A Brilliant Novel in the Works (19 page)

My father didn’t want to be buried like my mother was.
He wanted to be burned up. He wanted to be cremated and “splashed all across
the Davidson River.” He told me this about three months after she died.

“What?” I said. “You can’t do that. It’s too late.” I had my hands in
fists and could feel my fingernails pressing into my palms. Jews aren’t cremated—that
is what I thought to say.

“It isn’t the betrayal that you think it is.”

“It is,” I said. “Mom is buried down there waiting.” This was not something
I expected to say. I didn’t believe in any kind of afterlife, but I still
imagined my mother’s rotting body, all alone down there.

“Waiting for what?” my father said. He took deep and calm breaths.

“For you,” I said.

My father handed me the note. It was written on that tissue-thin paper,
which my mom used for international letters, when writing to her sisters in
Israel. It was a mix of my mother’s English and her Hebrew.

I am made of adamah and you are made of miyeem and so
that is where we need to go when it ends. We will meet again along the shores
of the river, where the miyeem embraces the adamah.

Her English was never so good, and her Hebrew began fading
from the day I was born. But what I didn’t think about was the new language
she was creating between the worlds of English and Hebrew. Her story about
earth and water was the kind of thing that made total sense once I read it.
I wondered about all the other things she had said in my lifetime that I might
have unfairly written off.

I began to cry into the tissue-thin paper. This was a kind of paper too
fragile for tears. So my father pulled the note away from me. He cleaned the
note with his shirt and I put myself back together.

“So you’re going to do it,” I said to my father, somewhere between a
statement and a question.

“I think so,” he said to me.

“You never wanted to be buried anyhow,” I said.

“No,” he said. “I guess I was just doing it for your mom. But if she
would’ve suggested this mishugas while she was alive, I would have stopped
the discussion before it started. She knew me well enough to know that the
only way she could win an argument with me was to start one after she was
gone.”

“What about all the money you spent on that plot of land?”

My father smiled. The color of his lips was darker than I remembered.
“Why?” he said. “Are you in the market for an extra burial plot?”

“No,” I said. “Maybe I’ll follow in your footsteps.”

“Well,” he said. “You better get yourself a fly rod.”

I got the call early one morning. A heart attack. Right
on the river. He died instantly, the policeman told me—a man who knew and
respected my father. The man said, “One of his wooly buggers was still in
his fist.” He said it thinking it would make me feel better. And it did. Well,
later anyway.

I always imagined I’d scatter his ashes alone, but in
the end, it went differently. I was freshly married to Julia and had just
gotten close to Shmen, and the two of them asked if they could go and support
me. And I said okay.

We flew to Asheville and drove into the Pisgah National Forest, right
up to the Davidson River. The forest was different than in Oregon. The pine
trees were smaller, but their needles were thicker. It smelled of something
sweet and sticky in the woods. There was a cold wind. The summer was nearly
over, you could see it up in the tall oak trees—their leaves were green, but
barely. I went up to the river and squatted beside it. The soil was spongy
underneath me. I tried to read the water like my father once had. There was
the noise of the water over the rocks and the ripples in the water and it
was muddy in the water and the smell of the wind and the fish. But I couldn’t
piece it all together.

When my father squatted, when he touched his finger to the water, he
saw things. “Look out there,” he once said to me. “An ant has fallen off the
tree.” It took some time, but I saw the thing struggling on the surface of
the water as the water sent him downstream. “The fish will get to him in no
time,” my father said.

I stepped into the water, not thinking that I was wearing
my best pair of shoes until it was too late.

Julia stood on the bank of the river, right on the root of a tree, her
hand against it like she didn’t know how to stand up otherwise. This wasn’t
her part of the world. “I’ll be right here, honey,” she said, her voice a
touch too quiet.

Shmen, on other the hand, fell into the water right beside me as if he
had been pushed. The water at this point was still fairly shallow, only two
feet deep, but deep enough so that his whole body went under.

I didn’t try to save him from the fall. I was focused on the box in my
hands.

He let out a yell from all the coldness in his bones. And after shaking
off, he said, “I’m good. I’m cool. I’m fine. We’re cool.”

“I’m sorry,” I said to him, as if responsible for his fall. “I should
do this last thing alone.”

