The Middlesteins(6)

At high school Edie was significantly smarter than most of her classmates. She was going to graduate a year early, and then she was going to graduate in three years from Northwestern, which she would attend for free because her father worked there, and she would do magnificently, and then she would go to law school there, and there she would experience her first academic setback, and Edie would graduate merely in the middle of her class, maybe because her class consisted of an exceptionally bright group of people, maybe because the first year of law school her mother got sick, maybe because the second year of law school her father got sick, maybe because somewhere in the middle of that she met her someday-husband and fell in love, and maybe because there is only so much a woman can handle before she simply collapses.

But right then she was at the top of her game, her skin plum-tinted, her eyes glittering and dark, her hair soft and dark and curly and long enough to tie in a loose knot at her neck, tiny sprays of it fluttering out around her cheeks and jaw. She felt sharp and prestigious, and she had an understanding that she could do anything she wanted in the world, and that no one truly had the power at that moment in time to oppress her except for herself.

Big Edie Herzen.

“But there’s something about a big girl, it’s true. Even the really big ones,” said Abraham.

“This is what I am trying to say,” said Naumann. Edie didn’t even know his first name.

Naumann, on the couch. Abraham in the basement. Her parents upstairs in bed.

Edie had only begun to engage in her flirtation with eating late at night. All day long it was this and that about Meir and Israel. Her father had smoked an entire pack of Pall Malls and had forgotten to eat. He was always so skinny. There were leftovers. There was half a loaf of rye bread, and there were so many delicious things to put between two slices of rye bread. Just sitting in the refrigerator, in the kitchen, past the living room.

She tiptoed downstairs, carpeting to tile to linoleum. The stench of cigarettes did not deter her from her goal. She would always think of cigarettes when she sat to eat. A lifetime of hating and loving a smell.

She did not even have to look around to know that it was Naumann who had lit up behind her and was now seated at the kitchen table. Edie had his number before he even opened his mouth. She could have touched him months ago. She could have run her finger along his swollen lips. Other girls did things like that all the time, and it was no big deal. Half her class had turned into hippies overnight. Her parents still loved each other, and held hands at the dinner table, and kissed each other good morning, good evening, and good night. There was nothing wrong with wanting another person, if it was the right person. But she had sized him up and given him a failing grade.

How could Naumann know this? He was too concerned with her size, what her ass would feel like if he squished each cheek between his hands, what her breasts would feel like if he put his face between them and pushed them up against his cheeks. What it would feel like to be with a girl he didn’t have to pay for. He was also concerned with vodka. He was barely concerned with his job.

That spring, Edie’s mother had hired someone to cut the bushes on the front lawn in unusual shapes, and through the side window Edie could see a dark green spiral in the moonlight. Coleslaw and roast beef between two slices of rye bread. She sat down at the table with Naumann and began to eat. He lit another cigarette. She felt fearless.

There was something about a big girl, after all.

“You are always so hungry,” said Naumann, bitter but hopeful, lost in America, sleeping on a plastic-covered couch, waking up every night, without fail, on the living-room floor, grateful that at least the fall was carpeted. “You always have to have some food in your mouth.”

Don’t say it, thought Edie.

Edie’s father had gotten Naumann a job cleaning the bathrooms at a high school in Winnetka. That meant he was a high-school janitor.

She took another bite. The coleslaw was creamy and tart.

Naumann inhaled deeply and drunkenly and then blew the smoke out his nose.

She could tell that he had no self-control. Neither did she in a lot of ways. She was sympathetic. But still. Don’t say it.

“Maybe you need something else in your mouth,” he said.

“Like I would screw someone who cleans toilets for a living,” she said.

“You would be so lucky,” he said. “Whore.”

She finished her sandwich; she took her time, because she was hungry, and because it filled her up, and because she was in her house, in her kitchen, and she was a queen, and because women could rule the world with their iron fists. Then, when she was done with her sandwich, she let out a loud scream that surprised even her with its girlishness, and which woke her mother, and her father, and half the block, lights flinging on in bedrooms and living rooms, everyone stirred, everyone worried, everyone but Abraham, who slept through all the ruckus because he had taken his hearing aids out for the night. She felt not an ounce of regret. As far as she could tell, no great tragedy had occurred.





The Willow Tree



Rachelle’s mother-in-law was not well. Rachelle wouldn’t have described her as sickly, though, because there was nothing frail about her. Edie was six feet tall, and shaped like a massive egg under a rotating array of silky, shimmering housedresses that seemed to make her glow. But Edie had had stent surgery six months before on her rotting thigh—a side effect of diabetes—with another surgery scheduled in a few weeks, and also lately Rachelle had noticed that two of Edie’s teeth had gone black. Concern stabbed her directly in the heart. Also, she was disgusted. Yet she could not bring herself to mention it.