The Middlesteins: A Novel(66)

“I did the best I could with where everyone sat. You’re fine here, right?”

This is a lovely table, a lovely party. We couldn’t have been more honored to be here.

She studied the table, doing some sort of math in her head.

“There were supposed to be some shoes here on the table. Were there shoes here when you sat down?”

We smiled steadily at her. We drained our glasses. We could not bring ourselves to answer her.

“There weren’t any shoes?”

It’s getting late, we said. The men helped the women up.

“There’s going to be dancing in a minute,” said Rachelle. “Stay for one dance.”

We stayed for one dance. We box-stepped. We spun ourselves around. We were sweaty and drunk and we needed to go to bed. We clapped at the end of the song, and then we walked out the door brazenly and, we supposed, rudely. But if we didn’t say good night, no one would even know we were gone. No one would ask, Where did the Cohns and the Grodsteins and the Weinmans and the Frankens go? And if anyone did, the reply would be simple: I think they went home.

We stood in the front of the Hilton and waited for the valet to bring our cars around. We held hands with our significant others. We stared straight ahead and ignored Edie and Richard, who had snuck out of the party and were standing nearby screaming at each other. We did not listen to what they were saying. We did not hear Edie say to him, “You do not get to apologize to me. You do not get that pleasure in your life. You do not get that reward. You are not absolved of one goddamn thing.” And if we did hear her say that, we would not remember it the next time we saw her.

In the car, we were silent but for small belches and sighs and tears. We thought about our lives together, how we had risen and fallen and then risen together again, and then we went to our homes, and took our spouses in our arms, and we made love. And there was comfort in that, we were not cold, we were not alone, we had someone to hold on to in the night, our bodies were still warm, we were not them, and we were not dead yet.





Sprawl



Kenneth had regrets about the day. He had not wanted to leave his lady friend, Edie, behind at the party with her family; in particular, her estranged husband, Richard, about whom he had heard not one good thing. But Kenneth had a restaurant to run, and there was no one to take his place in the kitchen. Saturday nights were his best nights, second only to Sundays, when many people were lazy and without ambition and wanted someone else to cook their food for them. He had bills to pay. He had been behind on them for months. He had no choice but to go to work.

But first he had driven Edie from the synagogue to the Hilton in his twenty-year-old Lincoln Continental, walked her into the ballroom decorated with pictures of her grandchildren, the twins, Emily and Josh, who were celebrating their bar mitzvahs that day, and deposited her at her table, which was decorated with ballet shoes, a nod to a popular reality show about a dancing competition, which he had never seen because he had not owned a television set since 1989. He felt, briefly, as if he were checking her into a mental institution. When he kissed her good-bye, once on her cheek, and once on her lips, her son, Benny, who was seated next to her, threw himself into a noisy coughing fit. Kenneth squeezed Edie’s hand tight and kissed the top of it. She was wearing a beautiful plum-colored dress that glittered. She smelled fantastic. She was overweight, and her breasts were tremendous. The night before, he had buried his hands and face and tongue in them, and was reborn in pleasure. Cough away, son. I can kiss her all day.

But that was a regret, too. He wanted her son to like him. He knew that Edie would still care for him even if her son didn’t, but if Kenneth’s own family was so important to him, how could it not be the same for this dear woman?

A final regret: that he hadn’t walked up to Richard Middlestein and looked him straight in the eye and let him know what was what. A finger jab to the neck, he remembered that move from a long time ago. But it was not his battle to fight, it was Edie’s, and he wouldn’t think of getting in her way.

The minute he released her hand, he resolved to make it up to her.

Six hours later, after twenty tables had come and gone, Kenneth stood in the kitchen pulling noodles quietly, holding the dough high in the air and then twisting it, folding the dough in half, then stretching it again. The action was mindless, yet infused with love. He rolled the dough in flour. Long, thick noodles emerged, and as he twisted and halved and stretched, they quickly became shorter and thinner. Nearby sat cumin seeds, lamb, garlic, and chilies. These foods would warm her up. He had never met anyone with so much fire in her mind and heart as Edie, but with such a cold stomach.