The Middlesteins: A Novel(44)



It must be so nice to feel so right all the time, he thought. He would ask her that later. What that felt like.

After dinner, after Benny had done the dishes (defiantly dumping the remaining purplish mess into the garbage, because no he would not be taking the leftovers to work the next day), after the kids watched whatever crappy reality television show they were emotionally invested in that week, after they practiced their haftorah readings for their upcoming b’nai mitzvah, their voices reverberating sweetly from the living room, and after Rachelle forced Josh to try on his new suit for his father, Josh executing a glamorous turn as if he were on a runway—that kid had moves—before suddenly turning, embarrassed, and then running back upstairs again, and after the kids went to bed early, which is something that had not occurred ever in their house, Benny and Rachelle stood out in the backyard, near the tarp-covered swimming pool, and shared a joint, Rachelle taking just one hit before proclaiming, “That is the last time I am ever smoking this stuff ever again.” (This was not a lie, she meant it as fact, but it was untrue nevertheless.)

“Whatever,” said Benny.

“Don’t whatever me,” said Rachelle.

Benny took a walk around the pool, stopping on the far side, then taking a step back and peering up at the house he had paid off nearly all on his own, only the down payment coming from Rachelle’s parents, a dowry of sorts, he supposed, or at least some sort of panicked gesture toward the then-young couple who had gotten pregnant before they had even graduated from college. It was a simple mistake in the bathroom of his fraternity house, his intention being merely to hoist her up onto the sink and get her off with his tongue, but it tasted so good, too good, and then he stood and plunged inside of her without protection, their eyes locked together, it was just supposed to be for a minute, just one more minute, and then he would return to his duties downstairs, but neither of them could stop themselves, they were making nonsensical noises, they were having nonsensical thoughts, and he, deft, mathematical, precise Benny, made a serious miscalculation.

“Uh-oh,” he had said.

“Uh-oh?” she had said.

And now look at this house, brick, Colonial style with two sturdy pillars in the front that made Benny feel safe, like his family would be protected, two stories, three bedrooms, two and a half baths, a sunny kitchen, a shaded living room, a wet bar in the basement, a backyard with room enough for a swimming pool, a luxurious deck, and a badminton net in the summertime. (There was talk of building a gazebo, but not until after he saw what this year’s bonus was like.) A garage, with two sumptuous Lexuses in it. A shed with one of those lawn mowers you can ride. Not that he ever mowed his lawn. There was a guy who did that. He didn’t know who the guy was; his wife took care of all of that kind of stuff. Rachelle took care of him, that’s right, he reminded himself. He had trusted her to do so for so long. But he needed to eat. His kids needed to eat.

“We’re hungry,” he said to Rachelle.

“There was plenty of food on that table tonight,” she said.

“The kids are still growing. They need more than just vegetables,” he said. “And I’m suddenly going bald if you hadn’t noticed.”

“There is no scientific evidence linking hair loss to eating more vegetables,” she said.

He threw his hands up in the air, gestured toward the sky, and then toward his head, and then back again.

“It’s true,” she said. “I looked it up on the Internet.”

He took another hit from his joint and then realized he was high, and hungrier than ever, and there was not a goddamn thing in the house worth eating. He wondered if she would notice if he went for a walk and hit up the closest fast-food place, a McDonald’s about a half mile away. Maybe he would sneak back some fries for the kids. She’d probably smell it on him, though. He’d never make it past the first floor.

And then a scream rang out in the cool spring air, and Benny tossed his joint without thinking (this would eventually be found by the guy who mowed the lawn, in this case an Illinois State student on summer vacation, who would pocket it in one slippery motion and then later smoke it blissfully in his pickup truck during his lunch break) and ran toward the front of the house, two steps behind Rachelle, the scream sending shivers up his arms and the back of his neck. It was a child’s scream, he was certain. Don’t stop for nothing, Middlestein. He rounded the corner and saw Emily, lying on the ground, her head cracked open, her arm pointed in a strange direction, as if it were trying to flee her body. Benny glanced up at the house: Her second-floor window was open, and Josh peered out of it, his mouth shaped like an O. Then Rachelle was by her side, and so was he; both of them were bent over her, both of them terrified as they had never been before, their fear only receding after the stitches, after the twenty-four-hour watch-for-a-concussion period was over, and after the cast was put on. (“It was a clean break,” the doctor assured them, and they repeated this phrase over and over to anyone who would listen, as if focusing on this one positive thing would spin the entire incident into the plus category.) And when their heart rates returned to normal, and Rachelle stopped with her crying jags, and Emily was no longer in the worst pain of her life, and her grandparents had come and gone (separately, of course) with books and balloons and chocolates, and Benny finally said to his daughter, “What were you doing?” and Emily replied, “I just had to get out of there,” Benny did not even turn and look at his wife to see her expression, because he already knew what she was thinking, what she had to be thinking or she was not the woman he had married and she had been fooling him all this time, which was, “Enough is enough already.”

Attenberg, Jami's Books