Happy Family (23 page)

“A snow day, how perfect.” Cheri can't contain herself. “I saw her. I saw you and your kid playing in the snow.”

“What?” Sol stops in his tracks.

Cheri looks at him with contempt. “Forest Drive. Your other life. Which you couldn't even manage to do in another state. You disgust me.”

A kid wearing a backpack gives them a look, then brushes past.

Sol is flustered, tries to take her arm. “Let's go somewhere and talk,” he says in his best I'm-the-grown-up voice.

“I'm not going anywhere with you.”

“There are things you don't know, Cheri. A compendium of things that all affect each other. This is not the place to do this.” Sol's tone is becoming defensive, which only angers Cheri further.

“A compendium? A fucking
compendium?
Take your hand off me. I said I'm not going anywhere.”

Sol backs off, waits for an arm-in-arm couple to go around them. “I understand how this looks,” he says, grasping for a phrase that might calm her down.

“Is that all you care about, appearances? Fuck how it
looks!
How could you do this? To us, to her? You're a fucking lying bigamist. I could have you arrested.” She turns to storm off.

“Whoa,” he says, grabbing her arm again. “The only woman I'm married to is your mother. And keep your voice down.”

“Oh, great. You're only married to one of them. I guess that means you're in the clear!”

“Please,” Sol says, relaxing his grip on her arm. “I don't know what you were doing there or what you saw. Were you following me?”

Cheri laughs ruefully. “I don't think you're in any position to be questioning me.”

Sol lets out an exasperated sigh. His shoulders slump for a moment, but he quickly returns to his full height and clears his throat. “What do you want me to do here, Cheri? Tell me and I'll do it. I'll tell you the truth.”

“You know, the irony is that I thought I was actually getting to know you. Why did you even bother when everything you do is a lie? Does your other family even know about us?” Cheri pauses, trying to grasp all the implications. She hasn't, until just this moment, considered that this little boy is her half brother. “Forget it, I don't want to know.” Cheri wrenches her arm out of Sol's grasp and barrels her way outside. Sol is behind her.

“I can understand that.” He pants, struggling to keep up.

“You don't understand anything about me and you never have.” Cheri halts, lights up a cigarette, watching as her hands shake. “You never liked me. Can we get that out in the open? I was never enough for you. Would it have been different if I were your own flesh and blood? Well, now that's a moot point.”

“That's not true. I may not always like how you behave, but you're my daughter. I love you.”

“You might love me out of obligation, but you never
liked
me. I know the difference.”

“You're wrong,” he says adamantly. “You have a right to be angry. But this is not about you—”

“It never is!” Cheri says angrily, exhaling smoke in his face. “And that's part of the problem! But forget about me. What about Cici? You didn't just do what Taya's dad did, fucking a secretary and then dumping her. Oh no. You've got a whole other wife, a kid. A whole other fucking family!”

“Jesus Christ, I told you she's not my wife.” Sol's face is growing red.

“And I suppose he's not your kid?” Cheri knows the little boy is just another victim of her father's lies, but she can't access sympathy for him, or for the blond woman. She can't calculate how many lives he's hurt, but all she cares about in this moment is Cici.

Sol can't look at her. “Cheri, it's not that simple.”

“No, it's not.” Cheri feels the weight of what is now their shared secret get a bit heavier. Of course it's on her, not Sol, to make the choice about whether to keep it. Cheri looks down at her shaking hands. “As much as I hate you,” she says icily, “I'd hate myself more if I ruined Cici's life. Telling her…would ruin what she believes is her life. ”

Cheri sees Sol's shoulders relax. His obvious relief makes her hate him all the more. She needs to get away from the woody smell of Sol's cologne, his semi-tearing eyes, Washington Square Park. Nowhere could be far enough.

“Just stay away from me. You're not a part of my life anymore.”

E
ver since Sol died on the day before Thanksgiving, both the bird and the holiday were verboten by Cici. It's only three p.m. but Cheri's neighborhood market is jammed like people are getting ready for the Siege of Leningrad and she's thinking,
Wasn't it just Halloween?
There are cardboard cutouts of turkeys everywhere and too many carts for the narrow aisles; it's claustrophobic. This is why she avoids grocery stores. She snags toilet paper and paper towels and heads to the deli, where there's a sign about ordering your holiday birds. But with Michael on the road for
The Palmist,
she'll likely settle for commemorating the holiday with a turkey sandwich.

