The Middlesteins (4 page)

She’s going to die
, thought Rachelle.
And I don’t know if we can stop her.

She thought about walking inside the Chinese restaurant, reaching up the half-foot
distance between them, grabbing Edie by the collar of her beautiful coat, and demanding
she stop—stop what? Stop eating? Stop eating
everything
? But to do that would be to admit that Rachelle had been following her for the last
twenty minutes, and she would never do that.

Instead she turned her car back out onto the street and headed toward Pierre’s studio,
subdivision, subdivision, left, right, parked, and then watched the last twenty minutes
of the twins’ practice. They were so young and healthy and beautiful. They were thin.
Emily looked a little like her Aunt Robin in the mouth, those sad, pursed, vaguely
sexy lips. Josh was all Benny, dark, thick, bristly hair, surprisingly well-shaped
eyebrows, a small but determined smile. She could see nothing in them physically that
indicated that they would grow up someday and turn out like their grandmother, even
if Emily did seem sullen sometimes, which was not necessarily a correlative to a negative
relationship to food, but it was something that she, Rachelle, as a mother, could
keep an eye on nonetheless.

While the kids packed up their gym bags at the end of class, she leaned on one side
of the doorway, while Pierre leaned on the other. In her own quiet way, she began
to beg for his approval.

“There’s hope for them yet, right?” she said.

“They’re just diamonds in the rough,” he said, and he winked. “Waiting to emerge like
beautiful little rainbows.” He raised his hands to the sky and shimmered them down,
and Rachelle followed the path of his fingertips down to his sides. She swore he had
left little trails of pixie dust in the air behind them.

 “And how about you, Miss Rachelle? How are you doing? That’s a big party you’ve been
planning.”

She had bemoaned the chocolate fountain to him in the past. The chocolate fountain
felt excessive to Rachelle, and the thought of gallons upon gallons of chocolate hitting
the air and then bubbling up in a pool made her nauseous. A gateway to cavities, at
the least. But it wasn’t about her, this party. It was about her kids, and about their
family. “A little chocolate never hurt anyone,” Pierre had told her, and he had laughed
outrageously, and she had laughed too, even though she wasn’t totally sure she had
gotten the joke.

“The save-the-date cards go out next week,” she said. “Well, they’re actually little
magnets.” She pulled one out of her purse—
JOSH AND EMILY B’NAI MITZVAH JUNE 5, 2010
—
TONIGHT’S GONNA BE A GOOD NIGHT!
—and handed it to him. “You’re invited, of course.” She said this without thinking.
Was he invited? She would love to see him on the dance floor.

“That’s so sweet,” he said evenly.

Rachelle blushed. “I’m sure you’ve got a busy schedule,” she said. “And you probably
get invited to lots of bar mitzvahs.”

“Not too many,” he said. “I think people are always worried about who I’m going to
bring as a date.” He laughed, his own private joke that wasn’t so private.

“You can bring whomever you like,” Rachelle said, and she meant it. She could not
help but steal a glance at his gleaming wall of celebrity photos.

“I’ll check my schedule,” he said, and she felt deeply—she knew!—that he meant it,
too.

Benny was already at home when she returned with the kids, setting the table, an Edwardo’s
box on the kitchen counter. He was still wearing his suit, an old one, the crease
nearly faded in the pants. (She would donate it to the Goodwill tomorrow, she decided.)
He must have just beaten them home. It was his one night to cook, and he had cheated
and gotten a pizza.

“Tell me you at least got a salad,” she said. “Something with nutritional value.”

Benny pulled a large plastic container of salad out of a bag and waved it at Rachelle.

“What am I, crazy?” he said. “I don’t want to spend the night in the doghouse.”

“We don’t have a doghouse,” said Josh. “Or a dog.”

“It’s an expression,” said Benny. “A joke. You’re no fun. When did this kid turn into
no fun?”

“He’s plenty of fun,” said Rachelle. “You should have seen him dancing tonight.”

