On Turpentine Lane(43)

That worked. It was what as kids we’d called our Sunday night suppers with Heinz and Hebrew National, a family tradition . . . when the Frankels were still a family.

Nick had hockey every Sunday night. He led up to his departure with the weekly grousing about the bumpy Everton ice, the know-nothing refs, and why did he let Reggie talk him into signing up. “Have fun,” I said. “Don’t get any teeth knocked out.” I added that his timing was good: Joel was coming for dinner and no doubt he’d had had quite enough of Frankels singing the blues.

“A pity to miss that,” he agreed.



Only when pressed and after a beer, and with me avoiding parental topics, did Joel confide that he’d kept a third date with Leslie, Stuart’s ex-sister-in-law.

“Did the subject of Stuart come up?”

“Nope.”

“Never? Even though his mothers put you two in touch?”

“Maybe on the phone before we met. I can’t remember.”

“Did you get any impression about whether Leslie likes him?”

“Stuart?”

“Does she hate him?”

“Do you?” he asked.

“He deserves it.”

Here was where a brother who didn’t want to talk about his own personal life moves the conversation forward with “Who picked the fancy beer?”

I said I did; it was brewed in Brooklyn.

There was a pop from the saucepan, a knockwurst bursting its skin. “Dinner is served,” I said.

We helped ourselves from the pots on the stove then took seats at the kitchen table.

“Where’s the housemate?” he asked.

“On campus, playing hockey. The faculty-staff game is every Sunday night. He’s the goalie so he has to show.”

“Decent,” he said.

“Speaking of not so decent, have you heard from Dad?”

“Nope. Only Mom.”

“How’d that go?” I asked, knowing full well every sentence they’d exchanged.

“She called him, you know.”

“She warned me she might . . .”

“She told him, ‘Don’t go around telling everyone we’re not getting divorced. Because we are. I’m not the one who has anything to be ashamed of! This isn’t the 1950s.’?”

“Ironic,” I said, and pointed to my 1950s Formica counter, where my mother’s Eisenhower-era lemon squares were defrosting.

Joel muttered a hrrmmmph that sounded like a rebuke.

“Can you translate that?” I asked.

“It meant you should move back to Brooklyn.”

“Because Mom bakes me cookies?”

“No. What’s here for you? Everton Country Day? Mom dropping by every two minutes?”

“And what would I be going back to?”

“New York! Stuff to do and see. First-run movies! Public transportation.”

“Why don’t you move to Brooklyn if it’s too claustrophobic here? Or Boston? Or, I don’t know, Honolulu, Hawaii? Aren’t you in the same boat as I am?” Then, for good, illogical measure, I threw in “Plus dating a woman whose family I wouldn’t want to sit with at your wedding!”

“Well, that makes total sense.” He leaned over and gave me a friendly cuff on the shoulder. “What else ya got?”

“Not much.”

“There’s always the old favorite, How about taking some courses and working toward a degree? Shouldn’t you have a PhD by now? And a couple of kids?”

I said, “You don’t get that from me. And Everton makes perfect sense for me now. I have a house, a job I mostly like, a very good tenant—”

“That’s how you think of him? A tenant?”

Ignoring that, I moved on to “I have a car; I have what New Yorkers would consider a yard. And even if Mom is underfoot, what’s better: being a mile away or spending a fortune getting up here when she needs a little . . . boost?”

“You call this a boost? She told me she slept here.”

“Only one night! And only because we’d had too much to drink so we couldn’t drive her home, and we weren’t going to let her walk in the dark, in a blizzard.”

Thus, conversation was reset to the weather forecast and the batch of new plowing patrons, old faithfuls who were once on his paper route. I cleared the plates, and from the sink, I heard, “Mom likes your tenant.”

I said, “She told you that?”

“Obviously.” Then—as if it were the logical follow-up to a Nick compliment—“I told her he was gay.”

I squeaked, “You did? Why?”

“You know,” he said.

“No, I do not.”

“I think it was after she said she hoped you weren’t falling for him. Or maybe the other way around—Nick falling for you. I figured I’d throw her off the scent. It’ll save us both her stewing over the Gentile factor.”

Where to start refuting, correcting, scolding? I huffed first about my own various troubles, then the paternal trauma we’d all suffered the day before, plus his buddy Brian Dolan’s showing up to investigate some murders that might have been committed in my cellar. “And after all that,” I ranted, “that was her takeaway? That was her big overriding worry? Nick isn’t Jewish?”