The Believers (22 page)

Rosa gave a little moan of irritation. "You're not Mom's indentured servant, you know."

"Sorry," Karla said, scrambling up.

"Don't say sorry," Rosa snapped.

"Sorry...I mean, okay." Karla smiled. "How are you? How was your day?"

"Fine until I got here," Rosa replied sulkily.

Karla laughed nervously. Religion, she felt, had made Rosa more forbidding than ever.

While they were taking the foil containers out of the oven and setting them on the table, Lenny wandered in. "'Sup, girls?" he said, leaning unsteadily against the kitchen counter.

Rosa looked away. "I'm not in the mood to talk to you right now, Lenny."

"I didn't tell Mom about your classes," Lenny said. "It was Tanya. She didn't know it was a secret..."

"It's
not
a secret, you idiot."

"So what's your problem, then?"

Rosa did not reply.

"Okay, then," he sighed. "Suit yourself."

Rosa wheeled around suddenly. "Tell me, does Tanya know about your little
sleepover
at my house the other night?"

"No. Why? Do you want to tell her?"

"Oh, no. God forbid I should be the one to break up your beautiful romance."

Lenny yawned. "Jesus, Ro. Chillax, would you?"

"
Don't!
" Rosa burst out. "Don't tell me to
chillax,
okay? What are you, fourteen years old?"

"Guys," Karla said. "Remember it's Mom's birthday..."

"Did you know that Jane has a boyfriend?" Rosa asked. "A
fiance
, actually?"

"Sure." Lenny smirked. "She showed me the bunny he gave her. It was awesome."

The tendons in Rosa's neck were bulging now. "If she's such a big joke to you, why did you sleep with her, Lenny? Does it make you feel like a big man to seduce people you don't respect?"

Lenny let his head fall to the side, in a gesture of exhaustion. "C'mon, Ro, I respect her."

"Sure, that's why you and that skeeve Jason spent the whole night laughing at her."

"We were having
fun
, Rosa! We were nicer to her than
you
were--sitting there like it was fucking
Judgment at Nuremberg
the whole night. What's your problem? Are you against laughter as well as fucking now that you're such a big Jew?"

"That's it," Rosa said, folding her arms. "I can't talk to you."

Audrey walked into the kitchen now, with her hands on her hips. "So where's this bloody food then?"

Dinner was fraught, even by Perry Street standards. Rosa was haughty and distant. Lenny was monosyllabic. Audrey alternated between bouts of moony distraction and small explosions of temper. The conversation at the table would have lapsed entirely on more than one occasion, had it not been for Tanya.

"
I'm
totally against the war in Iraq," she informed the family soon after sitting down. "I'm a total pacifist, aren't I, Len'? I won't even let you kill cockroaches in my apartment, will I?"

Lenny grunted a reluctant corroboration.

"So you would have been against us fighting in World War II, would you, Tanya?" Mike asked.

"Totally!" Tanya cried. "Totally, I would have been against it. Violence only leads to more violence, Mike."

Karla listened, fascinated as always by Tanya's confidence in the value of her contribution. How much simpler life must be when you believed so wholeheartedly that your grade-school opinions had the status of knowledge!

"Hear that, Audrey?" Mike said. "Tanya wishes we hadn't fought against the Nazis!"

"What?" Audrey looked up from spooning food onto her plate. "Oh, yeah, well, Tanya's got a lot of interesting ideas..." She studied the foil container in front of her. "I tell you what, Rosa," she said, "I don't think you'll be wanting any of this. It's got
pork
in it."

Rosa continued eating.

"By the way," Audrey said, "what
is
the Hebrew for chopsticks?"

Rosa put her chopsticks down. "Ha ha. Very funny, Mother."

"Lenny and I went to this hilarious party last night," Tanya said, after a moment. "We were walking past this place in TriBeCa and the guy on the door was this old friend of Lenny's, so he let us in. It turned out to be a Doritos party--you know the chips? They were launching a new mesquite flavor. There was this enormous room, with like,
ice sculptures
of Doritos chips everywhere. It was
amazing..."

Karla listened with earnest concentration. She dimly understood that Tanya's enthusiasm for the Doritos party was facetious--a joke of sorts, like her T-shirt--but even so, it depressed her to think of Lenny wasting his life on such foolishness.

