Peep Show (10 page)

“No. This was in a box in the garage and—”

“You decided to come here, in front of my friends?”

“Mom?” I say and touch her arm.

She flinches. “I want you to leave.” I see a tear jump from her eye. “I love you,” she says and cries harder. “You're my son, David. But I want you to leave here. I want you to leave.”

The feeling is in my bones and blood. A trickling of nerve endings that prickles my skin. She walks back on the sidewalk, then runs to Becca and Debra on the porch. I get in the car and drive past them, watching them crane their necks as I go. My sister raises her hand to wave and I instinctively do the same, but she can't see me. There's no way she saw me. My mother's tears are on my hand. Or maybe they're mine. I'm crying, just here alone, driving and moaning like an idiot, like an actor in a movie, weeping as he goes, somewhere, nowhere, back to my father.

T
HE DANCER IS
an Asian burlesque performer and she's dipping her big toe into a five-foot martini glass. It's a larger crowd than I've ever seen around the main stage. The music is live, a three-piece band with a drummer, a sax player, and a piano that's tucked in the corner off stage right. I don't see my father or Brandi or Leo, but Jocko is tending bar. I ask him where my dad is and he points to the ceiling. Up the stairs, I go. Brandi's in the dressing room across from my dad's office. There are five or so girls in
there, all sitting and smoking and listening to her as she applies something to her face.

“Sleek here with elongated high arches. Shave them if you're a diehard but pencil and some patience is better. The rest is the same as before. Your face should be a creamy pale ivory with rose-toned cream blush applied to the cheeks with powder. If none of you . . . David!” She walks over to kiss me on the cheek. “Where'd you go, your dad is worried?”

“I was in Jersey.”

“Go see him. There's pizza in the office. Pepperoni and mushroom.”

Across the hall, I open the door.

“Fuck off, Bobby. I've been bookin' acts in Atlantic City as long as there's
been
an Atlantic City.”

My father waves me over to him, puts his hand over the phone. “Where ya been?”

I remove the picture from my pocket and place it in front of him on the desk. In the silence that follows, I look out the window toward Broadway. I've noticed this before but if I lean the top half of my body outside, I can see the enormous neon penis that hangs off the Marion Theatre. Within a few seconds it will fire those thousand tiny bits of white confetti into the air. I lift my Nikon and wait for it to snow in May. Three, two, one,
boom
, there it goes.
Click. Click. Click.
I feel my father's hands on my arm.

“You're gonna fall,” he says.

Click
.

5. Smashed Staircase Railing

4. Old Man with Hand in Garbage Can

“David?”

3. The Hasid and the Stripper

2. Burnt Orange Sun Setting between Skyscrapers

1. It's Snowing on Broadway in May

“I guess we should talk,” my father says.

I come in out of the window and stand with him, his hands on my shoulders.

“Ask me questions,” he says. The band finishes downstairs and lazy applause is heard. “Ask me anything.”

I put my camera on his desk before opening the top of the pizza box. “Mushroom. Can I have some?”

B
Y LATE
M
AY, SPRING FADES
in New York and I can't find a breeze anywhere. Summer will be early and hot, I can tell. In the shower I decide I'm in a jungle rainstorm near Tikal. It's a typhoon, really, a mass dumping from the sky that leaves me deaf to the world beyond the plummeting storm.

“Save some hot water,” Brandi yells from outside the bathroom, and strangely I'm back from Guatemala. When I come out I see the French final in the manila envelope on my bed. This one is multiple choice and like the other exams I'll take it alone and unmonitored at the kitchen table. SPD is the category. “Split parent dwelling.” The status is one of empathy, I think, and allows me to be trusted more than students whose parents still like each other.

1. Je ___________ assez bien Paris, mais je ne ___________ pas où habite le Président de la République.

a. sais . . . connais

b. sais . . . sais

c. connais . . . sais

d. connais . . . connais

I go with C.

