I roll over and survey my room lovingly, and with a touch of wonder, as I’ve done almost every morning for the last three years. It’s a large, square room, about eighteen by eighteen feet. I’ve furnished it sparingly to maintain the feeling of open space. It contains my queen-size bed, a small cherrywood desk from the Door Store upon which sit a black eighteen-inch flat-screen computer monitor, a cell phone charger, a cordless phone and charger, scattered pictures, receipts, dry-cleaning stubs, and approximately six months’ worth of miscellaneous mail and papers that I fully intend to get to, although I probably never will. The floor-to-ceiling bookcases are crammed with an eclectic collection of trade paperbacks, contemporary fiction mostly, some of the classics for show, a handful of the better Star Trek novels, screenplays printed off the Internet, and three or four years’ worth of Esquire and Entertainment Weekly. Opposite my bed is an entertainment center containing a thirty-two-inch Panasonic flat-screen with built-in DVD player, a VCR, and a Fisher stereo. The center of the room contains only an expanse of thick wine-colored carpeting that is more than occasionally littered with discarded clothing. On one wall hangs a framed, original Rocky movie poster on which a bloodied, pre-steroids Stallone collapses into Adrian’s arms, and on the opposite, a well-known Kandinsky print, a gift from Hope. The door to the bathroom is between the bookcase and the desk. The bedroom in my last apartment was roughly the size of my bathroom.
On my way to the shower, I see that Hope’s hung one of my suits on the bathroom doorknob with a yellow Post-it note in her elegant script. Perfect for the party, but it needs to be dry-cleaned. Love you, H. Her parents are throwing a party in our honor this coming Saturday night in their apartment, to officially announce our engagement. This despite their evident disappointment in their daughter’s selection of a mate, although I think I’m starting to grow on her mother, Vivian, who finds my suburban middle-class sensibilities humorously quaint. I consider Hope’s note and the somber dark suit she’s selected, clearly having overlooked the Moe Ginsburg label or she’d have rejected it for sure. Today is Monday. “Fuck,” I say for no readily apparent reason.
My bathroom is all done in a soothing gray, the tiles, the wallpaper, sink, bath, and toilet all peacefully monochromatic, contrasted nicely by the white towels that hang on the brushed chrome rack. It’s like a halfway house between sleep and consciousness, muted, functional, and unchallenging to the eye.
While I’m taking a leak, I notice something disturbing. My piss, usually a vibrant Big Bird yellow in the morning, is colorless, except for what appears to be the occasional flash of a cola-colored thread within the stream. When I look into the bowl, the colors have separated and I see a small floating nebula, which is now an unmistakable blood red. I feel an icy sensation in my belly, a tremor in my bowels. I study myself in the mirror for a minute, my brow furrowed in consternation. “That can’t be good,” I say.
When I step into the shower, I find myself wistfully wondering what it could be, and if it might somehow get me out of the engagement party.
My father has an erection. I haven’t seen him in at least six or seven years, and he shows up on my doorstep at breakfast time with a hard-on that lifts his suit pants like a tent pole. “Hello, son,” he says, like Pa Kent to my Clark. Fathers from New York generally refer to their sons by their proper names. “Son” definitely requires a sun-drenched cornfield in the background. And fathers all over the planet generally tend to maintain a substantial distance between their offspring and their erections.
“Norm.”
“That’s right,” he says as if pleasantly surprised that I recognize him. “How are you, Zack?”
“I’m okay. How are you?”
He nods slowly. “Shipshape. Shipshape.”
But seaworthy? I wonder. “You have a hard-on.”
“Yeah,” he says, looking down and shaking his head sheepishly. “I took some Viagra a little while ago, and it just won’t quit.”
“Of course,” I say, like it makes all the sense in the world. “I always like to sport some wood when I visit the family.”
My father grins, wide and devilish. “I had a sudden change of plans,” he says by way of explanation.
“Well, I don’t think all of you got the memo.”
He smiles good-naturedly, his perfect teeth gleaming white like a toothpaste commercial. “Teeth and shoes,” he used to say. “Teeth and shoes. You show up to a meeting with lousy teeth or shabby shoes, you’ve already made a bad impression, before you say word one.” He’s sporting a day or two’s worth of stubble that’s tellingly whiter than the ring of unkempt hair that encircles the radiant center of his balding head. He’s allowed these few remaining strands to grow ridiculously long in the back, and the effect is kind of like Jack Nicholson playing Ben Franklin, which would actually be an inspired bit of casting, if you think about it. Despite Norm’s pronounced gut, he’s somehow smaller and altogether less substantial than in my memories. I don’t keep any pictures of him around.
