As Close to Us as Breathing: A Novel (31 page)

“They’re having fun. Come on, let’s dare,” Tyler urged. “It’ll give you a thrill.”

Bec shook her head but then smiled, catching Tyler’s eye. “I can think of other thrills,” she said.

That afternoon, after they’d made love in Bec’s New Haven apartment, Tyler fell asleep, and for the next hour Bec lay beside him, her body turned his way. Thrilling, she thought, just to look.

“What do you think?” Tyler asked upon waking. “Time to head back?”

Bec swept her hand across his forehead. “Ten more minutes,” she said. “Then ten more after that.”

At about the same time, midafternoon, at Woodmont, behind Treat’s fruit and vegetable stand, my brother Howard was kissing Megan O’Donnell. This was old hat by now, this afternoon kissing, a time when the smell of peaches and berries and cucumbers and zucchini mixed with the smell of Megan O’Donnell, her rose-scented shampoo, her salty skin.

“Sheila told me this morning she’s going to tell our parents about you and me,” Megan said, pulling away suddenly.

“What’ll they do?” Howard asked, leaning in, hoping the kissing wouldn’t cease.

“Have a conniption. What else?”

“Is that all?”

“Is that
all?
”

“My parents would kill me.” Howard nodded, sure of it.

“That’s just a figure of speech.”

“Not really. I’d be dead in their eyes. At least eventually I would. If this thing between us really took off. That’s the rule.”

“Whose rule?” Megan said blithely, as if the old way were but a game. But the look in her eyes was serious.

He reached for her hand.

For a minute they didn’t speak.

Then she said, “Meet you at Bagel Beach tonight, dead man?”

He tried to answer her joking tone.
“Pow, pow,”
he said, a fake pistol to his chest, but he regretted the move as soon as he saw her horrified look. He kissed her cheek quickly. “Wouldn’t miss it for the world,” he said.

Four o’clock that afternoon and Mort and Leo were on the road from Middletown to Woodmont, listening to a ball game. After so many trips like this it seemed to Leo that the car was fueled as much by games as by gasoline. As always, Mort drove impatiently, swerving to pass nearly every car he could.

Leo, his eyes half-closed, felt only mildly queasy. If he opened his eyes fully, the queasiness expanded, which was interesting to think about given that other expansion, the universe’s, already on his mind.

He turned his thoughts back to his reading, to the past that was with us now, according to Gamow, if in fact he’d read him correctly. Such ruminations could keep the queasiness at bay. But Mort, speaking to him, interrupted his thinking. “You okay?” Mort asked. “Looking peaked. Very peaked. You okay?” he repeated.

Leo nodded.

Mort cleared his throat as if to say more but then quieted. “She’s a hothead, that Ada,” he finally muttered.

Leo turned to find Mort glancing his way. He seemed intent on talking, his eyes serious, his face grim. “Yes, let’s face it,” Mort continued, “I married the family hothead.”

Leo swallowed. He couldn’t disagree.

“And you married the family chef,” Mort added, his tone a little brighter.

Two weeks. They hadn’t seen Vivie and Ada in two weeks. Leo couldn’t tell which was the truth: that his brother-in-law missed his wife or that he dreaded the reunion. Yet because the human heart was its own inexplicable and expansive universe, it was possible, he knew, for both to be true.

The two weeks had seemed to Leo like two months. He sighed with relief when he realized they were approaching Savin Rock.

“A hothead and a chef,” he managed to say. “Then why are you so calm and me so nervous? And so thin?”

Mort liked that. He laughed. He reached for the radio dial, turning up the volume. Leo watched him, grinning suddenly and feeling hopeful as he heard the report: bottom of the eighth, score tied, man on first, man on second, one out, DiMaggio at bat.

A
s Mort and Leo pulled into Savin Rock for their weekly hot dogs at Jimmies—two hours after Tyler and Bec had pulled out—in Middletown Nelson was breathing in the dank air of the store’s basement, listening to Benny Goodman playing Mozart’s clarinet concerto. The piece was quiet compared to the buoyancy of something like “Sing, Sing, Sing,” and Nelson was particularly taken with the concerto’s dolorous second movement, which suited his mood. Come Friday afternoons he could get a little low, a little tired; often, he found himself wrestling with a bit of a headache. It was maybe the worst time of the week, he acknowledged, rocking in his chair to the adagio rhythm of the second movement. Then again, he thought, the hours ahead would also be pretty lousy, Friday night, when he’d light Shabbos candles by himself, pull off a hunk of challah, then another, then finally eat the whole damn loaf in what felt like one breath.

