Fate and Ms. Fortune (18 page)

“What was in it?” I asked.
Nice. Sound innocent so he doesn’t suspect you ransacked it.

“Well, a very important report I wrote in fourth grade on the mating rituals of fruit flies…I guess just stuff that was fun to see again. My Nolan Ryan rookie card…I am gonna be rich…oh, and, then believe it or not, there were even a few things left from nursery school.”

“My mom was a pack rat like that too.” Josh smiled. “Anything I did, she loved.”

“Not my mom,” I said. “The first thing she did when I got home from school was dump my book bag…God forbid excess cookie crumbs found their way into the house.”

“Anyway,” Ken said, “there’s this letter to my mom from Mrs. Abramowitz.”

“Great lady,” Josh said. “She was the only one who didn’t send notes saying, ‘Your son can’t cut for shit and he needs a tutor to teach him to skip.’”

“Yeah, I loved her. But listen. It’s a letter about what a great boy I was because I was so nice to this girl in the class whose brother died, and she went on and on about how I made it my job to take care of her, and carry her everywhere and make her tea in the playhouse…and I’m thinking, what girl whose brother died? I don’t remember anything like that? Do you?”

“No.” Josh shrugged.

“I do.” I stopped driving. Right in the middle of busy Route Four.

“What the hell are you doing?” Josh grabbed the wheel. “You can’t stop in the middle of the road. Freakin’ drive! We’re gonna get hit!”

“I remember her.” I clutched my heart as cars sped past us, honking in fury.

“You do?” Ken asked. “Who was it?”

“Me.” I burst into tears. “Oh my God. It was me.”

C
OMEDY IS BORN FROM TRAGEDY.
Not much of a news story there. Every stand-up I ever saw perform came to the party armed with my-life-was-insane material that they had learned to mine for laughs in lieu of seeking professional help.

And yet, if you asked me why I wanted to be a comic, I would tell you how much I loved observational humor and the cathartic feel of poking fun at our struggles. I would be loath to admit I was an in-disguise patient who was attempting to rationalize my inner turmoil.

But I would be lying. In spite of our stately, colonial half-acre home with the greenest lawn on the block, what went on behind the doors at the Holtz house teetered between serious dysfunction and a sitcom writer’s dream.

We were two parents, two kids, and a dog, but don’t let the Weber grill fool you. We were a family in crisis, and no matter how well we fit the mold, with our annual timeshare vacations in Orlando and our frolicking block parties turned toga parties, we were scarred. Our past, mired in an almost Shake
spearean tragedy that was but a tiny chapter, yet forever defined the rest of the book.

I never met my two-year old brother, Todd, as he died before I was born. I did know from stories and pictures that unlike our brother, Phillip, whose dark coloring foreshadowed his solemn demeanor, Todd was a cherubic blond known for his hugs around your neck.

I knew from my aunt Marilyn that his nickname was Magellan, due to his mysterious and unlikely fascination with my father’s maps, and that he was already a great collector, stashing precious finds beneath the stuffed animals in his crib.

I knew from accounts from family members willing to talk that he was kidnapped from Lido Beach on a steamy, summer Sunday in August 1971, exactly six weeks before I was born. Only to have his remains discovered four years later, less than a mile from the concession stand where my father had bought him a lime Popsicle.

To say that guilt and agony were the sentiments greeting me when I was brought home from the hospital that late September didn’t begin to describe it. Phillip, then five, said he remembered having to tell our inconsolable mother that I was crying, to which she said, “Me too.”

It was not a home that could celebrate gurgles and coos, for day and night, my parents and neighbors were focused on police investigations, media coverage, and ear-shattering cries about how something this tragic could have happened on Long Island.

If only my father, a man ill prepared for the challenge of parenting two young, active little boys, hadn’t offered to bring them to the beach that day, giving my mother and her swollen ankles time to rest before entering the home stretch of pregnancy.

Though she had warned him repeatedly about not taking his eyes off them, he was a trusting sort, certain her overpro
tective pleas were caused more by her fears of her children drowning than disappearing.

So when a whiny Phillip insisted on going back into the water, though Todd was asleep in his stroller, he saw nothing wrong with asking the young couple lying next to them if they would please keep an eye on the baby.

They turned down their radio, admired the adorable little boy in his Winnie-the-Pooh bathing trunks, said they would love to watch him and was there a bottle in case he cried?

To this day, my father swore there was nothing suspect about them in either manner or dress. They were well spoken and polite, not having had so much as a cigarette or a beer since arriving. The girl even swooned that one day she hoped to have a son just like him.

Only to have my father and Phillip return to their chairs and discover, in horror, that the couple had vanished, as had Todd and his belongings.

