The Middlesteins (16 page)

O
H, BEVERLY
, thought
Richard Middlestein, daydreaming again of his first crush since sometime in the late
1960s, right before he met his wife (his
estranged
wife, to be precise) and gave up his life completely (or incompletely, as he had
been thinking lately) to a woman he no longer loved. But here, now, he felt, as genuinely
as he was capable of feeling, that he had a second chance at love with Beverly, formerly
of the UK until a Chicagoan stole her away twenty years earlier, red-haired (still
natural, even in her late fifties; this bowled him over), plump-cheeked, bold but
not brassy, practical, smart, witty, clever even, half Jewish but on the right side,
with big, batty, beautiful green eyes, lovely Beverly who made perfect sense all the
time and had a certain order to her life that he would like to apply to his own.

Beverly! Who gave him the time of day only once a week, if he was lucky, leaving his
e-mails unreplied to, his phone calls unanswered, until he finally got the hint, she
was not a woman who could be crowded or pushed, she did everything on her own time
in her own way, she carried herself through this life with dignity, and he wanted
a little of that for himself. Whatever she knew, he wanted to know.

Beverly! The lovely widow of a fantastic man, a kind ophthalmologist, who’d left her
set for life. (She had a lot more than Middlestein in the bank, that much he knew.)
Beverly, childless (no baggage, none whatsoever!), but who still loved children. Beverly,
who liked to do
things
, lots of things, go to the movies, go to the theater, watch footy on weekend mornings,
go for drives along the lake, go for bike rides, eat nice meals, have elegant dinner
parties, all these things that did not involve walking too much, many of them mainly
related to sitting, which was perfect for Richard and his not-so-great knees.

Beverly! So precious with her British accent, in her soccer jerseys, hanging out in
that ancient, smoke-stained pub with the awful breakfasts (shriveled, ruddy sausages;
Middlestein had been unable to force himself to even take a bite) with her expat girlfriends,
cheering for Tottenham, even though (or because) they were a bunch of losers. Once
she had let him come and sit with her for a match early on a Saturday morning, and
they had all cheered and roared (this year, at last, Tottenham had been winning),
and sipped Guinness (for her and her friends) and Bloody Marys (for him), and afterward
she had listened to his problems and, miracle of all miracles,
solved them
, or some of them anyway, the early-morning alcohol perhaps infusing her with a shocking
clarity, and in retrospect he became convinced she could even see into his soul. And
now he waited to be invited every week—he knew he couldn’t just crash her party, that
would be the surest way to make her lose interest in him—but she hadn’t asked him
since, settling instead for quiet little dinners, which were satisfying in their own
way, but there was something about the moment they had both experienced during that
early-morning drunk, how her hand had fluttered to his hands and once to his cheek,
the directness of her gaze, which seemed to melt with his in the dusty streaks of
sunlight vibrating in their booth; he hadn’t felt that same connection with her since,
and he knew if he could just have one more morning with her, if she would grace him
again with that same energy, they would be able to move beyond the gentle pecks on
the cheek she gave him when she bid him good-bye in the parking lot of whatever restaurant
they had dined in—too briefly!—that night.

It was Beverly who suggested he write a letter to his daughter-in-law, Rachelle, asking
for permission to once again be a participant in the lives of his grandchildren. “Your
son can’t help you,” she said. “He can’t speak on your behalf. This decision came
from her. You have to go directly to the source.” Dust sparkling all around her head.
“And a phone call won’t do, nor will an e-mail. Don’t be a lazy man. Write her a proper
letter.” She ran “lazy man” together as if it were one word, as if it were an actual
thing, a term she had created herself, because Beverly had the power to create new
words. “Pour your heart out on that paper, tell her how much you love and miss those
children, put it in an envelope, stick a stamp on it, and then mail it.”

To spend time with Josh and Emily is my heart’s desire,
he wrote. He was starting to sound like Beverly, which was not such a bad thing.

“Then what?”

“Give her a week.”

Sure enough, a week later, there was Rachelle standing in front of him at the pharmacy,
a prescription in her hand, herself with a slight case of the stink eye.

