Joshua Cohen - Witz

We like the whole impermanence of the thing, like if we had to pick up and, you know, leave…like in the middle of the night.

By day, the house entire’s littered with trunks, suitcases and briefcases, boxes and cases, and the lawn, littered with life: a tricycle with leaves rustling through its spokes, a pair of discarded trainingwheels; rakes, some trashbags ripped through with branches, overflowing with clippings, some trashcans tipped to one side with neighborhood opossums and raccoons liningup amid the fleas and gnats gathering for their own feasts at the mouths; milk, how do they drink so much milk, and one of those big cylindrical waterdrums that goy in the black truck he delivers each week that he picks up the empty ones and so what’s this one doing out here with the trash. The mailbox hangs open, but there’s no mail inside and all of it’s bills. From the sidewalk, the house is white with gray shutters or maybe the reverse, three stories at least, too dim.

He stands in the street across from the path, the walkway up from the sidewalk’s street while she stands on the sidewalk itself, curbed at the lowest bend of the Circle she says, Looparound he says the Turnaround or About, taking the whole house in, its round plot. They’ve parked a length from the driveway of across the street neighbors, so as not to be found pulling up front and parking on the Shabbos he says, Sabbath she says, if she has to; there’re only three other vehicles, two so big they can’t be called cars, more like monsters these foreignmade mutations of steel and wheel in the we’ll go with loopabout or arounding (one, the Brooks’ new van, which’ll necessitate yet another garage reexpansion), and he hopes God how he hopes they’re not the last to arrive. Picking up the coat of his second new suit in a week (will Israel notice it’s the same he wore last Friday), draped over the driver’s seat, hunching it on, he shuts his door, stoops peering into the third car, that of a founding partner in another top firm he’d interviewed with that didn’t make him an offer, lives opposite with his wife the nonpracticing doctor and this, their midlife crisis convertible with its top up in winter, and, bareheaded and without scarf or gloves, he’s doing a little light accounting as she picks a stray thread from his pocket, unslit.

I think this is it.

You think?

Me.

Thirtythree?

Three three three…pointing to the numbers nailed once to the mailbox hanging open, then once to the siding its shingles hung off, one three in the latter display slung downsideup and so 3 3.

I’m looking good?

That a question?

She’s drying her sweater off, holding the dripping flowers away from her far while she wipes, like their smell’s sickening, like she can’t bear being near them.

All daughters, yes — how many they have at the least?

At the least, he says, I wouldn’t remember, realizing he’s never seen or met the same kinder twice.

How many times: there’d been that once at the office when the older attractive and the second he thinks were around, don’t think about it how old she is with the breasts and the breath and he’d been here once before her, without her, dropping Israel off because he had a car and Israel didn’t, had left his but where, he couldn’t remember; and there they were, playing in the yard, in the front. Who knows what games. All had the same look around the mouth and how they appeared to swap clothes. He remembers to her one in particular: one outfit not red or yellow, the other fired halfway to blue if blue was like a grandfather’s, what do you call it, he means techeles, that purplish on one or twoish of them. Running around, a dash, don’t get your clothes dirty, your suit you just bought it new. Here, now, in the frontyard, he’s mimicking them at their fun, trying to reenact for her enjoyment: she’s unhappy being here with him and thinks him weak and fearful, acting differently around others, how he’s rushing for props to cheer her, clown around smiles; grabbing them up, balls for baskets and bases and for soccer, mitts, a ripped pinwheel, a fractured kite tailed with a jumprope, a holed pail, rusted spade, making her even more impatient and angry, I can’t believe, a tossing of hair, what I’m doing for you, her walking up the path then the six steps of the stoop toward the doormat — a message there, obscured, dirt laced into itself, Shalom’s script interwoven — then the automatic lights light on and she jumps, stares at him, startled.

Sorry, he says, throws down a weatherworn, handling splintery slugger, rushes up the steps, next to her on the stoop, to behold the light suspended, the candles framed in the window.

They knock, ring repeatedly as if to get in sooner, almost to make as if they’ve been waiting a while. A single unlock, and a stranger opens the door, a woman with real presence, which means impolitely fat as not pregnant, Hanna, can’t be: her hair colored too brightly and the makeup reddening errant over lids and lips, Wanda sloppy in a shiftlike kimono and hurried along. They kiss her anyway and hug her surprised at how forward they are, how intense and excited to please; not stopping to kiss the mezuzah, they step inside by stepping around her, each to a flank and further to what has to be Hanna now next to Israel, his boss and bread changed into casual slippers but into new pants and a shirt, too, just as formal as the suit he’d been wearing; they’re holding each other, these guests, her head on his shoulder as if she’s suddenly tired, and how he tries to shake her hand off to shake Israel’s then say sorry to Hanna; apologies — that’s what I’m good for.

Wanda had Shabbos off, ostensibly, their Sabbaths and not hers, if and only if during the week she’d somehow or other satisfied Hanna, which satisfaction was often as difficult as proving to the most redoubtable of doubters the existence of an omnipotent God: though this can be done, God’s history tells us, there’s nothing impossible; Hanna’s particular brand of cacoethes carpendi, otherwise known as obsessive/compulsive not a disorder, an order, and that’s the idea, a mania known Developmentwide — tempered by only her optimism, her famous can do, oftabused.

On Friday nights, Wanda had to serve, that was it: upon Shabbos eves rare in Hanna’s happiness, her having plucked no fruited fault from the tree whose boughs, pruned daily, would overnight, over eves, branch into all species of tasks, errands, resentment. It was Hanna’s elected responsibility to prepare their family dinner — duty, the Schedule, just doing her part, hauling her own pregnant weight — and then, how she’d sit in the shade of accomplishment, accepting compliments heaped into her cups, bowls and plates, blushing the rose of an apple and eating all the courses from the challah on down to dessert even and drinking her wine, too, and Israel’s as well, though not while with kinder while Wanda would serve. As for those cups, those bowls of fruit and plates — though it was always the responsibility of these kinder, rotating, to set the table, each week, they would groan to their mother, shouldn’t Wanda do this?

I mean, every Friday, what do you pay her for anyway?

As if, to decrease your inheritance.

In any defense, though, Israel offering his with professional husbandry to Hanna’s constant complaint — I might want to fire her but I can’t (I have my reasons), I’m not strong enough and how that calls everything else into question, I might not even want to at all — Wanda did offer to help do this setting as regularly as such offers would be refused, and so today, as every Friday in its late afternoon with the female half of her employment situation upstairs and clattering at cooking, Wanda would lie on her understuffed futon and smoke a filtered menthol or vanilla into her wardrobe, adjacent, her head pillowed listening to the dull slipper and sneakerfalls from the kitchen directly above her room underground, one floor up. Until called for — her smoking complained about despite how much she’d spray even sunscreen and insect repellent and scent with candles and burn incense for hours. After she served, which was a responsibility mostly for show, she would return to her room and sit listening to the kinder haul everything into the kitchen: three steps to a thud, four to a shatter. After Shabbos, a sink full of dirty pots, pans, dishes, and silverware would be waiting, plates and bowls, a pile of shards to be superglued. And leftovers, to scrape to the trash, the disposal, or else refrigerated or frozen for Sunday’s reheating.