One Last Thing Before I Go (12 page)

CHAP
TER 29

B
ack at the Versailles, Casey joins the men at the pool, which Jack is not happy about. He shakes his head at Silver, like he’s just committed the mother of all faux pas.

“What’s wrong?” Casey says. “Am I cramping your style?”

“A little bit,” he says, then looks at Silver. “Really, Silver. Here?”

“Where he goes, I go,” Casey says.

“That sounds like a foolproof plan,” Jack grumbles.

“Does my being here make it hard for you to check out the asses of other girls my age? Is that it? Or is it that if I was sitting over there”—she indicates the college girls tanning across the pool—“with those skanks, you know you’d be staring at my ass too, and that’s upsetting to you because I’m your friend’s daughter?”

“Jesus Christ,” Jack mutters.

Oliver laughs.

“Casey,” Silver says.

“Sorry, sorry,” she says, grinning. “Pretend I’m not here.”

“That would be easier if you would stop talking,” Jack says.

“What is it with men and younger women?” Casey says.

“There she goes again,” Jack says.

“No, I’m serious,” Casey says. “I’m genuinely interested.”

Jack cranes his neck to look at her, then looks across the pool at the college girls lined up in their chairs like they just came off the assembly line. He looks at Silver, asking for permission, and Silver shrugs.

“I think it’s anthropological,” Jack says.

“What does that even mean?”

“I mean, we’re programmed, in our cells. It’s the animal kingdom. The male is drawn to the young, fertile female. It’s an instinct. To propagate the species.”

Casey shakes her head, smiling incredulously. “So you’re just an innocent bystander to biology, is that it? Forces beyond your control.”

“You didn’t ask me that. You asked me why I’m attracted to younger women,” Jack says, turning onto his side to face her. “Control is where I failed. Where you failed too, by the way. We don’t get to decide who we’re attracted to. Believe me, I wish we did. I’d still be married. And you wouldn’t be pregnant.” He indicates Oliver and Silver. “None of us would be in this mess.” His eyes grow wide, earnest in a way Silver has never seen. “I love my wife. I’d give anything to be with her right now. I mean, look at us. We’re intelligent people, but sex has nothing to do with intelligence. It’s impulse and instinct and animal attraction and it’s built into our cells. I know that’s not what they teach you in school right before they give out the condoms, but that’s what it is. And I’m not saying I like it. It’s a goddamn tragedy, is what it is.”

His voice goes up at the end, almost cracking. He looks around at them, suddenly self-conscious. It’s the first time Silver has ever heard him refer to his wife like that, the first time he’s caught a glimpse of the pain behind Jack’s bluster.

Casey seems to sense it too. “That was actually kind of beautiful,” she says.

“And strangely articulate,” Oliver adds.

“I have my moments,” Jack says, already regretting it.

Casey looks over to Oliver. “So, you agree with him?”

Oliver considers it for a moment. “I appreciate his point of view, without necessarily endorsing the behavior.”

“Oh, bullshit,” Jack says, annoyed. “If you could still get it up, you’d be right in there with me.”

“I have daughters that age.”

“Daughters who haven’t talked to you in years.”

“Nevertheless.”

Jack rolls his eyes.

Casey turns to her father. “What about you, Silver?

“What about me?”

“Come on. I saw you with that girl the other night.”

He doesn’t want to answer her, but as with everything else these days, he seems powerless to stop himself. “Their skin is tight,” he says. “Their asses are round and high, their bellies are smooth and flat, their breasts are full and firm and hang up high where God intended. They smell good, they taste good, and their kisses . . . Their kisses are long and wet and deep, and go on forever. They kiss like they’re going to consume you, every single time. You can get lost in those kisses—you can die and be reborn in those kisses. I don’t know why that goes away, but it does. . . .”

He looks up to find Casey, Jack, and Oliver staring at him. “What?”

“That was, um . . . comprehensive,” Casey says.

“You asked.”

“I did.”

