Larissa didn’t want to make a crack, to ask if he was old enough to drink. “So what kind of business are you thinking about going into?”
He walked alongside her to the tissues. “I want to run sightseeing tours.”
“Where, in New York?”
“Nah. Right here.”
“In Jersey?”
“Sure.”
“In Summit?”
“Why not? I get one tour bus to start, one of those 1930s National Park open utility vehicles. I show the travelers the Short Hills Mall, a decent attraction. I show them Deserted Village. That’s a whole day right there. The Great Swamp. What an adventure, especially if it rains in the marshes. Then we move to the snowy valleys and the skiing slopes. The factories. The outlet shops. The Jersey Turnpike. The amusement park. The Atlantic. Lots to see. We finish in Atlantic City on a blackjack run. I make them pay me first, though.”
Larissa couldn’t help herself, she laughed. And he laughed too.
“You’re joking, right?”
“No, I’m dead serious.” His eyes were jovial, so merry.
“Well, I have to go. Excuse me.”
He moved his cart out of her way, let her pass this time for good. “See ya, Mrs. Larissa.”
And she, without looking at him again, forcefully pushed her cart forward, and in a business-like manner clopped toward the milk and honey.
7
Ezra’s Boredom
Larissa, I told my mother.
You what?
I had to. I was losing my mind.
You told your mother? Why?
I needed help.
I told you I would help you.
I needed a different kind of help, Larissa. I needed counsel.
I gave you counsel.
I needed…different counsel. You’re my only friend. You’re like my sister. I love you. But you’re not hearing me.
Oh, for Pete’s sake. Why would you tell your mother?
Because there are things you don’t understand, Larissa.
What are you talking about? I understand everything.
No.
Che, you just don’t want to listen to me. That’s not the same as me not understanding.
It is. I don’t want to listen to you because you don’t understand.
Che, you’re sixteen years old and still in high school!
I know.
You think I don’t know how hard this is?
No, I don’t think you do. I think you would do what had to be done and wouldn’t lose a minute’s sleep over it.
Because I knew it had to be done!
I also know this. But I just can’t do it. You can. Not me.
Holy cow. What did your mother say? Oh, I can’t even imagine.
She cried. Then she prayed. For, like, three hours. Then she cried some more. She refused to talk to me until we went to church. Then she still refused to talk to me. She just kept crying. I said I know how you feel, Ma.
Larissa was now the one with her head in her hands, curled over a desk in her room.
My mother said she couldn’t believe I would be so reckless.
I told you that, too.
I know. You’re both right. Doesn’t help me much, though.
Did she say anything helpful?
She said she didn’t know I was being bad when I was out—she thought I was a good girl. She was so upset. How could I have been so careless with my life, she kept repeating.
I said that to you, too. But how is that helpful?
She beat her hands against her chest. Did you do that? I said to her, Ma, what are you so upset about? This is about me, about my plans. You should have thought about that before, not after, she said.
Okay, Ma, I said. I made a mistake. I was dumb. Can’t I be smart now?
It was too late for smart, she told me. Now it was time for action. Che bowed her head. My dad is semi-retired. Ma said he would take his retirement early and watch the baby while I finished school.
Che, no. Oh, my goodness. No. Don’t you count at all? What about you?
She said I could still go to college and leave the baby with them. They would help me.
But you’d never be free, said Larissa with fear and emptiness.
Ma said life is a bitch, Claire. Should’ve thought of that earlier. Now it’s too late.
It’s never too late. That’s the beauty of it. You make a little mistake, and three hundred bucks later everything can still go back to how it was before.
Che bowed her head.
It’s not too late!
My mother wouldn’t even discuss the other thing.
Why did you have to tell your mother?
If this happened to you, wouldn’t you tell your mother?
Never, said Larissa. And who says it hasn’t happened to me?
Now it was Che’s turn to gape at her friend.
Just kidding, Larissa said. But even if it did, I’d never tell my mother.