While my uncle rocked in his chair, and while my father and Leo finished their hot dogs, my brother Howard arrived home from Treat’s and headed off on his usual afternoon sail with Mark Fishbaum. As they rigged the boat, Davy hung around them, as he so often did lately, but he’d had a ride just the day before. Howard could argue without guilt that he’d take the squirt again the next day, or the next, but not that day. Once aboard the Sailfish, Mark sat starboard, tiller in hand, sail line in the other, while Howard sat beside him, hands free, body relaxed, as he let Mark manage the mechanics of sailing so that he, dreaming of Megan O’Donnell, could simply be taken for a ride.

On land, at the corner of New Haven Avenue and Warner, near the eastern border of Woodmont, Tyler McMannus pulled his Roadmaster to the curb to let Bec out. She’d asked to get off there, farther from the cottage than usual. Before she saw her sisters again she felt the need for some time alone. A good walk, she figured, would be just the thing. She turned to Tyler before opening the car door and smiled, taking in his face, the gray eyes, the sad mouth. She knew that her smile and his frown were but different takes on the same mixed emotions: love, fear, hope, worry. They’d been quiet the whole ride from New Haven back to Woodmont; during the afternoon they’d further cemented the decision to move together to New York, and all they’d been able to do since then was to sit together in silence. Once the holidays are over, Bec had finally said, speaking of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. That’s when they’d make their move. One hand on the door handle, she released her grip when he pulled her toward him, kissed her, and then held her. Once separated, they both laughed nervously. “Look what we’ve done” was what she thought to say to him, and to her surprise, when he spoke it was to that very idea: “Look what we’re doing.” They nodded, smiled this time with more ease, even some excitement, and then she turned from him and opened the door.

A mile away, at the Bagel Beach cottage, my aunt Vivie flipped through a cookbook wondering if she could do something else besides simply roasting the two chickens that lay side by side on the kitchen table, already greased with butter and seasoned with salt and pepper. When she spotted a recipe that called for garlic in, on, and around the bird, she realized that was enough of a stretch for her. “Garlic-y Chicken,” the recipe was called. She folded down the corner of the page, reached for the peeled garlic, and began, slowly, carefully, to slice.

In the dining room Ada set the table. She placed the kiddush cup, sterling silver, near Mort’s seat, then set a platter for the challahs to its right. She counted the place settings: two husbands, three sisters, four kids. Flushed and warm, she sat for a moment at the head of the table, Mort’s place, sinking into his chair, larger than those that flanked the table’s two sides and even the one she typically sat in at the opposite end. Sitting like a king, she thought to herself, and feeling suddenly regal she raised her hand and smoothed her mass of hair, carelessly twisted and pinned. She considered for a moment her decision the night before not to call the husbands about Nina’s injury. The women could handle it, she’d convinced her sisters. By the time the husbands arrived the matter would be no bigger than a few stitches and a Band-Aid. Good choice, she told herself as she rose from Mort’s chair, a kind of throne.

In the kitchen, Nina and I stood by the sink, each of us holding a thick brass candlestick that we were polishing. I couldn’t help but stare at the deep purple bruise on Nina’s forehead, over her left eye, and at the bandage and tape covering it. Nina, on the other hand, already seemed to have forgotten about the incident and its imprint; wholly in the present moment, she attacked a spot on her candlestick with fierce concentration as if shining that candlestick were all that could possibly matter.

Davy wandered in then, through the back door off the kitchen, his wavy hair windblown, his bathing trunks wet, his feet sandy.

“Young man?” Vivie said, pointing.

Of the rules in this house, spoken and unspoken, ancient and new, religious and secular, visible and invisible—of the mob of rules that controlled a given moment—the one about sandy feet was perhaps the one most strictly enforced.

“Sorry,” he answered, and he did so with such earnest regret that Vivie rushed toward him to hug him.

“And where’s your brother?” asked Ada, who stood now in the doorway between the kitchen and dining room, her hands on her hips.

