This Is Where I Leave You (30 page)

“Me too.”

“Why didn’t I miss him more when he was alive? He was dying for two years, and I only visited him a handful of times. What could have been more important than spending time with your father?”

“He didn’t want us around. He told me so. He didn’t want us to remember him like that.”

“Well, that was probably our time to step up and say ‘Tough shit, Dad.’”

Phillip nods soberly. “Dad was always much tougher than us.”

“I guess. How did we become such wimps?”

“Hey,” Phillip says. “Did I or did I not just take out Wade Boulanger with one punch?”

“You did.”

“Damn straight.” He winces a little as he rubs his hand. “I think I broke my knuckle. Can you even break a knuckle? I should go back in and get it X-rayed.”

“I heard the baby’s heartbeat.”

Phillip looks at me. “That’s great. Right?”

“Yeah.” I’m quiet for a moment. “I told Wade he was hoping for a miscarriage, but the truth is, I think part of me might have been. And how terrible is that, for a baby to be growing in the womb and for the father to be hoping it won’t make it?”

“It’s pretty terrible,” Phillip says, lying back against the windshield to join me.

“Did you think Dad was a good father?”

Phillip ponders this for a moment. “I think he did his best. He was pretty old-school, I guess. He didn’t always get us, didn’t always appreciate us, but come on, look at us, right?”

“I think I could be a pretty good father, actually.”

“I think you’ll be great.”

Raindrops land in small explosions on the Maserati’s gleaming hood. “But I’ll have to forgive her, won’t I? I’ll have to learn to live with the fact of Jen and Wade. I mean, for the sake of the kid.”

“I don’t know anything about parenting, but my guess is that there will be much larger sacrifices to be made.”

I look over at Phillip, who is catching raindrops on his tongue. “You almost sounded wise right there.”

Phillip grins. “In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.”

I smile and lean back on the windshield, looking up into the rain. “I’m going to be a dad,” I say.

“Congratulations, big brother.”

“Thank you.”

“You ready to go home?”

“Okay.”

He grabs the tire iron from me, and as he slides off the hood, he swings it to the side, noisily shattering the driver’s-side window. The car alarm goes off instantly, a muted, almost apologetic wail. Phillip looks at me and smiles. “Whoops.”

“You’re an idiot.”

“You just said I was wise.”

“I’m seeing things more clearly now.”

“Glad to hear it.” He offers me the tire iron. “One for the road?”

“I’m trying to rise above here. To forgive and move on.”

“And you will. In exactly thirty seconds.” He tosses me the tire iron. The cold metal feels almost alive in my hands. I shouldn’t be having this conversation. What I should be doing is climbing down off of Wade’s car and talking my way past the security guards so that I can make sure Jen is okay. We are going to be parents together, and there’s no place in that arrangement for juvenile acts of vandalism, no matter how satisfying. But Wade is already in there, probably back on his feet by now, taking charge, charming the doctors, asking all the right questions. I’m the extraneous one, the temperamental biological father who had to be forcibly restrained and removed. I realize now that this is how it will be: Wade on the inside, and me out here in the rain, and no magical heartbeat can change that. I will always be the odd man out, the guy everyone secretly hopes won’t show up to the party and put everyone on edge. And right now, that seems like more injustice than any man should rightfully be asked to swallow. If that’s what I have to look forward to, I’m not sure I’m going to be up for it after all. This is a crucial moment, I know that, but that’s never stopped me before.

And thirty seconds is really all you need with a good tire iron in your hand.

Chapter 39

 

B
ack at home, Mom and Linda are having a fight. They are in the kitchen, arguing in hushed tones. I can’t be sure, but it sounds like Linda’s crying. A fist pounds the counter. A cabinet door slams. There are no visitors right now, this being the dinner hour, but there is no dinner right now, since none of us will dare enter the kitchen. More low voices. Then Linda storms down the hall and out the front door, slamming it behind her hard enough to rattle the lightbulbs in their sconces. A minute later Mom comes out, still composing herself, and sinks down into her shiva chair. We all look at her expectantly. “What?” she says. “We had an argument.”

“What about?” Wendy says.

“About none of your business.” She stands up and heads for the stairs. “I think I feel a migraine coming on. I’m going to go lie down for a bit.”