Che stared at Larissa. Larissa stared at Che. You have to think about it harder, Larissa said. Think about your life. It’s your life, not your mom’s, not your dad’s. Yours. You only have the one. Is this what you want?
No, said Che.
You’re sixteeen! It was a mistake. Everybody makes mistakes. You’re allowed one do-over.
Who said?
Oh, come on.
The baby is not going to get a do-over, though.
Yes, but you are. It’ll be like it was before. Nothing will be any different.
Larissa, come on, you don’t really believe that, do you?
With all my heart.
The whole universe will be different, said Che.
No, it won’t. And you’ll have your whole life to have another baby. Please.
Che kept staring at Larissa. You don’t think it’s wrong, Larissa, that a baby be sacrificed so I can live as I like?
You’ll have another baby!
You didn’t answer my question, Larissa.
“Ezra,” Larissa asked her friend on Saturday night, “why do we sit here every week and regurgitate the same old questions on the unfathomable workings of the bottomless universe? Are we really trying to figure it out? Or do you think we’re bored?”
Why did she sound hopeful? Did she want Ezra to be bored? Ezra, who had an opinion on every subject, could debate good and evil with the devil himself, could talk to an engineer about bridges, to a scientist about quantum mechanics; economists had to defend the margin of low supply side against him and Ayn Rand her objectivism and Christians their faith in the Triune nature of God and the nominal reasons behind the Great Schism. He was a linguist, a scholar, he loved movies and semiotics. He knew the differences between communism, socialism and collectivism, and could ask you fifteen questions about evolutionary theory for which you had no answer, not a single one. He could recite the Bill of Rights from the heart, knew the Declaration of Independence, and most of Shakespeare’s sonnets. By heart. His favorite writers were Dante and Donne. (“That’s because he hasn’t read past the Ds,” quipped Jared.) He thought Paradise Lost was the greatest work of literature in the English language. He spoke fluent French. No one could out-argue him. Ezra watched movies like Aronofsky’s Pi and said it was his favorite film of all time. To defy classification he also said Bachelor Party was his favorite film of all time. Larissa loved Ezra. He defied classification.
Could this Ezra be bored?
He looked slightly liquid, funny, completely engaged. “Yes,” he said cheerfully.
“Oh, Ezra, just stop it,” said Maggie, laying down her letters. “You’re not bored in the slightest. All you do is stir up trouble. Stop it. It’s your turn. You’re losing, darling, you’re last at Scrabble, Professor Bored. You have 80 points, while your uneducated wife and her over-theatrical though under-ambitious best friend have 120 and 113 points respectively. It’s your turn, sweetheart, the great conversationalist.”
Ezra put his letters down. Colloquy was his word. Bingo, plus 50 points, wi
th Q on triple letter. Ezra was no longer last. Maggie snorted in derision and annoyance. Glancing sideways at a laughing Larissa, Ezra put his hand inside the letter bag. “All we think about is ourselves, Larissa. This breeds boredom. And unhappiness. We become like sharks, always needing to keep moving or we die.”
“Ezra,” cut in Larissa, “but last week you told me and Evelyn and Malcolm that we needed to think more of ourselves, remember?”
Ezra drew a blank look, and Maggie laughed. “I told you, Lar, he is nothing but a sophist,” she said. “Advocating only for the position you don’t happen to hold on this particular evening. Don’t listen to anything he says, darling.”
“I can’t imagine myself saying this,” said a defensive Ezra. “Since I think we’re spilling out our own ears. We are stuffed to the gills with ourselves.”
“Last week you said we were unknowable!”
“Yes? And how is that incompatible with what I’m saying tonight?”
“I’m not unknowable to myself,” bristled Larissa.
“You sure about that, Lar?”
“Positive.”
“Describe yourself in five phrases.”
“Fine. Um. I am a mother. I am a wife. I am a set decorator. I am a good cook. I am a lover of books.” She said the last one sheepishly.
Ezra drew a laugh. “No, Larissa. Not who you are. What you are.”
Less certainly she said, “I am neat. I am orderly. I am meticulous.”
