Peep Show (24 page)

“Don't let her do it.”

“Don't let her do what? She's her own person. Sorry,” she says, “I'd be a hypocrite if I told her to leave.”

“Then just be an adult.”

“Ya know what? I'm not telling an eighteen-year-old girl what she can and can't do.”

“Then get
out
! Get the fuck
out
!” I open the door for her but she doesn't budge.

“You sure are angry. Why don't you scream. Do it.
Screeeeam!
”

“Stop.”

“You want to hit something, David? Do it, do it now, get it out, man!”

“I don't need you to root for me,
Ar
lene.”

“Oh, be real,” she says behind me. “You're hurting, look at you. I want to be here for you, I'm trying to be here for you.”

Be real? Be real? What a joke. I have to laugh at this person in her opera gloves in July. “Be real?” I say. “Brandi Lady? No, sorry, Luna Von. I mean how many little dirty secrets do you have, Arlene Morrison, from some hick town in Michigan? I mean who are you, exactly? Do you even know? Which one of your characters is telling me to
be
fuckin'
real
?”

Her shoulders shrug. “Feel better?” she says.

“No! I've had enough bullshit.”

“So I'm a phony?”

“Look at you, you look like a stripper. Who dresses like that in public?”

“I do, you jackass.”

“Well why don't you be fuckin' real and buy a normal dress.”

“Hey, hey, hey what's all the yelling about?” Leo is in the doorway. “I could hear the screaming all the way down the hall.”

“You talk to him, Leo, he's being an asshole.”

“Where the fuck is Sarah? Huh, Leo?”

He looks at Brandi first and then to me. “I haven't seen you in four days and that's all you got for me?”

“See what I mean?” Brandi says.

“Are you giving her work?”

“No. She's just been coming by the theater.”

“For what?”

“I don't know. She asks if I've talked to you and I tell her your phone's off the hook.”

“Is she there now?”

“No. I dropped her off at the set in Kingsford. She said she wanted to help out.”

I run my fingers through my hair and give it a yank. “Help
out
? With what? Help out with what, Leo?”

“Listen, I came here to see if you were okay. Ira thinks you stuck your head in the stove. But I really don't like the way you're talking to me.”

“Have you filmed her doing anything?”

Brandi and Leo exchange a look and Leo shrugs. “No.”

“Good.”

“But she's eighteen years old, ya know?”

It's the first time I've ever stepped up to him. The first time I've ever put my finger in his face. “Don't . . . touch . . . that . . . Hasid.”

“I didn't.”

I pull my father's jacket off and run down the hall to my own room to find the pants and white shirt I wore to the funeral. When I get back, Leo's whispering to Brandi and they both look pissed off.

“The loft, Leo. I want to
help
out too. Please. Take me to the loft.”

B
RANDI HAS TO
come too. Just to nag me, I think. The whole ride to Brooklyn I listen to her talking about love and parenthood and child rearing and how so many people “fuck it up.” Leo and I don't say a word but she doesn't care. She's in know-it-all mode and seems to have this particular
speech prerecorded. Kids needs space and unconditional love, blah, blah, blah. When we arrive, I run from the van but find no one in the loft. There are dirty dishes in the kitchen and someone left the TV on.

“What a mess,” Brandi says.

From the bathroom window, I can see Jocko and Tiki and that cock slinger Stewart Haynes.

“I don't see her,” I say.

Brandi comes in and looks down at the garden. “What are they doing back there?” she says.

They're filling out college applications, they're painting a picket fence, they're practicing for a choir recital, they're helping a calf give birth, they're carrying an old, blind woman across the street, they're making a difference in so very many ways, utilizing their collective gifts to contribute to our precious planet.

“They're shooting a porno.”

“Outside?” she says.

The garden is surrounded by tall fencing and even higher yellow shrubbery that blocks the view of any neighbors. The phone booth stands in the center of a patch of lawn. There are two cameras, one mounted inside the thing and the other outside the door. I don't see Sarah and am hoping she went home. I head down to the garden just as Tiki and Stewart get nude in the phone booth. Jocko is on his stomach on the grass, looking through the camera. “Hi, David.”

“Hi. You seen that girl Sarah?”

He gets to his feet and looks around. “There she is.”

She's filling a watering can from a garden hose. I tell myself to be calmer than I feel. She sees me before I get to her and turns off the water. “There you are,” she says, eyes wide. “I was worried about you.”

“What are you doing here?”

She looks down at the spigot. “I'm working.”

“Working? Great. This is your
job
, now?”

“Why are you talking like that?”

“You shouldn't be here, Sarah.”

“And why not?” she says, moving away from me.

I take her elbow in my hand and she yanks it away. “Please get off me.”

“Come on, I'll take you home.”

“No. I'm going to pour water over that phone booth. That's all I'm doing.”

I step closer to her so I can whisper. “I don't want you working with Leo.”

“
You
work with Leo.”

“No, I don't. He just tells me who's hiring. I'm independent, remember?”

“What do you think I'm trying to be, David?” She takes the watering can and climbs the ladder next to the booth.

Leo comes out with a bagel in his mouth. “See, buddy. She's just helping out. Sarah? When I say action, just pour it over the phone booth, okay. Get it all wet. Tiki, Stewy, you ready?”

Tiki and Stewy put their cigarettes out and step barefoot
into the booth. “Good, just start kissing and go from there. Are we ready?”

“Ready,” says Jocko.

“Okay, here we go.
Action!
Good. Let it rain, Sarah. Let it rain.”

