Last Bender

8.3

Sally woke me up at 6. Christopher was asleep on the couch and Sylvio was buried in Lydia’s bed, gripping the pillow with his two hands and mashing his face into it so all you could see was his hair, which he had been growing out for some reason. The thing about Sylvio is he was not unaware of his own absurdity; and often enough I believed it was by design, but I’m not so sure now. It is anyway a kind of madness to allow your conceptual universe to so invade your daily one. Solar deities are not for the garden in the backyard.

The trip out to the Island was a monumental undertaking. Each of us had lined our bags up by the door. Sally’s was a navy blue and gold gym bag and Joseph’s was a proper tweed suitcase, which he had bought at a flea market for 40 cents. It looked 5 months pregnant and the fabric was starting to tear in the middle from over-packing. Jayda was there; she had to sit on it so he could close the snaps. Mine was a brown paper shopping bag I had stuffed with clothes, toothpaste and a toothbrush. My dress shirt was carefully folded at the bottom, along with a pair of black socks. I wore my jacket and black shoes.

Then there were the provisions, stowed away by Cynthia over the past two days. She had sacks of bread from Zabar’s, and marinated olives, capers, sun dried tomatoes, and artichokes. There were matzos from a Hasid on Houston Street, fish from Russ and Daughters, cream cheese from the dairy a few doors down, gefilte fish from Orchard Street and bagels and bialys. I couldn’t see how it would all fit, not with the wine and the luggage. At least there were only three of us going.

At 7 Sally determined it was time to arouse Joseph. He was on a futon on the floor of the master bedroom, wrapped up in a single woolen blanket and sheet, in a semi-fetal position, mouth agape. Sally probed his shoulder with her toe. He snored coarsely and straightened out onto his back. “What?” he asked.

“It’s 7,” Sally said.

“OK.” He sat up and slept in that position for a minute.

“Joe.”

“OK.” He stood and walked into the kitchen. He drank down a glass of water and scratched his ear. When he drank, he tipped his head back and it was impossible not watch his Adam’s apple glug. He was dressed in suit pants and a white shirt with silver points on the collar and a bolo tie. His hair was yellow, cut close on the sides and vaguely rockabilly on top, a blond toss of curls kept in place by gel. Even the faded blue of the vein on his forehead was made prominent by the pallor of his skin. It was a north view so in the morning the only sun came from the right in tiger stripes. A ray sometimes bounced off of an adjacent window and into the loft. One played on his cheek now, a deep amber bar. “Is it time to go?”

“No, we have an hour,” Sally said, washing out a coffee cup and filling it from the Mr. Coffee machine, an instrument I abhor. My pot was bubbling on the stove. It was the kind of espresso pot they used to have in restaurants that served terrific veal, and frutti di mare in fra diablo sauce with linguini. I flipped it and it steamed and bubbled as the cup of water rushed into the grounds. I poured a demitasse and drank it down and poured another.

Joseph opened the top freezer and stared with red eyes at the dark and snowbound contents. “I could have slept another hour? Where’s my ice tray?”

The buzzer went off. “Is anyone coming over?” I asked.

Sally pushed the talk button and said, “Who’s there?”

“Garble.” It was garble. Half the time the buzzers were out. She tried again. We could just make out Maureen.

“Maureen?” Sally asked.

“Garble.”

“I think it’s Maureen,” she said. She buzzed her in. Soon there was a knock at the door. “It’s a little odd. I hope nothing’s wrong.” She opened the door. It was Maureen.

“Maureen,” we all said.

“Hi,” she said. “Can I go in?”

“Sure,” Sally said. Maureen waved hello and we laughed a little as she headed over to Sylvio’s recumbent form. She sat down and nudged him awake. Slowly he stirred and rolled towards us in the bed and everything inverted for a moment. It was not Sylvio but Lydia who was asleep in Lydia’s bed.

Lydia sat up and rubbed her eyes. “Hi Everybody,” she smiled. “Did I miss anything? Today is the day we’re going, right?” She picked up her Archies lunch box, and took out a pack of Marlboros. She lit up the cigarette and took out a plastic inhaler. “The doctor at the detox said I got asthma and gave me this. I don’t know, I just thought I smoked too much…. So, I think I’ve got some clean clothes stashed away here someplace. Do I have time to take a shower?”

