An Absent Mind (6 page)

Saul

My Will

S
he’s pushing me around like some kind of kid in the playground. I mean, I’m still okay, not gone off the deep end—yet. Why can’t she just let me be? Let me have the last whatever time I have to be happy. But that’s not her style. She’s still as pushy as ever, still the master controller. Still wants to run the damn show.

Today was a perfect example. She must have called Nat Friedman sometime during the night. I heard some noises while I was tossing and turning in bed. At first, I thought it was the cat, but I don’t think we have one. And besides, the sounds were too big. So it must have been her in cahoots with Friedman. I’ve suspected them for a long time. They’re trying to steal my money, making sure my final days are miserable and denying the kids what is rightfully theirs. Friedman was always a money-grubber. One of those two-bit lawyers who prey on their clients by jacking up fees to whatever they think they can get away with. He’s done it to me, to Arthur Winslow, to everyone who goes to him. Why we keep going back, I don’t know, except they’re all the same. I remember Jeff Miller, a big shot tax lawyer with one of the major firms in the city. I referred a friend to him, and he hosed him so badly for doing almost nothing. Worse thing was, he didn’t even do what little work there was. He passed it down to some minion, showed up for a couple of meetings, and then sent a bill that would have sunk the
Titanic
—but that’s another story.

I can accept the overcharging, but I don’t think someone like Friedman should use his fancy degree and being a member of the Quebec Bar—big deal, member of the Bar—to take advantage of Monique. Although my guess is that the last few years she didn’t need a lot of coaxing. I think she’s been fooling around for a long time. But Friedman, he’s supposed to be my friend. Some friend, speaking to my wife in the middle of the night, conspiring to get rid of me so they can be together and steal all my money.

Well, I showed them today. Friedman wanted to be the guy who handles my stuff while I’m alive and wanted Monique to help him. Do I look like a schmuck? I know they’re both like vultures waiting for their prey to die so they can suck on its sweet flesh. They want the right to kill me. Yes, that’s correct—kill me. When you sign one of those things, and if you’re a little bit off your rocker, or in a … you know, like a deep-sleep thing, they can tell the doctor to kill you. In two seconds, they can send you to heaven or hell.

So I sat there and listened and nodded and whatever, and they thought I was being suckered by their sneaky plan. But when Monique left the room, I told Friedman I wasn’t going to let them do me in. He gave me one of his phony endearing smiles and assured me that wasn’t the case.

“What is the case?” I asked.

He said he was only trying to help me, to look after me, to watch over the family, Joey, Bernie, Florence, and, of course, Monique.

“Yeah, I bet you’re going to look out for the family,” I said. I told him I knew about him and Monique.

Again he plastered that sympathetic smile of his on his face, like he was so sorry for my inability to see the truth. Sometimes I think they take a full semester in law school learning how to do that smile. Friedman must have got an A. Anyway, I told him he wasn’t going to be the one who decided anything about my money, or when I die. He put his hand on my arm and asked me to reconsider, again giving me that damn beaming grin of his. God, I would have liked to have dented a few of those too-white teeth of his. But then he probably has big connections with the police, being a big shot lawyer and all. And I didn’t want to spend my last days in some stinking jail having those perverts try to make me their girl, or whatever you call it. Those guys are sick, really sick. Sicker than me. Can you imagine big macho guys doing that stuff to each other? No wonder they send them to jail!

Enough of that. Let me tell you how I handled the will thing. You see, at first, before I knew that Monique was fooling around, I was leaving her everything, so long as she took care of the kids and willed them whatever was left when she was gone. So while she was sitting in Friedman’s conference room, filing her nails, or whatever women do when they have nothing to do—which in Monique’s case is often. I mean volunteer work at the YMCA … big deal. She never really worked. I mean never had a real job. She always said she wanted to but that she couldn’t find work because she had no experience. Then when she got older, she said no one wanted to hire a woman her age. Gimme a break. If she wanted to get off her fat tush and find a job, she could have. But she preferred to have me sweat day and night to make the money while she played mahjong with her fancy lady friends. Well, they say you always marry your mother!

Anyway, while she was in there, I discussed it all with Friedman. Yeah, I decided to keep Friedman as my lawyer. I’m getting too sick to start changing at this point, and they’re all crooks anyway. He told me maybe I should just keep everything as is and that if I want to make changes in the future, I should let him know. That makes sense, I guess, because first of all, I’ll be damned if I’ll pay him to change my will twice—there would be almost nothing left! And besides, I’ll see how Monique behaves. Maybe I’ll leave her something; maybe I won’t.

Saul

First Confession

I
heard Monique talking to Florence on the phone. At least I think it was Florence, because she called her “honey,” like she does sometimes. She never calls Joey that. In fact, when she refers to Joey in conversations with me, she always says “that son of yours,” stuff like that.

Now, I know Joey is her son. I was at the hospital when she gave birth, although it was hard to watch. I’m just like Florence; I can’t stand the sight of blood. When Joey came out covered with the stuff, my whole body shook, like when my father would roll his tongue between his teeth and hit me when I was a kid. He did that a lot, and I was always waiting for his tongue to drop to the ground and blood to pour from his mouth. But that never happened.

It seemed he was always hitting or kicking me under the dining room table, and that hurt, because I never thought I had done anything wrong. I already told you I was a tough guy, but I was a fair tough guy.

