Housebreaking (7 page)

As a child, Benjamin had always worried that Leonard might suddenly drop dead: a heart attack while driving his Cadillac or cooking hamburgers on the grill. He couldn't recall what prompted this fear. Leonard had always been healthy. But he had been older than most of the other fathers in the neighborhood. If Benjamin woke in the night he would listen to the sound of his father snoring in the next room, awaiting the next percussive outburst, fearing that it might not come. In the
morning, at the breakfast table, he would imitate the snoring, making his mother and sister laugh.
That's not me,
Leonard would joke.
That's your mother. She snores like a stevedore.

Feeling an onset of panic, Benjamin decided to call Judy to tell her the news. To his surprise, she answered: “What do you want?”

“You're answering?”

“I'm sick of you clogging up my machine.”

He tried to ignore that. “I have something to tell you.” He paused. “It's not good news.”

“Nothing is good news where you're concerned. How dare you call this late?”

He felt himself falling into the familiar fighting stance. “You didn't have to pick up. You could have let it go to the machine, like usual.”

“I should have. God, I can't stand the sound of your voice. It makes my skin crawl.”

Benjamin took a deep breath, trying to stay calm. “Judy, we should be able to communicate. For the kids' sake, at least.”

“They're better off without you. You're poison. I don't want you seeing them.”

“What about Thanksgiving? The kids will be home—”

“Forget about Thanksgiving. I'm having a peaceful dinner with my children. You're not invited. You're no longer part of this family.”

“Come on, Judy. Don't be a pain in the ass. This is hard enough—”

“Talk to my lawyer if you don't like it.”

She hung up. “Damn,” he hissed, angry with himself for getting drawn into a shouting match. Only Judy could get him going like that. When he redialed he got the answering machine; he heard his own voice announce:
This is the Mandelbaums. Please leave a message for Benjamin, Judy, David, or Sarah.

“Very mature, Judy,” he said after the beep. He considered going on, telling her about Leonard—but he hung up instead. She had always been fond of his father; the two had been close ever since she'd started working at Mandelbaum Motors, all those summers ago. No matter how nasty she was being, telling her about Leonard's stroke on the answering machine would be a lousy thing to do.

This is the Mandelbaums.

He felt the weight of what he'd lost. He'd had everything: a family, a
home, and all the warmth that came with it—the pleasant chaos of the kitchen, Judy cooking pasta, David and Sarah making the salad, their friends coming and going, the house alive with the familiar presences. A full life. How had he let that slip away?

Benjamin went into the den and turned on the TV. Sometime later he drifted into a dream of a snowy field. He and Yukon were walking toward a line of trees. Something was rustling behind the branches. Was it a deer? A raccoon? Pine needles fell and the wind rose like a chorus of voices.

* * *

LEONARD MANDELBAUM
woke to a rumbling outside the window. He felt numb all along the right side of his body. A tube was attached to his wrist. He wanted to remove it but found that he couldn't raise his hand. With great effort, he managed to move his fingers, hardly more than a twitch.

This was not his bed. He was not at home, but at that moment he could not remember where his home was. The rumbling clouded his mind. He could not summon the word for the sound—for when water fell from the sky. It happened during storms. The clouds opened up and the thing happened. It made you wet. Your clothes would get soaked if you stood outside. A simple word. But he could not find it, and searching for the word made his head throb.

He opened his mouth to speak, but the sounds that came forth made no sense, like a record played on slow speed. The effort at speech tired him immensely, and he let himself fall back into darkness, not sleep, not waking.

* * *

“
WAKEY, WAKEY, LEN
.”

Some time had passed, he could not say how long. He blinked, trying to focus. A face was peering down at him, not three inches away: enormous features, a grotesque painted mouth.
Who are you?
he tried to say, but only a slurred syllable emerged.

“Don't strain yourself, Len. You just take it easy. That's why they got you in this dark room, to reduce stimulation.”

He fell into the blackness, tumbling backward. Where was this place? He thought he heard Myra's voice, and then he was pulled away, someone tugging at his arm.

“You probably don't even know who I am. Your mind's all muddled right now. It's Terri. Do you remember? Think, Len. You've got to start using your noggin again.”

