As Close to Us as Breathing: A Novel (23 page)

All morning Howard seemed that way: confident, knowing. By noon he’d made an easy seven sales, a good number, but not so unusual for a talented salesman like him. After lunch, though, and in just an hour, he made seven more. “Call me Bob!” Howard quipped at one point, passing Nelson, who was standing near the register, doing nothing but gazing at Main Street. Crazy to say yes, he was telling himself anxiously.

A few hours later Nelson stood in the office as Mort and Leo, their weekend suitcases nearby, prepared to go to Woodmont. Seeing those suitcases, Nelson dropped down into the basement. Soon the drums of “Sing, Sing, Sing” had his feet tapping despite the melancholy—a regular piece of Friday—that he felt creeping up on him.

Crazier, he realized anew, to say no.

When he emerged from the basement it was time for them to leave, and Howard was suddenly at Nelson’s side. “Thanks again for everything,” Howard said. Through the office doorway Nelson could see Mort speaking on the phone and jotting something down as he did. Nelson cleared his throat. “Sure, sure,” he said.

Then he and Howard walked into the back office together.

“What’s that?” Mort asked Howard, noticing the packages of shirts in his hands, the ones he’d chosen the day before.

“I thought he could use a few things for college,” Nelson explained, stepping in front of Howard protectively. But Howard didn’t need his help. Not just then. He was back on the sales floor, whistling. A few minutes later Mort, Leo, Howard, and Nelson walked to the front doorway and Howard practically ran from the dim interior of Leibritsky’s Department Store past his father and uncle and into the brightness of the afternoon. “Let’s go,” he said. He had his suitcase in one hand and the car key in the other.

Mort took a few steps outside then turned back to speak to Nelson.

“Happy kid. He really enjoyed this week, Nelson. You’re what he enjoyed the most.” He patted Nelson’s shoulder several times. “You’re a good brother. A good uncle.”

Out on the sidewalk again, Mort turned Nelson’s way and waved.

“Good Shabbos, my brother.”

“Sure, sure. Good Shabbos,” he said.

B
ut in Woodmont, Shabbos that evening wasn’t good. The men arrived and my mother, in her oddly matched housedress and wedge sandals, had challenged the rules. After that—and throughout what felt like the longest meal ever—my parents didn’t speak, and the next morning, after the men returned from services, Mort packed his bag, told Leo to pack his, and they were off. “See you in two weeks,” Mort announced, stunning us. He wasn’t coming back the next week. That hadn’t happened before.

Hearing the news, my mother hung her head. He might as well have punched her in the stomach. His absence, we all knew, was her punishment, her humiliation.

But then the car revved, they were gone, and suddenly Ada’s mood shifted. She raised her head. She crossed her arms over her chest. She kicked a clamshell that had made its way onto our front porch. “Good riddance,” she told the thing. Then she breathed deeply. Then she smiled.

Vivie was less content. “It’s not just about you,” she told Ada once the men had left. She was standing on the porch beside Ada.

“Leo can drive right back once he gets to Middletown. He has a car,” Ada countered.

“He’d never. You know that. He can barely drive himself from home to work without getting queasy.” Vivie turned to go inside. “Two weeks!” she said as the screen door slammed behind her.

Two weeks was a long time away from Leo, but once Vivie had her say with Ada, she didn’t raise the matter again. Instead, whatever discontent lingered she channeled into her cooking, or so it seemed, for that week and the next Vivie spent largely in the kitchen, experimenting with an array of new recipes, only to cook by the end of that first week entirely recipe free. She was inventing meals of a kind we’d not had before. One night she served us a noodle casserole filled with tomatoes, zucchini, onions, and peas—all from Treat’s—simmered in a mushroom sauce. On another night she made a cold noodle salad, also filled with the season’s vegetables and lightly flavored with a garlic mayonnaise. These were new tastes for us—so different from the meatloaf and potatoes, the roasts of beef and chicken, or the franks and beans we were used to—and we couldn’t heave enough spoonfuls of her concoctions onto our plates. Nearly every day she needed fresh vegetables from Treat’s, and by Thursday of the first week without Leo she took to bicycling there herself, borrowing one of the Weinsteins’ bikes to do so. She looked hilarious, Nina and I thought, pedaling off in her skirt and hose that she’d changed into just for the shopping, the kerchief she’d wrapped around her head flapping as she gained speed.

That week, the second one of August, while Vivie expanded her range in the kitchen, Ada expanded her dunking to a second time daily, in the late afternoon. This she did with Davy and me jumping in delight beside her. “Don’t splash or I’ll turn myself right around,” she’d warn, and then she’d stand still for a moment before she’d turn and splash each of us, and then lower herself until we couldn’t see her anymore. A moment later she’d pop up, the water streaming off her rubber cap, her eyes shut tight as if she were still beneath the sea. The sight of her this way, drenched and happy, teasing us, taking time out for us like this, was exhilarating. In we’d dive, following her, and just as we’d catch up to her, our arms outstretched, ready to grab her—for that became the instant point of this new game: to touch her, grab her, be grabbed by her—down she’d go again, only to pop up a few feet away. And so the chase continued until, exhausted, we’d just float, the gentle waves of the Long Island Sound undulating softly beneath our backs, the wispy clouds in the sky above as interesting to gaze at as any face, the murmur of water in our ears a kind of song.