“I heard you’re getting married,” he says. “Heard she’s a beautiful girl.”
I don’t know how he could have possibly heard about it, but I won’t give him the satisfaction of asking. “She is,” I say.
“Listen,” he says. “Can I come in?”
“What for?” I say.
His smile falters. “I’d like to talk to you.”
“I’m late for work.”
“Have you been getting my messages?”
“Sure.” He’s been calling sporadically ever since the Twin Towers came down, leaving long, rambling messages saying that the tragedy had made him realize what was truly important, and that we needed to get together and talk. It’s typical of Norm to see the annihilation of some three thousand lives as an opportunity. I’ve taken to screening my calls.
“Well, I can certainly understand why you don’t call back, but I am suggesting that I’m here in the interest of getting past all of that. I know I’ve let you down before. I’ve been a lousy father, no doubt about it. But I wanted to tell you, in person, that I’m sober now. Just hit my ninety-day mark—”
“So now you’re an alcoholic?” I say skeptically.
“I am,” he says with an air of practiced humility. “And I’m up to step nine of the twelve steps, which is making amends.”
“Nice tactic, Norm,” I say, unable to keep the sarcasm from creeping into my voice. “The nine-eleven thing didn’t work, but who can say no to a recovering alcoholic, right? It’s brilliant.”
“Naturally, you have every right to doubt me.”
“You think?”
He sighs. “Listen, I’ve been on my feet for a while already. Can I please just come in for a glass of water?”
I peer down at him, trying for a moment to look past all of my issues and his bullshit and just see him for who he truly is, but all I can see is a sixty-year-old con artist in a worn, wrinkled suit, down on his luck, with the bad sense to play the sympathy card while sporting a chemically induced erection. He looks dirty, decrepit almost, and even though I’m disgusted with myself for the sudden wave of sadness and pity that washes over me, I let him into the brownstone, and he waits in the living room while I fetch him a glass of water.
“Great place,” he says, impressed. “You own, or are you renting, if you don’t mind my asking?”
“It’s Jed’s,” I say, handing him the glass. He drinks the water quickly, wiping his wet lips with his sleeve as he hands me back the cup.
“You feel that earthquake last night?” he asks me.
“Sure.”
“You know, in ancient times, some cultures believed that earthquakes were occasions for intense introspection, the gods shaking up the fates, giving you the opportunity to change your destiny.” He looks at me meaningfully.
“Or maybe it was just the gods gangbanging the thirteen-year-old virgin that had been sacrificed the night before,” I say.
Norm grins ruefully. “Listen, Zack,” he says. “All I’m asking for is a half hour, an hour at the most. I know you’re angry, and I’m certainly deserving of your anger, but I’m still your father, and like it or not, I’m the only one you’ll ever get.”
I have no time for this. I’m still thinking disconcertedly about the blood in my piss, wondering if I should do anything about it. “I really have to get to work,” I say.
He stares at me for a moment and then nods slowly. “Okay,” he says. “Now’s not a good time.” He fishes into his suit pocket and hands me a bent business card. Few things are more pathetic than an unemployed man with a business card. “My cell,” he says. “I’m headed down to Florida in a few days. A guy I know down there wants me to run his sporting goods store. But I came here first, because this is important. Please, Zack. I’m staying with some friends downtown. I’ll stay a few days more if that’s what it takes.”
“I’ll think about it,” I say, ushering him toward the door.
“I am suggesting that that’s really and truly all I could ask for,” he says solemnly. Over the years, Norm’s developed this odd manner of speech, his sentences festooned with flowery malapropisms that he thinks make him sound better educated, the distracting patter of a bad salesman. He extends his hand. I shake it, not because I want to but because what the hell else can you do when someone extends his hand. “It’s great to see you, Zack. You look wonderful, really terrific.”
I’m pissing blood. “Thanks,” I say coldly.
He grins widely, as if he’s achieved a minor victory. “How, then, is your mother?” he says.
I tell him that’s none of his business, not because I care but because I want to see if I can wipe that shit-eating grin off his face.
I can.
As a young boy, I would wake up scared in the middle of the night, terrified that I’d been left alone in the house, and I would come running into my parents’ room, always to his side of the bed. His large arms would hoist me up and onto him, where I would lie with my head pressed flat against him, listening to the beating of his heart through his soft, fleshy chest as he rubbed my back, pulling my pajama shirt up in the places where it clung to my small, sweating trunk. And then, as my staggered breaths became slower and deeper, he would sing to me, his voice hoarse and dulled with sleep.
