A Disorder Peculiar to the Country (12 page)

Marshall screwed his face into a mask of disgust.

“How informed do I have to be about Israeli history? I’m an American. When we went to war in Somalia and Kosovo, how much history did I have to know? How much does anyone know about other places’ just-as-complicated histories? I don’t need a course in Zionism, the Balfour Declaration, the Holocaust, UN Resolution Five Million and Three…Fuck it. The only thing that’s important to me as an American is America’s national interests. And Americans are starting to ask themselves, what’s so necessary about this crappy little country that our people have to die for it? Why do we have to make all these foreign policy accommodations for a single ethnic group?”

The men at the table had put their forks down. Until Marshall had spoken the words
crappy little country,
this had been an argument between only him and Joel. He had seen a few flickers of demurral in their faces when Joel had defended the settlers. Steve had seemed to want to jump into the conversation, to mediate it. Now he was paralyzed. Neal’s face had darkened.

Joel’s smile was rock hard. “Spoken like a true anti-Semite.”

“What do you think makes people anti-Semites?” Marshall blurted, or, rather, pretended to blurt. He answered himself in a low, even voice, his mouth tight. “It’s the way every dissent from Israeli policy provokes an accusation of anti-Semitism. It’s the fact that we’re not permitted to talk about Israel in this
country, even though it’s our number one foreign problem. It’s the way that every remark by every non-Jew has to be tested for the stain of anti-Semitism. And I ask myself, in this day and age, why is anti-Semitism the greatest evil the world must contend with? Why is it worse than being anti-Arab?”

Joel shook his head and turned to Neal. “See? Scratch a Gentile. You thought I was making this up. They’ll never accept us, never. Look at their white-bread private schools and the no-Jews country club. That’s why they fought so hard against you and don’t want the least Jewish content in your wedding: no rabbi, a single lousy Jewish prayer, a huge argument just to get the chuppah. I’m not blaming them individually, but their environment is totally inimical to everything you are.”

He turned to Marshall. Marshall recalled that at one time he would have been intimidated by his passion and certainty. Now he didn’t care, he had won complete freedom of expression, even if he was still imprisoned within his marriage. He was crazy! Joel said, “You should educate yourself. Israel’s not going away and neither are the Jews.”

The men were silent and the other diners stared. They expected Marshall to storm from the restaurant. But he smirked, lifted his knife and fork, and returned to his plate. He kept his head down, taking an animal-like pleasure in the meat. After a while the other men resumed eating. The conversation was dead, except for a few murmurs about how good the food was. In fact it was cold. The table was cleared and Joel signaled for the check, but Marshall demanded the dessert menu. He ordered a tiramisù. The other men reluctantly ordered desserts as well. Then there was coffee. He ordered a refill. Even after the check had been paid, Marshall lingered sullenly with Neal, his brother, and his friends on the sidewalk in front of the restaurant, so that they couldn’t go off for a nightcap without him. When they each had finally been deposited in their respective
cabs, Marshall walked by himself to the subway. He felt like singing. Flora’s
thing
. That was it.

JOYCE’S FIRST IMPULSE
was to tell Flora about her affair with Roger, even if it wasn’t really an “affair”—he hadn’t called her since that evening and she hadn’t wanted him to; nor had he called her back after she left her number at his office, several times. But while Flora would have been impressed and deliciously scandalized, the fling with Roger could also have confirmed suspicions, if Flora possessed them, that Joyce was responsible for the failure of her marriage through other self-indulgences and betrayals. The divorce had already lowered her standing in the family. Joyce knew her parents blamed her; they probably recalled from her youth precursor catastrophes. Flora would have heard comments.

As soon as Joyce arrived in Connecticut, she saw that her concerns about Flora’s response were moot: Flora had no time for her confessions. She rushed at her in the driveway, her face flushed, her hair unclipped, desperate to unburden herself, and she hardly said hello to Victor and Viola. The kids had squabbled all the way from the railway station; their grandfather Deke had pretended not to hear, or perhaps truly had not heard. His radio had been tuned to a loud, biliously contentious call-in show. Once the kids were settled the sisters sequestered themselves in Joyce’s childhood bedroom, which had been renovated into a charmless but convenience-rich hotel-like guest chamber, furnished with a television, a writing desk, a dressing room, and, in the adjacent bathroom, little packets of soap and shampoo. Her voice tight, Flora said that certain details involving the caterer and the florist had not yet been finalized—Amanda was still tinkering. Also, she had added to the musical selections some awful seventies pop numbers. Meanwhile, Deke was absent most of the time, apparently indifferent to the wedding.

