Bertrand Court (19 page)

“Where's Mom?”

“Up in Baltimore,” Adam said, playing the abandoned husband. Ridiculous. He'd wanted her to go, not to mention the fact that he might have given her VD. “With Hannah.”

Jason handed the phone over to Isaac, newly smitten with some seventeen-year- old sailing instructor. Isaac reminded Adam of himself, the guy with the guitar and minimal athletic ability.

“Listen, steer clear of bats,” Adam warned Isaac impulsively.

Isaac laughed. “You sound like Mom.”

“Do I?” Adam could picture Isaac shaking his head, ponytail bouncing back and forth over his shoulder.

“You've never heard her give the bat lecture?” Isaac raised his voice an octave. “You see one of those flying rodents, boys, and you run like a bat out of hell. One bite can ruin your life, and you won't even know it until it's too late.”

Adam could just see Becca waving her finger at the boys. “Now I've been properly bat-tized.”

“That's just wrong, Dad.” Isaac chuckled. “So wrong.”

The Timmy Carver anger hadn't even lasted through the phone call; Adam couldn't touch his stack of pancakes. Becca was the love of his life, even if he wasn't hers. Besides, Timmy died last fall. He glanced at the clock. Seventy-two more hours. Seventy-two hours ago, he was standing in line at the Greek deli on 20th and M, perusing the
City Paper
, debating whether to splurge on the gyros or have the salad. Dressing on the side. He wasn't fat, but the week before, his doctor had given him a stern talking-to about his cholesterol, in view of what had happened to his dad. He went with the gyros, double order of lamb.

He thought about contacting Georgia, because he'd been a jerk to her. After lecturing Isaac and Jason ad nauseam about safe sex, how could he have been so stupid? He should apologize. Sorry, Georgia, for practically hanging up on you when you called to tell me that I might have ruined my life. Sorry, Georgia, for assuming that you'd been waiting patiently for some arrogant fuck to grant you a quickie. Sorry, Georgia, for bolting out the door before I'd even buckled my pants.

Georgia. Funny woman to select for a fling. She wasn't younger or prettier or smarter than Becca. She wasn't desperate, but he had a sense that unlike Becca she'd be happy with whatever he could give her, a kiss, a night, or a slim offering of remorse after acting like a jerk. Becca was never satisfied. She picked through every peach at the grocery store to make sure she selected the best one. She'd renovated their kitchen twice, hectored principals to make sure that the boys got the best teachers, and switched exercise regimens every six months to challenge her metabolism. Women both envied and snickered at her, and men lit up around her, especially when she pranced
around in her sexy Catwoman costume at the neighborhood Halloween parties.

He spent the next four hours flipping between infomercials, a fly-fishing show, and an old Court TV documentary about the Menendez brothers. He drank tumblers of ice water so he could revel in the small consolation that he was still pissing without pain. At five, he showered. He scrubbed his thighs, up to his groin, harder and harder until his skin turned raw. The physical pain was a relief. He squirted a blob of Becca's shampoo on his hand, closed his eyes, and inflicted the same scrubbing on his head; cutting into his bald spot with his fingernails.

“Hey.” Becca materialized, water streaming down her shoulders.

He recoiled. “You scared the holy fuck out of me, Becca.” He jumped out of the shower and wrapped himself in a towel. “What were you thinking?”

Becca stood there under the spray looking like a little girl whose brand-new dress had just been splattered with mud by the playground bully. She turned off the water and dried herself off.

He wanted to grab her so badly, but her nakedness scared him. He was afraid to touch her. Despite his squeaky-clean skin, he'd never felt so filthy. “I'm sorry, I'm just out of sorts.”

Becca still looked hurt and confused. “What's up?” She moved to hug him.

He backed away. “Work stuff,” he grumbled.

“The schmucks who kept you from your fiftieth birthday trip to Israel?” Becca switched moods deftly, angry now. “You just tell them that you'll have to charge them double if they're going to be unreasonable.” Any enemy of Adam's was an enemy of hers.

Becca wasn't a great listener; she was too quick to offer a solution or an opinion, which annoyed him. But he was in no position to be annoyed. “I guess I shouldn't let them get to me.”

She ran her hand down his back. “Let's go out.”

They snuck tomato, mozzarella, and basil sandwiches into an art theater and endured a movie about a skinny Japanese businessman who fucks his cheeky Australian tour guide somewhere in the outback and then dies. Agitating as hell. Not that Adam could have concentrated on that new Bruce Willis movie anyway. He took Becca's hand, and after a few minutes she leaned over to whisper, “A little lighter, babe. I can feel my bones kissing.”