2. J'ai rencontré Claudine et je ___________ invitée à sortir ce soir.

a. l'ai

b. la ai

c. lui ai

d. l'y ai

A?

3. Réflexion d'un touriste: ___________ Bordeaux les enfants parlent français!

a. À

b. Aux

c. En

d. Dans

I don't know, D.

4. Je voudrais que vous ___________ à la maison avant minuit.

a. soyez

b. serez

c. êtes

d. être

I think these are all fine.

5. X: Quand vas-tu voir tes amis de Grenoble?

Y: Je vais dîner avec _________ ce soir.

a. elles

b. leurs

c. ils

d. eux

No idea.

I'm late. I decide to finish later and hurry to get to Larry's by two o'clock. His store is gutted; the chipped linoleum floor is covered in dust. He's got everything in boxes, including sixteen film canisters of porn movies that were never part of the deal. He says he has to get rid of them so he'll “give” them to me—long pause—for five hundred even. I tell him I'll talk to my dad, but I doubt it. He asks me how much I think it'll be to buy porn from LA or San Francisco. “This is a steal,” he says.

I suggest he throws them in for free since he won't have much use for them in Boca Raton. Ole Larry shakes his head and runs his finger over the canisters.

“Ten each,” he says.

“Deal,” I say, like I'm Monty Hall. Though I haven't watched the movies, I'm pretty sure they're fine. Girls with
no clothes on. People fucking. I'm sure they're fine. For the next three hours, Larry reads off his inventory as I tag everything in the store with product markers. The dildos take the longest: “The Great American, $15.00. The Squirter, $10.50. The Challenge, $15.00. Five-inch balls, $9.50. White realistic, $10.00. Black realistic, $18.00. Willy, an even $10. Knobby Ed, $9.50. Uncle Bobo, $15.00. Cock nose with headgear, $20.00. King Kong Dong . . .”

T
UESDAY MORNING IS
graduation. My father wakes me with another new camera. It's a Graflex, a Crown Graphic 4x5 with an Ektar 127mm f/4.7 lens. He puts it in my hands before I even open my eyes and it's beautiful and thoughtful. “Got it for dirt cheap,” he says, and I hear Brandi in the hallway, “It's from me too.”

“I love it,” I say, and when she pokes her head in, I think of my mother and whether she knows what day it is. If I call her, she'll say, right, right, I'm so sorry and tell me it's some Jewish holiday like Erev Stinchus Pinchus. I'll tell her she's a better stripper than a mother, a better liar than a Hasid. Yeah. That'll make her love me.

“It's called a Graflex,” my father says. “I put film in it. Black and white.”

The phone rings the loudest in the kitchen.

“Hello?” I hear Brandi say as I get out of bed.

“I think you should bring it to Atlantic City.”

“David, it's your mom.”

“It's your mother,” my father repeats, his hands on my shoulders. “Get Deb for Friday. Don't mention the beach.
Just tell her we'll meet her at Halfway Hojo's. Tell her it's for my birthday.”

I lift the phone in my father's room. “Hello?”

“Hi. Happy graduation.”

“Yeah.”

“I didn't know if you were going to the ceremony.”

“No.”

“I didn't think you'd want to.” Silence. “I mean . . . if you were going, I'd go but knowing you, I thought you'd think it was . . .”

“A waste of time.”

“Yes. Knowing you.”

“Yeah.”

“How are you going to get your diploma?”

“They'll mail it. Where were you? I called you twenty times last week.”

“We're not here a lot, David.”

“You should get one of those machines.”

“They're expensive. Plus, I hate the phone.”

“But I can't reach you.”

“I know, I know, I can't believe how busy I am these days.”

Silence.

“Is Debra there?”

“No.”

“Where is she?”

“School.”

“It's Sunday.”

“They're having a—”

“Will you tell her to call me?”

“Yes. Yes I will.”

“Did she get my letter?”

“I don't know. I can ask her.”

“Ask about Debra,” my father whispers. “Two nights. Next Friday. Tell her I'll have her back on Sunday.”

