A. Homes - May We Be Forgiven

“That sounds good,” I say. “And then do you let them room together?”

“For as long as they are willing and able,” the social worker says. “Meanwhile, your mother is up and walking. She’s been dancing. She may not be the woman you remember, but whoever she is now — she’s doing very well.”

On the way home, I pull into the drive-thru at the Chick-Inn and order a whole bird to go. The woman shoves an enormous piping-hot roasted bird through a window that I think was built only for doughnuts and coffee. A second bag follows with sides of biscuits and potatoes.

As I’m coming in the door, I hear Walter Penny’s voice on the answering machine: “I received your claim form: thirty-eight hundred dollars for damages to the car. We should be able to get this processed pretty quickly.

I put the bags down and let him go on for a while.

“Don’t forget you’ve still got the halvah in the trunk; I think it worked for you as ballast when that nutcase was driving you out. No worries about bringing it back — once it’s out of our hands, we can’t take it back anyway. I wanted to remind you. It shouldn’t stay in the trunk, probably too hot in there. And, by the way, you left your cookies up at the camp — they’re very good. What’s the trick?”

I can’t resist any longer. I pick up the phone. “Tablespoon of warm water,” I say.

“Just one tablespoon?” Penny asks.

I cut to the chase. “Where’s George?”

“George complained of an injury, so we brought him in just after you left — didn’t seem like we could leave him out there after what happened. As soon as he’s feeling better, they’ll transfer him to a more traditional facility.”

“What about the agreement?” I ask.

“What agreement?” Walter says.

“The agreement we signed in the director’s office at The Lodge that said George would never go to a regular jail?”

“Do you happen to have a copy? I don’t think I have a copy.”

I’m not sure what kind of game Walter is playing with me, but I make an excuse to get off the phone and immediately call George’s lawyer.

“We never got a copy,” he says.

I call Walter back in the afternoon. “So, if no one has a copy, I guess there is no agreement?” Walter says.

“How long is he in for?” I ask.

“Five to fifteen,” Walter Penny says. “We compromised.”

“No trial?”

“Trust me, it’s better this way.”

“When’s the soonest he’ll be out?”

“Figure three years. We had to give him some credit; the Israeli was a good catch.”

Late one night, I drive to the temple and unload the halvah on the back steps. I leave a note: “This is good halvah — I am leaving it here for the community to enjoy as it’s more than one man can manage.”

As I’m unloading, the rabbi appears, sneaking out of a side door. He’s clearly frightened when he sees me, as though I’m a religious terrorist — unpacking C-4 plastique explosives.

“It’s just halvah,” I call out.

“What?” he says, his tone the familiar annoyance of an old deaf Jew.

“Halvah,” I shout as loudly as possible.

He comes closer, and I introduce myself as George’s brother, and lie: “I was recently doing a job and received the halvah as partial payment,” I say. “I thought perhaps the temple had a soup kitchen.”

“We have a preschool, and a day camp for the elderly,” the rabbi says.

Now is the moment. I have the rabbi’s attention; this is the meeting that I called months ago to arrange. It’s my chance to get good counsel.

“So,” I say, “what do you think? Was Nixon really an anti-Semite?” I ask, surprising myself.

“Nixon?” the rabbi intones.

I nod.

“You want to know about Nixon?”

“I do.”

“He was a son of a bitch, hated everyone but himself. The one who makes me nervous is Kissinger, who never stood up for himself — he sold us down the river.”

A police car pulls into the parking lot. “You okay, Padre?” the cop asks.

“Fine, thank you,” the rabbi says.

The cop looks at me like he knows me from somewhere. “Why don’t you go home now, mister,” he says. “Let the padre get a good night’s sleep.” He hovers until I say goodbye and then follows my car most of the way home.

As part of my quest to become a foster parent, I’ve made an appointment with Dr. Tuttle, a psychiatrist. Strange though it may seem, I’ve never been to a psychiatrist before, and so it is with some trepidation that I approach his office on the ground floor of a small strip mall. To the right of his “suite” is Smoothie King, to the left a dry cleaner’s, and next to that a cell-phone store. The office windows are covered in wide metal vertical blinds circa 1977; the waiting room is dark, with a low acoustical-tile ceiling and oatmeal-colored wall-to-wall. Six chairs with caned seats that are starting to sag dot the room in pairs like couples. There’s a little glass table with a precarious pile of magazines and a trash can so small it seems to say, Don’t use me. Sitting down, I spot a lone Cheerio in the corner, and then more — a series of Cheerios tucked up against the molding, likely pushed there by a vacuum cleaner. There are numerous signs, handwritten and poorly laminated with Scotch tape.

If you need a bathroom, go to Smoothie King and ask for the key.

If you need your parking validated, please ask, 1 hour free.

The psychiatrist opens the door and calls me in. “Tuttle,” he says, shaking my hand. His hand is wet, smelling of perfume and rubbing alcohol. I immediately spot a bottle of hand sanitizer on his desk — the sample from a drug company. Tuttle is a short, thin fellow, prematurely hunched — the top of his head comes to a kind of a shiny point, absent of hair but for a ring of yellow fringe that goes all the way around and is longer than the fashion. He wears horn-rimmed glasses, which he edges higher by repeatedly wrinkling his nose. The office has the same metal blinds as the waiting room and would be dark but for the afternoon sun reflecting off the cars parked outside.

“Have a seat,” Tuttle says, directing me towards a worn sofa.

I look past Tuttle; clear plastic cups from Smoothie King are in an even row on the edge of his desk, each less than a quarter full, one yellow, one pink, one purple. Mango, strawberry, and berry-berry lined up like some kind of experiment. There’s a half-empty old five-cent gumball machine filled with what look like greasy peanuts and piles of used legal pads. An air conditioner hums noisily.

“First let me get a little information: name, address, phone?”

I give him the details.

“Employer?”

“Self,” I say for the first time.

“Insurance? I don’t take insurance, but I’ll give you a bill each time we meet and you can submit it. The initial meeting is five hundred and runs for an hour, and subsequent visits are forty-five minutes and the charge is two fifty. I am a psychiatrist, not a social worker, not a psychologist.” He looks at me carefully. The glasses seem to be magnifiers — his eyes look enormous. “What medications do you currently take? Previous hospitalizations?”

I mention the stroke.

“Do you have a diagnosis that you are familiar with? And/or how has your condition been described to you? What was the referring agency?”

“A girl at Social Services gave me your name,” I say, thinking that something here is not entirely on the mark.

“Do you require court-ordered drug testing — i.e., do I have to watch you pee?”

“No,” I say.

“Good,” he says. “When I watch someone else pee it makes me feel like I have to pee. In fact, I usually get one of the employees from Smoothie King to do the watching. I tap one of the guys to follow us into the toilet, and I tip him a few bucks to do the watching. I really don’t want to see a patient’s water works and then have to talk to him about what he’s like with his wife. Plus, I happen to know the bathrooms are monitored — so there’s very little chance of the patient trying to get away with anything. But I digress, and this isn’t about me, and this isn’t about Smoothies. What can I do for you?” He puts his pad down, crosses his legs, and looks at me, again wrinkling his nose and lifting the glasses up a little.