They walked through Chinatown, now McBarnes and No-bled out. Depressing. They didn't talk until they were facing each other over cups of Häagen-Dazs, licking Rum Raisin and Java Chip off their respective spoons.

“Tell me about Baltimore,” Adam said.

Becca grinned, flashing one of her dimples. “You'll glaze over if I start describing chants and homemade drums.”

True. “How's Hannah?”

“Crazy nuts planning Goldie's bat mitzvah.”

Adam could tell that Becca was about to launch into one of her speeches about how smart and lucky and spiritually grounded they were to have bar mitzvahed Isaac and Jason in Israel, avoiding the
Goodbye, Columbus
syndrome. He headed her off with a report on Jason's new waterskiing feat and Isaac's recitation of Becca's bat-out-of-hell warning.

“Do they know about that?” Adam bit down on a piece of Heath bar.

“You mean our rabies scare?” Becca laughed.

“I can't believe you dumped me after that.” The petulance in his voice served as his tired ploy to make her proclaim her love for him, to swab an old wound. He was an asshole to ask for this.

Becca looked flattered. “You won in the end.” She could barely suppress a smile.

“I was the consolation prize,” he moped.

“Are we really talking about this?” Becca dabbed her mouth with a napkin.

He swirled his spoon around his ice cream cup. “I was there for you when you were freaking out about the bat, and then you took off with Mr. Aryan of the Great White North.”

“Oh, God. It had nothing to do with the bat!” She did smile now, a little patronizingly. “On second thought, it had everything to do with the bat. You were so incredibly sweet and loving, and that scared me more than the rabies.”

“What scared you?”

“That at nineteen I'd met the man I was going marry.” She touched her pinkie to his cheek with such tenderness
it gave him chills.

So the bat had cemented their relationship by scaring her off? Adam's head hurt. “Maybe we could have had this conversation thirty years ago.”

“It wouldn't have changed anything.” She wiped a glob of chocolate from his chin and licked her finger, her eyes warm. “We're here, aren't we?”

“You're right.” Sitting across from Becca, he felt the way he had when his father bought him a guitar they couldn't afford. Her unfailing belief in their marriage, normally something he drew strength from, made him feel even punier. He turned away and tossed his ice cream dish and spoon into the trash can behind him.

They drove home in silence. Adam spent the balance of the evening drinking water, peeing, and checking himself. He called his mother, and when she confused him for his father, he hung up. Becca made four attempts to beckon him to their bed before she gave up. He fell asleep on the couch with his clothes on so that his morning hard-on would be safe from Becca's hands.

He awoke late. Becca was already downstairs. He tuned his guitar, but couldn't muster up the energy or the attention to play anything. Becca went for a long walk, thumbed through the
Post
, and fixed them a bowl of tuna salad, which they scooped up with long rectangular crackers sprinkled with all sorts of seeds. Adam couldn't bring himself to tell her that a caraway had lodged between her front two teeth.

He couldn't breathe. “I'm going to the office.” He rose and kissed the top of her head.

“Oh, babe. Well, if you have to. But don't forget, we're meeting Hannah, Danny, Maggie, and Eric for the fireworks at seven. It's a Solonsky night. No Amy and Leon, though, too late for the baby. Who would have thunk?” she prattled on as he headed for the door.

Adam sat in his steamy Subaru for a second before he started it. The heat offered him a welcome distraction. After a few minutes, he turned on the ignition. The clock read 12:45. Forty-five more hours until he'd know. Forty-five hours ago, Georgia had called him. If he hadn't spilled ketchup on her at that party, he never would have thought to hire her. If he'd had the balls to tell his client that their video could wait until after his birthday trip to Israel, he would have been circling Ben Gurion airport with his family that night last April. If he hadn't had a bad chimichanga once at the Mexican restaurant where he'd parked his car, he would have eaten there and not at the trendy bistro half a block away where he'd bumped into Georgia. Dayenu. History in the subjunctive. A term he'd heard in a movie once.

