"All right, no mas," said Benny.
There was no crying upstairs, Middlestein noticed. Rach.e.l.le pa.s.sed by a window, and then one light went out and then another.
"So. Dad," said Benny.
"Son," said Middlestein.
"I wanted to let you know something regarding the b"nai mitzvah," said Benny.
"So formal," said Middlestein, and he laughed. "What"s wrong? I can still come, right?"
"Of course," said Benny. "I just wanted to give you advance warning about something." He stubbed out the joint and looked up and smiled weakly at his father. "Mom"s got a boyfriend, and she"s bringing him."
"How the f.u.c.k does your mother have a boyfriend?" Who would want your mother? was what he was thinking.
"Dad!" he said. "Don"t talk that way about my mother, please."
"I just meant, already? That"s all I meant. I mean, we only just split up."
"I don"t know. She talked to Rach.e.l.le about it, and Robin"s met him and said he"s great, and Emily liked him a lot, too."
"Emily met him?" he said.
"I didn"t have anything to do with it!" said Benny. "I can"t watch over everyone all the time."
Middlestein shook his head. If he didn"t have to drive, he would have smoked that entire joint right there, and it still wouldn"t have been enough to calm him down. Some other man lying with Edie. He"d believe it when he saw it, and then he still wouldn"t believe it.
"I wanted to let you know in advance so there were no surprises," said Benny. "I"m not on anybody"s side but the kids". We want them to have a good time and feel like they are loved by the family. And if it would make you feel better and you wanted to bring a friend, you absolutely could."
Beverly!
"I have to go," said Middlestein, who stood up awkwardly, knocking over the patio chair behind him.
"You don"t want to stay? Rach.e.l.le cut up some fruit."
"I have a date," he said.
"Are you all right to drive?" said Benny.
"Never better," said Middlestein.
In the front seat of his car, not the old car, not the future car, just the car, his car that he had at this time in his life on this planet earth-c.r.a.p, he was kind of stoned after all-he called Beverly on his cell phone.
"It"s me," he said.
"I know who this is," she said. "It"s a bit late to be calling." Oh Beverly, the sound of her voice slowly unfolding itself through the ear, luxurious, silky smooth, as he could only imagine her skin must feel like.
"It"s not that late. Can I come over?"
Beverly laughed. "Well, I never expected to get one of these kinds of phone calls at my age."
"I just want to talk," said Middlestein.
"If you want to talk, we can meet somewhere," she said.
"Anywhere!" said Middlestein.
She paused, and he imagined her sweet breath flowing out of her mouth as loopy pink swirls of miniature flowers. "Meet me down at the pub, then," she said.
Through this town and the next one and the next-Slow it down, Middlestein, the last thing you need is to be pulled over by a cop, try explaining that one to your daughter-in-law, you"ll never see those kids again-every last one of them looking identical to him. He was a part of this, his stores were, his store, the last one anyway, those other two closed (not failures, just not successes), but this last one, his legacy, the last one standing, he believed it was special. Was it not unique and important to have been one of the first Jewish business owners in the town? Had he not provided a service to his neighbors and friends? Was that not a success? Was he not worthy of being admired? Wasn"t he worthy of Beverly"s love?
Beverly, I"m coming for you.
The parking lot at the pub was nearly packed; it was the best fiddle night in the Chicagoland area, said the sign. He wormed his way through the lot, footsteps in gravel, dust rising in car headlights. The fiddlers fiddled. Middlestein straightened his suit coat, fluffed up his hair, his beautiful, thick, gray hair. Richard Middlestein, Jew, independent business owner, father, grandfather, a man-he believed-among men, walked into a dirty, crowded bar, where he had no business being on a Friday night, on a path to retrieve and secure the woman of his dreams.
He pushed through the crowd of middle-aged drunks knee-deep in Guinness and spilled popcorn and empty, crumpled-up bags of potato chips. They weren"t even paying any attention to the fiddlers. Were they looking for love just like him? Where was it, where was love? What was it? Just what turned up in the dark?
Beverly, on a barstool at the corner of the bar, her hair in a ponytail, only a lick of makeup, dark mascara on those pretty peepers of hers. He must have called just when she was getting ready for bed. This is what she looked like right before she slept. For reasons unclear, he gave her a formal bow, and she laughed at him. He kissed her on the cheek, sat next to her, and took her hand in his.
"Enough waiting around, Beverly," he said.
"You"re a married man, Richard," she said.
"Paperwork is being filed," he said. "I would say at this very moment, but the lawyer"s got to sleep sometime." This was not entirely the truth, but it was close enough.