Her favorite sight when she was a kid was the foil-wrapped bundle Cheri would pull out of the fridge and pick on for days after a holiday. Her fridge is currently a wasteland dotted with old takeout containers. The woman at the head of the line orders a pound of corned beef. Sol loved his corned beef on rye. “If only he'd gone out for a corned beef,” her mother had been known to lament.

When Sol died, it had been fifteen years since Cheri had agreed to keep his secret. Since that day, Cheri had avoided him whenever possible and when—for Cici's sake—she went back to Montclair for obligatory holidays like this one, she kept her sarcasm to a minimum. It was hard enough for her to handle the pretense in her conversations with Cici, but seeing it up close and personal challenged her resolve to stay silent.

Cheri was told that it had been a crisp fall morning. Sol decided to walk to Citronella's to pick up the Thanksgiving turkey. Cici had debated between an eighteen- and a twenty-pounder. It was just the two of them, but Sol liked plenty of leftovers and Joe the butcher had picked out a lovely hen for Cici. Sol was in a wonderful mood; he had a spring in his step because he'd lost a little weight and was getting his tennis game back. Sol had had a mini-stroke three years earlier, after which he had re-prioritized his life. He started eating healthy, exercising daily, and working less. His phlebitis was finally under control; by all accounts, Sol and Cici were enjoying a second wind in their marriage, happily ensconced in their Eighty-first Street apartment. Semiretirement also rejuvenated Sol's humanitarian interests and he volunteered a few hours a week at a free health clinic.

Cici had told him to take Cookie's grocery cart to collect the turkey, but he scoffed; it wasn't right for a man to be seen wheeling a cart down Fifth Avenue. He felt the same way about a man being seen in public walking a small dog. Joe the butcher said he was surprised to see Dr. Matzner that morning, as they'd scheduled the turkey's delivery for later that afternoon. But they joked around and Sol looked in perfect health. “Happy Thanksgiving to you and the missus,” Joe remembered saying.

The police report quoted witnesses who said they saw a well-dressed older man carrying a large package on Eighty-first Street suddenly fall to the ground. They thought he'd tripped but on closer observation, they realized he was clawing at his chest, unable to breathe. When the EMS team arrived, the man had lost consciousness, and they quickly packed him in the ambulance. Apparently, a bystander had thought to put the package in with him.

Cheri got a garbled call from Cici saying her father had been hurt carrying a turkey and was in the hospital. Come home immediately. Sol died of sudden cardiac arrest at 3:47 p.m. while Cheri was in seat 23C of a United airbus. During her three and a half years as a police officer, Cheri had often been in the position where she had to tell people a loved one had died. She knew it was important to look them in the eye, keep it brief and neutral. The doctor who told Cici the news no doubt adhered to those rules, but Cici was so distraught she'd needed to be sedated and was sleeping when Cheri checked in on her. The hospital administrator gave Cheri a plastic bag filled with Sol's belongings: clothing, watch, wallet. And then he handed her the sodden turkey, wrapped in once-white paper blotched with pink juice. “Can't you throw it away for us?” Cheri asked. She was told she'd already signed for it; staff could not take personal effects that had been signed for and released, and disposing of raw poultry in the hospital trash was a health hazard. So Cheri carried the dripping turkey out to the street and dropped it in front of the first homeless guy she saw. “Do I look like I have a stove?” he protested.

The images are so vivid, as if it all happened yesterday. Later, Cheri would hear every detail of that day recounted over and over by her mother, and she'd listen and nod and say, “Yes, it's shocking.” And it was. Because no matter how she felt about her father, his absence loomed as large as his presence ever had. He was the white space around words.

On the first anniversary of Sol's death, Michael and Cheri flew in from Chicago. Cici prepared a rib roast while Cookie fussed. “Now, don't you be crying into the food, Mz. M., that meat's too expensive to blubber in it. Why you can't make turkey like usual I'll never understand.”

“I should eat what killed my husband?”

They ate prime rib and mushroom risotto and Cheri went to Mass with her mother. That was the last Thanksgiving Cici would ever celebrate.

W
hen Cheri gets home from the grocery store, she logs on to her computer to see if Michael's online. He's not. But Jessica the intern answers his phone. Cheri was used to Jane or Bertrand picking up his calls, but lately, it was always Jessica, with her offhand way of acting like she knew everything about Michael. “He's in a pre-interview, but we should wrap by midnight if you're still up,” she says in her cartoon bubbly voice. It was hard to tell how Michael was really doing. He said he was maintaining weight, on track with his regimen. They were on schedule and getting great stuff for the documentary. Cheri knew he'd never admit to anything less, but the last time they video-chatted, his eye was twitching, and she knew the grueling pace on the road had to be taking a toll. Whenever he checked in, it was from another noon-struck little town, a new motel room, always on the move.

