The Middlesteins: A Novel(39)

“Just drive,” said Edie. “You’re embarrassing me in front of them.”

“You can’t do this anymore,” said Robin. “You can’t eat like this.”

“You’re the one who wanted to eat,” she said, and she started to cry quietly and to herself.

“I don’t want you to die,” said Robin.

“I didn’t know you cared,” said Edie.

“Stop it,” said Robin. “Don’t pull that on me. Don’t try to make me feel bad for being me.”

They didn’t say anything for a while, watching everything shift in the strip mall, the two girls crushing their smokes under their heels then sharing a stick of gum, the UPS driver exiting the lot, one hot dog already half eaten before he pulled out onto the road, the girl in the cell-phone store showing a text to a co-worker, cursing loudly, sending a customer scuttling out the front door. They watched a party of seven, a birthday party, walk into the restaurant. They were good tippers, even if you couldn’t tell it by looking at them.

“I’m here now, aren’t I?” said Robin, but neither one of them knew if it was already too late.





Male Pattern



Benny Middlestein woke up one day and realized he was going bald, and he thought: “This is the end, beautiful friend.” He’d always had a perfectly thick head of hair—he had even come out of the womb with his rosy pink head covered in dark fuzz—and there had been no indication that he would ever have had anything to worry about for the rest of his life, at least when it came to his hair. Other things, they were maybe more of a problem.

His daughter’s newfound adolescent moodiness, those dark, twisted, frustrated glances she shot him whenever he opened his mouth, as if an Oh, my God, Dad were just hovering in the air between them, waiting to be splattered up against him, a condescending pie in the face. He remembered when his little sister had gone sour in her teens. Once the milk turned, there was no turning it back. Yes, his daughter was something to worry about.

There was also his wife’s full-blown obsession with his mother’s weight and her diabetes, it was all she talked about, first thing in the morning, staring straight up at the ceiling in bed. Not that it didn’t need talking about, so he couldn’t argue with her necessarily, only sometimes maybe, just for a day, he wished they could take a break.

But there she was, squirreled up next to him under the comforter, frowning, making all kinds of new lines in her forehead.

“I’m worried,” she said.

“I know you’re worried,” he said. If you keep making that face, it’ll stay that way, is what he wanted to say.

“Aren’t you worried? Why aren’t you worried more?”

“I’m worried plenty.”

He put a pillow over his face and inhaled the fabric softener, chemical approximation of a mountain breeze.

At night, too, she was fixated on this life and death situation, after the kids went to bed, during what was supposed to be their quiet time together, out back, sharing a joint.

“Can’t you just relax?” he said. He rubbed her shoulders, narrow, fragile, wrenched up with worry. “Take another hit.”

“This stuff will kill you,” she said.

“We’ve been smoking this for twenty years,” he said.

“I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that,” she said.

She was not wearing her mortality well, a real shame for such a pretty girl.

And there were e-mails during the day. Sometimes there were texts, and she hated texting, the squinting and the poking. But Rachelle had been following his mother around like some undercover cop, tracking her eating, and it was not enough that she contain this knowledge within herself.

She’s at the Superdawg on Milwaukee. 3 hot dogs!!!

He had tried to tell his wife to stop following her, but even saying the words made him feel like he was falling from the sky, a loose and lurching sensation in his gut. He searched for the right thing to say, because it all just seemed so preposterous, that they were even having this conversation. You’re freaking me out, was he allowed to say that? Please don’t stalk my mother anymore.

“I know you’re just trying to help,” he said. “But I’m not sure how she would feel about it.” This was over lunch, a small, sunny diner near the synagogue, where they had just dropped off the kids for their haftorah lesson with the cantor. They were both eating salads covered in raw vegetables; that was all they ever ate lately. Rachelle had ordered for them both without asking him what he wanted. Oil and vinegar on the side.