The Middlesteins: A Novel(7)

So what? That’s what she had to say about that. Even if it had hurt a little bit to hear him say those words, it meant that they were still looking at her.

As a much younger man, Abraham had escaped serving in the Russian army during the war with Japan by puncturing both of his eardrums. He had worn hearing aids since. All her father’s friends respected him for his subversive behavior, because they all hated Russia (and sometimes America) (but loved Israel) but Edie thought that was the act of an insane man. For the rest of your life to be deaf? She could stop eating (maybe), but he’d never get his hearing back.

Naumann’s father had known Edie’s father when they were children in Kiev. They had not been close, but her father had a hard time saying no to any of the pleading letters that came his way. Naumann had been staying on the living-room couch off and on for a few months. It was covered in plastic, and she had no idea how he slept on it without sliding off. Abraham would pass out upright on the recliner in the basement. Edie’s mother would cover them both with blankets that were always neatly folded in the morning when Edie would stumble downstairs on her way to school, both men gone to whatever job Edie’s father had secured for them.

At high school Edie was significantly smarter than most of her classmates. She was going to graduate a year early, and then she was going to graduate in three years from Northwestern, which she would attend for free because her father worked there, and she would do magnificently, and then she would go to law school there, and there she would experience her first academic setback, and Edie would graduate merely in the middle of her class, maybe because her class consisted of an exceptionally bright group of people, maybe because the first year of law school her mother got sick, maybe because the second year of law school her father got sick, maybe because somewhere in the middle of that she met her someday-husband and fell in love, and maybe because there is only so much a woman can handle before she simply collapses.

But right then she was at the top of her game, her skin plum-tinted, her eyes glittering and dark, her hair soft and dark and curly and long enough to tie in a loose knot at her neck, tiny sprays of it fluttering out around her cheeks and jaw. She felt sharp and prestigious, and she had an understanding that she could do anything she wanted in the world, and that no one truly had the power at that moment in time to oppress her except for herself.

Big Edie Herzen.

“But there’s something about a big girl, it’s true. Even the really big ones,” said Abraham.

“This is what I am trying to say,” said Naumann. Edie didn’t even know his first name.

Naumann, on the couch. Abraham in the basement. Her parents upstairs in bed.

Edie had only begun to engage in her flirtation with eating late at night. All day long it was this and that about Meir and Israel. Her father had smoked an entire pack of Pall Malls and had forgotten to eat. He was always so skinny. There were leftovers. There was half a loaf of rye bread, and there were so many delicious things to put between two slices of rye bread. Just sitting in the refrigerator, in the kitchen, past the living room.

She tiptoed downstairs, carpeting to tile to linoleum. The stench of cigarettes did not deter her from her goal. She would always think of cigarettes when she sat to eat. A lifetime of hating and loving a smell.

She did not even have to look around to know that it was Naumann who had lit up behind her and was now seated at the kitchen table. Edie had his number before he even opened his mouth. She could have touched him months ago. She could have run her finger along his swollen lips. Other girls did things like that all the time, and it was no big deal. Half her class had turned into hippies overnight. Her parents still loved each other, and held hands at the dinner table, and kissed each other good morning, good evening, and good night. There was nothing wrong with wanting another person, if it was the right person. But she had sized him up and given him a failing grade.

How could Naumann know this? He was too concerned with her size, what her ass would feel like if he squished each cheek between his hands, what her breasts would feel like if he put his face between them and pushed them up against his cheeks. What it would feel like to be with a girl he didn’t have to pay for. He was also concerned with vodka. He was barely concerned with his job.

That spring, Edie’s mother had hired someone to cut the bushes on the front lawn in unusual shapes, and through the side window Edie could see a dark green spiral in the moonlight. Coleslaw and roast beef between two slices of rye bread. She sat down at the table with Naumann and began to eat. He lit another cigarette. She felt fearless.