Peep Show (23 page)

“Hello? Who's there?” I say, sitting up in my father's bed. I don't remember choosing to sleep here.

“It's time,” Brandi says from the hallway.

Time to bury my dad.

The gunshots are as steady as a metronome. The shooting range next door. Pop, pop, pop, pop, like the person pulling the trigger is learning to play “Chopsticks.” From the gravesite, I watch Leo and Jocko and Tiki all flinching
every time another round is fired. Sarah arrives with the rabbi she found, a guy with Art Garfunkel hair. He tells me I'm the only “official” mourner because Jewish law says you're not technically a mourner if you're not the father, mother, son, daughter, sister, brother, or spouse of the deceased.

“You'll speak after I say a few prayers,” he says.

“I'd like to speak too,” Brandi says.

“Are you a direct relative?” he asks.

“No,” she says.

“Then, please, I only want the immediate family to participate. It's tradition.”

She's not happy. Sarah whispers something into her ear but it doesn't help. We all walk up to the gravesite but Brandi stays back. I try to wave her over, but she's angry, her back to us now. Jocko goes back down to get her but she won't listen to him. I can't worry about her right now. The coffin is pine and unpainted and looks as cheap as it did in the funeral home. But apparently Jews believe that you leave the world in a simple box, wrapped in clothing with no pockets and a shroud of linen or muslin. He didn't believe in any of this but now, as he lies here in that box, there are still rules about who can talk and who can mourn. I'm so sorry for him. In there alone, a stranger's
tallis
around his shoulders. I'm sorry that the most religious day of his life is today.

“Oh, Lord, what is man that you should care about him, mortal man that you should think of him? Man is like a
breath, his days are like a passing shadow. O Lord bend your sky and come down; touch the mountains and they will smoke . . .”

In the parking lot I see Ira with his wife and some other man. Brandi has no choice but to walk with them now.

“Rescue me, save me from the mighty waters, from the hands of foreigners, whose mouth speaks lies, and whose oaths are false.”

I feel Leo's hand on my back and it triggers the loss, the weight of where I'm headed. I swallow again and again to avoid tears and the effort is tiring, nauseating. The rabbi says a bunch in Hebrew, then says my name. “You ready?” he says.

I step closer to the grave and look down into it. The walls have roots sticking out of the cracks in the mud. My grandfather's plot is three feet away.

“I was told I'm the only mourner here today,” I say. “But we all know that's not true.” A light drizzle starts and the rain begins to darken the pine. “His family was his father, Myron. His daughter, Debra. Me, David. And of course you, Brandi.”

She takes the moment to smirk at the rabbi.

“I miss you already. I wish we could have said a few more things. I didn't know you were going . . . when you did. If you hear me, I want you to know I love you. And I'm going to miss you.”

After a long silence, the rabbi signals the two cemetery workers, who lower the box into the ground. He asks me to
lift the shovel and scoop some dirt on the coffin. A symbol, he tells us, of the finality of my father's life and the reality of death, according to Judaism, the religion into which he was born.

I do it, I get some on the tip of the shovel and toss it down onto the box. The dirt hits it with an empty sound and most of it slides off the sides. It is a raw and sobering ritual, assisting in the task of his burial. The rabbi takes the shovel, says another prayer in Hebrew but before he finishes, Brandi takes the shovel from his hands. Her scoop is much bigger and hits the box with a muddy plop. She hands it back to the rabbi. She's crying hard as she walks down the path and into the parking lot. Ira kisses me on the lips and I feel cold, man saliva on my mouth.

“Anything you need. Anything you want. The theater is half yours. Your father was family to me. We had our moments but he was a brother, my older brother. You saw us fight, I know. But you also saw us hug. Let's you and I hug now.”

We do.

“So we're good? We can work together?” Ira says.

“I have to go now.”

“What about your sister?”

Ira speaks louder because I'm moving away from him. “You're right. Let's do it at a more respectful time.”

I head down the path to the beat of gunfire and decide I'll never see Ira Saltzman again.

“You should call her now,” Sarah says. “She should know.”

“Yeah? Well maybe she should call me.”

“It's her father, David.”

“I didn't want a Lichtiger funeral. I told you that.”

“I could call her.”

“I'll do it.”

“Will you stop?”

Running, yes, from the grave, from Ira, from telling my sister. “I just want to go home, Sarah. Can I drive you somewhere?”

“Leo said he'd give me a ride home.”

“Leo? He did?”

“Brandi should've been able to speak,” Sarah says, trying to change the subject.

She's looking at me, wanting me to feel jealous and I do.

“I guess I'll see you later,” she says, and climbs in the back of Leo's Dart. From my father's car I see her lighting a cigarette. She holds it high, between her middle and pointer fingers, like someone taught her how. A shotgun blast is heard and my shoulders flinch at the noise. Sarah looks at me as if the world just shook. And I drive home.