"That"s not what I mean," she said. "All you do is talk about her all the time. I have listened to you talk for hours about your wife, your family, your grandchildren."
"But we talk about lots of things, Beverly! That"s what I like about our relationship. So many interests."
"I have been down this road before. You are not available to me."
"I am so available. You have no idea," said Richard.
She shook her head, and her charming red ponytail swirled back and forth, and Richard lost himself momentarily in the sway.
"I"m serious about what I want from a partner in this life. When I walked into your pharmacy that day, it was because I"d heard from my manicurist there was a good, single man there."
"You knew who I was before you got there?"
"I"m fifty-eight years old," said Beverly. "I don"t have time to waste."
"I find this flattering somehow."
"Don"t let it get to your head. I was misled, obviously. You are so wrapped up in it you can"t see your way out."
He was still holding her hand, and she was still letting him.
"I like you," she said, softening. "Don"t think I don"t."
The fiddlers announced that they were taking a break. They pa.s.sed the hat, and the drunks began to dig into their pockets.
"We make good companions for each other," said Richard. "It would be so easy to take it to the next level. If you would let me be near you." He leaned in, close and desperate. "I"m trying to think out of the box here. Beverly." He kissed her lips, irresistible and soft, a young woman"s lips; they were just what he imagined a young woman"s lips would feel like. He thought of the ChapStick he saw in the bottom of her purse on the day he met her, forever softening her lips. "Beverly, Beverly, Beverly." He kissed her each time he said her name, until she was kissing him back, and the jolt to his groin was so furious he was afraid he might pa.s.s out in front of her. "I am a good man," he said. They kissed some more, and he heard her breathing turn funny, a breath unfamiliar and familiar at the same time. "I promise you." The intention was there. The intention was true.
Middlestein and Beverly, kissing and kissing until someone at the bar yelled, "Get a room." Middlestein and Beverly, taking their cars separately, a good fifteen miles above the speed limit, to Beverly"s house the next town over. Middlestein and Beverly, crushing their hips and chests against each other on Beverly"s overstuffed couch. Middlestein and Beverly, finally making their way upstairs, where they would push and pull and gasp and breathe and then wrap themselves around each other so perfectly and tightly to sleep that it was a wonder they had ever slept apart before. Middlestein and Beverly, two lonely people, successes, failures, a widow, a husband, caught up in something resembling love.
Seating Chart.
The Middlestein b"nai mitzvah, are you kidding me? We wouldn"t have missed it for anything. They were our oldest friends in the world practically, or at least our oldest friends at the synagogue. We all came up together, Edie and Richard, the proud grandparents, and us, the Cohns, the Grodsteins, the Weinmans, and the Frankens. We attended each other"s children"s bar mitzvahs and their weddings, we have celebrated our birthdays together and anniversaries, too, plus sometimes Pa.s.sover and the odd Thanksgiving, and every year, without fail, we have broken fast together. And now, to celebrate the first b"nai mitzvah of the third generation, was there any question we wouldn"t be there? Who even knew we would live this long? There are no guarantees in this life.
The ladies among us bought new dresses at the Nordy"s at Old Orchard and got mani/pedis from the Polish girls at the new nail salon where the Blockbuster used to be and blowouts from Lonnie, who we"ve been going to for years and don"t know what we would do if he ever retired. The men got their suits dry-cleaned and gave up their tee times to a few of the new guys at the club who didn"t know to call months in advance like they did. We all dieted a little bit the week before so we could eat whatever we wanted the night of the party. Some of us took our water pills even on days when we didn"t need to.
We all sat together through the day and the night, first at shul, where we took our seats in the fourth row, the first row belonging to the Middlesteins: Edie and her escort, the Chinese man whose name we did not know; and Benny and Rach.e.l.le, the proud parents, with the twins, on one side. And on the other side sat proud Aunt Robin and her boyfriend, that charming schlub Daniel; Richard with his new girlfriend (also unmet, because no one ever introduced us to anyone), who sounded British from three rows away, which seemed impossible (though we later discovered was true); Rach.e.l.le"s parents, straight as arrows, cool as cuc.u.mbers; and a handful of empty seats beside them, as if no one wanted to go anywhere near that traffic jam. The next two rows were filled with people we didn"t know, but it was children mostly, and some out-of-towners we were guessing, and also we noticed Carly there-how could you miss Carly? So glamorous, even at sixty!-and some friends of Benny"s and Rach.e.l.le"s. We supposed we could have sat closer, fought our way through the out-of-towners, but we"ve sat in the front enough in our lives. Sometimes it"s better just to sit in the back and watch. Watch, listen, and learn, that"s what we say.