Four years later, when a group of high school students, examining igneous rock in preparation for their New York State Earth Science Regents exam, came upon a skull and a toddler-two bathing suit, the unsolved case was reopened, causing my family’s anguish to resurface.

It was then that I was attending nursery school at the Oceanside Jewish Center, learning to read, write, and count to a hundred like the other children, yet feeling inherently different because the one thing I had not yet learned was how to be silly.

I remember trying to fit in by laughing too loud and pretending to be uncooperative when Mrs. Abramowitz said it was circle time. But I was bad at being bad, much preferring to play alone in the corner.

So when a boy in the class learned the reason I was always sad was that my brother died, I was thrilled when he befriended me, carrying me from the classroom to the playground to the sanctuary where we sang with the rabbi.

During playtime, he brought me toys and tea, pushing away those who would dare disturb me. But mostly I remembered him kissing my hands, as if that might make my boo-boos go away.

Now to discover that my childhood hero was seated in the back of my car, and that, unbeknownst to me, he had reappeared in my life so many times since then, left me breathless. Why were we being thrown together under the oddest of circumstances, weaving pain and suffering in between moments of childhood bliss? Why?

I looked up to see that Josh had jumped out of the car and was directing traffic away from our disabled vehicle. Disabled because the driver had shut down. Gently, he buckled me into the passenger side, then eased back into traffic, getting us to Fair Lawn without incident.

And all I could think was, God bless these boys for their endless courage and compassion.

In all the haste to make arrangements for my dad to examine Ken, I had failed to share one important matter. The name of the patient. So when he came out to help me pull Ken and Rookie from the backseat, and I quickly said, “Dad, this is Ken Danziger. Ken, this is my dad, Harvey Holtz,” I didn’t expect for him to nearly let go as Ken struggled with his crutches.

“Ken Danziger?” My father took a step back. “From Oceanside?”

Not you too!

“Yes.” Ken wobbled.

“Howard and Judy’s boy?”

“Yes?” He looked up.

“Oh for God’s sake. I don’t believe it.” He kissed his cheek. “Robyn didn’t tell me she was bringing home an old friend of the family.”

“Because Robyn didn’t know,” I said.

“Yeah, we actually just figured out in the car we went to OJC together…we’re in shock.”

“Isn’t that something?” My dad watched Rookie jump like mad. “Who’s your friend?”

“This is Rookie.” I tried to get him to stop. “I’ve never seen him like this.”

“Discipline’s just not the same since his tutor quit,” Ken quipped.

“Rookie, huh,” my dad said. “Mets or Yankees?”

“What’s a Yankee?”

“Bingo! You just earned yourself a nice discount…So how are your folks? Are they still in Oceanside?”

“No, they moved to Sarasota, Florida, about three years ago.”

“Wonderful. Who needs the crowded East Coast? And they’re both in good health I hope?”

“Actually my mom is doing great. Still whips my ass at tennis, but my dad is having a hard time right now. Prostate cancer.”

Really? My mom has breast cancer, but shhh. It’s a big secret.

“Uch. God. It’s all I hear,” my dad replied. “But he’s going to be okay?”

“Yeah. They think they caught it early enough. It’s just the treatments are rough on him…”

“You send them my best…and how is your brother? Steven, was it?”

“Seth. Yeah. He’s great. Married now, having a baby…”

“Glad to hear it.”

“So wait, Daddy. How do you know his family?”

“Long story, sweetheart. Too long to go into now. Let’s get Ken in the chair and see about fixing him up. Are you in pain, son?”

“I’m not going to lie. Hot and cold kill me…”

“That’s nerve damage. Might need a quickie root canal. But
let’s go take a look. Robyn, how about you head home and straighten things up for me?”

“Well wait.” Ken hesitated. “Who’s going to hold my hand?”

“You’ve spent months in a hospital, but you’re afraid of dentists?” I teased.

“They have to give me sweet air in the waiting room.”

“Don’t worry.” My dad winked. “We just hired a new assistant with big knockers…I hear she’s an excellent hand holder.”

“Daddy! This isn’t 1956…and how bad is bad at the house?”

“Remember when your mother won that contest and went to California for a week?”

“You put Tide in the dishwasher again?”

“No, I had a tiny fire in the kitchen after the microwave blew up…maybe later you can help me shop for wallpaper.”

Say what you would about my dad being a great dentist. He had learned nothing from my mother about housekeeping. In fact, I was tempted to take pictures so she could see what had become of her once immaculate, three-Dustbuster home.

Take-out containers in the living room, bath towels hanging from the dining room chairs, and evidence of the said fire, no doubt because Harvey wasn’t housebroken and forgot that microwaves were no place for metal objects.

