Hope: A Tragedy (7 page)

9.

KUGEL WENT UP TO HIS BEDROOM, sat down in the small wooden chair beside the small wooden desk, took a deep breath, and phoned his office. He asked for his supervisor, and was quickly put on hold.

Post-it notes, said the recorded hold message. Pet hair. Tea bags.

Sales
, said Kugel’s very first manager,
is not about convincing others—it’s about convincing yourself.
As a salesman, that requisite moral pliancy turned out to be Kugel’s greatest challenge; he just couldn’t convince himself that a Honda was better than a Chevy, that Prozac was better than a placebo (or just a long quiet walk in the woods). And so when he and Bree first began thinking about bringing a child into this world, Kugel took a sales position with the local office of EnviroSolutions, the region’s leading residential composting company, hoping that by selling something positive, something he could actually believe in, he could make a difference both in his own fortunes and in the future of the world.

Eggshells, continued the hold message. Cheese. Latex condoms.

His plan had worked. Kugel could make the simple act of composting sound like the most courageous act of the most selfless superhero, and he signed on dozens of accounts. And remember, he would say at the end of his sales calls, your waste is a wonderful thing to mind. That soon became the company’s slogan, and it had been his idea, too, to replace the phone system’s generic hold music with a constant loop of the many compostable materials their concerned customers could turn into nutrient-dense soil.

Recently, though, the green industry, as it had become known, had exploded; there were new technologies and new companies every day, and the competition for accounts had become fierce. EnviroSolutions expanded their offerings to include recycling pickups, and Kugel proved just as adept a salesman at that as he had been with compost. The company charged their customers by the gallon; the more people recycled, the more money EnviroSolutions earned.

How much do you love the earth? Kugel would ask his clients, in a pitch that the other salesman soon began to emulate. Seventy-five gallons or ninety-five gallons?

But I only need seventy-five gallons, they would say.

If you really loved the earth, Kugel would reply, you’d use up more.

It soon became a badge of environmental honor to bring as many bags of recycling to the stoop as possible, a trend Kugel almost single-handedly had begun.

Toenail clippings, continued the voice on the phone. Burnt toast. Goat manure.

If only he were as good with truth, he thought, as he was with bullshit.

At last his supervisor answered his phone.

Yes, said Kugel to his supervisor, yes, I know . . . Of course, yes . . . no, I don’t . . . well, it just sort of came over me late last night, sir . . . A cold, I think, just a little bug . . . Yes . . . I understand that, yes, I do . . . sore throat, coughing . . . Yes, I didn’t want to risk infecting the rest of the office . . . Yes, of course.

The tapping began again.

On the vent.

Tap. Tap-tap.

Softly at first, but growing louder as the conversation continued. Kugel stood and walked to the vent.

I should think so, yes, yes, he said, stomping angrily on the metal register grate. Yes, yes, plenty of liquids,
cough, cough
, I know, yes . . . Really, I am very sorry about it, sir, I just, well, better safe than sorry . . . Yes, sir, I think so, just a day is all . . .

Tap tap.

Maybe two days, you know, if it’s a bad one, two or three days, tops, yes . . . Of course . . . I . . . yes . . . yes. Thank you, sir. Yes, sir, I will. Thank you.

Tap tap.

Kugel ended the call, slammed down the phone, and got down on his hands and knees beside the vent.

Shut up, you hear me? he whispered angrily into the vent. What did I just tell you? What did I just fucking tell you two fucking minutes ago? Don’t tap on the vents! Finish your book! Eat your fucking apple! Just shut up! Shut the fuck up!

He stood, paced around the room, looked out the window, returned to the vent, and knelt down again.

Just
shut
up
, he growled.

He stood, went to the window, ran a hand through his hair, and asked himself what Bree would do.

She would be calm, he knew. She would be rational. First of all, she would say, let’s find out who this person is.

Yes, Kugel thought. Yes, of course.

He sat back down at the desk, went online, found the number he was looking for, and picked up the phone.

We’ll see, he said, sneering up at the ceiling, who’s alive and who’s dead.

Kugel crossed the room, slid open the door to the closet, climbed inside, and closed the door behind him, reveling for a moment in the vent-free solitude within. He squatted down on the floor beneath his hanging shirts, coats, and pants, turned on the phone and dialed the number.

