The Middlesteins (17 page)

But young Emily did not yell. She merely whispered, “I’m not done yet,” and then,
in perhaps her most offensive act of the evening (and there were a few yet to come),
shook his hand off hers with vigor. Middlestein pulled his hand back, stunned by her
aggression. Josh turned to her openmouthed but did not say a thing, closed his mouth,
turned away, faced forward, opened his mouth again, and turned toward her, and the
two of them stared at each other, and then—this was the part that crushed Middlestein,
that made him realize that it was possible there was no one left in this family he
had a decent relationship with (And was it his fault? He had nearly convinced himself
it wasn’t.)—Josh let off a short, staccato laugh, as if he were trying to control
it but could not.

Once he had bathed these little babies. Once he had bounced them on his knee and ran
his fingers through their soft curls. These were going to be the children he would
never argue with, never punish, whose curfew he would never have to worry about. He
would never have to spank them. He would never have to disappoint them. All he had
to do was spoil them rotten, overspend on every birthday and Hanukkah just to see
their eager smiles. Now they revered their iPhones above religious decorum and thought
he was a schmuck because he’d left his wife. Now they didn’t give a shit what he thought.

Middlestein was devastated throughout the entire service. He could barely bring himself
to sing the Shema, which had always been such a soothing prayer for him, a proclamation
of his faith. It had always been so good to believe in something. Now he was distracted
by the little miss down the row, with her eye rolling and sighing and the loudest
page flipping this side of the Mississippi, her brother choking in his laughter, the
Cohns and the Grodsteins and the Weinmans and the Frankens giving him rueful glances.
It wasn’t enough that he had abandoned his wife, now he had ill-behaved grandchildren
too? Shameful. He was shamed.

Once he had counted their fingers and toes, just to make sure they were all there.
Their nails were like dewdrops.
This little piggy went to market, this little piggy stayed home.

He sighed and closed his eyes and tried to achieve bliss: Beverly! What did her toes
look like? He knew she got a manicure (and a pedicure) once a week from the Polish
girls in the same mini-mall that housed his pharmacy. She strolled in afterward, her
nails glowing coral, afraid to fish out her wallet from her purse. “I always end up
chipping,” she said with that adorable British accent of hers, offering her purse
to Middlestein. As he roamed through her sunglasses and cell phone and lipstick and
checkbook and a paperback novel, on the cover of which was a dark-skinned man with
bright blue eyes against some sort of Middle Eastern backdrop (it looked
smart
), a package of Wrigley’s peppermint gum (a classic and elegant choice if one had
to chew gum), and a dozen pens (freebies from local businesses, he had a box of them
himself that he handed out to customers, all bearing the Middlestein Drugs logo),
he was touched by the intimacy of the moment, even if she was a complete stranger.
There were three quarters at the bottom of her purse, and a tube of ChapStick. A plastic
comb, also bearing the logo of a local business. Did she just say yes every time someone
handed her something? Was she too nice to say no? Nobody needed that many pens.

She was buying a greeting card, for a college graduation; on the cover there was a
young man wearing a mortarboard in a hot air balloon, and on the inside, opposite
a flap to hold a check, it read “Congratulations on moving on up in the world!” It
was a dumb sentiment, but he carried only five different kinds of college-graduation
cards in his display. (He had been trying to phase them out since 1998 but couldn’t
bring himself to throw them away.) He suddenly wanted nothing more than to impress
this British beauty, and all he had to offer were decade-old greeting cards.

He waved the card at her. “Mazel tov,” he said. “Your son?”

“Nephew. Michigan State.” She blew on her nails.

“That’s a gorgeous color on those nails,” he said.

She pulled her hands away from her face and cocked her head as she stared at them.
“But it’s a bit bright, isn’t it?”

“Nah, it’s perfect,” he said. “You should always wear that color.”

He pulled a five-dollar bill out of her wallet.

“I don’t like to be too flashy,” she said.

“Add a little sparkle to your day, there’s nothing wrong with that,” he said.

She straightened herself and stared at him meaningfully. “Truer words were never spoken,”
she said. And then she collapsed slightly. “Life is so dull sometimes.” She gave him
a wistful but (he was almost positive) flirty smile. “It’s as if I can hear the clock
ticking off the minutes of the day.”