“Ah,” said Ezra. “Three different words to say the same tedious thing.”
“I am motherly. And wiferly. I’m a planner.” She thought. “I am well-dressed.”
He nodded. “One more. But make it a good one.”
Larissa was still thinking. She was still thinking. It wasn’t fair. It was hard to describe yourself in five phrases.
“But you just said you knew yourself better than you know anything,” Ezra said. “Why should it be hard at all? Just think of the five most important things about you. You can name five things about a lion, can’t you? Or a chimp?”
Spending her days swirling red paint around on the sets of school plays. Larissa, the Jackson Pollock of high school productions of Guys and Dolls. Theater hadn’t even made the cut. How could that be? The children hadn’t made it. Love. Yearning. Contentment. None of it.
“Get rid of one of the neat freak traits,” Ezra said, “and you’ll have more room for painting.”
But Larissa felt it still wouldn’t get to the bottom of things. The bottom of who she was.
Ezra clapped in delight. “It’s easier after ten minutes of nominal research to talk for an hour about anabolic metabolism than it is to talk with any degree of authority about yourself, even though you’ve been stuck with yourself your whole damn life. Clearly you’re not thinking enough about yourself, Larissa,” he concluded, stretching out his hand with the emptied Margarita glass. “See, you think you’re bored because your glass is overflowing,” he said, “but what if it had tipped over and is empty and you don’t even know it?”
8
A Birthday Gift
And then one night, Jared said to Larissa after dinner, with a big smile, “Whose birthday is coming up?”
“What are you smiling about? I’m cancelling all birthdays this year.”
“Just the opposite. We need to celebrate like we’re twenty.”
“We’ll have to start early.” Larissa stabbed at her empty plate. “You’re asleep by ten. Did you always fall asleep by ten when you were twenty?”
“Actually, yes. I don’t know if you’ve noticed after knowing me for twenty years, but I’m a morning person. But seriously, you want to hear what I’m thinking of for a present for one very good wife?”
“Which part of cancelling the birthday didn’t we understand?”
The kids had just dispersed, though loudly and not far, and husband and wife had a few precious minutes to themselves.
Jared stared at her with his “are you finished” stare. She smiled. “I don’t need anything. I already have everything.”
“And Ezra told us what he thinks of that,” Jared exclaimed happily. “He would prefer we had nothing—like in college. So what do you get a woman who has everything but who’s turning a very young 4-0?”
“Diamonds?”
“Nah, you have those. I was thinking more along the lines of,” said Jared, with a dramatic tone and expression, “a new car.”
She stared at him dumbstruck. “A new what?”
“A new car! Something snazzy. A sports thing. A two-seater. Not a mom car. A Larissa car.” He beamed. “A Beamer? A Merc?”
“A Jaguar…?” she intoned dully.
“Well…I was thinking more of something sturdy and German-made.”
“Like a VW?”
“No! Sturdy but snazzy. But sure, a Jag if you want.”
“I thought the British built Jags.” She couldn’t think of anything else to say.
“Not anymore; long ago sold to a Ford division in Michigan. Pricey. But a good idea.” He nodded agreeably. “They have some fine-looking sports cars. And they keep almost half their value. There’s a new dealership that opened on Main Street in Madison. Why don’t you go there next week, see if there’s anything you like, and then I can come in, swoop in at the end, check it out with the checkbook?” Jared’s straight light hair was in a shaggy mop, he looked healthy, happy, still in a dark gray suit, pleased with himself. Leaning over, he kissed her. “But pick yourself something nice. Something babelicious.”
“Yes, except at twenty we were riding rusted bicycles, not Jags,” Larissa said, getting up from the table, the dirty plate in her hands, the silverware, the cup, the soiled napkin. “That’s the irony. When you’re young and want to ride a flash motorcycle, you can hardly afford it, and by the time you can afford it, you look ridiculous on it.”
The kids were playing pool in the den, even the six-year-old. Larissa hoped he wouldn’t stab his older brother with a pool cue.