Sitting there in the dark, Kugel envied the clothing their solitude, their safety, but soon he worried that perhaps the clothes hated the closet, feared the dark—perhaps they wanted nothing more than to live, like the bed and dresser, beneath the soothing rays of the sun, beside open windows, no door no more. He worried about this often; sometimes he wore a shirt he didn’t even like because he worried it felt bad, passed over day after day for something newer, sharper, cleaner. He spent the day feeling uncomfortable and ugly, and by the evening, he resented the very same shirt he had only that morning taken such pity upon, and he hung it back in the closet, swearing never to wear it again.

Good afternoon, said the cheerful woman on the other end of the line. Simon Wiesenthal Center, how may I help you?

Was it the afternoon already? Should the Simon Wiesenthal Center receptionist be so chipper?

Yes, said Kugel softly, hello. I was wondering if you could . . .

I’m sorry, sir, you’re going to have to speak up, I can barely hear you.

Hello, yes, said Kugel more loudly. I’m trying to find out if someone died in the Holocaust, I wondered if you could help me.

Of course, said the woman, her tone becoming instantly more somber. We have a vast searchable database, she continued, of all the millions of victims of Nazi brutality. Of course many died outside the camps, or en route to them, so you understand that not every person that was murdered will be listed.

I understand, said Kugel.

Many died in the street.

Sure, he said.

Like dogs.

Of course.

In front of their wives.

I know.

And children.

Terrible.

Last name? she asked.

Frank.

First name?

Kugel swallowed.

Anne, he said.

Click.

Goddamn it, thought Kugel.

He climbed out of the closet and paced around the room. Now what? Should he phone the Museum of Tolerance? Should he contact the Anne Frank House? He couldn’t imagine those inquiries would prove any more fruitful. What if that Wiesenthal woman phoned the ADL? he wondered. What if she told them a Holocaust denier had phoned, what if she had traced the call? Kugel imagined the ADL banging on the front door, dragging him from the house, kicking, screaming; he could see the forlorn look on Mother’s face, the disappointment. She’s in the attic, I swear! he would call out as they threw him into the back of the ADL van and locked the door. She’s in the attic!

Tell everyone, why don’t you? Mother would say.

The tapping began again.

Goddamn it, thought Kugel.

Kugel phoned Professor Jove.

Jove wasn’t in.

Kugel left a message.

10.

Matzoh—12 boxes

Herring—1 jar

Borscht

Gefilte fish

Printing paper—3 pak (no
holes)

Mini-fridge

Mini-fridge? thought Kugel as he pushed a cart through the automatic doors of Mother Earth’s Bounty Natural Food Market. Blow
me
.

Where the hell was he supposed to find gefilte fish in Stockton? And who the fuck needs a dozen boxes of matzoh? He hated even saying that word,
matzoh
. The Kugels had never been particularly observant, but when Kugel was young, the one holiday Mother celebrated every year was Passover.

It was a celebration, she said, of freedom.

Kugel hadn’t seen it quite that way. It seemed more like a celebration of suffering, of slavery, a sacrament of hardship and abuse. Kugel, Mother, and Hannah sat around the seder table for hours on end as Mother read them stories of how their ancestors died, how babies were murdered, how rabbis were burned alive.

It made young Kugel angry. Hadn’t he and Mother and Hannah suffered, too? Okay, so they hadn’t been wrapped in Torahs and burned by the Romans, but it hadn’t exactly been a picnic, either. Perhaps retelling the sufferings of others made Mother feel better about her own, but to Kugel, it just set up a pointless competition, a Misery Olympics he didn’t want to compete in, the losers of which lost all claim to their legitimate pain, the winner of which won nothing but pity. Mother, it seemed to young Kugel, was forever going for the gold.

This, said Mother, as she handed him a piece of dry, tasteless matzoh, is the bread of our affliction.

Where, young Kugel wondered, is the seven-layer cake of our salvation? Where is the muffin of our mirth? Where is our no-longer-reduced-to-jelly doughnut?

Just eat it, Mother said.

The last words of Rabbi Akiva—the one the Romans wrapped in a Torah and lit on fire—were these:

Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God, the Lord is One.

Fuck that, thought Kugel as he made his way down the grocery aisle. Montaigne wrote of those who faced their executions with humor—not with mankind’s narrow tragic perspective, but with God’s all-seeing, humorous one. Said one man on the gallows when asked if he had any last words: Let ’er rip! Said another as the priest pressed him to commend his soul to God: I’ll just tell him when I see him.