“Can I change my answer?” Jack says, and they all crack up, for no real reason he can think of, but still, the world feels just this side of OK for a moment.

* * *

Later in the pool, something happens. He’s floating on his back, looking up at the sky, when there’s a flash of light, and then everything goes dark. He is suddenly sinking, feels the water flooding his nose and mouth and then the roughness of the pool bottom, scraping his lower back. He is drowning in darkness and unable to move. This is how it ends, he thinks. Strangely, he is not panicked, just a little bit sad. He tells himself to pay attention. If this is death, it will only come once, and he doesn’t want to miss anything. Like he did when he was alive.

Then there are fingers digging into his forearms, hands pressed painfully into his armpits, and then he’s shivering in the air, being rolled on hard, gristly pavement. Flashes of color, and then moving shapes. It’s like being born, he thinks. He hears Jack’s voice: “Come on, Silver! Wake the fuck up,” and then Casey’s face comes into view, hovering above him, close enough that he can see the thin trickles of water catching the sunlight as they run down her face. “Dad!” she shouts. “Can you hear me?”

He nods, and coughs up a lungful of chlorinated water. He has a vague sense of an assembled crowd, and he is suddenly self-conscious of his flabby gut, hanging out there for all to see.

“I’m OK,” he says, rolling over and trying to sit up. He feels a pair of hands behind him, steadying him in place.

“Go slow.” He hears Oliver’s voice in his ear.

He sits up slowly and looks at Casey, who is fighting back tears. “What the hell happened?” she says.

“I don’t know.”

“You just went under.”

“I didn’t mean to.”

“Are you sure?”

She looks a little bit off to him, like he can’t tell how far away she is. He looks around the pool area, at the men standing around, the college girls, all staring at him. It’s like he’s seeing them all at a strange angle. In the distance he hears a siren, and by the time the ambulance shows up, he’s figured out that he’s gone blind in his left eye.

CHAPTER 30

“Y
o
u’re going to die,” Rich tells him. He is standing over Silver, moving his penlight across his eyes.

“Tell me something I don’t know.”

Rich retracts the light and looks at him. “What you have is something called amaurosis fugax.”

“You see? Now, that I didn’t know.”

Casey, sitting cross-legged at the foot of his bed, grins and shakes her head at him.

“A small clot breaks off and lodges itself in the ocular vessels. It will probably break down on its own. You’re already responding to light.”

He closes his right eye and sees a burst of light colors in his left.

“So it will get back to normal.”

“Maybe. Maybe not.”

Denise comes into the room, looking slightly breathless, like she ran up from the parking lot. They all look at her, and her face goes red. She looks young and shy, and Silver gets that funny feeling in his chest.

“You look pretty.”

“Shut up, Silver,” she says, but her heart’s not in it, and he’s wondering if maybe she’s been thinking about that hug too. “Are you OK?” she says.

“I get by.” It’s an old, not-funny joke from the earliest days of their marriage, and he can see it register in her quick, uncertain smile.

Rich stands back, suddenly the interloper in his own hospital, in this family, and the part of Silver that isn’t, on some petty level, gloating actually feels sorry for him. You would think that in his dying days he’d be a bigger person than that. You’d be wrong.

“Hi,” Rich says to her. He leans forward and kisses her cheek, which looks awkward and wrong because he’s wearing his doctor’s coat, because there’s clearly some tension between them, and because she was Silver’s first.

“She was mine first,” he says.

“Oh, shit, Silver!” Casey says. “Not this again.”

“I know she was,” Rich says. “But she’ll be mine last.”

“Rich . . .” Denise says quietly.

“What?!” Rich says, turning on her. “Isn’t that what we do here? We say whatever we think, right? And everyone laughs.”

“He’s sick.”

“He’s more than sick. He’s dying. And I’m the only one who seems inclined to stop that from happening.”

“Which I appreciate,” Silver says.

“You’re an asshole, Silver.”

“I think I’d like a second opinion.”