Good night, sweet baby, good night
I’m right here to watch over you
And the moon, stars, and I
And this old lullaby
Will make all your sweet dreams come true
You can never totally hate someone who sang you to sleep like that, can you? Who calmed you down and eased your fears. You can feel angry and betrayed, but some part of you will always love them for being there on those scary nights, for giving you a place to run to where your nightmares couldn’t follow, the one place where you could descend finally into slumber knowing, at least for the time being, that you were completely safe.
My mother did all the household accounting, so when my father started sleeping with his secretary, Anna, he rightly worried that paying for motel rooms two or three times a week could lead to discovery. He decided the smarter move would be to simply bring Anna home during his lunch hour to fuck her in the familiar comfort of his own marital bed. While this precluded the possibility of a money trail, it nevertheless must have left some forensic traces, because when my mother finally stepped into the room to catch him in the act, she was prepared. Rather than get hysterical and throw things, she simply snapped some damning pictures with the Nikon she’d bought him as an anniversary gift a few years earlier, when he’d declared a newfound, if typically fleeting, passion for photography. As he and Anna scrambled for their clothing, my mother walked calmly down the stairs of our attached house and then three blocks over to the Ace Pharmacy, where she dropped off the film to be developed. The Nikon hanging from her shoulder irritated her, so she tossed it into a corner trash can, bought herself a diet soda, and took a long walk.
In the days that followed, an eerie calm beset our house, none of us willing to shatter the inscrutable, fragile truce that had somehow been forged in the aftermath of this event. My siblings and I were able to piece together what had happened, because the walls of our attached townhouse in Riverdale were paper thin, and my parents’ whispered bedroom arguments, my father’s desperate pleas and my mother’s bitter recriminations, were easily discernible from the hall bathroom.
I was twelve years old, Pete nine, and Matt an already angry seven. We all knew this meant trouble. Even Pete, who was mildly retarded and didn’t always catch on, knew some bad shit was afoot, but none of us really believed this might be the watershed event. It wasn’t the first time this had happened. We all knew the drill, even Pete. Dad screwed up, things got tense for a while, and then Dad made up for it. He’d once even confided in me that when it came to him and my mother, he was the comeback king.
But there would be no comeback this time. A few weeks later my mother sent out her Jewish New Year cards, and instead of a family portrait, that year’s picture was my father and Anna at the horrifying instant of their discovery. No airbrushing, no posing, just the raw, messy truth of middle-aged coupling captured from a blunt angle, anatomy as nature never intended it to be seen.
Norman King, my father, was a popular character in the neighborhood. He walked the streets like a politician, greeting everyone he passed by name, and if he didn’t know your name, he’d either introduce himself or say, “Good morning, chief.” He was the sort of man who was on a first-name basis with all the shopkeepers, and knew to ask after their wives, children, or parents with perfect specificity. He would draw the men into lengthy discussions of their businesses, offering suggestions and tax-planning strategies. His job in the bookkeeping department of a large Manhattan corporation lent him the aura of white-collared big-business expertise, and he took great pains to burnish that image, not in the least because he believed in it, often throwing on a tie even just to run out to the grocery store for a carton of milk. He came across as a guy who knew how everything was wired, who had the inside track. His own slew of failed entrepreneurial ventures never seemed to diminish this perception, even to him. “Your failures are the foundation upon which your success is built,” he would say grandly. Occasionally, as I grew older, it would occur to me to wonder what success, exactly, he was referring to, but he spoke with such assuredness that I instantly doubted my own doubts, and that, in actuality, was his greatest gift. He was the most believable bullshit artist I’ve ever known.
Norm was also abundantly chivalrous to the ladies, greeting them with a gallant flourish and flattery, always able to point out a new haircut or dress. He was on friendly terms with most of the women in our neighborhood, and if it ever seemed to me that there was an inappropriately sexual nature to some of these relationships, I dismissed the thought out of hand and chalked it up to my own immaturity, until he started getting caught. Mostly, I enjoyed walking the streets with him, basking in his popularity, feeling like the son of a king.