Voltaire, on his deathbed, was asked to repudiate the devil. Is this, Voltaire asked, a time to be making enemies?

Gentlemen, said one George Appel as they strapped him to the electric chair, you are about to see a baked appel.

Funny.

Burnt Kugel.

But wrapped in a Torah? Lit on fire?

How about a little anger, Akiva? How about skipping the prayer to God above and saying a little something to His barbarous believers below?

How about, Fuck you?

How about, Fuck all of you motherfuckers?

Kugel pushed his cart to the side of the vegetable aisle, took out his Last Words notebook, and wrote that one down:

Fuck all of you motherfuckers
.

He underlined it.

Not bad.

Kugel had discovered of late that he was gluten intolerant; the slightest amount of wheat in his food, and his stomach would spasm, his bowels would cramp, and the fury soon after with which his intestines attempted to rid themselves of the cursed grain was so great that he often wondered—on the train, in the car, in the mall—if he would make it to the bathroom on time. It was difficult to avoid wheat, and gluten-free food was terribly expensive, but Kugel now thought it wonderfully appropriate that matzoh—the most hated food of his youth—was the one he, as an adult, would find he was allergic to, the one that his body was actually incapable of processing, the one that the lining of his gut identified as poison.

His stomach was anti-Semitic.

His bowels had assimilated.

His rectum was self-hating.

Anne Frank would be pleased.

Mother would be disappointed.

It seemed of late that everything had become poisonous. Wheat gave him diarrhea. Sugar made him sweat profusely. Caffeine gave him even worse diarrhea than wheat did, as well as intense anxiety, so that he anguished, doubled over on the toilet bowl, that the diarrhea meant something was going terribly wrong inside him, that he was decomposing from the inside out and was, in all likelihood, only moments away from death.

And that the toilet, understandably, was furious with him.

Jesus, said the toilet.

It’s the wheat, Kugel said to the toilet.

Try the salad, the toilet replied.

Jonah was allergic to bees. And pollen. And cats.

How would they ever hide in an attic with Jonah allergic to bees? Winters would be fine, but spring would be impossible, with his constant sneezing giving them away. Don’t
ha-choo
shoot. Summer would be even worse. What if the bees got inside the attic, what then? He would have to remember to bring some EpiPens.

iPod and EpiPens; he would make a note of that.

And Zyrtec, for the hay fever and sneezing.

iPod (headphones/charger)

EpiPens

Zyrtec

A list. The beginnings of one, anyway. It made Kugel feel better. He was preparing. He was fighting back. He would not be caught unawares.
Like sheep to the slaughter.
That’s how Mother described the prisoners in the death camps. He wondered how Anne Frank might react to that description.

And if maybe sheep had the right idea.

Fuck all you motherfuckers.

It’s okay, he would say, holding Jonah in his arms as they huddled in the eaves of their Stockton attic, soldiers in heavy boots in the hallway beneath them, shouting, cursing, shooting; he would try to calm Jonah down, try to just stop his body shaking in fear, in terror, or was that Kugel shaking, was that his own fear, was that his own terror?

Excuse me, said another shopper, trying to get by.

Fucking Anne Frank, man.

He took out her list.

Borscht? Did they sell borscht here?

Bree was allergic to color. A dye of some specific hue, some precise shade, though she didn’t know which one, and doctors were unable to help. Recently she bought a pack of M&M’s and ate one color a day for a week to see if she could identify the color herself—brown on Sunday, yellow on Monday, green on Tuesday, red on Wednesday, orange on Thursday, and blue on Friday. On Saturday, she rested. But every color gave her the same rash, so she assumed she was allergic to all colors. The doctors suggested she might just be allergic to dairy. Now she avoided colors as well as dairy. And wheat. And sugar.

The food at Mother Earth’s was pure and natural and extraordinarily expensive. You paid more these days for the things you didn’t get—no sodium, no fructose, no corn syrup, no MSG, fat-free, carb-free, dye-free, wheatless, flourless, sugarless—and with each ingredient that wasn’t included, the price increased. A box of nothing—free of poisons, toxins, pesticides, a box that needed no warnings, no list of possible side effects and adverse reactions, a box that didn’t harm unborn children or require checking with your physician before opening, a box of fucking air—would require a second mortgage.

Staying alive was costing them a fortune.

What kind of a monster brings a child into this world?

Jesus said Ouch.

Hitler was an optimist.

Do you have any matzoh? Kugel asked one of the Mother Earth employees.