“Yeah, brother,” he said, “perhaps you should.” He reached out a wet
hand and put it on my shoulder. His hand was cold from the water and hot underneath
the cold.

I looked back at Julia and smiled.

The box in my hands was just a small pine box no bigger than a loaf of
bread. But I felt that I would drop it at any moment if I didn’t direct all
my attention to keeping it secure. I knew where I wanted to go.

I walked to that same bend in the river where he once apologized for
hitting me with a belt. It wasn’t long before I saw that rock. The one that
looked like a grand piano. The one that stood above what he called Piano Pond.
He once told me that the trout in Piano Pond loved one of his homemade flies.
“I call it a Shmendrick bug,” he said to me. “You should see it sometime.
It’s a beauty.”

I climbed up on the rock. It was higher than I’d imagined it would be,
and when I stood on it, I could see Julia and Shmen in the distance. They
waved at me, but I didn’t want to drop the box.

The water was muddy from all the construction upstream. A hard rain wasn’t
supposed to do this. That is what my dad taught me. “Nature wouldn’t do it
this way.”

I squinted through the muddiness, watching closely for movement. I could
make out two trout swimming down there.

I knew I would miss the old man who took me out to this river and showed
me about ants and wooly buggers and Shmendrick bugs, but I didn’t realize
that I would miss the man with the belt and the angry eyes just as much. And
I didn’t realize that holding my father’s ashes would somehow feel like a
favor for my mother as well—a woman who didn’t believe in cremation and wrote
poetry from the grave.

There was a noise in the distance, someone calling out. Maybe Julia and
Shmen, but I didn’t look at them.

Afterward, on the flight home, I paid more attention to
them. I was extra aware of how they each behaved. How Julia squeezed my hand,
how she let us be so quiet together, how in her eyes were the thoughts of
her own mother and father. And how Shmen handled the situation differently.

“It was the right way,” Shmen said to me. He said it with a lightness
in his voice. He could’ve been talking about a turn we had taken on the freeway.

I didn’t say anything. I wasn’t in the mood for social etiquette.

“The only way to die,” he said, “is the way you live. At least the way
you live at your best. None of this hospital horseshit.”

Shmen had good intentions but I still didn’t like how lightly he was
talking about it. I knew he had been through some tricky times with all his
surgeries and sickness but I wasn’t ready to take in any life-and-death wisdom.
I wanted him to talk about the hot stewardess or the number of peanuts in
the complementary snack pack, not about my father dead in a river.

“And you did good,” he said. “With his ashes there. He would’ve been
proud.”

I noticed on Shmen’s cocktail napkin he had written something.

“What are you writing?” I asked.

“Oh, nothing,” he said to me. He tried to cover it up, but I still saw
what he’d written. He was always good with words, much quicker than I was.

Back at the river, back on that piano-shaped rock, the
box was hot in my hands. I opened it carefully. When I pulled the top off,
I heard the sound of air being sucked into the box. Everything my father had
been was now just a few pounds of dust in a box. My eyes burned from trying
so hard to look. I took the box and sprinkled the ashes into the water. One
pinch at a time until all of my father was gone. The dust glistened as it
fell.

It took a long time for the ashes to reach the water. And when they did,
those trout came up to the surface. They inspected the ashes carefully, and
then they began to nibble
.

Shmen tells us that the reason he brought us leek soup is
because it’s the anagram for “peek soul.” He also tells us it’s
healthy. It’s a popular recipe. It’s all the rage. I’d never imagined
raging leeks before. But he doesn’t eat a thing. His eyes are
bloodshot and his face almost seems yellow. Like the raging
leek soup had already leaked into his face.

“Why aren’t you eating?” Julia says, which is a secret code for saying,
Why
are you drinking
?

“Oh,” Shmen says. He waves his hand in the air, does some
odd spiraling gesture. “I ate back at the office.”

This line is so broken that Julia doesn’t even begin to
dissect it. She closes her eyes and breathes. I wish I could
down a few drinks to tolerate the meal. Instead of drinking
alcohol, I stand up, kiss my wife on the head. And then I go
to the bathroom.

I don’t even crave cutting myself, I just want to sit on the
toilet and wait for all of this to pass. But I know it won’t. I’ll
have to do something to make it better. So I flush the toilet to
make it seem like something has happened here.