So it had to have been a devastating blow to Norm when my mother sent out those cards. It went well beyond the public documentation of his infidelity; it was a humiliation of the highest order, the emperor exposed, warts and all, in the unforgiving clarity of 200 ASA Kodacolor. She knew what she was doing, my mother. After years of silently suffering these betrayals, not only had she hatched a plan that trashed his reputation, shattering forever the carefully cultivated persona he’d been refining for years, but she was also forcing her own hand, making further reconciliation impossible. Because now, when she felt herself weakening and leaning toward her customary forgiveness, the pressure from the community would keep her from relenting. And even if she managed to overcome that, she knew that now Norm would never be able to stay in Riverdale.
We forgave my mother for this, and for failing to realize, in the haze of her flaming rage, that the inflammatory pictures she’d sent out to her friends would find their way into the hands of their children and ultimately into the halls of our elementary school, not only making a laughingstock of her sons but affording them the ineffaceable view of their father in midcoitus, his hairy, dimpled ass, his guilty, shriveled penis, and the unrestrained rolls of his belly fat frozen for all posterity as he flung himself off Anna, who lay engorged and spread-eagled beneath him. I’m here to tell you, you don’t forget something like that. Ever.
Until then, the only nudity I’d ever seen was in the National Geographic magazines my friends and I pored over in the public library, studying the oblong taffy breasts of aboriginal women, their square, sandpapery asses, so unlike what we thought an ass should be, what we imagined lurked like buried treasure beneath the skirts of the high school girls we jerked off to. Then I happened upon Mike Rochwager and Tommy Chiariello in the boys’ bathroom, copiously examining the New Year’s card purloined from Mike’s parents’ mail drawer. They wordlessly handed me the picture and watched me as I looked at it, my face carefully blank. Beneath the picture was calligraphy, in Hebrew and English, wishing the recipient a happy and sweet new year.
“Is that really your father?” Mike asked.
“Yeah.”
“My dad says your mom’s going to take him for every red cent he has.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You know,” Mike said. “In the divorce.”
“They’re not getting divorced!” I shouted, tearing the photo in half.
“Hey, that’s mine!” Mike yelled, pushing me against the wall, wresting the two halves of the picture from my fingers and handing them to Tommy for safekeeping.
“Give it back!” I screamed, lunging at Tommy, but he’d hit puberty in the fifth grade, and the head start put him a good head taller and twenty pounds heavier than me. He deflected me easily, holding the pictures above his head in one hand while shoving me to the sticky tiled floor with the other. I jumped up, fully prepared to get my ass kicked by Tommy, but at that moment the bathroom door swung open and Rael stepped in. He sized up the situation in an instant and quickly walked over to stand by my side. “Is that the picture?” he demanded. Rael wasn’t quite as large as Tommy, but he was close, and his sharp fearlessness bridged the gap.
“It’s mine,” Mike whined, cowering behind Tommy.
Rael ignored him, his eyes never leaving Tommy’s. After a few seconds, Tommy said, “Whatever,” and tossed the two halves of the photo disgustedly to the floor. “Let’s go,” he said to Mike. “He probably wants to beat off to his father’s whore.”
After they were gone, Rael handed me the pieces with a sympathetic frown, and then leaned against the door as I tore furiously at the photo until it was scattered like confetti at my feet, hot tears running down my face in a steady stream. Who the fuck said anything about a divorce?
This is what happens. Your father shreds the family with his repeated infidelities and then takes off for parts unknown, leaving you and your siblings to stumble into a new philosophy as to what life is all about. You’re the oldest and therefore feel the greatest sense of betrayal as you witness the extinguished eyes of your mother, the sullen glare of your younger brother Matt, who denies that he’s crying himself to sleep at night even though you can plainly hear him, and Pete, whose lack of comprehension should be viewed as a blessing in this instance, but in whose uncompromising, sweet demeanor you see only a reminder of the depth of your father’s transgressions. You see the members of your family floating in their own separate orbits of misery, and you vow to replace your worthless father, to provide the strength and guidance your siblings need, to take what weight you can off your mother’s shoulders so that maybe the light will return to her eyes, the easy laughter and affection you’d always taken for granted. Maybe Matt will start smiling again, and stop playing alone in his room with his action figures, and maybe it will feel like a family again, instead of an ongoing funeral. You’re twelve years old, and you don’t yet know that you don’t know shit. You’re just determined to be everything your father wasn’t, for them and for yourself, and it takes a while for you to understand that it’s not within your power to undo the damage that Norm did, that the injuries go much deeper. By then, your determination not to emulate him has become something of an obsession, and it’s a point of pride whenever you can point to the ways in which you’re avoiding your progenitor’s defective character. I’m not like him becomes your mantra, and while you would never cop to it, it may very well have become your universal philosophy boiled down to its absolute essence.