“Sailing,” Davy answered, still standing sandy-footed in the middle of the kitchen. If he didn’t move soon, I thought, I’d whisk him up myself and carry him outdoors to the shower. I placed my candlestick, still smeared with polish, in the sink just in case.

“Sailing toward Megan O’Donnell is more like it,” Nina interjected, her face unchanged, as focused as ever on her polishing.

“Megan O’Donnell? Who’s that?” Ada said.

There were moments when Sal Luccino hardly knew his name anymore, and that third Friday in August was one. Sitting in his truck, calmly making his late-afternoon rounds, he was only Sal Baby, known as much for his whistling as for his ice cream. Just then, whistling straight into the winds of Milford yet still sounding loud and clear, he grasped anew that his was a rare operatic capacity. Should his truck’s bells ever give out, he could compensate, he knew, with the work of his own breath. Considering his two talents, the one for Good Humor, the other for Art, he got such a feeling in his gut, such a deep love for life, and he knew himself to be as lucky as any man could be. Add to that the day’s blue sky and lovely temperature, not to mention the energetic boost of low humidity, and all he could think to do was to take a private moment off the beaten path, hop down from his truck, and drink it all in: the ocean, the clear sky, the shrubs beside him of wild roses, a few still in bloom, and the familiar hum of his truck’s engine, which was something like his own heart, a murmur of comforting steadiness.

While Sal took a moment for himself in Woodmont, Nelson Leibritsky finally rose from his rocking chair in the corner of the store’s basement to lift the phonograph needle, bobbing now at the record’s end. The third movement of the Mozart concerto, marked allegro, had finally got him going, out of his chair, up those stairs. He could do it, he figured. He could rejoin the world, put on a grin, work until day’s end. He was at the top step, about to walk onto the creaky planks of Leibritsky’s sales floor, when he stopped, gasped, needed in a way that was just plain embarrassing to rest.

By this time, four fifty that afternoon, at the Savin Rock amusement park, near Jimmies hot dog stand, Leo Cohen had upchucked. For a time, while in the throes of celebrating Joe DiMaggio’s triple, then in swallowing the first bites of his dog, he’d felt better. And the two men had been having an unusually friendly conversation. The anticipation of seeing the women was making Mort, at least, especially chatty. He kept repeating the phrase “a hothead and a chef.” He’d also asserted, multiple times, “She’ll have the place ready. I know she will.” Mort had finally turned to DiMaggio as a subject for conversation, recalling the best moment, the fifty-six-game hitting streak of ’41. But as Mort talked, the sickness—motion sickness, Leo had always thought of it—returned. This time, though, there was no motion to induce the sudden clammy feeling. Leo had risen, scoured the grounds of Savin Rock for the nearest trash can, rushed over to it, and stood there, bent over, feeling—because he knew Mort was staring at him—like one of the world’s biggest fools.

Minutes later, Mort, waiting in the car for Leo, was watching his brother-in-law’s protracted, stumbling approach. Leo was pale, rail thin, about to pass out, or so it seemed. There were so many responsibilities in a given day, so damn many, and one of them, for Vivie’s sake, was to keep Leo Cohen alive. Mort owed her that much, he reminded himself as he opened the car door. “Hey, buddy, feeling better?” he asked as Leo settled himself in the passenger seat. When Leo nodded, Mort said with a tenderness that rose from a place he didn’t even know he had, “Rest now, buddy. Everything’s going to be okay. We’ll be there soon.”

Everything’s going to be okay
is what Bec was telling herself, too, as she ambled slowly away from Tyler’s Roadmaster and headed toward the cottage, toward us. She was walking along New Haven Avenue, which was a busy street, and not nearly as scenic as even Hawley Avenue, just a block away. But she wasn’t thinking about scenery. She was thinking about her sisters, her life soon to ensue without them, the dresses she would no longer be making for them, the summers she would no longer be spending with them at the cottage. The thing about family, she knew, was that you were either in or you were out. She only wished she understood why that was so. When a dog began yapping at her from a nearby front porch, she stopped, startled. She stood still while the dog, an unleashed hound, still barking, approached. But once beside her the hound ceased barking and merely sniffed the hem of her skirt then glanced at her longingly. “You’re just lonely,” she told the thing, relaxing, bending to pet it, thinking as she did of her sisters once again. “You and me.”