“I’m quite happy with my Escalade, Jared,” she went on. “It’d be a waste of money. Honest. I don’t need a new car.”
“Yes, you do. And don’t be a spoilsport. What else am I going to get you?”
“A vacation? Hawaii, maybe?”
“Hmm. Hawaii’s a good idea. But you know, with the kids…we’ll need a vacation after that vacation. Besides,” he added glibly, “a vacation is over in seven days. But a Jag you have forever.”
So this became Larissa’s life internal: talking herself out of going to the Jag dealership. She didn’t want a new car. She’d be satisfied with a BMW. Except Jared told her that Doug Grant thought a Jag would be finer than any other car except maybe a Porsche.
“What, Doug is now a car expert?” She brightened. “But a Porsche might be nice.”
“Off the table. Too expensive.”
“I’m not sure about Doug’s opinion,” she said. “I’m going to ask Ezra.”
“Ezra!” Jared loosened his tie. “You’re going to ask a man who drives a twelve-year-old Subaru wagon with a hatchback that doesn’t open what kind of luxury car he thinks you should get?”
“Ezra is very smart. Do you deny that?”
“He’s an idiot about cars!” Just to prove his point, Jared got Ezra on the phone despite Larissa’s protestations that dinner was about to achieve room temperature. “Ez, it’s me. My wife wants to know what kind of sports car you think I should buy her for her birthday.”
Larissa was violently rolling her eyes while Jared was nodding into the phone. “Exactly. My point entirely. Thanks, man. See you Saturday.” He hung up. “Do you want to know what Ezra said?”
“I can’t tell you how much I don’t care.”
Jared laughed. “But you wanted to ask him! He told me. Would you like to hear?”
“Suddenly, no.”
On Friday, Larissa asked Fran’s opinion, her twentysome-thing friend with whom she did only one thing—sit at the nail salon. Finklestein liked the be
autiful things in life, though she was a receptionist at a Midtown-based news agency and had no actual money. The girl was single, young, hip and didn’t fit in with Larissa’s other friends. Her singlehood and youth dazzled Larissa; Finklestein was what a Republican looked like to a Democrat: unfathomable. This time over a latte, flash Fran denounced Larissa’s false dilemma by administering a brutal piece of advice. Any sports car would do, Fran said dismissively. Pick the one that will please you the most.
The ever-practical Maggie tried to talk her out of the car entirely. She didn’t share Ezra’s risible indifference to the question. Always thrifty, Maggie thought such a purchase an unnecessary extravagance.
Larissa couldn’t talk to Bo about something so trivial as buying a car when Bo was living in a two-bedroom apartment with her unhinged mother and freelance Jonny, who’d been looking for a long-term gig for three years. Bo spent her days on the sixth floor of the Met during lunchtime, ambling through neo-Impressionist floral displays from South America and dreaming of a different life. Talking to Bo about Jaguars was as absurd as talking to Michelangelo about it, who saw a brochure his father had brought home and said, “Ooh, nice blue car without a top, Mommy, but how you gonna fit your whole family in there?”
Che didn’t come to school, one day, two. She didn’t pick up the phone either. Larissa walked to her house after school. She was on half-days; soon she would graduate, summer, then college! But Larissa’s daydreams of impending adulthood had faded recently in the face of Che’s trauma.
Che’s mother let her in, curt, impersonal. It wasn’t like her. Che’s mother loved Larissa. She’s upstairs, was all she said.
Che was on her bed, face down.
Why is your mother mad at me?
She’s not mad.
Why did she give me the evil eye? Larissa thought about it. Oh, no. Did you tell her I wanted you not to have it?
Che nodded.
Thanks a lot, girlfriend.
She asked me. What is Larissa advising you to do? So I told her.
But what’s happened? Larissa perched on the edge of the bed, touching Che’s heaving back. What else could’ve happened?
I’m not pregnant anymore, said Che in a dead voice.
Larissa’s heart jumped, flew up into the summer sky. Oh, Che! That’s the greatest thing I ever heard.