"...And then, at about one o'clock in the morning," Tanya was saying, "
Enrique Iglesias
came down these big stairs. For real! It was
fucked up
."

"Who is Enrique Iglesias?" Audrey asked.

"He's a pop singer, Ma," Mike explained.

"There was like, dry ice everywhere," Tanya went on, "and Enrique was singing this song about how great and tasty the new chip was..."

Mike shook his head dourly. "That's capitalism for you. Worshipping graven images of potato chips, while Kandahar burns."

Tanya giggled. She didn't seem bothered by how poorly her anecdote had been received. She looked pleased, as if the family's failure to be amused were flattering confirmation of her challenging, unorthodox sensibility.

"So, come on, Rosa," Audrey said, poking her with a finger. "Why don't you tell us what you learned at Jew class tonight?"

"I already told you, Mom. I wasn't at a class tonight. I was at the hospital."

"Oh, give her a peanut! She visited her father!"

"I saw Dr. Krauss. He seems very concerned about--"

"Please! Don't talk to me about that useless fucker. I hate that pigeon-chested, flat-arsed, albino bastard."

Everyone but Rosa laughed.

"I do, though!" Audrey went on. "He gives me the creeps! There's something not clean about him. He looks like he's got genital herpes, I swear to God."

There was more general, outraged amusement. Rosa stared down at her plate with a pained expression.

"Go on, smile, Rosa," Audrey said. "It won't crack your face."

"I would smile, Mom, if anything funny had been said."

"Oooh." Audrey pretended to cower. "Yentl's angry."

"I was trying to tell you what Dr. Krauss said about Dad--"

Audrey slammed her hand down on the table. "Well, maybe I don't want to talk about your father on my fucking birthday!"

Mike sat forward and tapped a spoon against his mug of wine. "If I could have everyone's attention for a moment..."

Karla hugged herself with embarrassment. This was it. He was going to announce their adoption plans.

"No, no, Mike." Audrey cut him off with an irritable wave of her hand. "Don't be a silly. We don't want any of that."

Mike reddened and put down the spoon.

Lenny stood up. "I need to piss."

"Oh, charming, Len," Audrey drawled. "Let us know when you do a number two, won't you?" She watched him leave the room, and then she turned to Rosa. "So, now, tell us, when you
do
go to class, what do you learn?"

Rosa closed her eyes primly. "I'm not talking about this with you."

"How to do a nice brisket?"

"Please, Mom, just drop it."

"What's the big secret? It's not fucking Mossad, is it?"

Rosa gave a heavy sigh. "I study parshat ha-shavua," she said, pronouncing the Hebrew words carefully. "Each week we examine a portion of the Torah."

"
Ohhh
. How useful!"

Rosa gave a superior smile. "I guess it depends on how you define useful. I know very little about my religious heritage, and I'd like--"

"Excuse me,"
Audrey interrupted. "There's a lot of things you know very little about. You know fuck all about quantum physics, but I don't see you taking a class in that."

"Come on, Mom, let's have a nice time," Karla said. "It's your birthday."

"Yes," Rosa said, "that's true. But right now, I'm interested in finding out something about my people and where I come from."

"Where you come from?" Audrey repeated. "Your people? What
are
you going on about, Rosa?"

"The Jews," Rosa said. "I hate to break it to you, but we
are
Jewish."

Audrey clapped her hands. "And Mike is a gentile. Should he be thinking about joining the Aryan Nation?"

"So do you actually believe in God now, Rosa?" Mike asked with a smirk.

Rosa paused. When she spoke it was with great, self-conscious dignity. "I can't answer that, Mike. Sometimes I do."

"Oh, bloody marvelous!" Audrey exclaimed. "Sometimes you do! What does that
mean
?"

"You know," Rosa said, turning to her mother, "it would be nice if once in a while you were actually supportive of something I did or said, instead of automatically shitting on it."

Audrey looked at her with exaggerated astonishment. "What
are
you talking about? I've never been anything but supportive of my children."

"Sure, Mom. If you say so."

"What? All I've ever wanted for you is to do well and be happy."

"Really? That's not been my impression."

"And what's your impression been then?"

"I think it would kill you if you thought I was really happy."