She calls to video-chat later. Jessica Rabbit with her red ponytail is on Michael's computer in the van. It's just after midnight and she's whispering. “It was a really long day. He's sleeping.” She looks over her shoulder. “Yeah, he's out. Do you want me to wake him?” If Michael's sleeping, what is she doing there?

“I guess not,” Cheri says. “Just tell him I was looking for him.”

“Will do. You should have seen him today. It's amazing how he gets people to relax and say these incredible things like it was rehearsed. I'm learning so much from him.” Jessica leans into the camera. “You know, Cheri, your husband's a genius.”

“That's why I married him, Jessica.” Cheri closes her computer and feels like a snarky ass. Back when she met Michael, there was always a
Disco, Doughnuts
groupie in the background, a young production assistant who hung on Michael's every word. But there's something about Jessica that gives Cheri pause.

Cheri can't sleep. Fretting over Michael's health, Jessica's devotion, and the infuriating ongoing silence from the university, Cheri gets out of bed and crosses the yard into what's now HMS Base Camp. It smells like Michael is still there: Indian blankets, nag champa, and marijuana. A notecard with
Sit with your fear and find your love
is tacked up above his big computer screen. The last time they were in here together she and Michael had sex on the floor. Maybe he's having sex on other floors with Jessica Rabbit. Longer-lasting sex. He's telling her the story of how he almost died when they ran out of gas in the Ozarks with his crew and didn't have any water or food. How he saved them by urinating in the gas tank to get enough fumes in the carburetor so they just made it to a gas station. He's explaining the Tyndall effect, how to see light in shadows and shadows in light. Cheri loved his black-and-white photography; he'd once taught her to see through the shadows. Is it inevitable that the oxygen runs out in every marriage, each person consuming the other's air until both are left gasping? You pledge allegiance to a united state and with that comes compromises, adjustments, a snip here and a snip there until you are more alone together than apart. Did she think that her suffocated feelings would all disappear because he had cancer? She'd wanted to face it with him, to be united in the battle. But now he's so far away. Spending his remaining time with someone else. A younger someone who doesn't argue with him or make demands or challenge every decision he makes.
And why shouldn't he have that,
she thinks in a rare moment of selflessness.
Doesn't he deserve a few moments of happiness now?

Cheri had never been tempted to open Michael's diary before. He'd kept a journal for as long as she'd known him. It was on his bedside table or on his desk, never hidden. He has his current journal with him, but at the bottom of his bookshelf there's a stack of black, hardbound books filled with his lefty scrawl. She's sure there's plenty she doesn't want to know in there, but she feels so disconnected from him she's willing to risk that to feel—what? Close to him again? She takes a journal off the shelf and skims through quotidian complaints and confessional thoughts on fear: that he won't finish his film, that he won't make money, that he's getting older. But one sentence jumps out, cries for her to stop:
I want to fall in love again.
Her throat catches. She wasn't even looking for Jessica, she tells herself, but there she is. But it's not about Jessica. It's not about infidelity at all.

It's all about Cheri. Michael's bemoaning their lack of intimacy. Although this is nothing new, seeing it in writing feels like a spotlight is being shone on her failure. She wants to look away. She's about to close the journal when she notices a list at the bottom of the page:

Michael wrote about how he secretly hoped she wouldn't get pregnant, as it would only make separating harder. His words had oceans of glare. There is more, but this is more than enough.

Her mind is churning, restlessly circling back to a sick realization: Michael wanted to leave
her
. Long before she'd brought it up, he'd spoken to his shrink, Robert Meirs—RM—about separation. While she had harbored a belief that they'd either get pregnant or split up, her thoughts were blunt knives rendered harmless by her single-minded focus. The notion that he'd been sitting on this for so long cannonades what was left of her defenses. She tells herself it's high school semantics—who cares who wanted to break up with whom first?—but a crushing sense of abandonment overwhelms her anyway. He wanted to leave her first. He was thinking of leaving her the whole time they were trying to get pregnant. Or rather,
she
was trying. How had she not seen through his patina of acquiescence?