He thought back to the boys' childhood, when Jason could never resist the urge to smash Isaac's elaborate Lego constructions. Becca blamed it on sibling rivalry, but Adam understood the impulse to destroy something beautiful. To soil his marriage with a night he barely remembered beyond a maroon bra. Now he knew that he'd been afraid. Afraid to turn fifty. Afraid that if he didn't knock over his near-perfect Lego life, God would destroy it on His terms. Slowly, as with Adam's mother, who'd put a brand-new pair of heels in the freezer and a melting carton of ice cream in her shoe rack. Suddenly, as with his dad, whose arteries blew out while he was brunching at the twenty-dollar-a-head Palm Springs restaurant he couldn't afford. Explosively, as with his assistant's son, who suffered one unlucky jolt while trying to fix his air-conditioning unit on a 110-degree desert afternoon.

Adam fiddled with the vents so that air blew on his perspiring face. He put the gear shift in reverse and backed out of the driveway. As he pulled away from his house, he glanced in the rearview mirror long enough to spot Becca standing in front of her faded hydrangeas, her hands hidden in the pockets of thirty-year-old overalls stained with fresh dirt and the orange paint they'd used to fix up the Camp Kehilah counselors' lounge the summer they met. Her curls were tucked into a straw hat she'd begun wearing only recently, after her skin started sprouting big brown spots. She waved, or maybe readjusted her hat; he couldn't tell for sure.

The July sun, naked and bold, cast a luscious haze on the pink and red crape myrtles that lined Bertrand Court. He drove to the end of the block, past Marcus and Robin's house, where Isaac had dislocated his shoulder on the trampoline; past Tad and Nikki's front lawn, where Danny had recently installed an “Under Contract” sign; and past Maggie and Eric's driveway, where Amy and Leon were unbuckling Simon from his car seat. He turned out of the neighborhood and drove on, passing the pharmacy that filled his Lipitor prescription and the little Italian place where he picked up dinner when Becca didn't feel like cooking. He rolled down the window, inviting the hot sunshine onto his freckled skin, and waved his arms in circles, ushering in every memory and dream, blessing the hell out of life.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thank you to the editors of
Lilith Magazine
,
the minnesota review
,
Fifth Wednesday Journal
,
PoliticsDaily.com
, E
lectric Grace: Still More Fiction by Washington Area Women, Blackbird, The Pedestal Magazine, Drash, Potomac Review, River Oak Review, Jewish Women's Literary Annual, Literary Mama, Shortbread Stories,
and
Bethesda Magazine
, where earlier versions of these stories first appeared; to the editors of
Shebooks
for publishing “Sylvia's Spoon” and “Shhh” as an ebook entitled
We Named Them All
; to the editors of the
Pushcart Prize Anthology
for the selection of “More So” as an honorable mention; to Pati Griffith for awarding “Harvard Man” the F. Scott Fitzgerald Prize; to Yona Zeldis McDonough for choosing “Sylvia's Spoon” for the
Lilith Magazine
Fiction Award; and to Mark Farrington and David Everett for their belief and for nominating “Shhh” for inclusion in
The Best New American Voices
.

I am the luckiest writer on the planet to be a member of a dream team that includes Prospect Park Books and the tireless and smart Jill Marr of the Sandra Dijkstra Literary Agency. I owe a debt of gratitude to Patty O'Sullivan (and Jill again) for plucking my debut novel,
Washing the Dead
, from the slush pile and thus launching my publishing journey, and to Colleen Dunn Bates for her editing and marketing genius, grace, and infectious enthusiasm for all things literary.

I wrote
Bertrand Court
over a span of fifteen years, so it would be impossible for me to acknowledge every reader who has helped me shape this material and in turn my narrative voice. Most of them, however, belong to one or more of the following communities to which I am forever indebted: The Writer's Center, the Johns Hopkins MA in Writing Program, the Glen Echo writing group, the George Washington University Creative Writing program, the DCJCC Writers Group, and the DC Women Writers. I'd also like to acknowledge my MacArthur Boulevard walking buddies and former Adas Israel Chavurah. Special thanks to Joy Johannessen for shining up my prose and helping me stitch these stories together.

With deepest gratitude, I'd like to acknowledge my mentors and muses: Faye Moskowitz, Bob Bausch, Margaret Meyers, Ed Perlman, Richard Peabody, Bill Loizeaux, and, specifically, Ray “Bertrand” Farkas, for teaching me how to eavesdrop properly and see life through the luscious haze of a pro-mist filter. I am grateful to my children, Gabriela and Gideon, for redefining my notion of love, which they do every single day; my parents, Lotta and Stuart Brafman, for providing encouragement and a quiet place to write; and my husband, Tom Helf, for his formidable PR efforts and, more importantly, for reading me on and off the page with honesty and great tenderness.