The Nakeds (23 page)

The comment made Nina feel sharply Jewish. She’d long ago given up being religiously Jewish and certainly wasn’t unsympathetic to the Palestinian plight, but when Azeem brought up Israel, she felt uncomfortable, and worse, she worried that on some level, way down, he hated her just a tiny bit. She didn’t hate him, though, but felt guilt and maybe a little fear, which she didn’t quite understand. When they weren’t talking about Jews and Arabs, Nina believed that they were almost able to forget what they were.

She was ambivalent about Israel and when she discussed it with her mother or sister on the phone, she found herself getting angry at their certainty, how positive they were. They said things about Jewish territory and Arab anger that made her cringe. She’d sympathize with the Palestinians and defend them, one time even hanging up on her mother when she’d said, “Arabs are a pill.” “I’m married to a pill,” she reminded her. “And I love that pill very much,” she’d said before slamming the phone down.

Still, when Azeem brought up Israel, she felt defensive, like Jews all over the world were her blood relatives and she needed to protect them.

She took another long pull from the drink she didn’t really want. Soon they’d be at a party and this was how they were preparing for it, getting in the mood? “Are you excited to see your brother? He’ll be here in, what, a week?” she said, trying to change the subject.

But Azeem wasn’t letting go. He told her that the rabbi’s nephew was one of the athletes who died. “The rabbi shouldn’t have been commenting on the event.”

“Why not?” she said.

“Obviously,” he said, irritated, “he was too close to the situation.”

“Maybe the boy’s death earned him the right to talk about it.” She set down her glass and looked back up at the Chihuahua in the sweater.

“Bullshit,” he scoffed.

When guests rang the doorbell, Nina was thankful. A smiling and newly shaven Phillip popped his head inside the bonus room again and invited them out to join the others. As they stood up from the couch, Nina whispered to Azeem. “It’s a party,” she said. “Let’s talk about party things and have a good time.”

“OK,” he said, snatching up his drink.

More guests arrived. The Harrisons, who she recognized from The Elysium. Two couples she didn’t know. Phillip’s mom and dad, who were in their late seventies and surprisingly youthful. Mitch and Mica showed up with their parents. Mitch had brought along a handsome young friend who was heartily shaking hands with everyone and saying their names out loud. “I want to get all your names right,” he said, smiling big.

Unlike the bonus room with its black couches and dark rugs, nearly everything else in the house was white. White rugs and white couches and white chairs and white lamps and white bookshelves. There were splashes of red too, pillows and two red, high-backed chairs in the corner of the room that Mitch and his happy friend quickly claimed as their own.

The Harrisons requested a tour of the house. Phillip pointed the rest of the guests to the backyard and then led the couple up the stairs.

Outside, there was a pool shaped like a perfect circle and a square Jacuzzi. The caterers and servers were clothed, passing out food to all the naked guests. Nina was alone, sitting on a lounge chair that was shaded by a palm tree, and from where she sat she could see the steam rising from the Jacuzzi. It looked like the hoses were on full blast, the bubbles breaking the water. A very skinny woman, whose body looked twelve but whose face looked fifty, was stepping into the hot tub. An older man held his hand out to her.

Azeem stood at the bar ordering drinks. He looked over at Nina and waved and smiled. He wanted to be nice now. She waved back.

A husky man came up and stood behind Azeem and the two of them started talking. Azeem was laughing and Nina could hear his laugh from where she sat. She loved his laugh, and it made her smile hearing it. She watched him accept an appetizer from one of the servers. He stabbed something with a toothpick and put it in his mouth. She watched him scratch his chest. She wondered if they’d make it as a couple or if too much was pulling them apart. She watched him watch a pair of women walking by. One of the women wore a baseball cap backwards and heavy red lipstick. The other one wore bikini bottoms but no top. The husky man watched them too. She wondered if it was only a matter of time before Azeem opened up their marriage on his own or if he’d already done so.

Phillip’s dad had a head of thick white hair and a neatly trimmed white beard. He sat at a table with his wife and a group of older women, passing a joint around. There was a teenage girl about Hannah’s age, one of the guest’s daughters, who was visiting from London and walking through the party by herself, saying a cheerful hello to everyone. The girl was lean and tall and seemingly comfortable with her nudity. Nina thought that she probably had grown up with nudists. Kids like Hannah, whose parents came to the lifestyle later, were usually inhibited, and when they joined their parents at the camp, did so reluctantly. If and when they took off their clothes, their tan lines gave them away. The seasoned nudists called them “cottontails.”