“Hey,” Wendy shouts, stopping her at the foot of the stairs. “What happened to a family with no secrets?”

Mom nods to herself, holding on to the banister for support. When she turns to us, there are tears in her eyes. “It’s been such a long time since we were really a family,” she says.

 

 

 

 

 

IT’S A NIGHT for lovers’ tiffs. Alice is pissed at Paul for injuring his shoulder. She is berating him upstairs but is coming in loud and clear through the baby monitor. Back in the den, Tracy is furious with Phillip for hitting Wade. I sit in the kitchen eating dinner, listening to these two very similar arguments play out on different sides of the house. There are perks to being single.

Underneath it all, Alice is really angry at Paul because she’s still not pregnant, and Tracy is angry at Phillip for having sex with Chelsea, which he probably has, or, if not, probably will. He’s definitely been thinking about it. Tracy is angry at herself for letting Phillip make a fool of her, for blinding herself to certain obvious realities, for being in her forties. But this is not the time or place for such thorny issues, so in their frustration they overreact to sprained shoulders and bruised knuckles, and harmony is not in the cards at Knob’s End tonight.

On the plus side, fresh new platters have been delivered. Teriyaki chicken wraps, pasta salad, deviled eggs, and a tray of black-and-white cookies. I don’t know when I’ll eat this well again. Wendy’s boys sit across from me on stools at the kitchen island, freshly scrubbed and dressed in tight pajamas that cling to them like superhero costumes. Their damp hair, perfectly combed, gleams under the recessed lighting. They are like an advertisement for children’s shampoo, or for children in general. Wendy tries to get them to eat, but their tiny stomachs are still bloated and churning from all the sugared crap they ingested at the amusement park today. I experience a clenching pang as I think of Penny. It’s the feeling of having behaved poorly, of having hurt her. I would call her if I had any idea at all what I could possibly say besides “I’m sorry.”

A hard rain pounds at the windows, looking for a way in. On the monitor, Alice yells at Paul.
“You could have done permanent damage. And for what? To strike out Boner Grodner?”

“If she wakes the baby, I’m going to kick her fat ass,” Wendy says as she assembles a plate for Mom.

“Mommy, you said a bad word,” Ryan says.

“No, I didn’t, honey.”

“You said ‘ass.’”

“‘Ass’ is just another word for a donkey.”

“So it’s not a bad word?”

“It is when children say it.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know,” Wendy says, exasperated. “Those are just the rules, Ryan. Deal with it.”

“We’ve been here for less than a week, and you’ve been in two fist-fights!”
Tracy shouts at Phillip.
“This is clearly not a healthy place for you.”

We cannot make out the other half of either conversation because, in true Foxman form, Paul’s and Phillip’s responses are low and monosyllabic. Under attack, we retreat into stoic fortresses built for one. It drove Jen crazy. The more she yelled, the quieter I got, sometimes not uttering a word for hours. Maybe if I had yelled back at her, things would be different now. Maybe yelling back is a kind of marital diplomacy I never learned.

Eventually someone slams the den door and the lights in the kitchen flicker and then go out. Phillip comes stomping into the dim room and opens up the freezer. He grabs an ice pack and sits down across from me, wincing as he presses it against his swollen hand.

“For a guy who punches people so often, I would think you’d know how to do it better,” Wendy says.

“I think I may have broken something.”

“Besides Tracy’s heart?”

Phillip gives Wendy a dirty look. “Don’t you ever get tired of being the thorn in everyone’s side?”

Upstairs another door slams and the lights come back on. On the monitor, Serena starts to scream.

“Fat bitch!” Wendy mutters.

“You said a curse word!” Ryan shouts, gleefully horrified.

“A bitch is a female dog,” Wendy says.

“Bitch!” Cole repeats happily.

The first time I heard my father curse, I was helping him install a timer in the garage for the lawn sprinklers. He had a screwdriver in his mouth, some screws in his hands, and he dropped a key washer, which rolled across the garage and down through the grate of the catch basin. “Ah, shit,” he said. I was eight. I laughed until my ribs ached.

