The Middlesteins: A Novel(10)

Pierre promised her, “I’ll turn them into solid gold,” and she believed him. He knew Ricky Martin, after all.

The kids walked past their mother, their eyes glued to their iPhones—Hanukkah gifts from the previous month, against her better judgment, all those studies with the tumors and the cancer, she wouldn’t even let them talk on them, only text—giving a quick good-bye to Pierre. “Don’t forget to vote tonight,” he said. “We won’t,” said Emily.

“You can vote, too,” said Pierre. He pointed to a new picture on the wall, of him and a skinny young Asian man with pale blue eyes and a Mohawk. The two of them both had ice-cream cones, the tips of which were touching. Pierre explained the man was a former student of his who was now appearing on So You Think You Can Dance. He was in the finals, and he needed people to vote for him. “You can call or text,” said Pierre. “If you’re the texting type.”

She wasn’t, but she could learn to be.



*

The class lasted ninety minutes, and her in-laws’ home—the same house where Benny had grown up with his sister, Robin—was ten minutes away from the studio. That meant Rachelle had at least an hour to spend with Edie, which seemed more than enough time to approach the matter of her teeth and perhaps even the larger looming issue of her health, which she had not attempted to change one bit even though her doctors, everyone around her, had issued serious warnings about it. Legs, teeth, heart, blood. Everything about her was collapsing. She weighed well over three hundred pounds. If she did not alter her diet and begin to exercise, she might die: the doctor had said as much to all of them. A bypass might soon be an inevitability rather than just a possibility. How many more surgeries would she have to have before she would change her life? Did she value her life so little? To Rachelle, to Benny, to everyone they knew, it was unimaginable. One surgery would have been enough for them.

Benny’s father had said, uselessly, more than once, “You know your mother, I can’t get her to do anything she doesn’t want to do.” And that was all he was willing to say on the matter. He simply was not willing to take on his wife. While Edie was wonderful to her own children, the grandchildren, and Rachelle herself, she pecked at Richard constantly, as if she were a sparrow and he was some crumb just out of reach; it made Rachelle like her less.

Still, Rachelle was certain it was Richard’s responsibility to help his wife get healthy, and yet here she was, driving through one long subdivision of new homes, and then another, until she arrived at a tiny side street still full of homes that were built in the 1960s, the owners of which had never sold out to developers, or had sold directly to younger families. Every third house looked exactly alike. Many were ranch style, and they all had fenced-in backyards. In the warmer months, robust American elms bloomed in the front yards. It was a fine, quiet block. Rachelle had seen pictures of the house from thirty years ago, in family photo albums, Benny and Robin standing in front of a massive willow tree in soft petal bloom, Robin chubby, poky little breasts in a polo shirt, half smiling, squinting from the sun, and Benny with a Cubs hat and a baseball glove, a big grin, a brace face, sparkling next to his sister. How had Benny turned out so cheerful and Robin so sad? Nobody knew. It was in their genes; that’s all anyone could guess. That willow tree was gone, and now there was just a low row of unevenly manicured bushes in front of the two-car garage, poorly maintained by Edie, who, in the spring, occasionally hacked at them with a giant set of clippers. “I do love the fresh air,” she would say.

Rachelle parked across the street from the house, but did not get out of the car; her legs would simply not move, and she could not even bring herself to turn off the engine. Unfair, she thought, the word hotly blinking in her head, branding her with each throb. Why had she said yes? Because they were all in it together. Because her mission in life was to keep her family happy and healthy. Because where she failed, her husband would pick her up, and she would do the same for him. Just as she was doing now.

The front door to the house opened; it was Edie, wrapped in her enormous mink coat and matching hat, an inheritance from her own oversized mother. (“I am morally opposed to fur,” Edie had told Rachelle once. “But since it’s already here, what am I going to do? Throw it away?” Rachelle had fingered the coat delicately with her fine, manicured hand, and imagined having it taken in—dramatically—someday for herself. “You can’t waste mink,” agreed Rachelle.) Edie got into her car, and before Rachelle could get out of her own car to stop her, drove off.