If Azeem were to open our marriage, he’d want to do it here,
is what Nina thought. He’d want that naked woman or that one. He’d want her or her. He might even want the teenage girl. He’d want the one with the long braids or the one with the straight blonde bob. He’d want the tan one sitting at the edge of the pool dangling her feet, her tan calves half-submerged.

Azeem had a fresh drink now and had moved out of line with the husky man. The two of them were standing a couple feet from Nina, within earshot. She could hear Azeem talking about the Munich Olympics and the Israeli athletes, and the husky man was obviously uncomfortable, scratching his cheek and nodding, looking around the yard, searching for someone, anyone else to talk to.

Nina didn’t know why Azeem insisted on talking politics now, here, with these people who just wanted to drink their fruity drinks and smoke pot and eat their jumbo shrimp and little meatballs and skewers of chicken, who didn’t want to think about Israel or the Gaza Strip or Palestinians, who just wanted to chitchat about nothing and swim in the pool and watch Phillip blow out the candles on his cake and open his gifts, who just wanted to sit in the Jacuzzi until they ran out of words and the pads of their toes and fingers wrinkled.

AFTER THE
funeral and reception, after family and friends and longtime customers had all gone home, after Sandy, Bill, and the kids were on the road, Martin’s mom’s face changed, her cheeks fell, and the stoic expression she’d been wearing all day disappeared. “I’m going to bed,” she said wearily, even though it was only seven p.m. He was on the couch, petting Sadie, when his mom leaned down and kissed him on the top of the head.

He gave Sadie one last gentle tweak of the ears, then got up to straighten up the house. Sandy and Bill had done most of the work already, but there were still a few things Martin could do. He stretched plastic wrap over the casseroles the neighbors had dropped off and put them in the fridge. Sadie followed Martin around while he picked up the few remaining napkins, cups, and little plates. Sadie sniffed at a cube of cheese that had fallen on the floor and he let her eat it.

An hour after his mom had kissed him good night, Martin went to her room to check on her. The door was ajar, and when he knocked and stepped inside, he found her under the covers, sitting up in the near dark, staring straight ahead. “You all right?” he said.

“No,” she said.

He stood there, quietly.

“I’ve got nothing.”

“That’s not true,” he said.

“What will I do now, Marty?”

He sat down at the foot of the bed. “You’ll do what you have to do,” he said. “You’ll grieve and then you’ll get on with things. You’ll keep the restaurants going.”

“No,” she said firmly.

“No?”

“You’ll do that.” She leaned forward and patted his thigh. “He wanted you to come back and take over.”

“I’m here,” he said.

And she wanted to talk.

Of course she wanted to talk.

She wanted to go over it again.

“The restaurant was full,” she said. “People were in line, spilling out the front door. You know how your dad loved that.”

His father had used his hip to bump open the swinging doors that led from the kitchen into the main dining area. He took a few healthy, robust steps, but right before he’d reached the customers’ table, he collapsed and fell to the floor, the tray flying through the air, his rich desserts a mess in the corner.

“I’m all alone,” she said, starting to cry. “I don’t even have any real friends. It was just us, your father and me.”

“I know,” he said.

“Other women have friends. They do lunch. They go shopping. I only wanted to have lunch with your father.” She pulled a piece of Kleenex from the box on the nightstand and blew her nose.

“You’ll make friends,” Martin said.

She shook her head. “I’m glad your dad was doing what he loved to do, and that there were happy people all around him.”

Martin nodded, imagining that the unlucky customers who watched his father die were not smiling, but horrified. He imagined many were particularly disturbed by their proximity, but he didn’t tell his mother that.

“I’m glad he wasn’t alone,” was what he said.

NINA HATED
sacrificing her weekends at The Elysium, but because of this particular cast, she hated leaving Hannah home alone for long periods of time even more. If it was a walking cast and Hannah could get around on her own, fine, but it wasn’t. It was a very heavy toe-to-groin, the heaviest yet. And Megan and Becky were both away for the weekend and Nina wouldn’t leave Hannah alone—what if the house caught on fire or someone broke in and she couldn’t defend herself or get away?