Little Emily and Josh sang their haftorahs beautifully, Josh"s voice cracking during a high note, the whole room restraining their laughter, Emily a sullen, brunette, already bosomy beauty who smiled at nothing, and while we would like to think she was caught up in the majesty of the moment, it was more likely that she took after her grandmother Edie in her intensity. (We had all feared Edie at one time or another. The woman knew how to make a point.) Emily pounded away at her portion, as if she were adding exclamation marks where they did not need to exist. None of us knew what she was singing, but we all got the message: If she had not arrived somewhere yet, she was intending on getting there soon. Good luck with that kid, we all thought. She was going to be a handful.
We shared cars from shul to the party at the new (new-ish, anyway) Hilton. It had been built two years ago, and we had driven by it hundreds of times on the way to the health club, but why would we ever visit it? We already have homes, why would we sleep somewhere else? So we were excited when we got the invitations. Ooh, we said. The Hilton. We had heard good things through the grapevine. Plenty of bar mitzvahs and weddings had been held there, even if we were not invited to them, as we were at the age where we had almost been forgotten but were not quite old enough to be heralded for still being alive after all these years.
Of course we were seated together at the reception, the eight of us. We barely glanced at our place cards, which we picked up at the entrance to the ballroom from a table decorated with dance shoes: shiny black tap, pink satin ballet, bright red high-heeled flamencos, and a scuffed-up pair of Capezios. Flanking the table were two life-size photos on cardboard of Emily and Josh dressed in dance attire, and in the center was a sign that read, WE KNOW WE CAN DANCE. Charming, we said. Isn"t that adorable? Some of us had seen the television show being referenced and watched it twice a week before bed, and some of us had better things to do with our time than sit around rotting our brains with garbage like that, especially when there were books to be read. Politely and calmly-some of us squeezing our spouses" hands for silence-we agreed to disagree.
The banquet room was just stunning, with a huge wall of windows facing a well-manicured rose garden backed by a trellis, the highway only faintly visible in the distance, and there was an atrium lit by strands of twinkling lights. Every table had a different dance theme and was decorated accordingly. Hip-hop! Broadway! Bollywood, salsa, and krump. (We never really understood krumping.) We were at Table 8-the waltz table. They must have run out of ideas for that, because all they had was two pairs of high heels on the table and a box of Viennese cookies. One of the husbands sat down first, opened the box of cookies, and offered it to the rest of us, but we all declined. Not before dinner, we demurred.
We were all silent for a moment. The table was covered with glittery stars and tea candles. The room was so romantic, but something was off. We were all thinking the same thing: Wouldn"t everything be so perfect if there weren"t two pairs of shoes in front of us? Shoes were just so unappetizing. Would anyone even know if we moved the shoes? Two of the wives exchanged glances, and then suddenly the shoes had disappeared, ditched under the table. We can"t help it if we just want to make things a little bit nicer.
Around the room the other guests took their seats, and again we noticed the new configuration of the Middlesteins; the traditional notion of the head table was now kaput, with the kids sitting with their school friends, Rach.e.l.le and Benny sitting with Rach.e.l.le"s parents and Edie, whose date had now disappeared, while at another table Robin sat glumly with her father, while her boyfriend chatted animatedly with the British woman, who seemed dazed, perhaps even a little angry, although she still held Richard"s hand tightly. We wouldn"t have wanted to be sitting anywhere else, but at the same time we wouldn"t have minded being a fly, hovering back and forth between Edie and Richard.
We tried to decide if we should go over and say h.e.l.lo, but to which table? We had never officially taken sides in the split. We still saw Richard at the health club and said h.e.l.lo, we still spoke to Edie, who was no more erratic than usual, giving and taking her affection and attention from us; we loved her when we saw her, but we hadn"t been able to count on her being emotionally present for years. Plenty of divorces had rolled through our lives, our children, our siblings, other peers, but we thought that once we hit a certain age, we were in it for life. When Richard left Edie after she got sick, especially after she got sick, there were too many ways to interpret it for us to decide how we felt. Everyone agreed that Edie was a tough woman to love, though she was worth loving. Was Richard saying that these unspoken rules did not apply to him? Was he a bold individual making a last grab for happiness? Or a coward who could not contend with fighting for his wife"s life? Was he merely soulless?
Did we even know these two people at all?
