just gotten too used to it to notice it, but when we go out to the WENUS gigs, and I see him charming and seducing these young girls from a mile away, sleepwalking through the motions, I have to fight the urge to grab him by the shoulders and scream at him to wake the hell up.

  Instead, I sit at my little concession table, watching the crowd and getting hammered on free drinks—the other, less glamorous benefit of being with the band. Before Hope, I did hook up on occasion, but my success rate paled in comparison to Jed’s, and I usually had to wait until he had already chosen his partner for the evening, since no one would give me a second glance while he was still there. Looks are a function of circumstance, and I become much better looking when Jed’s not around.

  Sure enough, within a few minutes, a girl with almond eyes and a dancer’s body walks over and sits down in Jed’s empty seat. Her straight shoulder-length hair is standard-issue blond, darker at the roots and parted in the middle. Her body is its own selling point, and her posture and the clinging halter top she wears indicate that she knows it. It’s pathetic, really, but that’s all it takes: nice eyes and lively breasts on a thin frame. Everything else is just icing on the cake. She’s hot and flushed from dancing. “Hey,” she says. “T-shirt man.”

  This is apparently a salutation, so I respond in kind. “Hey, sweaty girl.” She throws back her head and laughs. I picture her in her dorm room, looking in the mirror as she rehearses this gesture, possibly picked up from a Sandra Bullock movie. “I know,” she says. “I get a little carried away with the dancing. This is my third WENUS show this year.” Her skin glows pink in the spotlighting of the club. She’s pretty in an unsophisticated way, like a Midwestern farm girl, and you can see the wide-open prairies behind her, the blue-skied meadows in her eyes. As far as one-night stands go, I could do a lot worse. I know this because I have. “Can I ask you a question?” she says.

  “Sure.” We’re both shouting to be heard above Matt, who has just launched into a thrashing cover of “Believe It or Not,” the Greatest American Hero theme. I suggested it to him about a year ago, and it never fails as a crowd-pleaser. It occurs to me that the girl now sitting with me probably was in diapers during that show’s brief run, and I feel ridiculously old.

  “What does Worried About the WENUS actually mean?”

  “Ah,” I say. I get asked that question often. “Did you ever watch Friends?”

  “Sure,” she says. “In high school.” She is leaning close to me to be heard, affording me a clear view down her flimsy shirt as her breath tickles my ear. The alcohol fumes mingling in the air from our collective breath could be ignited with the scrape of a match.

  “It’s an obscure reference to a particular episode.”

  She looks up at the band skeptically. “They were Friends fans?”

  “It’s a somewhat ironic reference,” I admit.

  There comes a point in every one of these types of conversations when you somehow know it’s yours for the taking, and when she leans in to me and says, “I’m Jesse, by the way,” I know I’m in.

  “Zack,” I say. We shake hands like idiots.

  Later, after enough drinks to lose count, we slow dance in the back, right near my table, and if you need another confirmation that sex is in the offing, slow dancing to punk rock is usually a good sign. I am in that blissful state of drunkenness where your impaired senses are not yet aware of the frothing cauldron stirring in your guts, and you foolishly believe your buzz will simply taper off like smoke in the breeze, rather than end abruptly in the acidic violence of a late-night puke. Jesse presses her cheek to mine and I enjoy the feel of her spry bosom crushed against my chest. Soon we’re making out, the deep, wet, wide-open kisses of horny strangers. She brushes her thigh blatantly against my crotch, her tongue flitting hungrily about my lips, the volume of the music somehow granting us license for this salacious behavior. On some distant plane of consciousness where the alcohol has not yet seeped, the guilt is percolating, but oddly enough, instead of seeing Hope’s face there, I see Tamara’s. My benumbed mind is not up to examining the complex stratification of this drunken betrayal, so I choose to forget about it. Consequences are a concept for the sober. My body feels weightless, suspended by the booze, by the deafening sound system, and by Jesse’s arms, and as I close my eyes, I can feel myself sinking into a pleasant oblivion.