“Call dad,” Sally said. “He’s been dying.”

“Oy fucking vey. I’ll call. I just don’t know what I’m gonna say.”

Maureen looked at her and said, “You said you’d tell them?”

“In the car, in the car. Is there coffee? I smell coffee.” She stood up and creaked a bit. She had this odd look, as if she had awakened in a world where everything was a little different; her presence in space slightly altered. She couldn’t quite place herself in the continuum. She had the look in her eye of a woman who is paused between before and after, in a small reach of time when she has the power to consider before doing but which will snap shut. The way out is an illusion once the new trajectory is in progress and events take over.

“Where’s Sylvio then?” Sally asked.

“I think I saw him wandering around 14th Street,” Maureen said.

Sally looked worried. “Oh my god, someone will kill him!”

“He’s fine,” Christopher shouted from the couch. He sat up. “We were supposed to tell you about Lydia. We were still up when she came in. He just went out for cigarettes and a plate of eggs in a diner. That was all he could talk about. The eggs he once had by himself at a diner at dawn. I don’t know what time it was. What time is it now?”

“Seven-something,” I said.

“Don’t you have to go soon?”

“Lydia’s going to take a shower.”

“Oh good,” he said.

“I heard that! I hear everything. My ears are very acute.”

“Is there more coffee?” he asked.

“I’ll make some. Which kind do you want?”

“Oh, yours. That wacky pot.”

“I’m going in,” Lydia yelled. “I am going down to the river Jordan to bathe.”

“So Maureen, what are you doing?” asked Sally.

“Coming with you. I hope it’s all right.”

Sally bit her lip and said nothing. Joseph sipped a cup of coffee as if it were hemlock.

“Should I get the car?” I asked.

“I’ll come with you,” Sally said. “But I want to know what the hell is going on–”

“She’ll explain in the car. She’s very fragile right now.”

“We’ll buzz,” I said, forcing Sally out the door simply by going out it myself.

Halfway down the block she stopped walking and said between her teeth, shaking two fists at me, “She can’t come.”

“Your parents won’t care. There’ll be a lot of people.”

“It’s a disaster.”

“They all know she has a girlfriend. It’s not like a family secret or something.”

“That’s not it, it’s the scene. The way she hijacks the emotions in a room. And Bubbe. Oh, I just can’t bear the controversy, not now.”

“What do you mean, not now. When?”

“I’m trying to work and it’s very upsetting when people disappear and go off the rails. Sylvio has no idea of what goes on out here. If I weren’t trying to write all these papers, or this paper, or whatever it is, Thesis, then maybe I wouldn’t care if we have to talk about all this shit this weekend.”

“Didn’t you just not long ago tell Lydia she should be more honest about her sexuality. Be more out around your parents and relatives?”

“Oh, be quiet. Let’s go. Where are we parked?”

“Garage in Chelsea. I got the ticket.”

We got the car, a white Honda Accord, and I drove onto the street, eyes wide open and everything flashing by. I had no awareness of the solidity of things.

“You don’t think it’s rude to invite yourself to a family event?”

“No. It’s a Seder. There’ll be plenty to watch besides Maureen and Lydia.”

“I wouldn’t do that. Lydia didn’t ask anyone.”

“Well, I’ll sit with the car, you go in and get them.”

I put on the flashing lights and opened the trunk. Cynthia had emptied it out and cleaned it. They all came down with two armloads. Lydia looked at the car and smiled and said, “Oh, it’s the Hawnder. Hello Hawnder. This is Sakajeweer.” I packed the car as best I could. A couple of sacks of groceries would have to go between the feet of whoever was sitting in back. Lydia and Joseph went upstairs for their bags and Sally got into the front. Maureen sat in the middle in back and put her feet up on the partition between the front seats. Joseph and Lydia climbed in and we took off.