“I can’t imagine a woman like you, with nails like those, would ever be bored.”

“I keep myself busy,” she said. “I have hobbies.” She said “hobbies” with a bit of
spite. As much as he had hated his ex-wife’s ire and venom, he did find a woman with
an edge extremely attractive; they were so fearless. “But lately I’ve found myself
just waiting for something to happen.”

Did this gorgeous, witty, well-read, nicely groomed, age-appropriate, mostly organized
woman really just walk into his pharmacy and lay out an invitation for him to flirt
with her? Had he done anything good that day to deserve this moment?

“I noticed there’s no ring on that finger,” said Middlestein.

“I noticed there’s no ring on your finger either,” she said.

Ante up, Middlestein.

Down the aisle Emily flung herself into a coughing fit, a grimacing Josh patting her
on the back, and then Beverly’s smile gave way to a vision of his any-second-now-ex-wife.
She had been hovering somewhere in the back of his mind and then pushed her way to
the front, knocking Beverly over until she returned, timidly, to a dark space out
of frame. Edie said nothing, she just stood there, her hands in fists, her presence
enormous. Everyone in the temple sang, and so did Richard, and he looked at his grandchildren,
and Josh was singing, and Emily had her arms crossed and was staring into space. An
angry young girl. She looked at her grandfather, sneered, and turned back toward nothing
in particular. Richard faced forward, folded his hands together, rested his forehead
on them, and began to pray on behalf of his (if he had to be honest with himself now
that he was in an actual conversation with God here) long-drawn-out-legal-battle-until-she’s-his-ex-wife.
Because she was sick, she was very, very sick, in the head, in the heart, in the flesh,
and even though he could not watch over her anymore, it never hurt to ask God for
a little help. Here he was, in his house of worship, asking for help for her. Because
now that he was really being honest, he’d give up Beverly in a second if he knew that
it would heal Edie. But he knew that nothing would make her better. That’s what he
knew that no one else did, not his daughter or his son or that little grimacing monkey
two seats down. That Edie didn’t care if she lived or died.

Middlestein almost felt like he might cry, and where better to do it but here, under
the watchful eye of God? He had seen so many people cry over the years in synagogue,
in this long life of his, particularly during the Kaddish. He was born a few years
after the Holocaust had ended, but it seemed like it dragged on for years, the wailing
and the moaning, gradually fading to tender streams of tears accompanied by a choked-up
sound, the sadness trapped in the heart and the chest and the throat, resolving, years
after the fact, into just a whimper, for some faraway soul. (Could they even remember
what their lost loved ones looked like anymore?) Then there was Vietnam. There was
cancer. Heart attacks and strokes and car accidents. A surprising amount of cliff-diving
accidents. (Six.) Suicides, hushed. Old age. Bankruptcy. Runaway children. Hands clenched
across the heart, as if the white-hot force between the palms could make a miracle
happen. If one believed in miracles. So many wars over the years, sons and daughters
came and went. Pray for them, and pray for Israel while you’re at it, too. (Everyone
always should be praying for Israel.) Hold on to hope. Hold on to love. Hold on to
your family, because they won’t always be around.

Where better to cry?

But where worse to cry than under the watchful eye of the Cohns and the Grodsteins
and the Weinmans and the Frankens? They didn’t need to know how bad it was. He didn’t
want them talking about him later in their living rooms, over a nightcap of fat-free
snacks. Worrying or judging, he didn’t know which, and it didn’t matter; either way
would make him feel weak and helpless, and even after all these years of being in
each other’s lives, what did they know anyway?
They didn’t know anything about him.

Or to cry in front of Emily, who was now slumped on her brother’s shoulder, looking
in profile a little dreamy, less like the Middlestein women and more like her mother,
her petite chin, the smooth drop of her forehead, the pink swell of her lips, the
furious blaze of her eyes temporarily dampened, as if she had pulled herself deep
underwater, and was holding her breath until she turned blue. She must have felt him
staring at her: she suddenly shook her head, and the eyes were relit. She had remembered
she was supposed to be mad at him. No, he would not cry in front of Emily either.

