Джонатан Троппер - This Is Where I Leave You

And now I have no wife, no child, no job, no home, or anything else that would point to a life being lived with any success. I may not be old, but I’m too old to have this much nothing. I’ve got the double chin of a stranger in photographs, the incipient swell of love handles just above my hips, and I’m pretty sure that my hairline, the one boundary I’ve always been able to count on, is starting to creep back on me when I’m not looking, because every so often my fingers discover some fresh topography on my upper forehead. To have nothing when you’re twenty is cool, it’s expected, but to have nothing when you’re halfway to seventy, softening and widening on a daily basis, is something altogether different. It’s like setting out to drive cross-country without any gas money. I will look back at this time and see it as the start of a slow process that ends with me dying alone after living out my days in an empty apartment with only the television and a slow, waddling dog to keep me company, the kind of place that will smell stale to visitors, but not to me, since the stale thing will be me. And I can feel that miserable future hurtling toward me at high speed, thundering across the plains in a cloud of dust like a wildebeest stampede.

Before I know it, I’m on my feet, ducking and weaving through the crowd, intercepting random bits of conversation, keeping my eye on the sanctuary of the kitchen door.

“. . . Paul, the older one. He spoke very nicely . . .”

“. . . on a ventilator for three months . . . basically a vegetable . . .”

“. . . a place down on Lake Winnipesaukee. We do it every year. It’s beautiful. Maureen brings the kids . . .”

“. . . recently separated. Apparently, there was a third party involved . . .”

That last one pierces me like a fishhook—but by then I’m at the door, and I’m not looking back. I step into the air-conditioned quiet of the kitchen and lean up against the wall, catching my breath. Linda is crouched at the fridge, absently chewing on the nub of a raw carrot like a cigar, trying to make room for all of the food that’s been delivered.

“Hey there, Judd,” she says, smiling at me. “What can I get you? And, bear in mind, we have pretty much everything now.”

“How about a vanilla milkshake?”

She closes the fridge and looks at me. “That, we don’t have.”

“Well, then, I guess I’ll have to run out and grab one.”

Her smile is sweet and maternal. “Getting a little intense in there?”

“We passed intense a while ago.”

“I heard the shouting.”

“Yeah . . . sorry. And thank you, you know, for all of your help, for taking care of Mom and everything.”

She looks startled for a second, seems on the verge of saying something, but then just pops the carrot back into her mouth and smiles. From the other room, we can hear my mother laughing.

“Well, Mom seems to be enjoying herself, at any rate.”

“She’s had a long time to prepare for this.”

“I guess so.”

We stand there for a minute, the well of small talk having run dry.

“Horry looks good,” I say, and wish instantly that I hadn’t.

Linda’s smile is sad, ragged, and somehow beautiful, the aching smile of the long-suffering. “You learn not to think about what might have been, and to just appreciate what you have.”

“Yeah. I’m probably not the right guy to hear that right about now.”

She steps over to me and puts her arms on my shoulders. It’s been forever since I’ve been touched, since I’ve even had any sustained eye contact, and I can see my tears reflected in her eyes. “You’re going to be okay, Judd. I know you feel lost now, but you won’t feel this way for long.”

“How do you know?” I am suddenly inches away from a full-on crying jag. Linda diapered me, fed me, mothered me almost as much as my own mother, without ever being recognized for it. I should have sent her Mother’s Day cards every year, should have called her every so often to see how she was doing. How is it that, in all these years, I never once spared so much as a thought for her? I feel a dark wave of regret for the kind of person I turned out to be.

“You’re a romantic, Judd. You always were. And you’ll find love again, or it will come find you.”

“Did it ever find you again?”

Something changes in her expression, and she lets go of me.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “That was a terrible thing to say.”

She nods, accepting my apology. “It would be a terrible mistake to go through life thinking that people are the sum total of what you see.”

“I know.”

“No, you don’t,” Linda says, not unkindly. “And it’s not the time or place to go into details, but rest assured, I have not spent the last thirty years sleeping alone.”

“Of course not. I’m an asshole.”

“Maybe, but you get a free pass this week.” She offers up a friendly smirk. “Just don’t abuse it.” She looks out the window to the crowded street in front. “Looks like you’re parked in by Jerry Lamb’s Hummer. Why a retired doctor needs to drive a tank like that in Elmsbrook, New York, is a question for the ages. His penis can’t be that small, can it?” She reaches into her apron and tosses me some keys. “It’s the blue Camry. If you time it right, you can pick up Horry on your way back. I don’t like him walking home this late.”

LINDA’S CAR SMELLS like yeast and flowers. Other than the small gold locket that hangs from her rearview mirror, the car is empty and clean in a way that strikes me as sad. Or maybe anything empty is just striking a chord with me these days. The earlier rain has tapered off into a light mist that dusts the windshield just enough to blur the headlights of oncoming cars. I drive down Centre Street and park at a meter in front of Foxman Sporting Goods’ flagship store.

Dad worked as an electrician, but when Paul was born he decided he wanted a legacy for his children. He borrowed money from his father-in-law to buy a small sporting goods store out of bankruptcy, and over the years he expanded it into a chain of six stores across the Hudson Valley and into Connecticut. He was a firm believer in customer service and a knowledgeable staff, and proudly rebuffed the larger national chains who offered to buy him out every few years. Every Saturday he would visit the five satellite stores, to check their books and troubleshoot. When Paul and I were younger, he would wake us up at first light and hustle us into his car to come along. Dobbs Ferry, Tarrytown, Valhalla, Stamford, and Fairfield. I’d sit in the back, my eyes still glazed with sleep, watching the sun come up behind the trees along the highway through the tinted windows of his secondhand Cadillac. The car smelled of pipe tobacco and the tape deck played a steady rotation of Simon and Garfunkel, Neil Diamond, Jackson Browne, and Peggy Lee. Every so often I’ll hear one of those songs, in an elevator or a waiting room, and it will take me right back to that car, lulled into semiconsciousness by the soft thrum of the road seams, my father humming along to the music in his gravelly voice.

Once a quarter he’d bring along Barney Cronish, his accountant. Paul hated it when Barney came, because he had to give up the front seat for him, and because Barney had to stop at every rest stop on the thruway, either to buy a coffee or piss out the last one. Barney also farted loudly and without shame, at which point Paul and I would crack our windows and stick our heads into the wind like a couple of dogs to escape the rancid, cabbage smell. Sometimes my father would press the window lock button in the front and play dumb while we suffocated, which was the closest he came to joking around.