Those afternoons while we swam and Vivie cooked, Bec sewed with renewed vigor. Before taking off for New York with Tyler, she was determined to leave her mark on each of us, a specially designed new dress, the dresses of our dreams. She was even making another one for Nina, this time in a less flashy style, a dress she’d be more apt to actually wear. “Too bad I’m not a girl,” Davy remarked one afternoon, leaning on Bec’s shoulder as he watched her run a seam under her Singer. That’s when Bec decided she’d make Davy a fall jacket. “I just have to get myself back to New Haven for some fabric,” she said, and then she called Tyler from the phone in our dining room, for the first time suggesting he come get her on a Thursday rather than Friday. She’d stay Thursday night in her apartment in New Haven, she told us, then she’d be there for a fitting she had to attend anyway on Friday while she also shopped for Davy’s fabric. She needed a little more time in town, she noted. “Don’t want to be late again for Shabbos,” she added, winking and smiling as if she’d just made a great joke.

“Shabbos?” my mother quipped, as if she’d never heard the word before.

“Oh, Ada,” Vivie said. But by this time even she grinned. “Just don’t push your luck too far,” she warned her sister. “Remember, it’s our luck too.”

That week Davy and his drawing partner Lucinda Rossetti weren’t getting along, at least as far as he was concerned. She kept mailing him that confounding picture, making the lines of brown, gray, and blue, on top of the red foundation, taller and thicker, like stalks of an unidentifiable species. Even Sal Luccino, to whom Davy showed the picture in something like desperation, couldn’t figure it out. “You got me,” Sal said, handing the drawing back to Davy and then handing him an ice cream. “But why not ask Lenny Bagel?” Sal said. “He knows everything.”

This idea pleased Davy, and though Lenny Bagel was home, in his box with the other puppets, Davy instantly adopted his persona. “What the goddamn hell? You call that a
picture?
” Davy said, and as he turned from Sal he didn’t walk home so much as shuffle, for it was old news already that Lenny Bagel was exhausted from his life of work, work, and more work.

For a whole three days that week Nina didn’t read a book. She’d finished the Lincoln biography. I happened to be reading a pile of
Archie
comic books I’d borrowed from my friend Anna Weiss, which I suggested Nina might like to share. To my delight she agreed. And so on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday we read those comics on the porch after breakfast, at the beach at midday while deepening our tans, and just before sleep while side by side in the sofa bed. Something about the comics, though they weren’t exactly hilarious, loosened her up, made her laugh. And the more she did, I did too, in a kind of helpless, hysterical simpatico.

By Thursday of that week we were done with the pile of comics, and before I knew it Nina had abandoned me for another serious book that her father had left with her. This one was called
Coming of Age in Samoa.
Of the author, anthropologist Margaret Mead, Leo had written,
Bravery: all by herself, only twenty-four years old, a mind as sharp as yours, Nina, and Mead goes halfway around the world to live the primitive life. What does she find there? Who does she come to know? Girls, just your age, Nina. But are they just like you?

By bedtime Thursday night Nina had nearly finished the book. The focus on girls compelled her, and she’d not stopped reading, except to eat, the entire day.

“Are they?” I asked that night from my side of the sofa bed. “Are the Samoan girls just like you?”

“Reading my father’s notes?” Nina answered, mildly irked. She held the book, her father’s note tucked into its pages, close to her chest.

“Maybe.”

“Maybe, Molly? Maybe?”

“Maybe, yes. Maybe, yes, I saw it on the bed. I’m sorry.”

She nodded, accepting the apology.

“Well, are they?” I repeated.

“You want to read it yourself?”

“I’d rather hear it from you. Are the Samoan girls just like you?”

She stared at the living room ceiling. The floor creaked upstairs; my mother was getting ready for bed. So was Vivie. Bec had already left that day for New Haven and the sunporch off the far end of the living room seemed not only dark but sadly so.

Finally Nina answered. “I’d say they’re more like
you.
They’re easy. Relaxed. They’re a bunch of Linda Bagels, those happy Samoan girls.”

“I’m not so relaxed,” I said, suddenly defensive of my personality, the same as my alter ego puppet, who was in fact relatively untroubled.

“Molly, it’s a good thing,” Nina said. “I wish I were more like you.”

