The Middlesteins(60)

Middlestein would have thrown in a few bills, too, if they had only called him, but they had not. No one had called him about anything at all, not even to extend condolences, except for his son to give him the details about the funeral. But why would they? Why had he thought anyone would care how he felt? He had left her, and they had been weeks away from signing divorce papers. He put his plate down on the floor and lowered his head between his legs and let it hang there. He had brought two boxes of rugelach, and he realized when he walked through the door that it was not enough. Nine months before, he would not have been allowed to bring a thing. Nine months before, shiva would have been held at the house they shared together. Why didn’t he bring more rugelach? How much rugelach would he have had to buy to not feel this way? How much rugelach would he have to eat?

He jerked his head up. He wasn’t certain he was feeling rational. He was so full, but still he wanted more. All around him, people sat politely with plastic plates in their laps. His son, Benny, sat on a low chair, his granddaughter, Emily, leaning against her father, staring off into the distance, her lips downturned. She was thirteen; it was her first funeral. Middlestein’s daughter, Robin, sat next to Benny on a normal-size chair; she was working hard at actively not looking at Richard. Her boyfriend, Danny, sat next to her. He held her hand. He was stroking it. He had these fancy-framed glasses, but he wore his tie loosely, like he’d never learned how to tie it on his own. He looked like a real pushover, is what he looked like to Richard. That’s about Robin’s speed, he thought. She’d need someone to mow right over.

Robin was hell-bent on ignoring most of the traditions, but she at least wore a black ribbon pinned to her blazer. She wore one, Benny wore one, Rachelle wore one, Emily wore one, and so did her twin brother, Josh, who had wandered off somewhere toward the dessert table. Richard was not wearing one. Richard was not sitting on a low chair. He was on the couch, with the rest of the general population. He had sat in the third row at the synagogue during the services. He didn’t know if that was too close or too far. He didn’t know if he should have leaned against the back wall, like some of the other mourners. It was standing room only. Good for Edie, he thought. People still cared about her. People wanted to show their respect. When he died—oh God, he was going to die someday—he wasn’t sure he’d get the same kind of crowd. Not anymore.

He was suddenly consumed with a desire for savory foods, the saltier the better. He wanted his tongue to be swollen with salt. He hefted himself up from the couch—What was that sharp crunch in his knee? And the other in his lower back. Had those always been there, or were they brand-new?—and maneuvered through the crowd made up of people he had once been able to pat on the back hello and who now pulled away from him, he was certain, in disgust. He made his way to the dining room table, to the herring. He was going to eat the hell out of that creamed herring. He spooned some onto his plate. He grabbed a handful of baby rye crackers, and then he stood there and dipped one crisp cracker after another into the tangy, smoky whitefish. He could stand here all day, if necessary. At least he had something to do, a purpose for standing in that spot, at that moment. It was then he thought he understood Edie, and why she ate like she had; constantly, ceaselessly, with no regard for taste or content. As he stood there, alone, in a room full of people who would rather take the side of a woman who was dead than acknowledge his existence, he believed he at last had a glimmer of an understanding of why she had eaten herself into the grave. Because food was a wonderful place to hide.

In the living room, his daughter death-stared him. Her eyes were sloppy with anger. It was spilling out everywhere. What a mess. Danny stood behind her and gripped her shoulders, and Robin reached back and pried his hands away from her. Danny winced. I’d happily walk her down the aisle just to get rid of her, thought Richard. Hand her off to that guy in a heartbeat. Robin got up from her chair, and again the crowd cleared a path for her, and again people stared. She marched up to Richard and past him—leaving behind only the slightest trail of a sneer—and toward the kitchen, where she paused and then dramatically shoved open the swinging door that separated it from the living room. Richard could see his daughter-in-law, Rachelle, inside, a cup of coffee in her hands, leaning against the refrigerator. Rachelle was the captain of this ship, and Robin was a rebellious sailor. Mutiny was clearly afoot. “We have to talk,” was the last thing he heard before the swinging door settled to a close.

Richard turned his attention to the circular dessert table, where Josh was opening boxes of pastries and shifting them onto a giant vaseline-glass dish that Richard recognized as one of his aunt’s. She had brought it with her from Germany when she immigrated and left it to him when she died, along with a houseful of furniture, which he had since sold or donated to charity. But he had kept the dish. It was made of uranium, and it was light green and glowed faintly like kryptonite. It was a neat trick: The dish was made of a volatile substance, but had been turned into something useful. As a child in Queens, he had been mesmerized by it. He would fantasize about it exploding spontaneously. Poof! The Middlesteins would be gone forever.

A week earlier that dish had been sitting in Richard’s former living-room cabinet, and now, suddenly, it was on his son’s dining room table. He bet that his house had been ransacked. Rachelle had probably gone through every cabinet and drawer and taken whatever she liked, antiques, jewelry, those two fur coats. Now he was going to have to have a conversation with his son about it. That was his plate, everything in that house was his, lock, stock, and barrel. No papers had been signed, nothing had been filed. If Edie had lived a bit longer, it’s possible he would have had no say on that plate whatsoever. But she hadn’t. Edie was dead.