“So I have some announcements to make,” Lydia said. We had not even gone through the tunnel and she was making announcements. “First of all,” she said, as if she were addressing a large group, “I just want to tell you all that I had, or have, a drug problem. And I’ve been trying to do something about it so that’s why I haven’t been around. I haven’t gotten fucked up in seven days. Mo’s been helping me out here.” I looked at Maureen in the rearview. She was gazing serenely at the baroque architecture of roads in Queens. Joseph looked like he was both amused and nonplussed as he calculated whether or not to open the beer he had between his knees. “I’m gonna tell mom and dad tonight, so maybe they can pay for me to go to rehab. I want to go to Hazleton. They say that’s good. That’s what Mo said anyway. Her mother went there.”

Sally said, at the windshield, loudly, so her breath fogged on the glass, “But where were you? What happened? You’ve been gone for weeks. No one’s heard a word. Dad was in a state of repressed panic. It was awful to watch him suffer like that because of you.”

“Yeah, why don’t you ask how I am or something? I don’t know where I was really. In the Bronx. That’s where they found me, on the train. I od’d so they put me in detox. I was just so sad. I didn’t care about anything anymore. But I’m over that now.”

“Dad will be happy if you’re going into treatment.”

“The other thing is I’m gay.”

“You’re what?” I asked.

“Oh come on, like there’s something new in that?” Joseph said.

“Maybe when you first announced it they cared but now it’s just like one more thing you do,” Sally said.

“Oh you–full of shit! I mean it this time Sally. I’m a woman-identified woman. It’s not just a weekend muff dive. I would think you of all people, Miss Gay, would understand. Huh.”

“For crissakes, at least don’t do it at dinner.”

“What am I, an asshole? After. Aftuh.”

Joseph popped open the beer and said, “Ho ho ho.”

“It’s not funny,” Sally said, craning her neck to not only whine at them but attempt to wither them into compliance too, with a stern look. But against Maureen’s serenity, and Joseph’s clowning she had not a chance. She pleaded. “It’s not funny! Bubbe and Isaiah.”

Maureen said, “I told you.”

“Just don’t say anything,” I proposed. “You know, let it hang there. Everyone will know and let those who don’t, pretend.”

“That’s rather normative,” Sally said.

“But I’m agreeing with you.”

“For the wrong reasons. You compromise my position.”

Joseph said in a mincing baby voice, “Heloo Bubbe and Pop, I’m gay!”

“You drink too much,” Lydia said.

Joseph looked at her seriously now. “Do I have to put up with this from you now too? Don’t be one of those self-righteous ex-drug addicts.”

We drove in silence then and everyone fell asleep but me. Of course, I had been asleep all along. I fiddled with the radio dial, and then the road became rural. They lived off the main road, in an old farmhouse not far from Montauk. It had been a potato farm, but it went bankrupt and they got a deal on the place. Raph was an ok carpenter and a good painter and putterer, so he could keep it in repair and even fix it up a room at a time. He liked to take things apart and put them together. He had a garage out back full of old lawnmowers and chainsaws and clocks. He took apart radios. Sometimes he put them back together again.

The house was shaded by a few tall trees. Fields and woods stretched out for several acres. There was a circular drive. I parked by the kitchen door and we got out. The wind blew in off the ocean. Everything was still dead, except for some daffodils and forsythia, and blades of new grass starting in the thatch. The house was pealing paint. It had green shutters and birds’ nests in the eaves. Out back, beside the garage full machinery, was a converted barn, where Raph had his studio. There was also a sauna.

Cynthia came out dressed in jeans and a yellow sweatshirt that said, Summer of Love, and under that, 10 ears Afte. She looked at us and then at us again as she saw that Lydia was there. “Lydia?” She sighed heavily. “Are you all right?” She went over and hugged her. “Well?”

“Not really ma.”

“OK.” She kissed her head as if she were a child and tried to straighten the part in her hair. “Let me get your father.”

“Is that who I see?” shouted Raph from the kitchen door. He walked past Cynthia and down to the car. “Lydia, you came. I knew you would.” He hugged and kissed her. “How are you? You look good. Let me get your things.”

“Thanks dad. I only got a paper bag in there with a few things. I brought Mo, I hope that’s OK.”

“Oh, yes,” Cynthia said. “Of course. It’s Passover. Are you Jewish dear?”

“Catholic. But I don’t believe in anything.”

“Oh. OK. It’s no trouble to put another plate out. It’s tradition.” She smiled. “Well, shall we unload and catch up later?”