Earth Angel (22 page)

I didn’t know. I’d have to subtly find out from David.

“Dinner, tonight, six o’clock sharp,” David said on the phone. “Sound good?”

“Depends. What’s cooking?”

“Catch of the day.”

“Which is?”

“The catch is: We eat with Rachel and Josh.”

“That’s not so bad,” I said.

“Really? Then you won’t mind an extra helping of God, well-seasoned.” Apparently Rachel was preparing her first traditional
Friday Sabbath dinner and David had promised her that he and Josh would participate in all the rituals if I could come over,
too. “She’s delighted to have you,” David said. “Sure she is,” I said. But I accepted.

I tried to dress casual, but with a sedate spirituality that showed favor to no specific religion but acknowledged the great
imponderable mysteries beyond. A white sundress
topped with a midriff-length coral sweater with tiny shell buttons. My sling-back sandals evoked the biblical era.

Whatever my motivations about having trampy sex with David in that van—whether erotic or martyric—the result was I was still
in orbit around his family. I still had a shot. My plan was to stay close enough so that eventually I could ease my way into
David’s confidence and somehow convince him to accept the gifts from me I planned to lavish on them. Afterward, of course,
I would be on my way. Touch my nose, zip up the chimney. Leaving nothing behind but a bewildered family scratching their heads
and wondering, Who was that masked man?

“This is bullshit,” Josh said as he laid thick silverware from a velvet-lined oak box around the white linen tablecloth on
the dining room table. Real crystal wine glasses glittered at each place setting.

I had just arrived and David was showing me the enormous
hallah
—braided white bread—that Rachel had baked. It sat in the middle of the table, the size and shape of a pregnant armadillo.
“My God, Rachel. That’s beautiful. With poppy seeds, no less.”

“Thank you,” she hollered from the kitchen amid banging pans. “Can’t talk right now. Sorry.”

David explained, “She’s hurrying to finish before sundown. That’s when Sabbath starts. We aren’t allowed to use electricity
after that for twenty-four hours.”

Also, I could have informed him, no driving or handling money. But I just nodded. No need to reveal any more to him about
my past than I had to. I’d already said too much to Rachel.

“This is bullshit,” Josh repeated, louder this time.

David turned to Josh. “Protest acknowledged, Josh. Enough already.”

“I don’t see why we have to go through with this farce just because Rachel’s wigged out. I can’t watch TV because she’s suddenly
a Jew. That’s stupid.”

“We made an agreement, Josh,” David said. “You want to borrow the car next Friday, then you pretend you’re Moses this Friday.
Right?”

Josh laid the last knife down and walked back into the kitchen without saying anything.

“Sorry,” David shrugged. “We’re into the ninth month of
Josh, the Barbarian
, longest-running horror show on Broadway. He’s been something of a jerk lately.”

“It’s understandable,” I said. “His parents were killed. Sometimes the shock doesn’t set in for months or even years later.
Then suddenly people go crazy.”

“That’s what his therapist says. Plus the usual Freudian rap: He’s mad at God or the cosmic forces for unjustly taking his
parents. And, since I’ve replaced his parents, I’ve come to represent those unjust divine forces. Ergo, I’m the villain. You
think there’s something to that or is it a bunch of horseshit?”

I shrugged. “We didn’t cover that in dental school.”

“Among the Malagasay Indians, it is against tribal law for a son to be taller than his father. If he is, he has to pay his
father either money or an ox. That’s how they handle the whole oedipal problem.” He reached over and straightened one of the
crooked place settings, nudging a fork with his finger. “I just don’t want you to take anything he says personally. You ever
hear of Tourette’s syndrome, you know, that disorder where they shout obscenities uncontrollably?”

“Yes, I’ve heard of it.” Technically, it was called Gilles de la Tourette’s syndrome after the French neurologist who first
described it in 1885. Often it begins in childhood and is characterized by repetitive grimaces, twitches, tics, grunts, yells,
and in about half the cases, episodes of coprolalia, which is involuntary use of obscenities. Heredity is a main cause; it
is more common in males; and it usually lasts a lifetime, although drugs such as haloperidol can offer some relief. I’d even
treated a patient with it once.
A young graduate student in his late twenties who’d broken his wrist rollerblading. While I applied his cast and he explained
his doctoral dissertation on Anthony Trollope, he would periodically twitch and bark “Cunt!” or “Bitch!” or “Whore!” He apologized
but I told him I’d found his candor refreshing.

