Peep Show (13 page)

“I'm looking for my sister. Her name is Dena Arbus.”

The teacher seems tentative and disappears for a full minute. When I see her again, she walks past me to the staircase.

“Room three,” she says pointing, a Russian accent. “Up the stairs and to the left.”

I nod and then my father and sister are walking down the stairs. The woman speaks Yiddish to Debra and glares at my dad.

“
Mein tater vil mir frier efpikin frier
,” says Debra.

The teacher nods and tries to smile.
“Shalom.”

All of us say it back to her and she heads off down the hall.

“Hello, Deb,” I say. I get a fast hug and I kiss her but I can tell she's confused.

“You look different,” she says, and laughs a little.

“Yeah?”

“Does Mom really know about this?”

I glance at my dad. “Oh, yeah. Didn't Dad tell you?”

“I told her,” my father says, completely out of breath. “It was discussed at length, so let's get going, I got a surprise.” He starts moving toward the front of the building and we follow him. She knows this is bull. I can see it in her face.

“Mom didn't say anything,” she says.

“It's been planned since last weekend,” my father says.
“My birthday present. I get to be with my daughter. Did you leave the car on, David?”

“Your birthday's next month,” she says.

“But we're celebrating now.”

We all get outside and Sarah is still in the car. My father stops cold when he sees her. “Who's the hell is that?”

“Sorry, Sarah,” I say, and she puts her hands together in prayer.

“Please let me come. I want to come. My mother's fine with things like this. As long as there's a parent.”

“Your mother would kill you,” Debra says.

“And what about yours?” Sarah says.

“She gave me permission.”

“Just drive,” says Sarah.

“No, no way,” my father says. “I can't just take you from school.”

“I'll call my mother and tell her,” Sarah says, and she jumps in the backseat.

“What is she doing?” my father says.

A car pulls into the driveway and my stomach drops. “Look, Dad, look,” I say and a part of me wants it to be my mother. It's a blue station wagon that drives up to the swing sets. Four little girls in black come out of the building and walk through the playground to the car.

“You're Sarah, right?” my father says.

“Yes.”

“Please get out, Sarah.”

Another car comes into the driveway. It's my mother for a second but it's not. My father starts the engine. “Please, Mr. Arbus,” Sarah says. “My mother lets me do whatever I want.”

“Are you gonna get out or not?”

“No,” she says.

I look behind me at Sarah. She shrugs her shoulders and can't stop grinning like she just won a contest. My father starts to cough, cough, cough, and it looks like he's getting punched in the stomach. He reaches to roll his window down.

“We shouldn't do this,” I whisper.

He snorts, spits, and fires a loogy but it's mostly on the glass. “Goddamn it,” he says, trying to wipe it with his thumb. Another car, this one's green.

“That's the most disgusting thing I've ever seen,” my sister says. I laugh. It triggers a sort of hysteria in me and I'm laughing so hard. My father looks at me, still trapped in the mess.

“Yes,” he says. “It's true. I am disgusting. Now let's go to the fuckin' beach.”

I
WAS SEVEN THE LAST
time I stood on this boardwalk. I remember my mother in a man's shirt and a green ribbon that hung from her beach hat. I remember the taste of Fresca. But that's about it. The beach is long, about a hundred feet until the water, and there are swimmers and rafters on this hazy, sticky-hot day. On the sand are lifeguard stands and various patches of water from when the tide was higher. The amount of sky and space is what I notice most. And the waves that crash so far off the shore.

My father is very quiet and doesn't look well. The girls go in and out of giddiness, knowing, perhaps, how this awful crime will unfold. In my mind I'm unconnected from the decision to steal them from their yeshiva. I told him fifteen times we should bring Sarah back. “They'll figure it out,” he said, and just kept going.

I watch the girls lean over the boardwalk railing in their matching dark dresses.
He can be a savior
, is my thought. A Robin Hood instead. He plucked them from God's arms and brought them to the beach, where the salty air fills their lungs with life. My eye goes to the symmetry of their bodies and the contrast of black clothes on blue sky. By the time I get my camera out, Sarah is removing her shoes and now her tights. In court I'll swear this was never my idea. I'll apologize to my mother, to Becca Danowitz, to Peter Rabbi, to the grand rabbi and to every sect in every Hasidic community. In Yiddish. I lift my Graflex and try to capture the size of it all.

“Gorgeous, right?” my father says. “Look at the water.”

“Is this the hotel?” Debra asks.

“Yes, right here. The Swan. But we have time before checking in. You girls are free to run around. Take some layers off if you want. I'll go look for Brandi and see if she's got some suits for you.”

“Out by the water,” Sarah says. “Let's walk out there.”

Debra pulls her black sleeves up past her elbows. “I think I'll stay here,” she says.

“I'll hold your shoes,” I tell her. “Go. Go on out there.”

“Come on, Dena,” Sarah says, and is off, down the stairs and out on the sand where she stares down at her feet in quiet amazement. Camera to my face, I hear my own breathing as I watch her kick the sand.
Click
. My sister appears slowly in the bottom right of my lens. Shoes on.
Sarah is running now and I have them both in my view.
Click
.

“David.”

My father is hunched over and his cheeks are a greenish gray.

“Again?” I say.

He clears his throat and coughs like he's never going to stop. “I don't see Arlene. I need to go lie down. If you see her, don't tell her I'm sick. And she definitely doesn't need to know about—”

“Doesn't need to know about what?” she says, right behind us.

“There you are. Great. Good. When'd you get here, baby?”