  The band finishes their first set to a raucous round of applause, and I feel like a kid in a movie theater when the lights go up at the end. Fooling around with a stranger in public is somewhat more awkward without the comforting insulation of loud music and darkness. Jesse and I return to the table, where we quickly down a few more drinks in the hopes of sustaining the sexy mood through the jarring break while the band takes an intermission.

  Jed comes back from the bathroom, rumpled and lipstick scarred, and nods knowingly at me when he sees Jesse leaning on me. He pulls over a chair for himself and one for his new friend, a tall brunette who looks like a poor man’s Christy Turlington.

  “And how are things on the O.C.?” I say.

  “You’re one to talk,” he says, eyeing Jesse pointedly. He turns and theatrically offers her his hand. “I’m Jed, by the way.”

  Introductions are made all around and Jed calls for a pitcher. The waitress informs us that now that we have guests, we’ll have to start paying for our drinks. “I left my wallet in the van,” I say.

  “It’s okay,” Jed says, discreetly pulling out a wad. “I got it.”

  Jesse flashes me a sly look. “You have a van?” she says.

  This is what happens. The cold air hits your face like a slap as you stagger out of the club and down Bleecker Street to where the band’s van is parked. You’re thirty-two years old, with a fiancée to boot, and yet you find yourself climbing into the back of a van with a sweetly game college girl. She’s ten years younger than you and finishing the last credits of her religion major, and she has about her a practiced air of seasoned sexuality. She will prefer to be on top—you know this instinctively—and will be unabashed in the pursuit of her own gratification. This is all wrong. Even if you weren’t engaged, you’d be too old for her. But her skin is smooth and unblemished as fresh snowfall, and in the dim lighting, it has a satiny sheen, and you feel something apart from the guilt and self-pity that are growing like twin tumors in your belly, a sense of desperate longing to be that young and whole again.

  Matt’s van has only the two sea
ts up front. The back is open and windowless, to facilitate the transport of the band’s musical arsenal. Jesse climbs in and sits up against the wall. “Can you turn on the heat?” she says.

  The engine coughs twice before turning over with a loud backfire, and the air whines through the vents like a dying animal. “Put on some music,” she calls to me, shivering in the back. I fumble through the tapes scattered around the floor of the passenger seat. It’s mostly punk, not exactly mood music. The cold air has sobered me somewhat, and it seems preposterous that I’m really going to have sex with a college girl in the back of a van. I finally find a battered Pink Floyd album and slide it into the tape deck.

  In the back, Jesse’s seated Indian-style on the corrugated metal floor, lighting up a joint. She offers me the roach clip and I take a long drag. It’s been a few years since I smoked any weed, and it dries me out instantly. I feel a sting in my throat, a churning in my belly, and the rise of acid in the back of my mouth. I hand her back the joint and sit down across from her.

  I don’t want to cheat on Hope in the back of a van with some young stranger. I don’t know what’s going on with Tamara and me, but this feels like cheating on both Tamara and Hope, which makes no sense, again, but there it is. Also, no one’s had van sex since the seventies. It’s tacky. With the grandiose resolve of the inebriated, I decide that under no circumstances will I go through with this. Jesse carefully sets aside the roach and climbs onto my lap, straddling me as she starts to kiss me deeply. She tastes like strawberry lipstick, smoke, and tequila, and I celebrate my decision to not have sex with her by kissing her back. We do that for a little while, our tongues colliding in their sloppy explorations, and I guess the van’s heating has finally kicked in, because she pulls off her flimsy top with her bra in one practiced motion and I’m suddenly face-to-face with her astounding breasts. I feel my drunken resolve crumbling in the face of her impressive nakedness. The fact is, I don’t want to do this, but then again, I really, really do. Story of my life. Relief comes from my roiling stomach juices, which unite in revolt and rise up in a spastic convulsion. I manage to push Jesse off my lap just before I vomit prolifically all over the van.