David sighed. “Having a teenager is sort of like having someone with Tourette’s syndrome. You have to warn people ahead of
time that anything said is not necessarily the opinion of management.”

“Deflector shield up, Captain.” I saluted.

He kissed me on the cheek and said, “You crack me up,” though he wasn’t laughing, so I assumed some internal chuckling. He
limped toward the kitchen. His leg seemed worse today. Maybe that van’s floorboards had gotten to him, too. “Be right back.
Want to check on the cook.”

“Can I help? Give me an assignment, I’m very goal-oriented.”

“Rachel insists on doing it all herself. She’s in training. You want something to drink? Lite beer’s as hard as we’ve got.”

“I’m fine, thanks.”

He disappeared into the kitchen. Josh reappeared with linen napkins, which he folded sloppily in half and plopped unceremoniously
on the dinner plates. Each setting had three forks on the left and three knives and a soup spoon on the right. Fork and knife
for fish, fork and knife for meat, and fork and knife for salad and cheese, though there would be no cheese if she was serving
meat, since that wouldn’t be kosher. A small bread dish with a tiny butter knife sat at the upper left of each setting.

“That’s a pretty fancy setup,” I said to Josh. “Where’d you learn to do that?”

“Prison. I took a course in table settings.”

“Boy, times have changed. When I did time, they didn’t offer that. I got stuck with making sock puppets.”

He frowned, looked over at the kitchen door, saw David still talking with Rachel. He leaned toward me and whispered, “Look,
I’m not trying to be an asshole. If you like David, that’s fine. It’s got nothing to do with me. Go for it. You don’t have
to pretend to like me or anything. You don’t have to try to get to know me, okay? I’ll make it simple: I don’t know what college
I’m going to go to, or even if I want to go. I don’t have a steady girlfriend or boyfriend. I don’t want to pierce anything
or tattoo anything. I don’t want to be in a rock ‘n’ roll band. I hate Nirvana and flannel shirts. I don’t give a shit about
movies, TV, or art. I don’t keep up on current events. I’m not a jock sniffer, so I don’t follow sports. Politics sucks. I’m
not a member of Generation X, I’m in Generation Pez. Everybody we admire is on the top of a Pez dispenser.” He sighed. “So,
what have we got to talk about?”

I shrugged. “Summer fashions?”

David, Josh, and I sat at the table. Rachel, wearing a white lace shawl draped loosely over her head, stood at the head of
the table and explained, “Sabbath is the most important day in a Jew’s life, for it is on that day that heaven and earth meet.
This is when we get a foretaste of the world to come. Sabbath is when God and the Jewish people embrace each other with love.
The mystics described the Sabbath as the bride of God, who comes to Him and to his people every Friday at sunset and stays
until the following sunset.”

“So, God has a bride?” Josh said. “Does he have sex, too? Is that where thunder comes from, Mommy?”

Rachel ignored him. She closed her eyes and raised her hands and intoned: “Come, beloved, to greet the Bride; let us welcome
to the Sabbath…” She opened her eyes, picked up a match, struck it. As she touched the flame to the wicks of the candles,
she said: “Blessed are You, Lord our God, King of the World, for You have sanctified us by
your Commandments and commanded us to kindle the Sabbath light.”

“Amen,” I said automatically, as I’d been taught in Hebrew school, though with the Yiddish inflection that sounded like “oh-main.”

Rachel looked at me and smiled. “She’s right, this is where you guys should say Amen.”

David and Josh said “Amen.”

A loud knock at the door startled all of us and we looked at each other as if we feared it was some divine visitation.

“Hey, open up in there,” a woman’s voice hollered. “I’ve been in a taxi for an hour and need to piss a lake.”

“Annie!” Rachel said excitedly. She ran to the door and threw it open.

David’s girlfriend entered.

Rachel was a terrible cook. The pot roast was stringy, the roasted potatoes were dry, the broccoli was mushy. The giant bread
wasn’t baked through and smelled yeasty.

“God, this is good, Rachel,” Annie said, eating heartily. “They should induct you into the Jewish Hall of Fame after this.
You, Paul Newman, Jerry Lewis, Roseanne.”

Rachel beamed. “You don’t think the meat’s a little weird?”