We are happy to inform you we were not disappointed with the food. The salmon-obviously we all ordered the salmon over the chicken, because (a) we just knew that chicken was going to be covered in cream sauce, and boy, was it ever, and (b) you can"t get enough omega-3 these days-was delicious. Also, the sauvignon blanc was so b.u.t.tery it was practically sublime, and the women drank three gla.s.ses each, first depositing ice cubes from their water gla.s.s into their winegla.s.s with their spoon, while the men, with the exception of the two designated drivers, drank Heinekens poured into gla.s.ses ceaselessly throughout the night.
At least a few of the Middlesteins had joined us in the celebration: Robin"s head lolled gently on her boyfriend"s shoulder, her eyelids barely open. We also were pretty sure we saw a bread roll go flying from the table where Edie sat over toward Richard"s general direction, bouncing instead off his chair. Richard"s girlfriend, who we had determined had a cute little figure on her and was at least five years younger than Richard, if not more, and who was overheard in the bathroom offering a stick of gum to someone, and definitely was British, or was at least British at some point in her life, and whom we never got to meet because we are apparently unimportant, made a not-quite-dramatic exit soon after this incident with barely a brush of lips to his cheek. We watched Edie watch this, and we watched Edie smile. Then she saw us watching her and hoisted herself up from her chair with the help of her son and came in our direction, walking slowly but surprisingly with ease, considering her weight, and, of course, those surgeries.
We had to admit she looked glorious, our Edie Middlestein, even as she was so ill of health. Her skin was a bluish putty, and she had gained another twenty pounds since the last time we saw her-was she three hundred pounds now? Three-fifty? We couldn"t tell anymore-but her hair was dyed a deep, l.u.s.trous black color, and it sprang out beautifully from her head, and she was covered in a vibrant plum-purple caftan flecked with shimmering gold threads, and she wore a fantastic array of gold jewelry, the centerpiece of which was a long braided necklace from which dozens of charms dangled, bouncing up and down on her chest as she made her way toward us, until finally she was leaning casually above us. We could only presume she was channeling some sort of higher spiritual force (or dark demonic agent) to power her through the night.
"My dear friends," she said.
Dolly! we cried. We offered her our chairs, but she declined, instead grasping the back of Bobby Grodstein"s.
"I"m sorry I didn"t get over here sooner. There"s just so much excitement tonight."
You look beautiful. How"s the health?
"Enough about me. Can you believe the children?"
Could you be any prouder?
"Not possible."
But really, Edie, how are you feeling?
"Top of the world," she said, and she opened her arms wide, and then she stumbled a little bit, and Al Weinman, still so fit, jumped up and steadied her. "I"m fine," she said. "Too much excitement."
We said: Why don"t you sit, Edie? What we were thinking was: What a shame her husband isn"t here to catch her.
She did sit, finally, and we all unclenched whatever body parts we had been clenching. "The kids are going to do a little dance in a minute," she said. She did some jazz hands. "A little razzle-dazzle for the crowd. Hey, did you understand the theme?"
Yes, we"re at the waltz table. It"s a very old dance for very old people.
That cracked Edie up, and she laughed so loudly that other people turned and stared, but we loved that laugh, we loved her as much as she scared us sometimes. She was just so deeply feeling about so many ideas, and when she was present and capable of loving, she had astonished us with her fire. She had driven us to doctors" appointments and written us lovely notes when our children got married and brought deli trays over when we sat shiva for our parents. She had convinced us to try sushi for the first time, and also to donate money to Planned Parenthood, even though, obviously, none of us had ever had abortions. When she was engaged, she could make anything happen. When she was sad, and she had been so much lately, she could do nothing but eat.
We hid the shoes under the table, we whispered to her. Who wants to look at shoes while you eat?
Edie laughed even harder. "I"m glad you"re here," she said. "My friends."
A smile so wide, the most charming cackle. It was hard to believe she had been killing herself for years.
The lights flashed a few times, and the conversation level in the room rose briefly, and then there were shushes, and then it was silent. Edie lifted herself up from her chair, blew us all kisses, and wandered crookedly back to her seat. In the corner near the DJ booth, we saw a stand with fourteen candles waiting to be lit, except it wasn"t time for that yet, nor was it time for dessert, nor was it time for us to get our coats and head home, but the wine was. .h.i.tting us, the Heineken, too. All we could do was sit and wait for Emily and Josh Middlestein to dance for their lives.