When I come back out, Julia’s full bowl of soup is sitting in
the kitchen sink and she is back at her seat.

“How many times have we talked about this?” she says
to Shmen. She is gripping her spoon and shaking it at her
brother. It’s the kind of thing they probably tell you not to do
when counseling someone with a problem.

“You’ve said it quite a lot,” he says as if he isn’t being
threatened by a spoon. “But life,” he says, “is a lot like a horse
with a big uncontrollable dick.”

To laugh was not the right thing to do. I know I shouldn’t
have laughed.

Julia puts her hand on her belly at this moment. And then
she says, “I’m sorry.” And she walks right out of the kitchen.

Shmen and I sit there in the kitchen for a few minutes. I spend
the time trying to come up with an angle. Some approach to the
situation. Some graceful entry. I think of all the techniques Julia
has told me about when she talks to her patients. But I come up
with nothing. I use the approach of having no approach.

“So is it as bad as it looks?” I ask him.

“Yeah,” he says. He nods, but his head doesn’t move as
much as a proper nod requires. “Probably worse than it looks.
Did you know that I’m blind in one eye? Can you tell that I
can barely turn my body? Can you see that it is hard to breathe
because my ribs won’t expand?”

“Holy fuck,” I say.

“It’s okay,” he says. “The alcohol makes it hurt less.”

“What about a doctor? There must be a treatment.”

“I’m done with those guys,” he tells me. “I’m off the grid
and going further.”

I turn this over a few times. I don’t get the grid metaphor
but what I get is that my brother-in-law is done with trying to
find remedies for his esoteric diseases.

And then something happens that I don’t expect. He asks
me a question. He lets me in further. “Brother,” he says, “will
you skidoo me a favor?”

“Yes,” I say, almost before he finishes asking.

“I don’t want to go with a fused spine or pulmonary fibrosis
or lung disease or by drinking myself stupid. I want to go with
a wooly bugger in my fist.”

It’s late. Julia and I are lying in bed. We’ve spent an hour
talking about Shmen. She’s been crying. “I should be better at
this,” she says. “I see this kind of thing every day. But it’s like
I’ve learned nothing that helps with my own brother.”

“It’s always different with family,” I say. And I know it’s a
dumb thing to say, but it’s a true dumb thing.

I put my hand on Julia’s belly. She flinches when I touch
her. Usually, she’s not into me touching her like that. But after
the initial jump, she lets my hand rest there.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” I say.

She doesn’t answer for long enough that I wonder if she
heard me. And then: “It’s too soon,” she says. “Seven weeks
in. Anything can happen from here.” She breathes a few times
and her belly goes up and down. “And I was scared to tell you.
I don’t know if you’re ready. I don’t know if we’re re ady.”

“I don’t know either,” I say. “But I think it’s a bad idea to
wait until a man like me is ready.”

I wouldn’t have noticed the laugh without my hand on her
diaphragm.

“In any case,” I say, “I’m glad to not be ready with you.”

“Thank you,” she says.

I sit up and look down at my wife.

“What is it?” she says.

“Do you buy into this crazy
shtuyot
that we should look out for
the people we love? Even if it’s heartbreaking for us to do what we think
is right?” I make it sound like a trick question, which it obviously is. It’s
actually such a dumb trick question that it might even be tricky.

I reach down to her belly. I rub her belly around in a circle
like I’m looking for answers in there.

“Yes,” my wife says. “I buy it.”

She’s getting concerned. I can tell. Even in the dark I see
her eyebrows go all wiggly.

I kiss my wife on the lips. It’s a good, arrogant, passionate
kiss. I taste the leek soup and the toothpaste and some
mysterious strawberry flavor.

And then I get up. I leave that warm, maybe-with-a-baby
body of hers.

“I’ll be right back,” I say.

“Where you going?”

“To close off some loose ends,” I say, and walk out of the
room like I know what I’m doing. I step into the living room
and look at the mess of papers on the clotheslines and on the
floor. But I don’t scrutinize the pages. I grab a napkin and a
pen from a drawer in my desk and stick them in my pocket. I
also grab the pack of cigarettes and the lighter, both stashed in
the back of another drawer.

I light a cigarette and then walk outside, careful to open
and close the door quietly.