Azeem rushed over to the cupboard and pulled the plastic bag from a shelf. He carried it over to where Hannah sat on the couch. “If you wear this on your leg, you can get in the camp pool. Please, please, pretty please,” he said, standing above her, smiling, excited, and waving the bag.

“No way,” she said.

“You can keep your clothes on.” He looked to Nina for backup.

Nina shrugged.

“Lots of kids keep their clothes on,” Azeem insisted.

Hannah looked at him skeptically.

“Well, I’ve seen a clothed kid—haven’t you, Nina?”

“Oh, yes, that one,” Nina said, catching on.

“You shouldn’t lie,” Hannah said. “You’re both really bad at it.”

Then they were on the couch next to her, Azeem on her right, still holding the bag, and her mother on her left. Azeem leaned forward and attempted to fit the bag over Hannah’s leg, but it was a sorry fit and he finally gave up, sighing, leaning back on the couch.

“It’s OK,” Hannah said. “I don’t want to get in the pool with a bunch of naked people anyway.”

She could play gin rummy all day and sit on a blanket and read and hang out with those kids she’d heard so much about. Think of the story she’d have to tell Becky and Megan. Wouldn’t they be impressed?

“Grossed out is more like it,” she said.

“Come on, Hannah,” Azeem pleaded.

She was wavering, knowing they could sense her bending, finally bending, and knowing they’d never quit now.

“We’re nakeds,” he said. “You don’t have to be a naked, but you can join us for the day.”

“It’s nudists, Azeem,” Nina corrected him. “I’ve told you a hundred times.”

“Nudists, then,” he said.

If she joined them, they said, they’d take her out for Lebanese food afterwards in Santa Monica where they’d probably see movie stars, and they’d stop at a bookstore on the way and buy her two new novels and that book she wanted about the black-winged damselfly.

“I want this one about worms too,” she said.

“Anything you want,” Azeem said.

“And I don’t want to tell Rebecca and Megan. When they come over, you can’t mention it. No teasing.”

“Fine,” Nina said.

“OK,” Azeem said.

Hannah sighed, giving in.

“Terrific!” Azeem said. “Hannah’s coming with us to the naked camp.”

SO THIS
was The Elysium. This was where they came on Saturdays and Sundays, where they shed their clothes and all they had then was skin. They displayed their two asses, his penis, her breasts, their arms and shoulders and backs and legs, their calves and thighs, her mother’s triangle of dark fur.

So this was the grass they walked upon.

So this was what all the fuss was about, why they rushed out of the house on weekend mornings.

And the naked people were everywhere, of course. They were in groups or they were cooing couples or they were alone. They were walking or perched on beach chairs or sprawled out on blankets. Some of them were sitting with their bare asses directly on the lawn. They were standing by the pool, a family. A man was sitting cross-legged in a yoga position, while a woman knelt behind him, rubbing sunscreen on his back, her huge breasts swinging from side to side. A woman in only goggles and a bathing cap dove into the deep end. A couple holding hands trudged up the hill. Two men sat under a tree together, one of them strumming a guitar. An old man stood alone, eating a sandwich. A few women about her mother’s age played a board game several feet away from Hannah.

She was alone, on a blanket with an open book in her lap. She was reading about baby worms that lived in the guts of cockroaches, how when the cockroaches were eaten by rats, the worms grew and had sex in the rat’s intestines. There were worse places she could have been, Hannah thought. She could have been in a rat’s ass losing her virginity.

She was, of course, the only one clothed in the whole damn place. Regardless of how conspicuous she was, no way was she taking off her jeans or T-shirt. Several people stared at her. One old man smiled. One of the women playing the board game caught her gaze and nodded hello. A little boy dropped his father’s hand to point at Hannah. He looked startled and maybe afraid, as if he’d never seen a clothed person before.

She tried watching the people who weren’t watching her. She held the book in front of her face, pretending to read, peering over its pages. Her crutches were lying next to her with two bottles of water, a deck of cards, her mother’s box of raisins, and a jar of peanuts. There was a half-eaten banana going brown beside her that she didn’t feel like finishing. She couldn’t wait to be sixteen with a driver’s license and couldn’t wait to be out of the cast. She’d make her own decisions about how to spend her Saturdays. She could go to her dad’s house for an hour or two without having to spend the night. She hoped her dad was OK. She wondered if Christy was getting better in the hospital, if she’d ever be her cheery self again.