Brandi stands with me by the back door of the building. “You owe me a big apology,” she says, but I ignore her.

Sarah tips the can and water beads down the glass as Tiki drops to her knees to pull the string on Stewart's sweatpants. It's revolting, watching a blow job next to my father's girlfriend so I walk away from her. No one speaks as the scene is shot but Leo paces back and forth. “Move her hair, Stewy,” he says.

Stewart begins to moan as he puts Tiki's hair behind her ear.

“Your line,” Leo says.

Stewart squints his eyes, trying to remember the script. “Line!”

“All I wanted was a dime,” Leo says.

Stewart nods. “Alls I wanted was a dime.”

Tiki smiles and looks up at him. “That's okay, you can keep the change.”

Leo pumps his fist and looks back at us, smiling.

“Battery's dying, Leo.” Jocko waves his arm. “Battery light.”

“Cut!”

Tiki rises from her position with her hands on her hips. The rain stops. “What's wrong?”

“Where's the other camera?” Leo says.

Sarah steps down and heads back to the hose. “Can I talk to you alone?” I say in my kindest voice and no, I don't pull her, I never force her, but she's mad at me, fighting me. “No, you can't.”

“I just want to talk.”

“About what?”

“David,” Brandi says. “Will you leave her alone?”

“She's leaving, it's fine.”

“You're leaving, Sarah?” Leo says.

“Yes,” I say. “We're going over to my sister's.”

Sarah looks at me and puts the watering can on the ground. “Your sister's?”

“Yeah. I haven't told her yet.”

“About your
dad
?” Sarah says. “You didn't tell her about your dad?”

“That's why I'm here. I'm going to head over there right now. I thought you'd come with me.”

“Maybe you should go by yourself,” she says.

They all stare at me and I see Jocko picking his nose.

“This is what you want, Sarah? To be one of these people for the rest of your life.”

Stewart adjusts his dong in his sweatpants and steps up to me. “One of
these
people? What about you?”

“Exactly,” Brandi says.

“He's having a bad day,” Leo says. “A bad week. He doesn't mean it. Let's get back to it. Come on, where's the other camera?”

“That wig,” I say to Brandi.

“Yeah? What about it?” she says.

“Nothing. Just that I lived with you for over two years and I've never seen your real hair. Maybe you're afraid. Afraid to be
real
.”

“Oh boy,” Leo says.

I step closer to her. “Do you even have hair underneath that thing? Or are you bald?”

Brandi and I stare at each other in silence and I watch her eyes fill with tears. The tip of her tongue is touching her top lip as she places her fingertips under the hairline and lifts the wig up and off her head. I can see her ears and her brown hair, short and cut very close to her scalp. “Happy now?” she says, throwing the wig in my face. When I bend to lift it she steps on it with her pointy heel. “Get out of here. Go. You don't want to be one of us? Then go.”

“Come on, Sarah.”

“Leave her the hell alone,” she says. “There's nothing she needs from you. Go, David. Get out of here.” She points to the back porch stairs. “We don't want
you
anymore.”

Sarah is standing behind Leo, so I walk back into the apartment, through the hallway and toward the street. I have no memory of making the decision but I know what I have to do. I will go to my mother's home and tell her husband, Avram, what she used to be. A stripper. That's right. A better stripper than a mother. A better liar than a parent. I'm going to get a bullhorn and posters and tell everyone in the neighborhood what a phony fucking hypocrite Mickey Arbus really is. I'll hang flyers on all the telephone poles
and call the grand rabbi himself. That's right, Rabbi, she's a
baal teshuva
who used to shake her tits in a dump called the Imperial Theatre.

“David,” Sarah says.

She's in the doorway, a backpack over her shoulder.

“Are you going over there?”

I nod.

“I wasn't invited to the wedding,” she says. “I don't think your mother likes me anymore.” She comes down the steps and stands next to me in the middle of the road. “I'll go with you, David. But I'm not ringing the bell this time. And you have to be nice to me.”

I offer her my hand. She looks at it before taking it and holding on tight.

T
HROUGH MY LENS
I
SEE
the dark grooves of the tree trunk and the slow, tired movement of the summer leaves. We are across the street from their apartment building, along a fence, and the front door opens. I steel myself, ready to see my mother, but it's not her. A Hasidic woman with two small kids emerges. I see her through my camera—her eyes, her chin, the
sheitel
on her head.

“You ready?” Sarah asks.

“No.”

“I'll be right here.”

The intercom panel reads
Alef, Bet
, and
Gimmel
. My finger stops before the
Bet
button as a little girl screams behind me. A horror movie screech. “Stop it Jonah! Stop, stop.” When I turn I see a ten-year-old boy with a fedora on his head, spraying his sister with a water pistol. “I'm telling
Eema, I'm telling Eema,” she says, and tears off into the building next door. Sarah's motioning me to push the button. Jonah spins the yellow gun around his finger like Roy Rogers until it flies off and lands on the sidewalk.

“Do you live here?” I ask him.

He points to the gun on the ground and says something in Yiddish.

“Do you speak English?”

The intercom hisses without my touching it. “Is it Chaim?” says a woman's tinny voice.

“Hello?” I say, bowing toward it.

“Chaim?”

“No. No, I'm looking for someone.”

“Who?”

“Miriam.”

“Are you from the flower shop?”

“No.”

“Catering then.”

“No. I'm David Arbus. I'm looking for my . . . mother.”

In the silence, I try to rehear the woman's voice in my head. It could have been her. I push the button again and there is no response. “Is that you?” I say, my mouth nearly touching the box. “Is that you, Mom?”