Rich turns around so fast, Silver is sure he’s going to punch him. “OK, Silver, here’s a second opinion,” he spits out. “You don’t want to die. You just want a free pass to forgiveness, to undo the fact that you left your wife and neglected your daughter. And you’re too self-absorbed to realize that you’re just screwing them up more in the process.”

“Stop it,” Denise says.

“Tell me I’m wrong, Denise!” he shouts at her. “Tell me he’s not the reason I’m staying in my old house again.”

“You are?” Silver.

“Shut up, Silver.” Casey.

“Don’t do this here.” Denise.

“Where else am I going to do it? It’s not like you’ve been returning my calls.” Rich.

Silver rolls out of bed and looks at Casey. “I think we should give them a minute,” he says. He heads for the door, but Rich steps forward and blocks his way. Silver looks him up and down, wondering if they’re about to come to blows. Rich has a few inches on him but probably hasn’t been in a fight in his entire adult life, whereas Silver is a veteran of drunken brawls, none of which he can recall with any specificity, and all of which he lost, but still, being able to take a punch is half the battle.

“You can’t have her,” Rich says.

“What?”

Rich looks at Denise while he speaks in slow, measured tones. “Denise. You can’t have her. She’s going to marry me. She may be questioning that right now, but that’s how this story ends. And maybe you delay that a little bit, maybe you throw her off temporarily, but in the end, I marry Denise and she and I, and Casey . . . we bury you.”

“Unless I have the operation.”

“That’s right. You can live or you can die. But either way, you can’t have my wife.”

He’s being noble and a prick simultaneously. Later Silver will have to replay this conversation in his head to see how he pulled it off. But for now, his tortured love is filling the room, forcing Silver out.

“Where are you going?!” Denise calls out, alarmed.

“Home.”

“You just had a stroke, Silver!”

“Yeah,” he says. “But it was a little one.”

Out in the hall, he turns to look at Casey. “It’s OK, baby. Don’t cry.”

“I’m not,” Casey says, wiping his face with her fingers. “You are.”

* * *

He loved a girl once. She was pretty and kind, soft and hard, had a quick wit and a killer smile, and for reasons that never really crystallized for him, she loved him back. She laughed at his jokes and craved his body and threw herself into loving him with a blind trust that warmed his heart even while it terrified him. When they made love, they did it with fierce abandon, and it was they who shook, not the earth. And afterward, as they lay together hip to hip, her sweat on his tongue, he would make promises, and she would believe them. It had not been love at first sight, more of a slow burn, but when it hit, it hit like a tsunami. And then, one evening, as they ate ice cream by the wharf, he asked her to take off the Claddagh ring she wore so that he could see it, and when he handed it back, it was a diamond ring. And she couldn’t stop crying, and he kissed her tears and promised her that he’d never make her cry again, and that was just one of the hundreds of promises he would break sooner than even he ever would have believed.

CHAPTER 31

F
riday-nigh
t dinner turns out to be an ambush. Casey and Silver walk in to the shouts and whoops of his nephews, and Chuck and Ruby are on the couch in the living room, in somber conversation with Denise, who looks somewhat ill at ease in the home of her former in-laws.

“Oh, fuck,” Casey says quietly.

“Did you know about this?”

“I had no idea.”

Ruben comes over to greet them, looking sharp and scrubbed in one of his better suits. He has just returned from Friday-night services. The house is filled with the smells of Silver’s childhood: freshly baked challahs, sweetened gefilte fish, and stuffed cabbage. In the dining room, the table is set with an ornate white tablecloth, his mother’s silver Shabbat candlesticks standing in the center, burning brightly. This was his childhood, safe and warm and brightly lit, and being here now makes him feel like he died years ago and he’s now a lost spirit, stuck between worlds with unfinished business.

“I hope you don’t mind,” his father says, giving him a hug.

“You could have told me they’d all be here.”

“But then you wouldn’t have come, and I couldn’t disappoint your mother like that.”

“So instead, you disappointed me.”