I
FOUND SOME RUM
. I like it with juice, this red juice I bought at a deli on the corner. I drink it until it gets dark and then I fall asleep on my dad's bed. When I wake up the “Star Spangled Banner” is playing in the living room. It's creepy somehow, in the blue light from the TV, a flag waving in slow motion. My scrotum stretches like Silly Putty so I wrap it around my finger like a dumpling and realize I'm drunk. I start to jerk off but feel like a scumbag, like one of the regulars at the Imperial with their pants at their ankles. I can't sleep. The phone rings at 4 a.m. but when you're dead you're not there to pick it up. Hello? Are you there? Is it you? No, I'm dead. I can't talk to you now. In fact I'll be dead for quite some time and will never be able to speak to you again. The most precise word in the English language. How long? Never. How about after that? After never? It rings again and
it's stupid how I lift my head from the pillow to look at the receiver until it stops. Ring, ring, fucking, ring, ring all you want. What do you want anyway? Oh, you want to
talk
about my dad. You want to console me, to help me, to put your skin on mine for warmth because you know I am Oliver, the orphan boy. Ringing again, five thirty, it's the tax man, the police, the garage, Larry Abromowitz. It's his dry cleaner, his barber, some stripper he once knew. I throw one of Brandi's pink pillows at the phone and it spills onto the floor. “If you'd like to make a call, please hang up and try again.” You sound nice, lady, you sound really swell. No more calls, please. I'm an orphan now and don't need to pick up the phone if I don't want to. The view from my dad's bed is the flat rooftop of a post office and I see puddles of rain and a yellow kickball floating in one of them. At six the neighbor upstairs is jumping in place or maybe it's jump rope, yeah, the tap, tap, tapping on the floor is the rope. If I try to keep up with him, I need to leap like a toad, like a pogo stick, straight up and down. As soon as I land I hop even higher and I've never been much of an athlete but I think if I try,
hup, hup, hup
, I could place my palms on . . . the . . . ceiling.

I hear a knock on the door and tiptoe to look through the peephole. It's Ira.

“You in there or what?”

I stay as quiet as a tree no one hears, a bird in the wind, a farting mouse. Knock, knock, knock. Go away Ira, go the hell away. Not here, out to lunch, visiting relatives on a patch of land in the Baltic Sea.

“I know you're in there, David. I can hear you.”

I sit on the floor, one wall away.

“You're missing print jobs, kid. People are calling in for ya. If you don't want 'em I'll find someone who does.”

Through the peephole his nose is huge. Moist little hairs rooted in the cavern of the round tip. He stands there for five minutes sighing and giving my eye the finger. Finally he leaves.

Three slices of American cheese, a jar of apricot jelly, blue-crusted Wonder bread and two double A batteries in the slot for eggs. What a feast. I eat in his bed and see his suit pants on the chair by the window, black and forgotten, like a pair of legs left behind. What now, say the pants, the belt drooping off the chair to the floor. Stuck there for eternity, a pair of paralyzed slacks, longing to get to the closet where their matching blazer resides. I try them on—they're a little short around the ankles but fine in the waist. The interior is silky and cool against my skin and I see no reason to wear anything else for the rest of my life. Doorbell. I freeze.

“David, it's Brandi. What are you some kind of hermit now? My key is still missing. I left some of my clothes in the closet.” Doorbell. “David, I know you're in there. I can hear the television.”

Her nose is narrow and powdered. There are no hairs for miles and miles. The wig is curly and tight and she pulls on the bangs.

“I could send a cop in,” she says. “I might be saving your life.”

Don't do that. Please don't do that. I wonder if she even has hair under that wig. Or actual skin beneath the goop she puts on. She rings the bell twice before leaving.

My father has shoe trees in his closet, an iron bowl of pennies, a tuxedo with dandruff on the shoulder, and a mountain of dry-cleaner plastic. There must be ten pairs of women's shoes and two dozen dresses. Wig boxes galore. I find another one of his suits. A white three-piece. It smells like cigarettes and cologne, a battle of nicotine and chemical musk. I decide to put it on. Debra used to get nauseous from the cigarette smell and she'd steal the packs from his jackets and stab them with a protractor. She hid them too, buried them in the yard in Newstead and in the gully behind the Slaters'. Dear Debra, Dad is . . . really sick. Dear Debra, Dad was sick and he died so now you know. Dear Debra, when is your wedding to the butcher in
Fiddler on the Roof
. I have some news. About Dad. Dear Debra, is your fiancé a bearded man in
tzitzit
who raises his arms when he dances in circles and snaps simultaneously with both hands saying,
oy, oy, oy
, will you marry me, Dena,
oy, oy, oy
, will you be the seventeen-year-old mother of my eleven children? Moses and Isaac and Ezra and Solomon and Tabernacle and Esau and Dear Dena. Dad is gone.
May my family ever be perfect in your sight
. Grant me light, lest I sleep the sleep of death.

I fall asleep on the couch still in his white suit. I'm dreaming of hundreds of Hasidim, an ocean of undulating hats and wigs. I'm not invited to the wedding but I stand
under the
huppah
with my sister, the bride, and her husband, the butcher, and I walk around her seven times and my mother is stunned that I know this ritual and it makes her love me. I can see it, she loves me. She's proud of me, finally at peace with herself and her son. She grips the brim of my fedora and shakes it, smiling.

I wake up and stare at the phone still off the hook. I have to tell them.
Hup, hup, hup
, he died,
hup, hup, hup . . . hup . . . hup . . . hup.

I hear a key, metal in metal, and the door is opening. “Hello!” I yell, and slowly poke my head out of my father's room. Brandi Lady.

“I knew it,” she says.

“You knew what?”

“You didn't kill yourself,” she says, pulling off her white opera gloves. “Ira thinks you killed yourself.”

I sit on the couch, my back to her.

“It smells in here.”

“No it doesn't.”

“And the phone's off the hook. Leo's been calling you for days. And you've wrinkled the hell out of your father's suit. Have you been sleeping in it?”

I look down at the lapels, the crease in the pants. “Your clothes are in the closet.”

“Why did you take the phone off the hook?”

“It was ringing.”

“Why aren't you coming to the theater?”

“Because I quit.” I look right at her.

She puts both hands on her cheeks and stares back at me. “Oh yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay, then. Maybe Sarah will take your place. She's been coming in every day since the funeral.”

I watch her go into the kitchen.

“To the theater?”

“Yup,” she says, and I hear her put the receiver back in its cradle.

“She's a Hasid, Brandi.”

“She
was
a Hasid.”