“I’m not completely sure about any of this,” she said. She handed him the prescription;
it was for Lopressor, a heart medication, and it was for his someday-ex-wife. If that
action was meant to stab him slightly in the chest, it worked.

“About what?” he said.

Say your piece just the once and then let her do all the talking
, Beverly had said. He had known that already; he had some understanding of what it
meant to contend with an angry woman.

“I don’t want them thinking your behavior, your actions, are excused. Because they
are not.”

“Of course not,” he said. He wouldn’t even begin to justify his actions to her, leaving
his sick, emotionally unstable, diabetes- and heart-disease- and who-knows-what-else-ridden
wife, because he knew she didn’t want to hear it. Even though in his head it made
sense.

Beverly understood! Beverly was the first person he had met who got it perfectly,
Beverly with her mean drunk of a father, a military man crushed by time as a prisoner
of war during World War II. “I had my sympathies for the man,” she said. “We all did.”
Richard nodded. Their generation, his and Beverly’s, they all had family, and they
all had heard stories from the war growing up.

And then Beverly added—and was this the moment his heart skipped for her?—with a downtrodden
yet dreamy voice:
You never know what’s worse with the angry ones, watching them live, or watching them
die
.

“With the b’nai mitzvah approaching,” continued Rachelle, “and with all the family
in town, Benny and I want you in attendance of course. And we still would like you
to recite the kiddush, obviously.” His daughter-in-law had an insistent formality,
spine as straight as a rod, every hair in place, her nails a pearly pink, ironed,
pressed, tightly controlled. She reminded him of the average Zoloft or Prozac customer.
(He was no doctor, so he would never say anything like that to his son, but she seemed
like she might
benefit
.)

“I’ll be there,” said Richard. “With bells on.”

“Don’t wear bells,” said Rachelle.

“I would never wear bells,” said Richard. “It’s an expression.”

“I know it’s an expression,” she said, suddenly flushed and flustered, her neck delicately
purpling.
This is hard for her
, he thought.
Why?
In that moment of weakness, he made a grab for the gold.

“I would like to see them before the b’nai mitzvah,” he said. “I could take them to
services on Friday night? Or next week?”

It was Beverly who encouraged him to suggest taking the grandkids to Friday-night
services. If these kids were so important to him—they were; Richard practically shouted
this—then he needed to think
outside the box,
this last phrase she relished dramatically. Sure, it was more fun to go to the movies
or shopping or get pizza, but he was probably not allowed to be having fun yet with
his two gorgeous grandchildren, not in his daughter-in-law’s eyes anyway. Friday-night
services weren’t about having fun; they were about being contemplative. The subtler
point was (and she was right, Richard could not deny it) that he was not an out-of-the-box
thinker. He was completely in the box. (What was so wrong with the box? He had felt
this way his entire life.) But by leaving his wife at the age of sixty, he had hurtled
himself out there, out into the universe, out of the goddamn box. And if he had not
done so, he never would have met Beverly. So it was up to him to do whatever it took
to stay there.

“Let me talk to Benny,” Rachelle said, and her skin returned to its normal (though
possibly tanning-creamed) golden color. He had placed the power in her hands once
again, given her something to decide upon.
That’s where she likes to be
, he thought.
On top.
And his mind briefly traveled to a sexual moment, not with his daughter-in-law, of
course (although maybe she was nearby, down the hall or in a doorway watching), but
with Beverly, vibrant-eyed, sensible yet magical, unavailable yet somehow still within
reach, Beverly, his hands reaching up to her, and she waved her body back and forth
on top of him, a greeting, an introduction of two bodies to each other, an explosive
exchange of a specific kind of information. Beverly grinding on his dick, Beverly
straddling his face, Beverly all over him all day and night long.

Beverly!