Matzoh?

You know, said Kugel. Like for Passover.

Still, something about the store gave Kugel hope. All these remedies—plants, scents, vitamins, lotions—at least they were trying. They, too, were fighting back. With elderberry, sure, and shark cartilage. But fighting back was fighting, wasn’t it?

The young man scratched his chin.

Kugel couldn’t believe he was actually buying the old lady anything, but his hope was that she would finish her damn book quietly and just leave; that one morning he would awaken and go up to the attic, and Anne Frank would be gone, and he could go on with his life, Anne-free.

One hundred percent Frankless.

Now with Less Genocide.

Matzoh, repeated the young man.

Matzoh, said Kugel.

I don’t think we have any of that, he said. Then, trying his best to be helpful, he snapped his fingers and added: We do have Ezekiel bread.

What’s Ezekiel bread?

I’m not sure. Sounds religious, though. Biblical, you know?

Sold, said Kugel.

Crazy, anyway, buying this shit for some lunatic in my attic. Maybe getting the wrong thing would piss her off enough to leave. So she looked Anne Frankish, so what? All old ladies look Anne Frankish. It’s a misery thing.

Anything else? the employee asked.

Maybe he should get her some booze. It seemed to work for other writers. Some books, too—How to Write a Novel in a Month. A Week. An Hour.

Do you have a multi-vit? Kugel asked. Something for seniors?

He paid—that was thirty-six bucks he was never going to see again; 32 million copies and she can’t pay for her own fucking Ezekiel bread—and headed out to the parking lot, stopping at the door to grab the local classified paper. If he couldn’t throw her out on the street, maybe he could rent her an attic somewhere else. A little pied-à-terror, where she could cower in the corners until the world came to an end and it was at last safe to descend.

As he walked toward his car, Kugel spotted Wilbur Messerschmidt Jr., the forty-something son of Wilbur Messerschmidt Sr., from whom the Kugels had purchased their home.

Will, as Wilbur Junior was known to everyone in this small town, was a tall, fit man with a shock of red hair and a quick and easy smile, a beloved figure: a member of the town board, a part-time volunteer with the Stockton EMS, and a full-time volunteer with the Stockton Fire Department. His white pickup truck was a familiar sight; in the winter he could be seen pulling cars out of snowbanks or plowing neighbors’ driveways; in the summer, he could often be found helping the elderly carry their shopping bags to their cars, or changing flattened tires for grateful stranded motorists.

Will was leaning against the roof of a local police cruiser, chatting and laughing with the officers inside. Kugel approached, and Will greeted him with a hearty clap on the shoulder.

Hey, Mr. K, said Will. Boys here almost got him last night.

Got who? asked Kugel.

That son of a bitch who’s been burning down homes, said Will. Mr. Kugel here bought Pop’s place a couple months back.

The officer in the passenger seat nodded.

Tried to light another one up over on Tanglewood, the officer said.

Farmhouse? asked Kugel.

The officer nodded.

Kugel shook his head.

Didn’t get very far, said Will, thank the good Lord. Our boys here showed up and gave him a good chase through the woods. Maybe the chief will find a few more bucks for you two now, eh?

Extra
bucks? laughed the officer. Son of a bitch was madder than hell we didn’t catch him.

Lucky he didn’t can us, added the officer in the driver’s seat. Good thing he had a beer in him.

They all laughed. Will slapped the roof of the cruiser and he and Kugel waved as the officers drove off.

Good guys, said Will, good guys. I know Kevin since grade school. Didn’t think he’d ever become a cop, though, truth be told—shit, the kid just about set his own house on fire trying to sneak a cigarette one night. How’s the family enjoying the new place?

Well, said Kugel, now that you mention it.

Kugel glanced around, and, seeing that they were alone, said in a low voice: I found something.

Mm-hmm, said Will.

Something your father might have left behind.

Will nodded.

You don’t say, said Will.

Something he left in the attic, said Kugel. In the
attic
.

He studied Will’s face, looking for any sign of worry or surprise, but found there only confusion.

Like a bag or something? Will asked.

Kugel nodded.

Yes, said Kugel, like a bag. Like an
old
bag. I thought maybe your father would want the
old bag
back.

Will scratched his chin.

Hmm, he said, shaking his head. An old bag. Can’t say I know of it. Truth be told, Dad took care of most of the packing. Where did you say you found it again?

Kugel glanced around again.