Joyce asked, “How’s Neal?”

Flora frowned at the non sequitur.

“All right. He’s occupied with his own family. His brother came in last week, they had like a bachelor dinner with some friends, and now they’re picking up their folks at JFK. They’re coming for dinner tonight. Meanwhile I had another argument with Mom. You know, we agreed to that thing. Now it turns out there’s something else, a glass. I didn’t even know about it, but all of a sudden it’s important to Neal. He told me on Sunday. He was adamant about it.”

At that moment they heard their names lofted upward, sung as they had been sung since their infancies: liltingly, with an extra syllable in each name—
Jo-oyce! Flo-ora!
—the extra syllable buoyed by a measure of hope. The hope was that her daughters would not disappoint her. Without another word they went down to the living room, where Amanda had put out on the carpet a flowerless centerpiece basket for Flora’s approval. She was wearing slacks and a cashmere sweater. Joyce was struck by how youthful she looked. She must have been dieting rigorously in the months approaching the wedding.

“Hello, sweetie,” Amanda said, kissing her. “Your munchkins are adorable. The flower girl says the wedding will be on fire.” She smiled. “What can she mean by that?”

“She means it’s going to be exciting,” Joyce said. “She can’t stop talking about it. Vic still isn’t sure what the fuss is about.”

“It’s not a fuss!” Amanda objected, and Joyce saw that she had stumbled into one of the side alleys of the dispute. Flora had probably told Amanda that she was making an unnecessary fuss over the wedding. Joyce regretted her remark, the manifestation of a reflex never to speak of one child without mentioning the other. Oblivious to the wedding preparations, Victor hadn’t observed the fuss at all. Amanda said, “It’s only a great deal of busyness, a few complications. I’m just trying to get this wedding right.”

Joyce wondered if her mother meant to bring to mind her wedding seven years ago, which had been accompanied by several embarrassments: an unwanted guest, Marshall’s cousin, whom they were obliged to invite; a scarily nearly inadequate supply of champagne; Marshall’s ill-considered last-minute mustache; Deke’s rebellion against the affair’s add-on costs; Marshall’s slacker best man, who performed his duties half stoned. Joyce had specifically asked Gottschall to delete the word “obey” from her vows. They had practiced it without “obey” every time. On the day of the ceremony he had employed it anyway. Joyce had replied, “I do,” and had immediately hated herself for it, and hated Marshall too. Did Amanda believe that if they had gotten
that
wedding right, Joyce and Marshall wouldn’t be getting divorced now? It was an offensive thought, but not entirely without reason. Their marital arguments had been prefigured by the premarital, unlike their sex. Joyce sucked in her breath, signaling her displeasure with her mother’s comment.

“Flora says I never consult with her,” Amanda went on, perhaps pretending not to notice Joyce’s vexation. “Well, the florist has kindly allowed me to take home the centerpiece basket, so that Flora can give us her judgment. What do you think, dear?”

“Mom,” Flora said wearily, “I can’t judge the centerpiece without the flowers.”

“You’ve seen the flowers!” Amanda exclaimed, her voice wavering with emotion. It was hard to determine to what extent this drama was being performed for Joyce’s benefit. “But you didn’t like the baskets. You thought they were too formal. This is less formal. Please, use your imagination. If you don’t care for it, I’ll try to locate another.”

“Fine. It’s great.”

“You don’t think it’s great.”

“I do.”

“You think it’s something else I’m imposing on you.”

“I don’t,” Flora said. “Call the florist. This is the centerpiece I want and demand. Please, Mom, can’t we just move on to something else?”

“No more arguments!” Amanda agreed, holding up her hands in surrender. “I have to get into the kitchen and see about dinner. They’ll be here at six.” She confided to Joyce, “It’s veal. I was going to make a pork dish, then I remembered.”

Flora protested, “I’ve told you a hundred times, Mom, Neal loves pork. They’re not religious and they don’t observe kosher regulations. And if they did, nonkosher veal would be just as inadmissible as pork.” She paused. “I think.”

“You think,” Amanda said. “But you don’t know. How could you? They themselves don’t know all the rules and regulations, which as far as I can see are completely arbitrary. Certain butchers are kosher, some are not—but isn’t the meat the same? They have kosher
salt,
for God’s sake. How can a grain of salt be more Jewish than another grain of salt? I’m glad to oblige them, of course, as best I can, and it’s all very colorful and exotic—I’ve always been pro-Israel—but really. They say they’re not religious, and then they come up with one religious demand after another. Now there’s this to-do about a glass.”