“Daddy-o’s been having one helluva good time,” I called Phillip. “The house is a mess.”

“Well whatever you do, don’t let Mom get on that plane to Phoenix or we’re screwed.”

“Me? I’m sorry. What is your job exactly? Air traffic control?”

“Oh, give it up. I’m doing as much as you.”

“Is that right? Well I know for a fact you haven’t been here
or you’d know there was a new big-screen TV in the den and that dad is using the box to throw out all of Mom’s clothes.”

“Really? What kind? HD or rear-screen projection? I hope he didn’t just walk into Best Buy and get the first thing they tried to sell him.”

“Focus, Phillip. Focus. Mom has only been gone for five days and the fridge is filled with a cardiologist’s don’t list.”

“Relax, okay? Just do the best you can cleaning up, and next week I’ll have Patti…call a maid service.”

“You’re so kind. Maybe you should apply for that job opening at the Vatican.”

By the time the garage door opened, I couldn’t believe five hours had passed. Time flies when you’re cleaning what looked like a frat house, taking care of a spoiled city dog, and answering the phone every five minutes.

Neighbor friends of my mom had spotted her car in the driveway and called to hear about her great escape, only to hear my voice, and my ultimatum. “I swear if I hear you’re trying to set my dad up, I’ll teach your husbands how to meet girls on MySpace.”

A concerned Josh called to see how Ken and I were feeling, and would I please keep my promise to see him again? “Yes,” I said. “Unless I find out you were the one who always looked up my dress.”

Rachel begged my forgiveness after learning I’d heard the message she left on Ken’s machine, and to show her remorse, offered to pay for a reading with her favorite new psychic. “Deal,” I said. “But she better not tell me my mother’s getting remarried before me.”

Madeline and Seth both called for updates on Ken and my honest opinion if I thought we had hit it off. “Hard to tell,” I said. “At this point it’s a doctor-patient relationship.”

But the best call was from my mother. She wanted me to be
the first to know she bought a cell phone, and could I tell her how to send a picture so she could show me this beautiful rocking chair she bought for our living room?

What to react to first? That she kept using “our” in the most literal sense, or that someone who couldn’t figure out how to answer a call, let alone take a picture, had a nicer phone than me?

“But I’m not sending any of those sex messages,” she said.

“You mean text messages?” I laughed.

“Yeah. Whose got time to push a hundred buttons just to say nice ass?”

I was about to suggest that we swap phones so she didn’t have to worry about high-tech features when my dad walked in with an ashen-looking Ken. “Mom, I gotta go.”

“He’ll be fine.” My father saw me flinch. “He needed an emergency root canal, a temporary bridge, plus he’s got a fistula in the bottom left…you don’t want to ignore a draining abscess…”

“Can I get you something?” I asked him as Rookie rushed over, his tail wagging.

“A gun would be good…Hey boy. How are you?”

“I was thinking more in the line of an ice tea…You know what? Come sit down in the den and hold the new controller. That seems to have a strong, medicinal effect on men.”

But he was going to need more than a remote to recover. He was in such agony from his multiple injuries, he wanted enough pain killers to be knocked out until the next presidential election.

“Daddy, what did you do to him?”

“What do you mean what did I do to him? He had the start of a raging infection, he couldn’t eat or drink, he was in terrific pain…He’ll be fine in the morning. Good as new.”

Rookie growled, as if to say, He’d better be.

Ken finally conked out on the couch in the den, giving me some much needed alone time with my dad. But typical Har
vey, no discussion was complete without a meal. As I whipped up some omelettes and toast while begging him to stop noshing on leftovers in the fridge, I thought of how little both the kitchen and its inhabitants had changed over the years.

Especially the heavy maple kitchen set, circa 1967. Though it had lost its Pledge luster, the chairs had managed to survive forty years of holding up my father’s girth and Phillip’s futile attempts to lean back on two back legs without falling.

About the only noticeable change now that my mother wasn’t on the scene was the absence of two strong scents, cigarette smell and roses in bloom. The latter of which was intended to mask the former, though not even fragrant flowers could disguise tobacco smell, absorbed for decades into the shag carpets as my mother paced the halls, her cigarettes her only beacon of light.

It dawned on me how hard it must have been for her to keep up appearances, like the roses she raised to perfection, only to discover that like her garden, happiness could wither at the hands of nature’s clock.

As for my dad, I had to laugh as I gazed at his familiar, I’m-eating-don’t-disturb-me face. How many times had I sat in these chairs, waiting patiently to talk, knowing I couldn’t start until he stretched, rubbed his belly, and examined the fridge to see what goodies my mother had hidden from him.