The Unthinkable Thoughts of Jacob Green (22 page)

“Here I am wavin’ around this thing and you’re headed to that shit hole. How ya getting there?”

“Ride.”

“Mom?”

“No. Dad’s on his way.”

“
Here?
” he says, pointing at his bare chest. “
Now?
”

“I thought you knew.”

He runs his hand through his long hair and peers down the street for my father’s car. “I better get outta here. We gotta go!”

“What’s up?” says Brigitte.

“My fuckin’ dad’s on his way.”

Brigitte hops off the car and walks toward me. I look at the hooks on the front of her bra and the baby oil she put on her cleavage. “Your brother’s getting cuter than you, Ash. Look at this pretty blond hair,” she says, and I feel her fingernails against my scalp.

Nicky lets out an extended belch and says, “Real purty. And he got a
reeeeal
nice mouth too. Squeeeeel,
squeeel
like a hog, Jacob.”

Beth and Brigitte both laugh.

Brigitte circles me while fanning herself with her hand. “Ooh-wee. I don’t even care that you’re leavin’ anymore, Asher.
You can just take off and do all that disappearing you’ve been dreamin’ about. Give your little brother and me some breathin’ room.”

Quintessential Gitte. Obligated to the Nancy Spungen persona she’s honed for years, rumors often fly about the pills she’s popped and the dicks she’s sucked. The current gossip is that she blew her own brother, a coke fiend named Nigel who wears eyeliner and hiked-up kilts to school. Asher says he’d be amazed because Nigel’s a flat-out homo who can make himself gag just thinking about pussy. Now Brigitte cups my chin in her hand and gives me a lengthy Eskimo kiss and a peck on the lips. Her hair is Big Bird yellow at the moment and shaved nearly to the skin on one side. And there’s a cross pierced high in the cartilage of her ear that’s made the skin puffed and shiny with infection.

“Lady killer,” she says, with a tiny slap to my butt.

“Here, Nicky,” Beth says, and hands him the cassette she fixed. She tugs her miniskirt down on her hips with a snap and stretches her arms high above her head. Belly button, ribs, the body on this girl! When she walks past me she winks and I look away.

“Um . . . hello?” she says.

“Oh . . . hi.”

“Stop flirtin’ with my girlfriend,” says Nicky. I push out a laugh and watch her open his car door.

“He can if he wants.”

“Get in the car, Beth. And you, little Greeny. Hose those lonely blue balls down,” he says, and pretends to punch me in the stomach.

A car turns onto our street and Asher pulls his shirt on and squints at it. “That him? Let’s go Brigitte,” he says, clapping. “Right now. Fast.”

The car gets closer to the house. It’s not my dad but it stops right in front.

“Just clients,” I say. Dr. Nate sees patients in the basement of this house. This means I can sit on the staircase and listen to people air out their miseries past ten each night. The couple walk quickly across the lawn, she in front of him. It’s the Newmans—money’s tight, she’s the breadwinner, caught him napping in the afternoon with cereal milk in his navel, and she punched him in the chest. They walk along the side of the house and will enter from the rear.

Asher blinks a lot as he approaches me and wraps his arm around my neck. “We have to talk and it’s gotta be quick.”

I’m already packed. Just say when. Dusk? Noonish?

“It’s not something I was planning on and—”

“Just tell me.”

He pulls away from the embrace and glances over his shoulder at the street. “I gotta leave,” he says, with his head lowered. “Tomorrow. In the morning. I was keeping it a secret because I wasn’t sure if—”

“What did you say?”

“I know. I should have told you. There’s this professor named Bovitz who said he’d rent me his attic if I showed up by Monday. There are so few places for the money I have, you wouldn’t believe it. I had to talk to the high school and all this crap . . . Anyway, they don’t give a shit if I’m at graduation or not. They said they’d mail me the fuckin’ diploma.” He chuckles and looks back at his friends. “Isn’t that . . . cool?”

As I stand there in the driveway looking in his wide eyes, I tell myself it’s a gag. It’s got to be a joke. I start to smile and turn to face Nicky. “Are you fuckin’ kidding me?”

Asher looks stunned but more offended. “Kidding?” he says. “Why would I be kidding?”

As my smile fades Brigitte comes into view behind him.

“But I’m going with you,” I say.

He glances over his shoulder at her and faces me again. “No,” he says. “No, I’m going alone.”