But just as bad was Michael's doubt about her maternal instincts. This echoed her deepest fear: Did she have the ability to nurture, to love unconditionally? Or was something irrevocably wrong with her? Michael couldn't understand what was driving her to such lengths to have a child. Maybe she'd just been trying to prove to herself that she was better than the woman who'd given her away. That she was better than the woman who suffocated her with her love.

Cheri wakes up with the same gnawing sense of dread she'd gone to bed with but a new resolve to regain some control—at least of herself. On one of her pilgrimages to the suburbs to see her fertility doctor she'd noticed signs for Pro-Maxx Sports, Illinois's premier gun store and shooting range, but she'd resisted the temptation to go out of deference to Michael. She drives there now and hands the clerk her firearm owner's identification card. Even after all these years, a gun club feels like home. She says she's looking to demo a few handguns and selects a Kimber, single-action, semiautomatic chambered in .45, an HK P95 9 mm, and a Beretta PX4. “You know your shit,” the clerk says admiringly, his dentures clicking like a snapping turtle.

The shooting range has the usual mix of weekend warriors, but once Cheri puts on her hearing protectors and eyewear, everything gets quiet. She tunes in to her breath, focuses on her front sight. She notes every detail of the HK: the weight of the trigger, the crispness of the pull, the softness of the recoil. After her initial bout of self-criticism—she is out of practice—she centers on one moment, and then the next.
Steady the body and the mind, don't anticipate,
she tells herself.
Let it happen.
Soon she's made a tight cluster of bullet holes right in the center of each target, so she increases her distance. The trick is to exert only as much energy as she needs for each shot. Michael had his meditation; she'd forgotten how much this was hers. For the first time since his diagnosis, Cheri feels herself relax.

When she's back at the front desk, the clerk says, “I was going to come get you, we're closing—holiday hours this weekend.” She hadn't even looked at her watch and, like her mother, had opted to ignore Thanksgiving. Cheri buys the HK and the Kimber and gives the clerk instructions on how she wants them adjusted. She pays for a year of locker fees. Despite her temptation to conceal and carry, she won't break the law or her promise to Michael. She's already violated his privacy and paid a painful price for it.

When she walks in the door, she's hit by the resounding stillness. In the past, Cheri loved having the house to herself. But now she keeps the news on in her office at all hours—is she turning into a little old lady, watching TV to keep her company? Or just a bad-news junkie? While there are still a few hoops to jump through with UN inspections, an invasion of Iraq is looking imminent. She imagines Samuelson firing off impassioned e-mails to Washington, making a list of sites that need to be protected, warning about the antiquities that could be destroyed in the event of a war. In a normal world where Michael didn't have cancer and there was no Richards, Cheri would have been adding her name to those e-mails.

At least now she has a little something to occupy her mind. The package from Peter Martins finally arrived—the photocopies of the tablet pieces he'd identified, along with his notes “for your edification and eyes only.” Two-D representations go only so far; Cheri knows she needs to have and to hold all of the fragments, including the ones in Baghdad, to determine how they fit together before they could be translated. Peter wouldn't attempt a transliteration without the pieces in Baghdad.
And neither should you,
she tells herself as she hunkers down in her den and spreads the copies out on the floor.

Translating a dead language that scholars could approximate only phonetically was the kind of maddeningly complex work that appealed to Cheri's type A personality. Precision. Control. Working with cuneiform put her in the same zone she achieved at the shooting range. There were six hundred signs that the Sumerians used regularly; knowing which code words went with which symbol was the easy part. Even a slight directional change in one character could alter the meaning. Words and sentences would collapse, change, emerge as something different, then disappear again. That was for an assembled tablet. This was a tease, an unsanctioned taste, but it was a welcome distraction, far better than pawing through Ugaritic texts for the umpteenth time.

What are you without your work?
She hears Michael in her head and starts to panic; is he okay? Rather than risking getting Jessica on the phone, Cheri calls Bertrand, who goes on about Michael's “indefatigable spirit” but confides that he looks thinner. Bertrand says he's forcing Michael to take naps; they can afford to slow down the pace. It's upsetting that everyone on Michael's crew knows more about what is going on with her husband than she does. They're enclosed in the terrarium of their road show, and whatever's outside of it reanimates only upon their return. She's experienced this on his other shoots, but this time the question he's tracking is about his own life and death. Cheri knows that as long as Michael is on the hunt, he can be the predator and not the prey. She understands it perfectly and knows that she can't really claim to understand how he feels at all.