He felt ashamed that he didn't know the woman. “I'm fine,” he managed.

“I called the house looking for you and your son told me what happened. You must feel terrible, you poor man. I went through the same thing with Dick Senior. He had a stroke in 'ninety-nine. He was a clotter just like you. We were driving home from the China Palace and he started swerving all over the road, and the leftover chicken teriyaki fell into my lap. I called him an idiot. ‘Look what you did to my suede skirt!' Then Dick stopped the car and put his forehead on the steering wheel and started foaming at the mouth. I got out of the car and lit a cigarette. I was in shock. There was a pay phone there and I dialed Dick Junior. ‘Dickie,' I said, ‘your father just dropped dead.' By the time the ambulance showed up Dick Senior was speaking in tongues. ‘Ooga booga booga,' he was saying.”

Someone knocked on the door. There was another visitor coming to see him. Leonard felt that he should stand to greet the person, but he could not move his legs.

“Come on in, honey. Don't be shy.”

She was a tall woman dressed all in white, like a saint. “Time for your sponge bath, Mr. Mandelbaum.”

Leonard was in motion, being turned onto his side. Something cold and wet was running down his back.

“Doesn't that feel nice, Len? What a lucky man you are, to have such a pretty gal sponge your bottom. You got the legs of a showgirl, honey. You ever dance?”

“Some ballet when I was a kid. But I was too tall to be any good.”

“How tall is that?”

“Six feet.”

“You hear that, Len? A regular model, this one. Where you from anyway?”

“Jamaica.”

“I knew it the moment you walked in. That lovely skin, like cocoa.”

The nurse pulled the sheet up to his chest.

“Say thank you to the pretty lady, Len.”

Thank you, pretty lady.

“Look at his face. Look how hard he's trying. He's an old-fashioned gentleman. If he had his wits about him he'd be kissing your hand.”

“He looks very distinguished.”

“You hear that, Len.
Very distinguished
.”

“How long have you been married?”

“Oh, we're not married, hon. Just pals.”

“Well, you make a lovely couple.”

“Thanks, dear. What's that you're giving him now?”

“Stool softener. He should avoid bearing down, if possible. Try not to let him blow his nose, cough, or sneeze.”

“You got another one of those stool softeners, honey? I could bring one home for my son's shiksa. She looks like she needs one. I'm joking. You run along. I'll make sure he stays relaxed. You got that, Len? No coughing, no sneezing.”

A smell of something clean. Myra always used it in the kitchen. The word eluded him, but the scent lingered in his lungs. He heard a rhythmic beeping and the sound of a loudspeaker in the distance. Was he at the airport? Was he going on a trip?

“Dick Senior came home from the hospital as blind as a bat. For two months all he did was dribble and drool. Then one day he said, ‘I can see. Terri, I can see.' He could barely hold his head up. One minute he'd be sitting there, next minute his chin was on his chest. The doctor wouldn't give him a cane, said if he started with one he'd be using it for the rest of his life. I tell you, that man had to learn how to walk again, how to use a fork—everything. He tried to comb his hair with a toothbrush. It would have been funny if it wasn't so pathetic. And Dick Senior was a proud man. They gave him exercises to work his mind, a stack of cards with pictures on them, even a first grader could do it. I showed him a picture of a refrigerator and a picture of a car and asked, ‘Now, Dick, which one is the car?' and he got it wrong. ‘No, Dick. That's a refrigerator.' So I asked again, and he got it wrong again. I'd give him a pencil and paper and say, ‘Spell frog,' and he would write
fog
. One day he wanted to help with dinner. I told him to boil the water. A minute later, he was on fire. He lit his sweater on the burner and didn't even know it. He couldn't feel a thing in his right arm. I realized something was wrong when I smelled the burning wool. ‘You're on fire, Dick,' I said and threw a glass of water on him.

“But each day he got a little better. He'd go out for a walk and pull his right leg along like it was a piece of wood. ‘Come on, leg,' Dick would say. ‘Keep up with me, you prick.' Then one morning he woke up, with tears streaming down his face, saying that his leg hurt. ‘Let me get the heating pad,' I said. ‘No, Terri. You don't understand. I can feel my leg again.
I can feel my leg
.' A few weeks later he was back on the golf course.