He smiles. “I love you, but I sleep in her bed.”

“OK, Pops, don’t be gross,” Casey says, and he kisses her cheek happily.

“Is he here?” Elaine calls out from the kitchen.

“Go say hello to your mother,” Ruben says.

“Hey, Ma.”

Elaine stands at the center island of her kitchen in a black dinner dress and slippers, slicing a London broil. She must have gone to shul with his father. Silver pictures them, walking home arm in arm after services, breathing in the warm summer air, listening to the familiar rhythm of their heels on the sidewalk, anticipating a lively Shabbat dinner with their children. He can feel their love, their peace, their quiet comfort with their lives and each other. They have done something right without consciously trying, achieved some vital contentment that has fatally eluded him.

“You look terrible,” his mother says, putting down her knife.

“It’s been a rough few days.”

“Come give me a hug.”

He is twice her size, but when she hugs him, he disappears.

“Ma,” he says as the lump in his throat rises.

“I know,” she says, rubbing his back. “I know.”

And he almost believes her.

* * *

Although the vision has gradually been returning to his left eye, it’s still somewhat unfocused, giving him minor balance problems. In the living room, he staggers a bit before sitting down between Casey and Denise on the couch. “You good?” Denise says.

“Good enough.”

“I hope this is OK. Your mom wouldn’t take no for an answer.”

“It’s fine.”

“And, you know, I miss them.”

He knows that’s true. Denise’s mother died when she was thirteen, and Elaine had always yearned for a daughter. After they got married, Denise had formed an intimate bond with Silver’s mother. Silver sometimes wonders whether he and Denise only lasted as long as they did because Denise didn’t want to lose Elaine. They still get together for lunch every so often. His mother doesn’t mention it to him, but it’s a small enough town, and he’s occasionally seen them, on sidewalks and through restaurant windows. Getting divorced is a messy business under the best of circumstances, because in some ways, you never stop being a family. The movie stars can pull it off. Everyone else stumbles through it with a sloppy combination of false hope and willful blindness.

* * *

At the table he is seated between Casey and Denise, across from Chuck and Ruby, whose two boys sit beside them, vibrating like hot molecules. Zack and Benny, eight and six; they’re like cartoon characters who never stop moving. The baby, Nate, is sleeping in his car seat on the floor in the corner. They sing “Shalom Aleichem,” and then Ruben raises his silver cup and recites the kiddush, then pours wine from the cup into small silver cups that get passed around the table. The kiddush wine tastes like cough syrup, coating Silver’s tongue and throat with its sickly sweetness. They go into the kitchen to wash their hands with a silver washing cup, then return to the table, where Ruben says a blessing and cuts the challah. Then, having dispensed with the rituals, Elaine and Casey bring out the soup.

Ruben tells a condensed version of the story he told at services tonight, and Silver is acutely aware of Denise beside him, listening, laughing, enjoying herself. He would like to hold her hand. So he reaches for it, under the table. She gives him a funny look as she slides out of his grasp, standing up to help clear the soup bowls.

Ruby cuts the chicken for her boys, trading furtive glances with Chuck. Something is going on, there’s a plan in place, an intervention of sorts, and there’s nothing Silver can do but sit here and wait for them to make their move. He tries to disarm Chuck with a hard stare, but his brother is avoiding eye contact.

“Chuck,” Silver says, and when the table falls instantly silent, he realizes that he’s said it maybe a bit louder than he intended. Even the boys are staring at him.

“What?” Chuck says.

“Don’t do it.”

“Don’t do what?”

“Whatever this is. Don’t do it.”

Chuck’s face turns red and he looks over at their father, not sure how to respond. Ruben sighs and puts down his fork. He has spent years counseling families, saying the things people generally find too difficult to say to one another, and for the first time, Silver considers the courage it must take to walk into the emotional minefields of other families, and what sort of toll that takes on a man. His father sits back in his chair, pausing, like he does sometimes in the middle of a sermon, to gather his thoughts, or his energy.