Joyce nodded. “Flora started telling me.”

“Oh, the glass! The glass! First, we offered to have Gottschall read a Jewish prayer. Then they came back and said they wanted this thing carried into the church, some kind of canopy thing they wanted to stand under when he read the prayer. Who’s going to know what
that
is? It will look very silly up there in Canaan Christ Church. There was never any question of this being a Jewish wedding. They knew Flora was Christian and we were Christians, and in fact, some of us take our faith very seriously—never mind that. But they insisted on a Saturday evening wedding after the Sabbath they don’t observe and we agreed to it and they insisted on the canopy and we agreed
to it. Now they’ve just came back and said they need to break a glass.”

“That’s right, Mom,” Joyce recalled now. “I’ve seen it done at Jewish weddings, even mixed ones. Like at Annette’s. They drink wine from a glass, put it under a blanket, and step on it. The glass-breaking symbolizes that even in moments of great joy they have to keep in mind the sorrows of the world, especially the Jewish exile from Jerusalem. And the canopy’s a symbolic new home for the couple: it’s called a chuppah. The ceremony’s very sweet, actually, very moving and not religious at all.”

“Okay. Great. It’s not my wedding. You want to break a glass, Flora, go ahead,” Amanda said, heading toward the kitchen and pretending not to be mollified. In fact, Joyce had said precisely the right thing, probably by mentioning Annette, whose family represented serious old money up in Boston. Joyce felt she had just scored points as a peacemaker.

Flora sighed. “It’s been like that all week, one argument after another. And Neal! He admits he just thought of the glass, but he says it’s vitally important. You know, it wouldn’t be so annoying if he’d been more involved from the start, but everything with him is an occasion for another one-liner…”

Joyce went to her room to shower and change for dinner. The kids were playing on the front lawn by themselves, taking advantage of the liberties granted by the suburban civil order. They had been generating an enormous amount of noise, but her bedroom was in the back, putting her out of range. She was pleased by her intervention in her mother’s dispute with Flora. It had been timely, shrewd, and genuinely fair-minded. She felt like Jimmy Carter.

After her bath she wrapped herself in a towel and lay on the double bed that had replaced the one from her childhood. She marveled at how impersonal the guest room was and how much she welcomed its impersonality. Close your eyes and you
couldn’t recall the subject of the print hanging over the desk, nor the color of the walls or the bedspread. Here lingered no trace of family or self. You could forget history. Everything that had ever happened to her seemed to have taken place on another continent, in a distant century.

MARSHALL WAS CRAZY
, no doubt about it. He drove crazy down the Merritt Parkway, speeding, chortling, cackling, pounding the top of the roof of his car with his windows open as his radio blasted away. It was forty degrees outside. He was crazy and crazy made him strong. He could do whatever he wanted now, absolutely anything, he was a crazy fucking divorcing superpower.

He had no idea how this was going to turn out. He was operating on blind scamming instinct: say this, do that, yes sir, I’m calling on behalf of Neal Weiss. From the moment he first wished Neal good luck, Marshall had bulled his way through enemy territory without any idea of where his next opportunity would present itself. His trusting to chance was the true mark of a madman.

It was like going back into the building and finding Lloyd. He didn’t know what would happen next and he didn’t care. Fuck Joyce and fuck her whole fucking family.

NEAL’S FAMILY ARRIVED
at six, precisely on time as if, Joyce speculated, they were conforming to what they thought were the rigors of WASP punctuality. This speculation wouldn’t have occurred to Joyce if it hadn’t been for the discussion about the glass-breaking ceremony. She didn’t think she usually entertained generalized expectations about Jews, among whom she had lived and worked her entire adult life, or about what Jews thought of non-Jews. She had hardly ever considered her
putative brother-in-law’s faith. But just as she had begun to expect his family to be something more old-country than he was, or at least something more Long Island, Harold and Elise Weiss arrived at the front door tall, tanned, and fit like Neal, perfectly Californian. The couples exchanged handshakes within the conventional American boundaries of social warmth. No one kissed. Flora and Neal eyed each other, trying to determine from each other’s expression before Neal’s parents and brother even took off their coats how the other thought the dinner was working out. Amanda waved her guests into the living room. Deke poured some Scotch for Harold and the two men hastened to discuss Sunday’s football matchups, ignoring the Saturday event.