At shul the following week—of course Rachelle had said yes to Richard’s request; there
was no way she could say no to a grandfather sincerely wanting to take his children
to synagogue, there was certainly a rule about that somewhere in some daughter-in-law
handbook—Richard meandered lightly down the main aisle of the sanctuary, his two grandchildren,
their tongues struck by silence since the moment they'd gotten into the car, shuffling
behind him. He waved to the Cohns and the Grodsteins and the Weinmans and the Frankens,
all the couples he had come up together with for the last twenty, thirty, nearly forty
years. They had all gone to each other’s children’s bar mitzvahs and weddings and
anniversary parties and thank God no funerals yet, but he supposed they would be attending
those, too, until there was no one left.

How would that feel? To be the last one standing? Who was going to make it to the
end? Would it be Albert Weinman, who swam every morning and golfed every weekend and
ate egg-white everything? Or Lauren Franken, who’d already had a double mastectomy,
and joked that she’d gotten the hard part out of the way early and it was all smooth
sailing ahead? Surely it wouldn’t be Bobby Grodstein, the way he smoked those cigars
after dinner.

He allowed himself to consider his practically-ex-wife, her supersized existence,
the secret eating late at night (every night he could hear her opening cupboards and
packages and crunching crunching crunching, echoing through the quietude of their
home, their street, their town, their world, but he had given up on trying to stop
her), the twice-weekly trips to Costco (even though he knew where all the food had
gone, he couldn’t help but wonder out loud to her every single time she went, “What
do you need?”), the flesh stacked upon flesh stacked upon flesh. No, she would not
outlive him.

Would it be Richard himself? He worked out a few times a week, not as hard as he could,
sure, but those knees of his . . . His blood pressure was good, his cholesterol was
a little high, but nothing he couldn’t manage with Lipitor. He took vitamins. He ate
his RDA of fruits and vegetables, sometimes even much, much more than the RDA. During
his last checkup, his doctor had given him a friendly swat on the arm before he left
the room, clipboard in hand, and promised he would live a long life. “There’s no reason
you couldn’t live till one hundred,” is what he said.

Would he want to make it that long? Would he want everyone he knew to be gone? Except
for his family, they’d probably outlive him: Benny, who he knew would forgive him
eventually even if he had lost respect for him, and his sullen daughter, Robin, who
was already too busy to visit him while he was still a fully functioning human being—what
about when he was old and decrepit in a nursing home? He’d off himself before that
happened. He’d off himself before he was wearing diapers. He knew it. He could prescribe
himself the exact mixture he would need to send himself to a faraway dreamland, never
to wake up again. For decades he had been facing the adult-diaper section in his pharmacy,
studying the people who purchased them, their slow, miserable shuffle, imagining he
could see right through their clothes to what was underneath. Your needs at the beginning
of your life and at the end of your life were exactly the same. But Richard Middlestein
was no baby; he was a man. (He felt like pounding his chest right there in the middle
of the temple. Beverly!) He’d live until the day he was ready to die.

If his grandkids didn’t kill him first.

Because there were Josh and Emily, all three of them now seated in a prominent position
close to the aisle and near the front of the room, just four rows from the bimah,
and even though they were huddled over slightly, it was clear that they had their
cell phones out
and they were texting
. (Middlestein thought texting was the same as Morse code, and the more people texted,
the closer America came to being a nation at war. “Think about it,” he’d told Beverly,
poking his index finger on his temple.) He leaned across Josh and squeezed one of
Emily’s hands—the hand that was tap-tapping—and rested his arm across Josh’s lap,
and then, with as much restraint as possible, because he did not want to alert the
Cohns and the Grodsteins and the Weinmans and the Frankens, all of whom were seated
two rows behind him, that his grandchildren had apparently been
raised by wolves
, he said, “Put those away.” Josh, simple, scrawny, sweet-faced, looked instantly
terrified and shoved his phone into his back pocket, but Emily was another story.
Emily was so much like her grandmother and her aunt—at least in appearance, but Middlestein
suspected it went much further than that—she was practically marked by the devil.
She gave him a mean look, and was precariously close to opening her mouth, and what
she might say, and at what volume she might say it, he could only imagine. If she
were truly like her grandmother, it would be just loud enough so that everyone around
them could hear but not so loud that it could be considered inappropriate. Nothing
to ruin anyone’s reputation over anyway. Not like everyone hadn’t lost it on their
spouse at one time or another.