This was news. Hopeful, I asked, “You want to go to Sloppy Joe’s tomorrow, get a ras-lime soda?” Just recently, Howard and Mark Fishbaum had gotten into the habit of going there with a gang of friends after dinner. They’d abandoned all the childishness of Sal Baby and his Good Humor truck. I was hoping to follow their lead.

“Oh, Molly,” Nina answered, almost exasperated. She kicked her legs under the sheet and threw the book in the air then caught it. “I’d rather go to Samoa,” she said. “I really would.”

We were quiet then, Nina staring up at the ceiling, and me staring at the book in her hands. There was a photograph of young Margaret Mead on the cover, dressed in native Samoan attire—a headband, a tiered skirt, a long beaded necklace—and standing between two smiling Samoan girls. “Are they always smiling?” I asked after a time. “Is that what you mean?”

“Let’s put it this way, Molly. If we were in Samoa we’d probably lose our virginity about now—at my age I would, at least—and with an older man. A grown man. But not someone who wanted to marry me. The whole thing would be a kind of fling, and not a particularly big deal. The culture is relaxed about it.” She paused then repeated the word
relaxed.
“And if we were Samoan,” she continued, her voice suddenly but a whisper, “we might even have a special girl our own age to play around with—you know, to
sexually
play around with.” Nina’s eyebrows were raised as she turned my way. “It’s not common, but it’s possible. Can you imagine
that,
Molly?”

But she was way ahead of me. I couldn’t imagine any of it. I answered by turning from the Samoan girls on the book’s cover and slipping my head under my pillow. “They’re not like me,” I called into the pillow.

“Molly, I didn’t mean they’re like you sexually. I just meant they have a certain comfort with their lives, like you.”

I lifted the pillow and blinked up at Nina. No one had ever used the word
sexually
in a sentence directed at me before.

Nina pressed on. “When the time comes, it’s going to be easy,” she assured me. She put the book on the floor by her side of the sofa bed and then slipped under the covers. We were face to face. “I didn’t mean to upset you,” she said quietly.

“That’s a scary book,” I told her. “Did your father really read it?”

“It’s a wonderful book. And no, he got this one just for me. Other worlds,” she then said, her voice soft, as if she were about to tell me a child’s story. “Other ways, other possibilities.”

And with that Nina’s breath deepened, and I sensed soon enough that though she typically fell asleep after me, she was already pleasantly dreaming.

Since arriving back at Woodmont, Howard had taken Nelson’s advice. He and Megan had talked each day, for a half hour or so, at the close of their shifts at Treat’s. He’d begun to see her in the evenings too. On Tuesday he’d walked with her after their respective dinners from a mutual meeting point on Hillside Avenue the short distance to Sloppy Joe’s. When they arrived he didn’t see Mark and his other friends milling about outside the place as they often were, and so he suggested that they head inside. “Let’s get something cold,” he suggested.

He and Megan were just inside the door when he spotted Mark sitting in a booth with two other friends, Steve Gutterman and Jack Epstein. Jack had a sailboat too, a Lightning, and just the day before he and Steve had sailed alongside Mark and Howard in the direction of Long Island and back. The sail had the charged edge of a race, though no one acknowledged as much. Still, Howard was glad that Mark’s Sailfish, with some careful tacking by Howard, had come ashore first. At that moment, noticing the three turn toward then quickly away from him and Megan, whom he knew they didn’t think he should be with, the memory of winning that unofficial race gave him at least some confidence.

A hand on the small of Megan’s back, Howard steered her toward the booth, where he introduced her to his friends. Mark was the only one to speak to her, offering a tentative “hey,” before he, like Steve and Jack, took to sipping his drink with unnecessary focus. A crushing silence followed. Ordinarily Howard would have squeezed himself in on one side of the booth and suggested Megan take the other side, but none of the three signaled in any way that they join them.

“Looks good,” Megan said, obviously speaking about the drinks.

Again, no one responded.

“Mark?” Howard said. “Mark?” He didn’t know what he meant to ask him, but Mark’s acquiescence to the silence surprised Howard. Mark wasn’t just a friend, he was a best friend, and that meant they’d never betray each other. “Mark?” Howard repeated.

“It’s okay,” Megan said, and when Howard turned her way he saw that she was embarrassed, blushing. Her arms were crossed tightly over her white blouse and tiny drops of perspiration had formed over her top lip. When she nodded toward the door Howard returned his hand to the small of her back, ready to walk with her out of Sloppy Joe’s.

But before he did he appealed once more to Mark. “For crying out loud, Mark,” he said. “It’s me.
Me.
”

“I know it’s you,” Mark answered, finally looking at Howard, but only at Howard. Megan, Howard sensed, must have felt she was shrinking away.

Howard threw his arm over Megan’s shoulders, pulled her close, gave her a grin. “See you ’round,” he told the three at the table. He continued holding Megan close as he walked out the door.

“I wasn’t really thirsty,” he told her when they stepped outside, beyond Sloppy Joe’s.