“I just wanted to say congratulations,” she says. “You did it. You made it through. I'd like to send you something if it's okay.”

“Oh. Sure, yeah. Listen, we're going to the beach next Friday,” I say. “And Dad was wondering—”

My father's waving his arms at me, shaking his head. “You said
beach
.”

“If Deb could come with us.”

“I've told him this so many times, David. She doesn't have a bathing suit. And she burns just like me. You know how fast it happens. I'd prefer it if there was a different plan.”

“That's the plan. She doesn't have to go in the water.”

“But her skin . . .”

“Dad suggests we meet at the Howard Johnson's.”

“The sun is very bad for the skin. I'll talk to him. Is he there?”

I hand my father the phone. He stares at it like it's a tarantula.

“Hey there, Mick,” my father says. “Long time. Where ya been?”

Pause.

“Uh-huh, you real Jews have so much on your calendar.”

Pause.

“I'm not being rude. I'm saying God likes you more. Keeps you busy. Makes it hard to see Debra.”

Pause.

“No, no, no. Did he say beach? It's just a hotel.”

Pause.

“But so what. Beach or no beach, I want to see my girl next weekend. We're heading off for my birthday. Big, expensive gifts only, please.”

He's smiling from his joke, but his grin fades as soon as she speaks.

“I, I . . . don't care about any of that,” he says. “I want to see her. I'll meet you at the diner or pick her up at the house. It's up to you. One weekend with her father. One! People do it all the time, Mick. It's what families do.”

He faces me as she talks and talks and eventually he holds the phone away from his ear and points his fingers at it like a gun. “You done?” he asks. “Yes, I heard you loud and clear, Mickey. Friday's a school day. I just need her to miss a couple of hours so we can get on the road. How about two o'clock?”

Pause.

“I did listen to you and now I'm done. Give me a time, what? Two thirty?”

Pause.

“It's a couple of hours of school. She can miss two hours, Mick. And stop telling me she's too goddamn religious to wear a bathing suit. Do you have any idea how fucked up you're making that kid?”

More talk from her end and he ends up banging the receiver
against his hip. “
Excuse
me, can I say something? I'm finished with this conversation. Be ready to see me on Friday.”

Pause.

“Good. What time? Just give me a time. Good . . . See you there. Tell her I have suntan lotion. Good-bye.”

The plan is to meet at the same Howard Johnson's we used to go to during their many separations. Halfway Hojo's. I'm excited to see my sister. I haven't heard her voice in nearly a month. In my bedside table I find a letter she wrote me from the compound last year.

Dear David,

Long trip. We just got here. 12:30 a.m. Mom drove seven hours and thirty-three minutes and we only stopped twice to pee. The smell of this place reminds me so much of last year. It's a wood smell and also the trees around here, so big and so green. The girl in the bed next to me is snoring. When she breathes out it sounds like a whistle or a wheezing. When she breathes in it's more like a small motor or an old man. I am writing in the dark and can't see if my letters are on the line or not. It's like being blind, but I'm sure being blind is worse. This feels like the same cot I had last year. I scratched my name into the metal bed frame the night before I left but it's too dark to see right now. There is another girl in the room but I cannot hear her or see her. This is a new section of the girl's dorm that was built over the winter, along with a new synagogue and the boy's dorm. The building I'm in has ten three-person rooms and mine has a view
of the Tree of Life, a huge cyprus that leans out over the outdoor sanctuary. I am thirsty. I'm back now and I have some water. I still feel the tingling in my legs from the drive. We got here and no one on the campus was awake except for Rabbi Fleeter who was in the recreation room playing foosball by himself. He looked very happy to see us and even asked about you. I hear so many crickets outside, like grains of sand on the beach, millions and millions of them rubbing their wings together at the same time. I am tired. I can't stay awake. Sarah should be here tomorrow morning. I like it here much better when she's here and I'm sad are dorms are different. The crickets don't sleep, I guess. They are like Rabbi Fleeter.