The lights went out for good, and then a bomp bomp bomp keyboard note started playing, and suddenly a spotlight kicked in on the dance floor-Christ, where did the spotlight come from? This Hilton had everything!-and out came Josh and Emily, both wearing little hooded sweatshirts, baggy jeans, and high-top shoes. The lyrics came on, that song we"d heard everywhere, those of us who watched television anyway and were still alive and kicking and trying to keep ourselves young. I gotta feeling that tonight"s gonna be a good night. And then Josh and Emily danced! They pumped their arms, and they marched their legs up high, and then they crisscrossed them, and then they pumped their pelvises, almost all of it close to being in unison, and then they held each other"s hands and did this jumping move, where their knees flew up in the air, and everyone burst into applause, Edie the loudest, whooping it up. And then when the singer sang "mazel tov"-followed by this strange electronic processed "l"chaim!"-the whole crowd shouted it at the same time, while Emily and Josh started this running-jumping action around the room, waving their arms to get the crowd up dancing with them, and everyone stood, the young people and the old people alike, and clapped along with Josh and Emily on their special day. We don"t want to give too much credit to the song, because obviously it was the energy and enthusiasm of those children that got the room moving to the music, but we had to admit it was pretty catchy.
And then three video screens dropped from the ceiling simultaneously-would wonders never cease here at the Hilton?-and the opening credits of So You Think You Can Dance began to play, except, through the magic of technology, the t.i.tle read, So You Think You Can Hora. Everyone got a good laugh out of that, but the laughter gave way to coos and awws, as a montage of baby pictures of Emily and Josh began to play, the two of them in incubators, so tiny, and then a shot of a young Rach.e.l.le and Benny (we had all forgotten it was a shotgun wedding of sorts) who were just twenty-one when they became parents. There was a giddy Aunt Robin raising a gla.s.s in tribute while holding Emily, the baby girl who had turned out more than a little bit like her, at least in att.i.tude. And then both sets of the proud grandparents flickered on the screen, the crowd briefly quieting when a shot of Edie and Richard holding the infant twins appeared. Edie was still heavy then, but easily a hundred pounds lighter than she was now. Her face was so different: There was a person there to connect with, a jawline, a smile, a clarity in the eyes. No flesh hung from her cheeks and chin as it did now. She was in focus, we could see her, we could see who she was-or who we thought she was anyway. Where had that Edie gone? And where had Edie and Richard, our friends, our fifth couple, gone? We could not bring ourselves to look at her seated next to us. We did not want to imagine that our spouses could ever turn out like Edie, who had stopped caring about herself, or Richard, who had stopped caring about Edie. The room was suddenly frigid with a sickening mixture of heartbreak and mortality.
We waved our arms at the waiter. We begged for another round immediately. The room recovered, and we were treated to Emily and Josh in the bathtub, Emily and Josh on their first day of school, Emily as a ballerina, Josh in a tennis uniform, thirteen years of Halloween costumes, thirteen years of goofy faces, braces, ice-cream sundaes, summer vacations, chicken pox, school plays, the chubby period, the scrawny period, short hair and long, growing, growing, grown; thirteen years and still so many more to go. Oy, those punims. When the montage was complete, we burst into applause, poked at the corners of our eyes with the ends of our napkins. They weren"t our grandchildren, but they might as well have been.
There was an intermission between the video and the candle-lighting ceremony, and we took the opportunity to drink. We skipped the ice, we drank straight from the bottle. We checked our watches, and thought about the errands we needed to run the next day, the walk we would take in the sunshine, the phone calls we would make to our children, some of whom lived in other states, with grandchildren we missed terribly. We had only been there for two hours, but it was already starting to feel late.
In our dreamlike state, we were unprepared for Carly"s arrival at our table, famous Carly, who now worked in the White House and was friendly with Mich.e.l.le Obama. (There was not a person in this room who was unaware of their relationship, thanks to a front-page picture in the Tribune months before the election, the two of them at a luncheon, tipping their gla.s.ses toward each other, a knowing grin shared between them; we had all stared at it on a Sunday morning, wondering what Carly had done so right and we had done so wrong.) Her skin was glowing and tight (too tight? tighter than our faces anyway), her blowout was impeccable, golden, tidy, and there was no question that her jewelry trumped all other jewels we had seen that night. We could barely look at her. We couldn"t ignore her. She hovered over us and paused, waiting for a seat to be offered, a lifetime of offered seats trailing behind her.
"Ladies," she said. "And gentlemen."
Carly.
"We need to talk."
Do we?
"Are we not concerned about Edie? You see her all the time. Can you please fill me in on what is going on here."
With what?
"With her health! With her weight! You"re her closest friends. How did she get to this point? And more important, what are we going to do about it?"