They all sat and ate, Benny barraging Emily and Josh with questions about their day,
which sometimes they minded, and sometimes they didn’t. He made a real effort with
those kids, which Rachelle appreciated. Her own father, miserable, overworked, uninspired
by his job, his wife, his child, his life, the world, had ignored her through most
of her childhood; he would sit, stony-faced, at the dinner table, and command quiet
through angry glares at Rachelle and her mother. “Your father had a bad day,” her
mother would whisper.

There would be no silence at the dinner table in her own home.

After dinner they all watched
So You Think You Can Dance
, and there was Pierre’s student, Victor Long, spiked hair, bright eyes, jumping in
the air, both legs flying up and out to meet his hands, tumbling, bouncing, knees
popping up and down, all to a dance track that was punctuated occasionally by an intriguing
air-horn sound. Victor was athletic and graceful, which Rachelle admired, even if
she would never choose to dance that way herself. Her children were in awe of him.

“I’m never going to be that good,” said Emily mournfully. She crossed her arms and
locked her thumbs under her armpits. “I’m going to look like an idiot in front of
all my friends.”

“You’re going to do the best that you can,” said Rachelle.

“But what if my best totally sucks?” said Emily. She wiped away a tear, and another,
and then got up and left the room, dragging Rachelle’s heart slowly with her.

Later, out back, after the kids were tucked away in bed, Rachelle huddled in her winter
coat with her husband in the backyard, both of them quietly puffing on a joint; this
time she shared it with him. Benny needed it more than she. For him, it was something
he earned at the end of a long day of work. For her, smoking pot was just for fun,
usually, but following Edie that afternoon had saddened her, and she felt like she
needed it, too, or even deserved it. Because what did she do all day anyway? She managed
a household, and all their possessions. Drove her kids around, Pilates four times
a week, an occasional Sisterhood meeting at the temple with all those old ladies who
thought they knew everything about everything but only knew something about not much
at all if you really wanted to get into it, got her hair done (regular bang trims,
coloring once a month), her nails done, her toes, waxing, cooking, shopping. She read
books. (She was in three book clubs but she only showed up if she liked the book they
were reading.) If you asked her at the right time, she’d say, “Spend my husband’s
money.” It was a joke. It was supposed to be funny. But it was true, too.

“So they’re not getting any better?” he said.

“Josh isn’t terrible,” she said. “Emily’s got no particular sense of rhythm as far
as I can see.”

“It’s only been a few weeks,” he said. He put his hand on her head. He messed up her
hair.

“Don’t,” she said.

“Did you just get it done?” He rubbed it back and forth and in her face. “Did you
just get your pretty hair done?” He was completely high. He laughed. He ran his fingertips
down her face and then stopped at her chin and squeezed it. “This is a good chin,
here, this one.” And then he kissed her.

She took the joint from his hand. “No more for you,” she said. She put another hand
in his pocket and felt for his dick. Managing his possessions.

He was in such a good mood that she didn’t want to bring up his mother, but then he
did it anyway.

“So did you see the other Mrs. Middlestein today?”

“Mrs. Middlestein Senior?”

“That’s the one.”

Here are the lies Rachelle had told her husband in the order she had told them:

1. When they first met, she had not yet broken up with Craig Rossman, her boyfriend who
   went to Cornell, and it was a good month before that happened, but she wanted to wait
   to do it in person, over Christmas break, and she could not be blamed for that, Craig
   was a decent guy, and doing it over the phone seemed callous. 
   
2. When she was twenty-one and they first started dating, she said she was on the pill
   when she was not because she didn’t want him to think she was a total slut (this made
   no sense, she knew, everyone was on it, and at the least she could have said she did
   it to manage her cramps, but Benny thought she was an angel and she did not want him
   to think otherwise), and this led to her getting pregnant with the twins the night
   they graduated from college during a drunken, groping sexual rumble in a bathroom
   at a party at his frat house. 
   
3. She is not a fan of her engagement ring, that teeny, tiny chip, and she faked it like
   a queen when he, hands shaking which was ridiculous, because he already knew that
   the answer was going to be yes, it had to be yes, offered it to her in a teeny, tiny
   red velvet box over dinner at a steak house in Chicago. 
   