“You're coughin' like a madman, Marty. Have another cigarette. Doesn't need to know about what?”

Brandi's in a long red wig and a white one-piece bathing suit and heels. She pushes a huge pair of sunglasses higher on her nose and steps closer to my father. “Doesn't need to know about . . . ?”

“I wasn't even talkin' about you, Arlene. I talked to Sheehan and we're all set. You're tight-lacing tonight. You know that?”

“No. No one told me that.”

“He's a corset man. Eighteen inches, it's in the contract.”

“I'm thirty-six years old, Marty. If Sheehan wants eighteen inches, he can cram 'em up his ass.”

“And there's an interview.”

“With who?”

“The
Peep Show Express
. Some guy over there says he wants to meet you. Just plug the theater and tell him you need to get dressed. Do not mention my name.”

“Where's Deb?”

I point to the beach and she walks closer to the railing. Debra's sitting with her arms wrapped around her knees, as Sarah dips her toe in the water. “Mickey let her bring a friend?”

“Well, sure,” my father says, and looks at me.

I will not be the person to tell Brandi the truth. My father barks out a cough and suppresses it with his fist. I wait for him to hurl right here on the boardwalk.

“What's going on with you?” Brandi says.

“Nothing.”

“You feel all right?”

“Feel perfect. Look at my girl on the beach. Go tell her to take her shoes off.”

Brandi looks out at them again. “I want to see her,” she says, taking off her own shoes. I follow her down the stairs to the sand. When we reach the girls, Brandi hugs my sister before greeting Sarah. “No shoes allowed,” she says, and Debra slips them off. I lift my camera and she screams, “Don't!” with her head turned away.

“Okay. I won't.” I lower it and wait for her to face me.

“I think you should come home,” she says. She scoops sand into her hand and we both watch it pour through her fingers. “I want you to come home.”

Brandi slaps me on the head way too hard and says, “You're
it
!” before running around us with her heels dangling from her finger. “Come on, get me, David.”

I hadn't realized how much I needed to hear those words:
I want you to come home
.

“Come on, slow poke,” says Brandi. “Think you can catch me?”

I look down at my sister.

“Please,” she says.

“Dare me to go in?” says Sarah, pointing at the ocean.

We both watch her lift her dress above her knees. She laughs and starts to dance, a Hasid doing the Charleston.

“I dare you,” Brandi yells.

Sarah sprints straight for the water. The second her toe goes in, her arms go up, and she shrieks before running back to us.

“Told you it was cold,” Brandi says.

“I think about you a lot,” I say, looking out at the sea.

“I think about you more,” she says.

“Did you get my letter?” I ask.

“No.”

“No?”

“Where did you send it?”

“To the house.”

“Maybe she tore it up.”

“She's not like that, David.”

“Then where is it?”

“I don't know.”

“She wishes I didn't exist.”

“She wishes you'd come home too,” she says.

“No,” I say, and have to smirk.

“Yes.”

“Are you kidding me?”

“You have this idea that she's this crazy Orthodox lady with a prayer book in her hand all day.”

“Yes. That's right.”

Sarah runs past us and tags Brandi. “You're it!”

“No, David's it,” she says.

I nod and touch my sister on her knee. “You're it.”

She touches my shoulder with hers. “No, you're it,” she says, and is up and running.

“I'll hold your camera,” Brandi says. “Go chase your sister. I think she could use it.”

I give her the Graflex. It takes me a while to catch and tackle my sister. I toss a little sand in her hair and she screams like girls do in horror movies.

“Okay, okay, I'm it, I'm
it
,” Debra says.

I tickle her armpit like I used to do when we were little and she laughs with her mouth wide and smacks my shoulder over and over.

“Where'd your father go?” Brandi calls to us. “Do you see him, David?”

I look back at the hotel. “No. Maybe our rooms are ready,” I say, picturing him suddenly face down in the pool. “I'll be right back.”

I
FEEL BETTER WHEN
the clerk says my father has gone up to our suite. I knock for some time before he opens the door. The second I see him he runs back to the bathroom.

“Dad?”

“Not now. I need to be alone.”

“Is it any better?” I say.

In a few minutes I hear him flush. He shuffles out and collapses on the bed like a cut-down tree.

“Maybe we should find a doctor,” I say.

He shakes his head and his eyes close.

“Maybe there's a hospital around here.”

“Big night. Big, big night.”

I run the back of my hand along his cheek, looking down at his eyebrows and dark long lashes.

“I'm worried,” I whisper.

“I'm fine.”

“About Mom.”

“Oh.”

“Should I call her?”

The key jiggles in the door before it swings open.

“Hello?” Brandi says, followed by the girls. My father sits up quickly and pats down his hair.

“How is it out there?” he says, trying hard to look healthy.

“Humid,” she says, removing her sunglasses to focus on him. “Marty, you look terrible.”

“No, no, I feel a little dizzy but I'm sure it's just the heat. I don't know. Must be the heat. You got suits for the girls?”

“Yup, yup, you ready, girls?”

Sarah moves directly to the window and looks up at the sky.

“You don't feel well, Dad?” Debra says.

“Feel fine, honey.”

“The pool is big,” Sarah says. “Come look, Dena.”

“Let's go in the other room, girls. I'll show you my stuff and you can decide.”

“Arlene,” my father says.

“What?”

“You need to call Ira and ask him what time you need to be at the Moraga. And get Leo on the phone too. I have no idea where the interview is happening. And you're tight-lacing so . . .”