In the blur of that second I turn and step toward the house. The words stick to me and expand as I try to outrun them, to be where I was.

“Jacob,” he says, and jogs up behind me. “Talk to me.”

I shake my head, not wanting to speak, and pinch back tears that fight to rise.

“Please.”

I feel his hand on my shoulder and I yank away. When I get to the porch he snags the back of my shirt and stops me.

“Just relax . . . and listen to me!”

I see Beth on the lawn over his shoulder. She moves carefully as she stares at the wreck we are, and I turn from her view.

“Hear me,” he says.

“No.”

“I said—”

“You said you’d bring me,” I say as soft as I can.

“I . . . don’t . . . have . . . a . . .
dime
. Mom gave me a thousand bucks and that’s it, that’s all I have.”

“
I
have cash.”

“No.”

“Bar mitzvah.”

“
My
cash, the o
nly
cash in question went into supplies and getting my ass to Rhode Island. I
have
to get there like . . . yesterday and get a fuckin’ job and a cheap as shit place to sleep. This is what I’m up against.”

“You’re not listening,” I announce, walking closer. “It’s in the bank. It’s a lot.”

“That’s yours.”

“That’s ours.”

“No,” he says, and glances at the street for my dad. “The man, the . . . fella on his way here? The guy who raised you? Remember him? He’ll
ne
-ver stop.”

“Yes he will.”

“You’re lying to yourself.”

“He’ll give up.”

“He’ll find you.”

“No.”

“With
me.
He’ll find you with me.”

“No.”

“And I’ve earned this.”

“Listen.”

“
No,
J!”

I flinch from the bark and look up at him. He lowers his eyes to his shoes.

“I
have
to go now,” he says. “I really have to go. He starts to walk away and I follow him and reach for his arm.

“Wait . . . Wait.”

He glances down at my hand on his wrist. “You’ve got to let go.”

“I’ll get a job too.”

“You live here.”

“You said if you got into school.”

“I can’t just . . . lift you outta here.”

“Why?”

“It’s a crime.”

“A crime? You’re my brother.”

“It’s kidnapping.”

“Let me to talk to Mom,” I plead. “Wait two days.”

“I told you. I got to get there and be settled and find a place
to live. Start painting. I can’t bring you. I
can’t.
Not now.” He leans closer to me and takes my cheeks in his hands. “Root for me,” he whispers. “Be happy for me. Ya know?”

He takes a step backward and I’m surprised to see tears in his eyes. “It’s only Rhode Island,” he says with a shrug.

“Let’s go, Ash,” Nicky says, and revs his engine. Brigitte pulls a bent mascara brush out of her purse and starts applying it on the move. “
I’ll
see you soon, J,” she says with weighty sad eyes. “I promise.”

“Let’s go, Beth!”

Asher holds my shoulders in his hands. “You’re my family,” he says softly, and leans close to my ear. “My brother.”

I turn to see his face.

“I’ll call you,” he says.

I watch him run to the car and dive through the open passenger window. The thing screeches out of the driveway and I see sparks where it scrapes the curb. When Asher pulls his feet in, he climbs out the passenger window and rests his ass on the sill. He blows me a dramatic kiss that flings his arm above his head and I walk into the street so he can see me. And I can see him. Disappear.

Out the back window of my father’s long car, I count the suburban sick-amores that line the north side of Stanyon Road. Like on Saber Street, some of them rise through the seam of sidewalk and grass and have all but crumbled the cement meant to keep them aligned. Rona Milkin sits in the passenger seat in front of me and speaks quickly about something—a luncheon gone awry, greens steeped in oil. My father nods with moderate interest and searches for discourse on his digital radio. From the speaker behind my head I listen to the smear of what he cannot find and vow to leave for Providence before it gets too dark.

“Drenched,” Rona says. “A pool of it at the bottom of the bowl. So, I’m livid. The thing’s soaked. Okay? Soaked. Long
story short, I tell him I’m not interested in who handles decision making in the kitchen. I’m
inter
ested in eating my lunch the way I ordered it.”

“Good for you,” my father mumbles.

“I knew the guy was trouble from the get-go. He was chewing something when he brought our waters.”

The Hebrew word for recess is
hafsaka
. It begins about an hour into my first class and will allow me a chance to leave the building unseen. Bagels are left for us during this time and the halls are quiet and unpoliced for the entire fifteen minutes. Twice before I’ve walked to Jon’s house three blocks away and put cream cheese on my bagel. A woman named Ida calls your house if you’re late. She’s got my father’s home and office numbers but he may not be at either. I’m probably going to need to run.