Paul enters the kitchen wordlessly and opens the freezer. Phillip has the only ice pack, so he grabs a slab of frozen meat and slips it under his shirt to press against his shoulder. He leans back against the fridge and closes his eyes for a second. Seated between him and Phillip, I feel conspicuously uninjured.

“I have to get out of here,” Paul says, and heads for the door.

“You’re in no condition to drive with that shoulder,” Phillip says, getting to his feet. “I’ll take you.”

“Lucky me,” Paul says, disappearing into the front hall.

“Asshole,” Phillip says.

“An asshole is a donkey,” Ryan says.

“Asshole,” Cole says. “Bitch. Asshole. Elmo.”

Phillip considers our nephews gravely. “It’s good to see our influence on the next generation. We should seriously consider getting neutered.”

“It’s too late for me,” I say.

“Yes it is. I forgot.” He stands up and fumbles for his car keys. “Okay, then. Have a good night, everyone.”

“Wait!” I say, following him out to the front hall, where Paul is already halfway out the door. “What about the shiva?”

We look into the living room at the five empty shiva chairs lined up in front of the fireplace. “You’ll be fine,” Paul says. “Just nod and smile.”

“You can’t leave me here alone.”

Phillip flips a cigarette into his mouth and leans into the shiva candle to light it, which strikes me as somewhat sacrilegious, but I guess Dad wouldn’t mind. “It’s like a monsoon out there right now. I bet no one will even come tonight. So why don’t you come with?”

“What if people come?”

Phillip grabs a legal pad and pen from a compartment in the hall table and draws up a quick sign:

SHIVA CANCELED ON ACCOUNT OF RAIN. TRY AGAIN TOMORROW. —THE MANAGEMENT.

He jams the paper under the knocker on the front door. “Problem solved,” he says.

Chapter 40

 

S
ticky Fingers is in one of the last strip malls on Route 120, just about a mile down the road from the Marriott where Jen is staying. Or was staying. She is no doubt gone by now, hightailing it back to Kingston, with Wade grumbling about revenge scenarios as he drives.

Sticky Fingers. Famous for its spicy buffalo wings and nubile waitresses in their tight black T-shirts with the V-necks cut out jaggedly by scissors. The place is filled with women in short skirts or jeans, and tight sleeveless shirts. These women, with their hair and their bodies, their smiling lips, glossed to a shine. I am acutely conscious of every one of them, of every smooth thigh and creamy neck. I am dealing with major life issues here, death, divorce, fatherhood, and yet here, in this bar, I am all cock. I don’t know why this is, what makes it so, but I’d be lying if I said otherwise. I sit with my brothers at a high round table, licking hot sauce off my fingers, trying to moderate my roving eye. There’s a brunette with the kind of bee-stung lips you want to suck like candy. There’s a blond girl in a short skirt with smooth, perfect legs and the kind of smile you feel in your chest. There’s another blonde, a real one this time, with laughing eyes, and you just know she’d be fun and tender in bed. I want them all, slowly and softly, want to kiss them in the rain, save them from bad men, win their hearts, build a life. I’m probably too old for most of them. Maybe. I don’t know. I haven’t been single in over ten years; I can’t tell how old anyone is anymore, including me.

I would kill to be in love again. I loved being in love—the deep kisses, the urgent sex, the passionate declarations, the late-night phone calls, the private language and inside jokes, the way her fingers rest possessively on your forearm during dinner with her friends.

“Boys’ night out,” Phillip says appreciatively. “Why don’t we do this more?”

“Because we don’t like each other very much,” Paul says.

“That’s crap, Paul. You’re too angry at the world to know who you like and who you don’t. I like you, Paul. I love you. Both of you. I was always too young to go anywhere with you guys. I always wished we’d hung out more as brothers.”

“Well then, this must be a big moment for you.”

“The boys are back in town,”
Phillip sings.

A waitress comes to bring us our drinks. “Hey, Philly,” she says. “How’ve you been?”

“Hey, Tammy. Looking good.”

We cannot help but watch her as she leaves. God himself stops what he’s doing to watch her ass as she crosses the crowded room. It’s that kind of ass. The kind of ass that fills you with equal parts lust and regret, and then, almost instantly, chagrin, because, for Christ’s sake, it’s just an ass.