The Middlesteins(34)

“Stress is another possibility,” the doctor said gently to Benny. They belonged to the same synagogue, and their wives were in a book club together, and he had heard all about Rachelle lately, how she had insisted the last time they had all met (they were discussing The Help) that pastries no longer be served at their meetings. No pastries, no cheese, no crackers. Just crudités, and don’t even try to sneak ranch dip in there, she wouldn’t hear of it; ranch dip was all sugar. There was nothing wrong with making a dietary request, but it was the way that she said it. She was violent in her articulation—“I swear to God, she almost sounded British,” said his wife—and she was righteous. No wine either. Empty calories. As a doctor, Roger Harris technically had to agree with Rachelle, but as a human being he wondered if she had gone off the deep end. (“What’s the point of having a book club if you don’t get to eat brownies and drink wine?” said his wife. “Otherwise I’ll just stay home.”)

Benny stared at his doctor, the wise man, the trusted source of knowledge. He wanted to be able to talk to him about his problem; he wanted to be able to talk to anyone. He used to be able to talk to his wife about everything. They had been on the same team since they were seniors in college. There was an accidental pregnancy, and there was no question they’d be getting married, keeping those babies, the twins, twice as much to love. They were in this life together. And now she was the problem, one of them anyway. He couldn’t bring himself to admit out loud to this relative stranger sitting before him that the best part of his life had suddenly become the worst. Still, he was no liar.

“Who doesn’t have stress?” said Benny. “I think there’s something wrong with you if you don’t have it. But this much?” He pointed to his head with both index fingers.

“I can do some tests,” said the doctor. He rattled off a list, but Benny wasn’t listening, he was thinking of his mother’s health. Her diabetes was taking her down fast, and he felt so helpless; he didn’t think a raw-vegetable diet was going to make a difference. Benny jerked back just as the doctor handed him a prescription for Propecia.

“In the short term, if you can, take a couple of vacation days. Get a massage. You might consider finding someone to talk to about whatever it is you’re going through. There are some great therapists here in the building, and I’m pretty sure they’re on your insurance plan.” He leaned forward and tapped Benny on the knee with his clipboard. “Hey, there’s no shame in getting a little help.”

Benny looked down at the clipboard, not at the doctor. Clearly he didn’t know where he came from, how his family operated. Therapy was for people who had an interest in communication. This was not the Middlestein family, at least not anymore.

“So set up an appointment with Marnie at the front desk for those tests, and we’ll look at next steps from there,” Dr. Harris said. They shook hands, like men, firmly, seriously, with intent.

Benny did not set up an appointment with Marnie at the front desk. He did head to his father’s pharmacy, though, prescription in hand. He would be late for work, but he did not care. All this craziness had started because his father had left his mother after she got sick, and if he were still there to take care of her and nurse her back to health, none of this would be happening.

He drove quickly, occasionally catching a glimpse of his head in the rearview mirror. He was unable to resist adjusting the mirror at a stoplight, angling it at his head; was it so thin he could see the sunlight through it now?

There was nothing wrong with him, except for his family.

In the corner of the mini-mall, across from the Polish-owned hair and nail salon, sat his father’s last pharmacy, the final, fading jewel in his empire. Once there were three. Now there was just one, with cracked linoleum and an outdated greeting-card section. Walgreens was cheaper and had a far superior skin-care section.

But his father’s clientele persisted. He had been the first Jewish pharmacist to set up shop in the area, and he had collected his customers from all the other lonely Jews who had moved northwest of the city and the lake in the 1970s, looking for an affordable new home and an easy commute, not thinking far ahead enough as to how they would build a community for themselves. Well, you start small, as it turns out. Richard and nine other men—how had he managed to pull a minyan together?—regularly meeting in the back room of the pharmacy. Praying, and then plotting for a future: regular services, first at the local high-school auditorium, so many Jews crawling out of the woodwork to attend, happy to find a place where they didn’t have to explain why they put all their bread away once a year, or why there wasn’t a Christmas tree in their front window, or why they drove so far just to get some decent whitefish salad. Why the phrase “Jew down” wasn’t acceptable, under any circumstances. There was a cantor fresh from school, a rabbi who had left another synagogue in Ohio under veiled but ultimately innocuous circumstances and wanted to start over, investors, believers, narcissists—they all threw in, did whatever it took to build something out of nothing, a place to worship from an empty plot of unincorporated land surrounded by oak trees stretching far back to a tiny stream where deer gathered sometimes in the summer. A beautiful place to be yourself.

The synagogue members all supported Middlestein Drugs for years, enabling Richard to open one more and then another across the northwest suburbs. The eighties were a good time for everyone. But then the family business began to slowly crumble, like a sick tree limb infested with a mysterious fungus. There were a few causes: More conservative members of the synagogue branched off to create their own competing temple a few towns over. People moved out of the area, or died. And a younger membership emerged at the synagogue he helped found, and they knew nothing of Richard’s past, and had no loyalties to him. All they knew was that he owned and operated these dusty pharmacies he never bothered to modernize or renovate. He had made a mistake, it seemed. He thought that being a contributing member of his community, being a Good Jew, would be enough to make his business thrive. But this was no small town; this was a suburb. An American suburb, no less. Keep up with the Walgreens and the Targets and the Kmarts and the Walmarts, or get out, Mr. Middlestein. Get out.