“What are you looking for, Abe? Let me do it. You drive.”

“I got it, Rone. I can do both.”

The basement door beneath the sanctuary plops you out on Lemur Avenue. In theory I could be in Jon’s driveway about five minutes from the time the bell rings. Whether he’s there or not I’ll take his bike from his garage, ride to Carteret Savings, withdraw as much bar mitzvah cash as they’ll let me, and take a taxi to Newark’s Penn Station.

“Abe, you’re swerving.”

“I’m not swerving.”

“What are you looking for?”

“NPR.”

“You’re on AM.”

The six fifty Amtrak for Providence leaves from track 6 unless it’s raining or snowing—I’m not sure why. Get on the train. Ride for three hours and fifteen minutes and have a room at the Narragansett Inn around elevenish. I block my
face with my suitcase and stare at the back of my father’s head. He switches the radio off and yawns so wide his eyes squeeze closed.

“How ’bout a little preview for Rona?” he says through it.

“What?”

“The Torah reading. Let’s hear it. A little preview for Rona.”

He turns onto Glendale Avenue toward the temple and searches for me in the rearview. Rona starts to twist her rings when the silence gets long. “Piedmont in June,” she finally says. “Look at all this green.”

“Jacob?”

When I look up at the mirror his eyes are there. “Did you hear me?” he says.

“Yes . . .”

“Then let’s hear it. ‘Vaydabaaaaaaaare Adonai.’”

Rona glances back at me and smiles with warmth. “Don’t feel like you have to do it for me,” she says.

“
Yes,
” my father says. “Feel like you have to. I’m asking you to do it. We have two days to make this thing perfect.”

“It’s okay, Abram.”

“It’s not okay. He knows the beginning by heart, we’ve been doin’ it for weeks. Are you sick?” He cranes his neck to see me and reaches for my knee. “Anybody home?
Knock
,
knock.
”

“Who’s there?” says Rona, trying to keep things light.

My father faces her.

“Let’s talk about something else,” she says.

“You’d think I’d asked him to cut his chest open.”

“It’s okay, Abe. Don’t get upset.”

“I’m not upset!”

“I didn’t say you were.”

“All I want is a little of it,” he says.

No. All he wants is his crank monkey to sing his girlfriend a
little Torah ditty before he drops it off at Jew school for three hours. All he wants is what he wants and this time it’s inside my head. Naso, from Numbers 4:21–7:89: “Va’yidaber Adonai el Moshe lemor naso et rosh b’nei gershon gom hem laveit avotom l’michpachtom . . .”

My father thumps the steering wheel with the heel of his palm. “Do you know it or not? We’ve got two days.”

I know it like I know my own name. “I know it,” I say softly. “I’ll do it later.”

“Great,” says Rona. “Later’s great.”

My father slouches in his seat. “Great. It’s all fine with me,” he says. “
I’m
not the one who has to get up there and do it.”

“I hear you sing beautifully,” Rona says. “I was telling your dad I know two other Libras who also read Hebrew very well. Does Jamie Berkowitz still go to your temple?”

Rona’s got her back to the passenger door so she can talk and see me at the same time. She’s an attractive, middle-aged Jewish lady from Landview who once played Dolly to my father’s Horace Vandergelder. She has merlotish brown hair, overly attentive eyes, and enough memorized self-help clichés to sink a battleship. Married three times to “moronic male assholes” she’s now painfully open about the “festering matters of her psyche,” which were “virtually erased” after a series of epiphanies during her first “est-capade.” These matters included her father’s rampant adultery and her mother’s neglect and addiction and her sister’s chronic bulimia and her only son’s amphetamine issues and all of this I learn in the first six minutes of knowing her in a booth at Friendly’s. At the time she was in full tennis-club regalia—the visor, the head and wrist bands, the pleated pink skirt, and had a rock on her pointer finger the size of a plum. Today she’s in a gray suit, having come from yet another in a series of training sessions. By August she says
she’ll be a certified “body catcher” and “confronter,” roles that assist the leader in these Werner Erhard Self-Training Seminars. Rona’s Lord God is a man named Randal, who leads the gatherings from a lawn chair on a portable stage. And ever since my father bumped into her at a Purim carnival this spring, he’s been quite smitten by Randal’s vision and the outcome of his drive-through redemption.