“This doesn't mean anything to you now, Len. You probably don't even know your own name. And you won't remember any of this later. You're like a newborn baby in your diaper. The important thing is not to worry. You just stay calm. Listen to old Terri. Everything's going to be just fine.”

He felt a hand, stroking his hair.

“Oh look, Len. It's Oprah. Last week she had a show on sex addiction. One gal said she'd had relations with twenty-five men. Everyone oohed and aahed and clucked their tongues. I'm thinking,
Twenty-five? Is that all?
Shush, Len, stop that gibbering. Let's listen to Oprah.”

* * *

BENJAMIN MET HER
on Leonard's fifth day in the hospital.
A friend of your mom and dad from the old days
, she called herself. She'd phoned the house a couple of days earlier, asking for Leonard. Benjamin recognized her last name—the dry-cleaning franchise. Dick Funkhouser had been one of Leonard's cronies. (Benjamin remembered the dry-cleaning man from childhood. When his father would take him into the shop to pick up his weekly supply of starched white shirts, the man would come out from behind the counter and tousle Benjamin's hair and hand him stacks of shirt cardboards, which Benjamin liked to draw on.)

He didn't remember Terri, though. She said she'd reconnected with Leonard the week before, over dinner. “Did he try to sell you a Cadillac?” Benjamin asked, putting it together. “That was Dickie's idea. My son Dickie. He thinks I should have a new car. Fat chance.” The woman didn't seem like Leonard's type—she wore enormous gold hoop earrings and exuded a powerful perfume—but Benjamin found her to be comforting, in a way. “He's much better today,” she told him, patting his arm. “I was here yesterday too, and his color is coming back.” Benjamin himself could discern no difference in Leonard's condition—his father lay there in a frozen-face stupor, unable to drink water, now and then barking out a few sudden, slurred syllables. “He's going to be fine,” Terri reassured him.

After leaving the hospital Benjamin drove to Wintonbury Center for a slice of pizza. He sat alone at a windowseat, looking over sales figures on his laptop. Business was booming. With six days left in October, they'd already met the Cadillac sales goal, which would give them a bonus worth—he did the figures quickly—about seventy-five grand. Sure, he made his dealer holdback on every car they sold, but with overhead, that manufacturer bonus often meant the difference between the dealership being in the black for the month or being in the red. The bonus number changed every month—and if they fell just one car short the dealership got nothing—but his salesmen hadn't missed their numbers in a year. They'd even hit September, a rarity, because the first week of school was always lousy for sales in the suburbs.

He put away his laptop and called his son. No answer, as usual. He could picture David, as he'd seen him do so many times, fishing the phone out of his pocket, glancing at the number, and then putting the phone away until it rang itself out. David wasn't like Sarah. He didn't want to discuss the breakup; he wouldn't even let Benjamin raise the subject. “It's fine, Dad. Whatever” was the most David cared to comment on his parents' divorce. Benjamin didn't leave a message. This was another thing he'd learned about his son's phone etiquette; he never listened to messages, and apparently it wasn't good form to leave one, at least in David's social universe. The number appeared on the screen; that was all he needed to know.

Next, Benjamin called his sister and updated her on their father's condition, all the while gazing across the street at the Thursday-night crowd at Max Baxter's Fish Bar. Benjamin could see the well-dressed men and women through the plate-glass window, pressed together in the small bar area, everyone drinking and talking. He felt the urge to walk over for a cocktail and join the conversation. He wanted some company, even a drunken crowd—anything but another night in front of the television. But Yukon needed to go out; there was no way to avoid his responsibility to the dog.

When he got home he found a card in his mailbox.

Thanks for rescuing my dog.

Beneath her name she'd written her phone number. He went into the house—he'd forgotten to leave any lights on, again. It was a bad time
to call, six-thirty on a weekday, dinnertime. Her husband would probably be home, maybe in the same room with her. But she didn't have to answer the phone, did she? She could simply let the call go to voice mail. He cleared his throat and dialed, and she answered immediately.