After the services were over, he hustled the two children, his hands in an exceedingly
firm grip on the backs of both of their necks, out the door, past the wall of gold
leaves embossed with the names of donors—his was up near the top, because he was one
of the first, although it had been a long time since he had given any sizable amount
of money,
what with this economy
—all of them forming the long limbs of a tree, reaching up and outward as if they
were holding up the synagogue. He didn’t stop to chitchat with anyone, just a nod
and a “Good
Shabbos
, ” making a hapless, dog-eyed expression toward the children, as if to say,
It’s not me, it’s them
.

Outside, in the late-spring evening, the crack of summer heat curling at its edges,
as they dodged the cars pulling up curbside to pick up the elderly, then mixed in
with all those people filled with prayer and joy, the women in high heels, the men
in their suit coats (no ties necessary during the warmer weather), the children running
and giggling, released at last from sitting still, everyone immersed in that post-shul
glow, he almost let himself forget that his grandchildren had engaged in such subversive
behavior. He was, in fact, ready to forgive them, until Emily said, loudly, “I’m so
glad
that’s
over.”

“It’s over when I tell you it’s over,” said Middlestein. “You’re lucky I don’t make
you go back in there and have a talk with the rabbi himself about how God feels about
texting during shul. He’d have a thing or two to say to you.”

“We didn’t want to come, you should know that,” said Emily.

“Shut up, Emily,” said Josh.

“You shut up,” said Emily.

“I think he knows that already,” said Josh.

Middlestein released his hands from their backs, which had started to sweat, and pulled
out his keys from his suit-coat pocket, pressing the unlock-door button even though
they were still at least a dozen rows from his car. He passed Josh, he passed Emily,
he passed the Weinmans, headed, as they did every week, to a Shabbat dinner with Al’s
elderly mother at her nursing home in Oak Park. He walked and walked through the streaming
crowds until he was at his car, and he got in, and he sat, and he waited for those
little sons of bitches to get there.

Josh got in first, Emily pausing with her hand on the door, starting a staring competition
with her grandfather that she almost instantly comprehended—he could see her bite
her lip—she was never going to win.
Don’t you understand
, he wanted to say,
I invented the staring contest? Don’t you understand that, as far as you know, I invented
everything
?

She got into the car, the front seat, and pulled herself as far away from him as she
could.

Years ago, seventeen, maybe eighteen by now, Middlestein sat in this same parking
lot with his daughter, Robin, but in a different car—was it the Accord then?—and he
was just as furious with her as he was with Emily now. It was a month before Robin’s
bat mitzvah, and she still hadn’t memorized her haftorah. The cantor had called them
in for an emergency meeting, only Robin hadn’t realized that’s what it was, or maybe
she didn’t care, because—if it was possible—she was even more sullen than Emily was
now. Robin these days was a confident though still difficult woman, but at the age
of thirteen she was awkward and chubby, with a head of hair like a mushroom cloud,
and cranky because of all that. Middlestein had adored her anyway. She was the youngest.
She was trickier than Benny. She would retreat and attack quickly, a limber boxer.
He never had a handle on her once she learned how to talk back. And there she was
talking back to Cantor Rubin, then a young man, bearded, barrel-chested, a new recruit
to the synagogue (Middlestein had offered to give him a discount at the pharmacy,
but Rubin had never shown up, not in all these years, a slight insult if he had to
admit it), giving him lip while he tried to explain calmly that if she just worked
with the tape every night, one hour a night, he was confident she would have her haftorah
down by her bat mitzvah. And Robin dryly said, “Can’t we just play the tape instead
and I’ll lip-sync it? No one’s going to be paying attention anyway.” If it was a joke,
it wasn’t funny. If she was serious, then why was Middlestein shelling out twenty
thousand dollars for this party? If she was serious, then who did she think she was,
speaking that way to an adult, and not only an adult but a religious leader (and potential
customer) in the community? If she was serious, then somehow Middlestein had failed
as a parent, and he was pretty sure he had not failed at anything in his life, even
if he hadn’t really succeeded at that much either.