“Yeah, it’s weird, that’s why I’m only having four helpings.” And indeed, she speared another slice of meat and dragged it
to her plate. The rest of us had dutifully eaten one helping of everything, though Josh mostly pushed his around the plate.

“What do you know about good food, Annie,” Josh said, “you’ve been eating bees and ants for the last two years.”

“Shut your mouth, young man,” Annie said, vigorously chewing her pot roast for all of us to see. “Or I’ll show you the aborigine
version of a wedgie. You’d be walking and talking like Minnie Mouse for a week, pal.”

Josh laughed. That laugh caused me more jealousy than if Annie had pulled David onto the table and screwed him on top of the
pot roast. She could break through to Josh any time she wanted. I was a doctor, a pediatrician. Children were my specialty.
If only the children knew that.

“You’ve been in Australia?” I said, faking conversation.

“And now it’s in me,” she said and laughed. “I’ve eaten snake and shit kangaroos.” As I said before, she wasn’t anyone I’d
have picked as David’s girlfriend. For one thing, she was about fifty-two years old, at least ten years older than David.
And she wasn’t a svelte creature, either. She had a brawny thickness around her hips and waist. Her black hair was chopped
short and uneven, as if cut with a Swiss army knife. She wore baggy jeans and a white blouse that covered a fairly flat chest.
She looked rugged, durable. A tornado could hit this house and suck everything into the clouds, but when it all died down
she’d still be sitting here eating and laughing. But there was something else about her, an earthy sensuality and intelligence
that was compelling. If she so much as cleared her throat, we would all look to her for more. She made me feel as if I were
ten.

David didn’t introduce her as his girlfriend, but I could see from their greeting hug, the exchanged looks, that they were
in fact lovers. She was a fellow anthropologist, had even been his teacher when he was in graduate school earning his doctorate.

“Well, David, my boy, I’ve finally done it. Finally found my nutmeg tree.”

“Really?” David smiled. “Where?”

“New York City. Just got back from there. Met with an editor and signed a two-book deal. One is an anthropological study of
the family units in some of the cultures I’ve lived with. The other is a steamy autobiography. You know, single white woman
living in the jungles and deserts with
dark-skinned primitive people. Who’d I sleep with, that sort of thing. If they want sensationalism, they came to the right
gal. I’ve got stories.” She scooped more broccoli onto her plate and shoved a forkful into her mouth. “Congratulations,” David
said. “I can’t wait to read them.”

“You should eighty-six the film, David. Write a book instead. I already talked to my editor about you. She’s very interested.
Especially after what happened with you and those Buddhists. And, of course…” She pointed to his bad leg with her fork. “That
leg thing is a whole book right there. And a couple of movies. We’ve already had interest from the movies in my books, and
all I’ve written so far are outlines.”

“I’ll think about it,” David said without enthusiasm.

“Well, think fast. I gave her your number and she’ll be calling you.” Annie looked David in the eyes and it was the most intense
expression I’d ever seen. It made me sit back in my chair. “Don’t wimp out, David. It’s a nutmeg tree, that’s all.”

“Nutmeg tree?” I said. The conversation had been going so fast that I felt as if I’d been sent to the children’s table. I
decided to assert my adult status and join in the conversation.

“You know where Grenada is?” Annie asked.

“The Caribbean,” I said.

“Right. Well, it’s a poor country and they don’t exactly have a pension fund for retirement, which is why so many there rely
on the nutmeg tree, which is also called ‘the retirement tree.’ Of the 90,000 people there, 7,000 of them are nutmeg farmers,
the average age of these farmers being between 60 and 70. See, these trees take many years to mature but then produce for
about a century. All the old farmer has to do is wait for the nutmeg to fall and then take it to market.”

“We’ve got to get one of those for Josh,” Rachel said. “Slacker’s paradise.”

“I’d laugh, but I’m afraid the taste of this meal might come back into my mouth,” Josh said.

Rachel winced, looked down at her plate.

“Christ, Josh,” Annie said, “when did you become such a prick? You can’t be the same sweet kid I took camping in Yosemite
a year ago. The one afraid to piss in the woods because a bear might bite his pecker off.”

Rachel laughed. “Snack attack.”

Josh didn’t say anything.

“Anyway,” Annie turned to me again, “the nutmeg tree is just what we say when we’re talking about a nest egg for retirement.
Buzz words. Don’t dentists have coded buzz words?”