All eyes turned nervously to the head of the table where Audrey sat. "Dear, oh dear," Audrey said after a moment. "This religion business is making you paranoid, Rosa."

Mugs clinked and chopsticks clicked.

"
I
think it's so cool that Rosa's doing this," Tanya said. "I would love to develop my spiritual side."

"I bet you would," Audrey muttered.

"I mean it," Tanya said. "I think it's important to be tolerant of other people's faiths."

"Why?" Audrey said, turning on her suddenly. "
Why
is it important? Why should I respect a point of view that I think is crap?"

"Well," Tanya replied, undaunted, "you want other people to respect your beliefs, don't you?"

Audrey laughed. "Yeah, well, that's a bit different, love.
My
beliefs are based on observable fact and scientific deduction. Rosa thinks there's an old man in the sky who has a fucking heart attack every time a Jew eats a prawn. When people start believing in that shit, you don't respect their point of view, you call the fucking doctor."

"Is it just prawns you're not allowed?" Tanya asked. "Or all seafood? Because I don't think I could give up lobster rolls..."

"Oh, don't worry. Giving up stuff suits Rosa down to the ground," Audrey said. "She loves a bit of hair shirt, doesn't she? Denial is her thing. That's how she lived in a mud hut in Cuba for four years--"

"Yes, wasn't I silly?" Rosa interrupted. "When all that time, I could have stayed home just like you, directing the revolution from my mansion in Greenwich Village."

Audrey looked at her thoughtfully. "You know what I think you need, Ro? A boyfriend. I bet Mike could introduce you to someone nice in the union, couldn't you, Mike?"

"Mom--"

"I'm serious, Rosa. A bit of sex would do you the world of--"

"Stop it! Just stop it!"

Audrey sat back and smiled. "See? That's what I mean. You're very tense. You need some release."

Again, Mike raised a spoon and tapped it lightly against his mug. "I'm afraid I really must insist now," he said.

"Lenny's not here," Karla whispered, tugging at his sleeve. "You have to wait for Lenny."

"I'll get him!" Tanya volunteered. She stood up and left the room.

"Ma," Mike continued, "Karla and I have chosen today, your birthday, to announce some very special news--"

"You're pregnant!" Audrey broke in. "Well, it's about bloody time."

Mike opened and closed his mouth like a fish. "No, Ma. It's not that. We have decided to adopt a child."

"Oh!" Audrey paused. "
Oh
. I see."

Tanya came back into the kitchen now. "Uh, you guys..."

Audrey ignored her. "Is it going to be American or foreign?" she asked Karla.

"Sorry?" Karla said. "Oh! The baby, you mean? American, I guess. I mean, the agency deals with American children."

"Well,
that's
a shame. Why wouldn't you get one from Africa? They're the ones most in need."

"Guys?" It was Tanya again, louder this time.

Audrey turned around.
"What?"

"I think Lenny might have had an accident. The bathroom door is locked, and he's not answering."

Lenny had not had an accident, as it turned out. Nor was he, as Mike tactlessly suggested while attempting to break down the bathroom door, dying or dead. He had simply fallen into an opiate stupor while sitting on the toilet. By the time the door had surrendered to Mike's karate kicks and Mike had slapped him around the face with perhaps more vigor than was strictly necessary, he was able to stand up and walk unaided to the kitchen. Here, having vomited briefly in the sink and given himself a wash-down with a wet dish towel, he pronounced himself quite well again.

"You silly thing," Audrey said, ruffling his hair. "You scared us all shitless."

"We thought you'd done an Elvis," Tanya giggled.

Rosa clutched her head in frustration. "Hello? Could we stop acting like he did something cute?"

"What do you want me to do?" Audrey asked. "Spank him?"

Mike, furious that his adoption announcement had been upstaged by Lenny's collapse, gave a nasty little laugh. "That'd be a start."

"He was unconscious just now," Rosa said. "This doesn't concern you, Mom?"

Audrey got up from the table. "Do you want a cup of tea, Lenny?"

"Yeah, all right."

"He should have some chamomile, "Tanya said. "Or peppermint."

"Have you taken heroin this evening, Lenny?" Rosa asked.

Lenny shrugged. "I just smoked a bit. I didn't inject."

Rosa turned to Karla. "Am I the only one who thinks there's a problem here?"