4. She lied when she said she thought his sister, Robin, was adorable the first time
   Rachelle met her. Robin was—and still is—miserable, moody, and weird, and Rachelle
   had never forgiven her for her inability to muster one decent smile for their wedding
   photos, not to mention the drinking—oh, the drinking! Was she the only one in the
   family who saw how much Robin drank?—and if she had her way she would cut Robin out
   of every single picture in the album. 
   
5. She lies once or twice a month about going to matinees during the day by herself because
   she thinks he might begrudge her that pleasure when he works so hard himself, and
   this lie necessitates a double lie, one when he asks what she did that day, and two
   when they go to see a movie she has already seen and she has to pretend she hasn’t
   seen it yet, which has led her husband to wonder if she has lost her sense of humor,
   or, in a more subtle way he has not been able to name yet, her capacity for joy, because
   she barely laughs at the jokes she already knows are coming. 
   
6. And finally, she doesn’t always love being a stay-at-home mom, but the other option,
   dealing with bosses and responsibilities and meetings in poorly lit rooms and office
   politics and all that other crap that Benny goes through (and she is grateful he does
   it) on a daily basis, sounds so appalling that she will gladly gush, “This is what
   I was born to do,” to anyone who might ask, her friends, his parents, her Pilates
   instructor, the women at the Sisterhood meetings, even if she suspects there might
   have been another option, if only she had not let Benny just put it in for a second
   because it felt so good and never made him take it out again before it was too late. 
   

And now this: No, she had not seen his mother. No one had been home.

“What’s going on over there?” he said, his late-night high disappearing into the winter
air.

“I don’t know,” she said. “They’re your parents. You know them better than I do.”

“Where was she?”

“Benny.”

“What?” He ground something imaginary under his shoe.

There were many moments when she suggested things to her husband, mostly in such a
way that it seemed like it was his idea to begin with, and there were moments when
she called him on his bullshit, usually while teasing him, so as to take away the
sting, and then there were moments—and these moments were rare, because he was a good
man, and Edie and Richard had done an excellent job of raising him to be a man and
to take the right course of action—when she told him what to do.

“You need to talk to your mother. Not me. You.”

“I’ll call my dad,” he said.

“Do whatever,” she said, and then she was done talking for the night.

The next morning, Rachelle and Benny watched as Emily and Josh stood out back near
the pool, bundled up in winter coats, practicing their dance moves. A Black Eyed Peas
song blared from a boom box perched on a deck chair. It was a lovely, crisp, winter
day; the sun hung serenely in blue, windless skies. Emily counted off each beat out
loud. Josh closed his eyes and concentrated. They were desperately trying to glide
across the tiled patio.

Emily pulled off her winter cap, and Josh unraveled his scarf. Emily walked over to
the boom box to restart the song, and in that quick moment Josh popped and locked
in one beautiful, swift motion.

Rachelle drew in her breath.

 “Did you see that?” said Benny.

“I did,” she said.

“Takes after his old man,” said Benny. He executed a wobbly moonwalk across the kitchen
floor.

“Right,” said Rachelle.

The boom box began blasting the same song again. Rachelle was starting to hate that
song.

“So I was thinking I’d drive over to my folks’ house today,” he said. He barely looked
at her. She had stiffed him in bed last night, curled up in the far corner, a pillow
behind her to rebuff any approach.

Rachelle did not know if he wanted her approval or not. If she gave her approval,
it was as if she had commanded and he had followed, which, obviously, was what had
happened, but she didn’t know if it was wise to wound him any further. If she didn’t
acknowledge him, he might think she was still mad at him, which she wasn’t. In fact,
she was more in love with him at that moment than in years. All of the recent stressors
on their marriage, his slight disconnection from his mother’s multiple surgeries,
his inability to prepare or even merely purchase a significantly healthy meal for
his children for months now, all of that was washed away with just one appropriate,
adult decision.