Джонатан Троппер - This Is Where I Leave You

“Did anyone else hear him say it?” Phillip.

“Phillip.” Paul.

“What? I’m just saying. Maybe Bone—Charlie misunderstood.”

“I didn’t misunderstand,” Boner says testily. “We discussed it at length.”

“Don’t some people sit shiva for just three days?” Me.

“Yes!” Wendy.

“No!” Boner shouts. “The word ‘shiva’ means ‘seven.’ It’s seven days. That’s why it’s called shiva. Your father was very specific.”

“Well, I can’t be away from the business for seven days,” Paul says. “Believe you me, Dad would never have gone for that.”

“Listen, Charlie,” I say, stepping forward. “You’ve delivered the message. You held up your end. We’ll discuss it amongst ourselves now and come to a consensus. We’ll call you if we have any questions.”

“Stop it!”

We all turn to see my mother and Linda standing under the archway to the living room. “This is what your father wanted,” Mom says sternly, stepping into the room. She has taken off her suit jacket, and her low-cut blouse reveals her infamous cleavage. “He was not a perfect man, and not a perfect father, but he was a good man, and he tried his best. And you all haven’t exactly been model children lately.”

“It’s okay, Mom. Calm down,” Paul says, reaching out for her.

“Stop interrupting me. Your father lay dying in his bed for the last half year or so. How many times did you visit him, any of you? Now I know, Wendy, Los Angeles isn’t exactly next door, and, Judd, you’ve been going through a rough time, I understand that. And, Phillip . . . Well, God only knows what you’ve been up to. It’s like having a son in Iraq. At least then I’d know where you were. But your father made his last wish known, and we will honor it. All of us. It’s going to be crowded, and uncomfortable, and we’ll all get on each other’s nerves, but for the next seven days, you are all my children again.” She takes a few steps into the room and smiles at us. “And you’re all grounded.”

My mother spins on one stiletto heel and plants herself like a child into one of the low seats. “Well,” she says. “What are you waiting for?”

We all hunker down in the seats, silent and sullen, like a group of scolded schoolchildren.

“Um, Mrs. Foxman,” Boner says, clearing his throat. “You’re really not supposed to wear dress shoes when you’re sitting shiva.”

“I have bad arches,” she says, flashing him a look sharp enough for a circumcision.

The one tattered remnant of Jewish observance that my parents had maintained was having the family stay over for Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. Every year, as summer bled into fall, the call would come, more a summons than an invitation, and we would all descend upon Knob’s End, to argue over sleeping arrangements, grudgingly attend services at Temple Israel, and share an overwrought holiday meal during which, tradition had it, at least one person would theatrically storm out of the house in a huff. Usually, it would be Alice or Wendy, although a few years ago it was memorably Jen, after my father, already well into his peach schnapps, told her, apropos of nothing in particular, that our dead son wouldn’t have been technically Jewish since she was a gentile. This was just a few months after she’d delivered our dead baby, and so no one blamed her for hurling her plate at him as she stormed out. “What got into her?” he said. On the plus side, she insisted we go home immediately, which got me out of having to attend the interminable services at Temple Israel the following morning, where Cantor Rothman’s slow, operatic tenor makes you want to prostrate yourself on the spot and accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior.

ALICE AND TRACY are helping Linda in the kitchen. Horry, on Paul’s orders, has gone back to the store to finish out the day. The Elmsbrook store is the flagship, and it stays open until nine every night. Barry is upstairs, watching a video with the boys. So it’s just the four of us and Mom, sitting on low chairs, feeling sheepish and uncomfortable.

“So,” Phillip says. “What happens now?”

“People will come,” Mom says.

“How do they know when to come?”

“We are not the first people to ever sit shiva,” Paul grumbles.

“People will come,” Mom says.

“Oh, people will come, Ray,” Phillip intones, doing his best James Earl Jones. “People will most definitely come.” Phillip is a repository of random snatches of film dialogue and song lyrics. To make room for all of it in his brain, he apparently cleared out all the areas where things like reason and common sense are stored. When triggered, he will quote thoughtlessly, like some kind of savant.

Paul looks up to catch me staring at the scar on his right hand. It’s a thick, pink line that runs up the meaty edge of his palm, crossing his wrist and ending in a splotchy cluster on the inside of his forearm. There’s another, nastier one on his shoulder that radiates up toward his neck in raised tendrils the color of dead flesh, where the rottweiler missed his jugular by a few inches. Whenever I see him, I can’t help but stare at the scars, looking for the teeth marks I know are there.

He twists his arm around self-consciously, hiding the scar, and flashes me a hard look. Paul has not addressed me directly since I arrived. He rarely addresses me if he doesn’t have to. This is due to a combination of factors, most notably the rottweiler attack that ended his college baseball career before it started and for which he blames me. He’s never come out and said that, of course. Other than Phillip, the men in my family never come out and say anything. So I don’t know for sure if that’s when Paul started hating me, or if that’s just when Paul started hating everybody.

Another possible factor is that I lost my virginity to Alice back in high school, and she to me, which isn’t as creepy as it sounds. Alice was my year in high school, not even on Paul’s radar until many years later, when she cleaned his teeth and he picked her up with the always reliable “Didn’t you used to go out with my kid brother?” By then I was long gone from Elmsbrook, already engaged to Jen, so if anyone is to blame for that one, it’s Paul and not me. He knew going in that I’d been there first. For all I know, he may have even started sleeping with her to somehow get back at me for the dog attack, which would have been twisted and stupid and so very Paul. So now, every time Paul sees me, it’s there in the back of his mind, that I deflowered his wife, that I’ve seen Alice naked, that I’ve kissed the wine-colored birthmark in the shape of a question mark that starts below her navel and ends at the junction of her legs. It was seventeen years ago, but men don’t let go of things like that. And every time Alice and I see each other, we can’t help but flash back to those four months we spent having sex in cars, basements, shrubs, and once, late at night, in the plastic tunnel above the slide in the elementary school playground. You never forget your first time, no matter how much you’d like to.

“How are things at the store?” I ask him.

He looks at me, considering the question. “Same old same old.”

“Any plans to expand to any more locations?”

“Nope. No plans to expand. We’re in a recession, or don’t you read the paper?”

“I was just asking.”

“Although I guess a recession is the least of your problems, huh, Judd?”

“What do you mean by that, Paul?” We are ending our sentences with names, which is the equivalent of fighters circling, looking to throw the first punch.

“Paul,” Mom says.

“It’s okay, Mom,” I say. “We’re just catching up.”