Джонатан Троппер - This Is Where I Leave You

“I remember,” Phillip says.

“I’m so sorry about your father,” Janelle says. She has a pretty face underneath her spray-on tan and is slightly chunky, but in that way men like.

“Thank you.”

“He was such a nice man,” Kelly says. Kelly has a platinum pixie cut and a come-hither smile, and you can just picture her drinking too much and dancing on the pool table in the frat house.

“So, Philly,” Chelsea says. “What have you been up to?”

“I’ve been doing A&R work for a record label.”

“That’s so cool!”

“It’s a small, independent label, a boutique,” Phillip says modestly. “Nothing too exciting. You guys remember my brother Judd?”

They turn to me as one and say hi. I say hi back and try to decide which one I would most want to sleep with. The answer is, all of them. Line them up and I’ll knock them down. They are pretty and sexy and friendly and easy and exactly the kind of girls I never had a chance with back in the day. But now . . . now I’m divorced and damaged, and aren’t these the kind of girls who like damaged men?

“So what have you all been up to?” Phillip says, and what follows is ten minutes of giggles and banter, repeatedly tossed hair, and some really bad grammar. They laugh at pretty much everything Phillip says, and Chelsea, in particular, seems to hang on his every word, her chair gradually inching closer until her ankles rest easily against his. And then Tracy comes back, having spent the afternoon out of the house after her argument with Phillip. I watch her enter the room, see her register these hot young things surrounding her man as she makes her way through the chairs to Phillip’s side. “Hey, babe,” she says, smiling first at him and then at the girls. I have never heard her say “babe,” and it rolls clumsily off her tongue like a hasty lie. “How’s it going?”

“Great,” he says. “These are some old friends of mine from high school.”

“And college,” Chelsea reminds him with a smile.

“That’s right. Chelsea and I were also in college together.”

“I love the name Chelsea,” Tracy says.

“Thanks.”

“This is Tracy,” Phillip says. He doesn’t say “my fiancée,” or any other designation, and the omission lands with a resounding thud in our midst. But Tracy clings admirably to her gracious smile, and for the first time since I’ve met her, I feel bad for her. She’s a smart woman, and on some level, she has to know that this thing with Phillip will never work. Still, she leans forward to graciously shake hands and repeat each girl’s name as she’s introduced, like she’s at a business meeting. The girls flash their whitened teeth and extend their hands, their French-manicured nails catching the light and slicing the air like razor blades.

“LONG DAY, HUH?” Linda says to me. She’s sitting on a stool at the center island in the kitchen, peering down through her bifocals at the Times crossword puzzle.

“I thought I might go pick up Horry again.”

“I thought you might, too,” she says, sliding her car keys across the marble countertop. “You’re blocked in again.”

“Thanks.”

She takes off her reading glasses. “How does he seem to you?”

“Horry? I don’t know. Fine I guess.”

“He does not seem fine, Judd. Don’t be diplomatic with me.”

I nod and think about it. “He seems angry, maybe. Frustrated.”

“He hates me.”

“I’m sure he doesn’t hate you. But he’s a thirty-six-year-old man living with his mother. That can’t be healthy.”

“He’s not healthy.”

“He seems fine.”

“He has seizures. He wets his bed. He forgets things, important things, like locking the door or turning off the oven or putting out his cigarette before he falls asleep, or, once in a while, putting on his pants before he goes out. Sometimes he goes into these trances where he just stands there staring at the wall. I can’t bear the thought of him living alone and staring at the walls for hours on end, with no one there to snap him out of it.”

“On the other hand, he might need some independence.”

“What he needs is to get laid,” Linda says sharply. “That boy always had a girlfriend, remember? I lived in fear that he’d call me from college to tell me he’d knocked up some twit.” She leans forward and lowers her voice. “It’s never easy for him, seeing Wendy like this.”

“I hadn’t thought of that.”

“You think you’re lonely now, Judd, but you’ve got nothing on that boy.”

“No. I guess I don’t.”

“Which reminds me, you should go into the store when you pick him up and say hello to that Penelope Moore.”

I stare at her, nonplussed. “You’re just full of surprises, aren’t you?”

She puts her glasses on and turns back to her puzzle, a small smile playing across her lips. “You have no idea,” she says.

There was always something of a little girl about Penny Moore, with her pale skin and wide eyes, and that hasn’t changed in the years since I last saw her. When she sees me, her face lights up, and she leaps athletically over the counter to hug me. She’s dressed in jeans and a button-down oxford, her long dark hair tied loosely behind her head. From twenty feet away, she could pass for a college student. Only as she draws closer do you see the slightly looser flesh beneath her eyes, the soft commas at the corners of her mouth.

“Hey, Judd Foxman.” She feels thin in my arms, less substantial than I remember.

“Hi, Penny.”

She kisses my cheek and then steps back so we can look at each other. “I’m so sorry about Mort,” she says.

“Thanks.”

“I saw you at the funeral.”

“Really? I didn’t see you.”

“I avoided you. I never know what to say at funerals.”

“Fair enough.”

Penny’s honesty has always been like nudity in an action movie: gratuitous, but no less welcome for it.

“So, how long has it been?” she says. “Seven, eight years?”

“Something like that.”

She gives me the once-over. “You look like hell.”

“Thanks. You look great.”

“Don’t I, though?” she says, smiling.

What I’m thinking is that she looks fine, pretty even, but nothing like the ripe prom queen she was back in high school. I wanted her so badly then; everybody did. But she was out of my league so I settled for becoming her best friend, a form of masochism unique to underconfident teenage boys, our time together spent with her telling me about all the assholes she chose to have sex with instead of me. Time and troubles have sharpened her softer edges, and now her face is a knife, her breasts like two clenched fists under her tight blouse. She’s a sexy street-fight of a woman, and I have been alone and untouched for a while now, and just watching her lips slide against her teeth as she smiles is enough to get me going.

“So, I heard about your wife,” she says. “Or lack thereof.”

“Good news travels fast.”

“Well, your brother is my boss.”

“And how’s that working out for you?”

She shrugs. “He flirts a little, but he keeps his hands to himself.”

Penny’s plan was to get married and move to Connecticut when she grew up, have four kids and a golden retriever, and write children’s books for a living. Now she’s thirty-five, still living in Elmsbrook, and considers the fact that she doesn’t get groped in the workplace a perk worth mentioning.

“You’re feeling sorry for me,” Penny says.

“No.”

“You never were any good at covering up.”