In the kitchen Vivie swiped her brow with the back of her hand.
Oh for crying out loud,
she thought, watching Ada’s eyes grow wide as she took in the meaning of the name that Nina had just uttered: Megan O’Donnell. Why was Nina raising a matter sure to rile Ada? Vivie wondered. She was about to go over to Nina, to tap her shoulder, take her calmly to the front porch where the two would seat themselves in the cool metal chairs and talk, just them, mother and daughter. No one was on Nina’s side more than Vivie, she would tell her daughter. No one loved her like she did. She realized Nina might not know that, what with a father she was so close to, but Vivie was in the picture too. She was about to make her move toward Nina when Ada charged at the girl, said again, “Who? Megan who?”

“Megan O’Donnell,” Nina repeated, her hands on the candlestick moving rapidly back and forth but her face, as she turned to look directly at Ada, resolutely calm. “Howard’s Irish girl.”

“Howard’s
what?
” my mother asked, her voice low.

Vivie tensed.

“Howard’s Irish girl,” Nina repeated. “Doesn’t everybody know that?”

For a moment my mother stood still, her hands in midair, her head held high. As she considered the meaning of Nina’s remark, her coloring changed from her neck up and by the time she spoke again she looked blanched. “Which direction did Howard sail?” she demanded, her voice heavy, full of foreboding.

Nina shrugged, but Davy said, “That way,” and he pointed east. His answer was matter-of-fact, as if he didn’t seem to notice our mother’s growing anger. He started moving, finally, toward the back door, toward the shower, as oblivious to his wake of sandy footprints as he’d been to Ada’s rapid change of mood.

“Damn Irish,” she muttered.

Though strapped to her feet were her favorite summer wedges, the faded housedress that covered her body was one I knew she’d never be caught wearing in public. Moreover, her hair needed re-pinning. And she was vain about her good looks. That’s why I was so surprised when she dashed past Davy, flew out the door, and headed for Hillside Avenue, where the largest segment of the Woodmont population could see her. But this was the best route to Anchor Beach, where I knew she was determined to catch up with Howard.

“Howard!” she called, as if he could already hear her. But she was nowhere near the water yet. “Howard!”

She took two long steps, then ran a pace or two, then returned to the long steps. “Not under my roof!” she muttered in time with her strides. Though our feet were bare, Davy and I followed her. Within moments we three were at the intersection of Hillside and Merwin avenues, and we quickly swerved in the direction of Anchor Beach. As we passed the Villa Rosa and Sloppy Joe’s, Ada called more vigorously, “Not under my roof!”

At Anchor Beach we hopped onto its mass of rocks to get a view of the Sound. Any number of sailboats could be seen in the distance, but closer to the shore we easily spotted the Sailfish, its crew of two eighteen-year-old boys sitting high while their boat heeled at what appeared to be a dangerous angle. They were sailing parallel to the coastline of Woodmont and were past Anchor Beach. In a moment we’d lose sight of them. With even more urgency Ada called out, “Howard! Howard!” If only to stop her imminent fit, the one I could predict had only barely begun, I called out as well and Davy joined me. “Howard!” we yelled. But to no avail. The boat sailed on.

Beach Avenue was the road to take next, and my mother, wobbling occasionally in her wedges as she rushed forth, scurried off the rocks and onto the road. Soon we arrived at the point at which Beach Avenue turned, running behind a row of beachfront cottages rather than in front of them as it had thus far, and there we got off the road. By walking instead along a cement seawall we managed to maintain our seaward view. By the time the seawall ended and we rejoined Beach Avenue where it emerged from behind that batch of cottages, we were abreast of the Sailfish, though out on the water it remained a considerable distance from us. We stood, breathing hard, just where Beach Avenue intersected with Clinton Street. Across the pavement of Beach Avenue the cottages behind us formed a neat line of white clapboard and broad porches that gave way to tiny green lawns. Several sprinklers were set on the lawns, and as I noticed them I was tempted to dash across the street and run under one or another of them to cool off, especially my bare feet, which burned from the heat of the sidewalks and roads. But Ada, almost doubled over as she worked to catch her breath, was an even more compelling sight, her hair now fallen free of any pins and hanging completely loose in a way we’d never seen.