“This is a difficult time for you, Silver,” he says. “It’s a difficult time for our family. We’re all here because we want to understand, we want to help, the same way I know you’d want to help if one of us needed it.”

Silver pushes back his chair and stands. “I can’t do this right now.”

“Come on,” Elaine says. “Sit down. We’re not going to bite.”

“I appreciate what you’re trying to do, but—”

“SIT THE HELL DOWN!” his father shouts, bringing his fist crashing down on the table. Everyone jumps in their seats, and the baby starts to cry. Ruby jumps up to grab the baby, and Silver sits down. Denise, back in from the kitchen, sits down in her chair. Beneath the table, she reaches for Silver’s hand, clutching it hard against his thigh. They all stare at Ruben, who sits in his seat, fists clenched.

Silver was suspended for cheating on a test in the seventh grade, then again in high school for smoking a joint in the boys’ gym shower. He stole the car keys and backed his father’s Lincoln through the garage door two years before he was old enough to drive. Once, when he was sixteen, he called God a sick fuck, right to his father’s face. And he has never heard him raise his voice like he just did. None of them has, and, even now, Ruben is still trembling from the effort. The dining room acquires a weighted silence, like the silence just before the firing squad fires. Ruben offers a thin, unhappy smile, a tacit acknowledgment of sorts that this just got real.

“I love you,” Ruben continues. “But you’re being selfish. And cruel. We are your family, and if you’re so determined to die, then goddammit, you’re going to treat us better than this before you do.”

His hand on the table still trembles, causing the knife beside it to vibrate, glinting in the light from the crystal chandelier. Silver closes his right eye and can make out just that tiny crescent of light, waxing and waning in a sea of darkness. When he opens his good eye, the room swims a little before coming back into focus.

Ruben looks over to Elaine, signaling for her to speak.

“I love you, Silver,” Elaine says, her voice strangely formal even as it quivers with emotion. “I have loved you from the day you were born. And not once, not when you were off with your band instead of taking care of your family, not when you and Denise were divorced, not when your father and I were spending weekends with Casey because you were off doing God-knows-what instead of being a father—not once did I judge you, not once did I tell you that you were being thoughtless or selfish. And maybe I should have. I don’t know. I was just trying to keep you close, so that when you did try to find your way back, you’d still be able to. But now, now I’m going to tell you what I think, and so is your father and Chuck and Denise and Casey and everyone here who somehow manages to love you in spite of you. We’re going to tell you and you’re going to listen.” Her voice is cracking, but she finishes with a defiant nod before sitting down.

Ruben places his hand over hers, nodding his approval, then looks over at Chuck. “Why don’t you say something now.”

Chuck turns to look at Silver, offering a sheepish half-smile as he clears his throat. “We were once close,” he says. “I don’t know what happened. It’s like, you moved into that building and you just disappeared. You used to come by for dinner after you got divorced. You’d just show up while we were eating and pull up a chair and talk to the kids and make them laugh. They loved having you around. Then we’d have some beers on the deck, talk about stuff. Do you even remember that?”

Now that he says it, Silver does. But until this moment, he hadn’t thought about it in years. Is that the same as forgetting? He guesses that, for all practical purposes, it is.

“I don’t know why you stopped coming over,” Chuck continues, gathering steam. “Why you stopped returning my calls. I don’t know if it was something I said, or did, or didn’t do, but we never should have let it drag on like this. I’ve missed having a brother. I see my own boys playing . . .” His voice cracks a little, and Ruby, shaking the baby in her arms, comes up behind him to rub his back. They form a picture like that, Chuck seated, Ruby over his left shoulder, holding their new baby, like they’re being posed for a Christmas card. And looking at them, Silver can feel a familiar, inexplicable anger rising up in him.

“Why is Daddy crying?” Zack says.

“He’s not crying,” Ruby says. “He’s talking.”

“No, he’s not. He’s crying. Look.”

“You boys go play in the basement.”