Joey and Monique were born under different signs. He is a Taurus, and she is an Aquarius. But I’m an Aquarius, too, and I love Joey. I’m not saying she doesn’t have any feelings for him, but they’re not the same as her feelings for Florence. Sure, he isn’t as easy as Florence, but so what. I probably wasn’t as easy as my sister, Miriam, but my father should have loved me, too.

Monique asked Florence to go shopping for things to childproof our house. No one told me that I was going to be a grandfather again. That’s wonderful news!

She’s been gone a long time. Maybe she is seeing someone else. She has been acting a bit funny lately. My guess is that she wants to leave me and doesn’t know how to tell me because I’m sick. Well, I wish she would just do it and get it over with.

I have always been faithful to Monique—except for one affair with Gisele at the paper company. I already was the owner by that time, and she was my secretary. She didn’t have knockers like Monique, but she had legs like that actress—what’s her name … yeah, Marilyn Monroe—and she showed them off, especially when she bent over the file cabinet. She was young, real young. I don’t mean young enough for me to get in trouble with the police.

I would always close up the office. She generally stayed late, and one night things just happened. I never felt particularly guilty about it because I didn’t love Gisele, but she did do things to me Monique never had.

I asked Monique one day, after Gisele showed me some of her tricks, if she would, well, you know …

Monique told me I was a disgusting pig, or words to that effect. My father was right: you don’t marry Jewish women for sex. I guess that includes converted Catholics. Not that we didn’t have sex, but let’s just say they should have named the missionary position the rabbi position.

Monique

The Ultimate Consumer

T
ypically, I don’t leave Saul alone in a room for more than a few minutes at a time, and that’s usually when I’m doing my housework or calling the store to deliver groceries.

Now I have come to realize that a lot can happen in just a few minutes. It started with subscriptions to
Time
magazine and
Newsweek
. And then there was the aluminum siding. It seems that a telemarketer had called and convinced Saul that new siding would enhance the appearance of the house. When the installation people called to make an appointment, I had to inform them that since the house was brick, it wouldn’t be a good idea to put aluminum siding over it. He laughed, thinking I was joking, but when I insisted, he said he had a contract guaranteed by a credit card and would have someone from accounting call me to straighten things out.

But the best was yet to come. Last Tuesday afternoon, the doorbell rang. I looked through the front window and saw a Fournier Carpets truck. When I opened the door, two men stood there with a work order to clean the wall-to-wall carpet in the living room. That would have been fine, except we have oak floors and antique Oriental rugs.

I talked my way out of all of those, and the people were very nice. One who wasn’t so nice was the life insurance salesman who arrived at seven o’clock two weeks ago, having made an appointment with Saul. I explained that my husband has Alzheimer’s and that we wouldn’t be needing his help. He said that was even more reason I should buy a policy on my life, since he obviously figured out he couldn’t sell one on what was left of Saul’s days on this earth. When I apologized for the third time and started to close the door, he stuck his foot between the door and the frame long enough to give me a piece of his mind. Saul heard the commotion and came out from the living room. Even after I had explained Saul’s situation, the man started in on him. What kind of horrible person would do that?

I slammed the door, and the man’s foot in the process. It took only three days to receive a letter from his lawyer. That’s another thing I’ll have to deal with, on top of everything else.

Saul

A Solid Left Hook

W
hen I went into the kitchen, Monique’s mascara was running, as usual. Her head was tucked into her knockers and her whole body was heaving. I asked her what had happened.

She looked up and pointed her finger at me. “Don’t you ever do that again,” she shouted, “or I’ll have you put away!”

“Do what?” I asked. It wasn’t her mascara running—I mean, yes, it was running, but she had an ugly bruise under her right eye. I asked her what had happened, and she glared at me. She has learned over the years to copy my Reimer stare. I say copy, because it doesn’t have the same intensity as mine, but it’s a pretty good imitation, nonetheless.

She claimed that I’d slugged her. Now one thing I would never do is hit a woman. Not that some of them didn’t deserve it at times, including Monique and that holier-than-thou mother of mine. My mother would never punish me; she would just advise me that Larry would take care of all that stuff when he got home from work. She was like the announcer on television who would tell the viewers that so-and-so would be on next—so stay tuned! And the first thing she would say to my father when he walked through the door was, “Do you know what your son did today?”

That was all Larry needed. Frankly, he didn’t need her help. He could have found something I did wrong all by himself, and generally did, even before his first scotch, at least the first scotch he drank at home. My father always reeked of liquor when he arrived home from work. Maybe he really was an accountant; but, if so, his biggest client must have been Johnnie Walker!

Anyway, regardless of whether or not a woman deserves a beating, Saul Reimer is not the one to administer it. So, no, I didn’t hit Monique. I may be getting … no, I know I am getting worse, but that isn’t something I would ever do, no matter how bad I get.

“So who did it?” I asked her. Was she fooling around, and her lover belted her because she wouldn’t do those tricks he liked? When I said that, she pushed me aside and ran into her bedroom, sobbing. I say her bedroom, because even though we share a bed in there, everything else is hers, and everything is pink or yellow.

She slammed the door so hard, it made my head hurt. My head seems to hurt quite a bit lately. I can’t stand the noise of the vacuum cleaner or the washing machine. Monique says the house has to function and that I need fresh clothes. When I have an accident, I throw my underwear into the trash by the back door. Somehow it reappears in my drawer, clean and neatly folded, but we never talk about it.