Justin Taylor: Everything Here Is the Best Thing Ever

“Hey,” I said. “I don’t hate myself, or the Jews. Now, what the Israeli government does on the other hand…I don’t see how hating that or them has anything to do with Elijah, the fifth commandment, or us.”

“Have you read the Dershowitz editorial I forwarded you? It explains everything. Everything.”

The kitchen window looked out on the deck and there was Rusty, his back to the house, smoking. His friend Dara was there, too, facing us, maybe even watching us through the window? I wondered if she could she hear the fight. Dara was the prized only child of someone important at the synagogue. Her roots went back to its founding in 1843. My parents viewed the friendship as a profitable one. I wondered if she thought I was winning the argument.

“Dershowitz,” I said. “Now there’s a right-wing SOB I want to listen to. He’s pro- torture, for the love of—”

“He’s Jewish, at least,” said my father. “You should hear the voice of your own people sometime. Might wake you up.”

“CHOMSKY IS JEWISH!” I said. “Remember ‘self-hating’?”

“Stop this,” my mother said. We paused. “You two are here all day while your brother is at school and I’m working, and my parents are coming in at one o’clock on Wednesday.”

We greeted this information with silence, my father especially.

“Therefore,” she continued, “one of you will have to pick them up. Or you can both go. To be honest, I don’t care. Just get them here.”

My father was increasingly home-bound, so much so it made us uncomfortable, which is not to say that he didn’t keep busy. He wrote letters to the editors — all of them — about Israel and Palestine. He cleaned the house.

Actually, the cleaning had become sort of worrisome, too. It was so thorough, almost as if he were trying to say that if he could no longer work in an office then by God he would keep such a spotless and ordered home that the family would come to see how his lost job had been a good fortune in disguise.

If you ask me, the worst part for Dad about my brother smoking was not the ruination of his young body or the ongoing disrespect of his doing it, but the white flecks of ash that clung to Rusty’s clothes. That, and having to constantly change the air fresheners. There was a plug-in plugged in to every spare outlet in our house. He had even unplugged some lamps.

Like Jews raising swine on elevated platforms in the Holy Land, Rusty obeyed the letter of his father’s law. He never smoked in the house. But Dad was convinced that the smell clung to his clothes, that he left bits of odor and ash everywhere he sat, soiling the couch fabric, the cushions on the kitchen chairs, everything. He may even have been right, in fact he probably was, but that wasn’t the issue anymore. The house stank, not with cigarette smoke but with synthetic bouquets of every variety. It was potpourri without end, amen, and we all lived in its invisible, cloying crush.

My father decided he would cook a genuine Jewish brisket for the in-laws’ first Tennessee meal. They were coming up from West Palm Beach and he thought the brisket would make for the perfect pastiche of Jewish and Southern tradition, to the extent that either could be embodied in a slab of beef.

Between that and cleaning the house, his day was full. So there I was, cruising down I-65 at the wheel of the family Volvo.

I was like a kid again, all nerves, afraid even to change the radio station until I was off the highway and stopped at a light. I hit a preset and the country music was swapped out for some guy who must have written his senior college thesis on Green Day, croon-yelling about a girl who had done everything wrong, and how broken up and drunk he was because of it. It’s no wonder Rusty’s miserable. This mopey stuff just crushes your soul and—

I realized that my opinion of the latest rock music was sounding suspiciously like my father’s old attacks on what I’d listened to at Rusty’s age. This creeped me out. But I was getting off track. The goal was to bond with my brother, not critique his taste. If I could remember how the chorus went I could bring the song up later in a conversation. Maybe that would be a cool thing we could talk about. I started to sing along, willing the words to stick.

As the song faded out I registered a chorus of car horns. The light had changed and I had missed it. I hit the gas too hard and almost plowed into the guy in front of me. But didn’t. I was getting the hang of things all over again.

At the next light I chanced a look into the glove box and sure enough there was a stray cigarette buried under the registration. Do I know my brother or what? I punched in the car lighter, one eye on the traffic light, killed the AC, and lowered the windows. The smells of cut grass and motor oil poured in, along with a lot more sunlight than I had counted on. You sit behind tinted windows for a while and you forget what the day is. I scanned the horizon. It was luscious country, all rises and slopes and green, with a few half-finished planned communities and strip malls, but still. It was mild, as blight goes — enough to make you worry for the future, but somehow not enough to wreck such a sweet summer day. I gawked at every horse in every pasture. The lighter popped back out and I touched it to the cigarette, thinking maybe this was the way into Rusty’s head. I took a drag, started coughing. My eyes watered. The light changed. The horns started in again.

“Oh my, that smell,” my grandmother said, pulling away from my hug. “What have you been doing — smoking?”

How do you explain this kind of thing to a grandma?

“You know, during the war,” my grandfather said, “I was quite the smoker. Of course we didn’t know then what we know now. Modern medicine and so forth.”

“Don’t tell me,” I said, “tell Rusty. He’s the one who needs to know.”

“It’s so green out here,” my grandmother said. We were cruising. “And the hills are just—”

“I know,” I said. “Don’t you love it?”

“Prime real estate,” my grandfather said knowingly. Before retirement he had headed some firm. Their golden years were shaping up just right.

“So how is everything?” my grandmother asked. “It’s been so long.”

“It’s been okay,” I said. “But you’re pretty up to date. I mean, you talk to Mom twice a week, and I’m assuming you read my letters.”

“I read them,” my grandfather said. “She won’t go near a computer. ‘That machine,’ she calls it. Like it’s dirty! But I read her your letters.”

“Sometimes he reads me your letters,” my grandmother said. “But I won’t go near that machine.”

Sooner or later they would offer to buy me a suit. For job interviews. They would not ask me about my time away. They were good people, good grandparents, but had their prerogative for sure.

Maybe you think my father didn’t want to pick up his in-laws because he didn’t like them. Oh they had their differences, sure. Jewish mothers, in-laws, all the clichés you can imagine just roiling together, lolling to the surface like matzo balls in soup. But I think it’s that having my mother’s parents around drives home how he doesn’t talk to his own father anymore. I don’t know what they fell out about, but they don’t speak. My other grandpa is eighty-something. When I think of it, I call him. He sounds far away and confused, down in Florida near Dad’s sister and the place we left. Grandpa and Dad didn’t even say good-bye.

Rusty was upstairs, in his room. I let myself in. “They’re here,” I said.

“Don’t ever come in here without knocking,” he said.

“Did you ever even ask any of your friends if you could stay with them?” I said. “You didn’t, did you? The Weissbergs have got the room. They’d have taken you. We’ve known them how long?”