Ruby ushers the boys out of the dining room and then comes to stand behind her husband, doing this little dance to shake her baby back to sleep. She rocks on her heels, swaying left and right, and probably has no idea that she’s doing it.

Chuck wipes his eyes and takes a deep breath, ready to bring it home. “I don’t want you to die,” he says. “I think maybe this aorta thing is like a wake-up call for you, a way for you to come back to all of us.”

Silver can feel the weight of all the eyes in the room, which move as one across the table to land on him. He fervently hopes he’s not about to say what he’s thinking.

“You’re an idiot,” he says.

Shit.

Ruby gasps. Chuck flinches like he would when they were kids and Silver would pull back like he was going to punch him. If he didn’t flinch, Silver would hit him.

“And we’re off,” Casey says, under her breath.

“I’m sorry,” Silver continues. “I know you’re being sincere, but I still want to hit you until you bleed for saying it, and I’m not really sure why. I think maybe it’s because you have everything I lost, a pretty wife, kids, a home . . . And part of it is because you’re so damn smug about it. I stopped coming over because of the way you always made sure to hold Ruby’s hand while I was there, and pat her ass, or kiss her when she brought in the brownies. I mean, it was a Duncan Hines mix, for fuck’s sake. And I don’t know if you were like that because the obvious shittiness of my life made you appreciate yours more, or if it was some subconscious way of throwing it in my face because I was always so much smarter than you—you had all those tutors—”

“I had ADHD!” Chuck says hotly.

“The thing is,” Silver continues, “I would always imagine, whenever I left your house, that you’d be up in your bedroom, lying next to Ruby, appreciating how good you had it compared to your loser brother—like I was this cautionary tale that made your life seem better. And after a while, I just couldn’t stand that anymore.”

“You twisted fuck. I was trying to help you.”

“I didn’t need your help.”

“You needed somebody’s help, and you’d already shit all over everyone else.”

“OK, honey,” Ruby says, her hand on his shoulder. “We’re getting off message here.”

“Fuck the message,” Chuck says, getting to his feet. “I’m sorry that you took the fact that I love my wife so personally. What an asshole I’ve been.”

“It’s not your fault.”

“No shit, it’s not my fault.” He turns to their parents. “I’m sorry, I tried. But there’s no talking to him. There never was. I mean, for God’s sake, he still thinks he is a rock star.” He looks at Silver, shaking his head. “I do feel sorry for you. I pity you. You’ve pissed away everything good in your life because once upon a time you wrote a hit song.”

“It was a bit more complicated than that,” Silver says.

“Not by much.”

Silver considers it for a moment. “No, not by much,” he agrees.

Chuck heads for the door. “I have to get out of here.”

“Don’t go,” Elaine says. “We’re eating.” She turns to Silver. “Apologize to him!”

“I’m sorry I upset you,” Silver says.

“Fuck you.”

“Chuck!” Ruby says.

“I’m going to take a walk,” he says, heading for the door. He stops to flash Silver one last baleful look. “You’re a dick, Silver.”

“I know,” Silver says. “Where are you going?”

Chuck looks at him, nonplussed. “I don’t know where I’m going. Away from you.”

Silver nods and gets up from the table, grabbing the bottle of kiddush wine. “I’ll come with.”

* * *

They walk a few blocks in silence, over to the pond behind the Livingston Avenue cul de sac. It’s a cool night, the smell of honeysuckle and cut grass wafting across the pond, taking Silver back in time. When they were kids, they would fish out of the pond, pulling in small bass, bream, and the occasional catfish. Silver always had to bait Chuck’s rod because Chuck couldn’t handle running his hook through live worms. They would sit up on one of the large flat boulders that ringed the pond, and they would invariably end up discussing what Silver came to think of as the three S’s:
Star Wars
, sports, and sex. When the pond froze over they would skate on it, and some of the older kids would play broom hockey, but after Solomon Corey fell through the ice and drowned, no one ever skated on the pond again.