“And there’s really nothing else he can try? It seems like everyone in the world is on an antidepressant, and they’re always mixing and matching. I don’t mean to take this lightly, but is there really nothing that can work?”
“Oh, you know, sometimes a new drug seems to be having an effect. And we get all hopeful. But then he tells me it’s not working after all. Or else the side effects are bad. I see depressed people in my practice, but his depression, even though it’s supposedly ‘low-level,’ is just so tenacious, and hard to treat. Atypical, they call it.”
“If you want to experience over-the-top depression,” said Ethan, “just go to Jakarta and see how those workers live. That’ll really depress you.”
“Just what I want,” said Jules. “More depression in my life.”
Rory appeared then in the entry of the living room, still wearing her gi, though the sleeves were now dripping from what she’d been doing in the sink. She bowed deeply to Ethan, who stood and bowed back. “Ethan, I’ve gotten very good at destroying wood,” Rory said.
“That’s good, Rory. Wood is evil. That’s what I tell Larkin every day.”
“I know you’re teasing me. Want to see me destroy a piece of wood?”
“Naturally.”
Rory placed a thick piece of wood on the edge of the table and said, “Hi-yaaaaa!” and split the thing in half. The wood went flying, some of it landing under the radiator. It would stay there for months, years, wedged in a small space even after the Jacobson-Boyd family moved out. The wood would go unnoticed for a very long time, like the library book that had been flung under the bureau during Rory’s conception. Jules often thought of that night; she remembered Dennis in black tie, and how substantial he’d looked, how full of himself. That was it: Ethan was full, and Dennis now wasn’t. Depression sprang a leak. Dennis was leaking.
“You’re a genius at karate, kiddo,” Ethan said, and then he pulled Rory onto his lap.
“You can’t be a genius at karate,” declaimed Rory.
“No, that’s true. I can’t. But you can.”
Rory understood the joke and laughed chestily. “Ethan Figman, THAT’S NOT WHAT I MEANT!” she said in a voice that was so sure of itself and so deep that Jules sometimes referred to her as James Earl Jones. There was no point in telling Rory that she had to use her inside voice; she didn’t really have any idea how to modulate. She was spirited, full of herself too, the way Jules had just been thinking Ethan was.
Rory slipped off, went to destroy more wood in the front hallway. Ethan said to Jules, “Okay, I have to leave. Ash wants me to look at some set designs for that Balinese play. But before I go, you and I have to talk about the thing between us. The horrible thing about one friend helping another.”
“I never get to help you,” Jules said. “You’re always helping me and Dennis and everyone else.”
“Are you kidding?” he said. “You know you help me.”
“Oh,” she said. “You’re talking about me going with Ash to the Yale Child Study Center? I know she brought that up at brunch, but it was no big deal. And anyway, I helped her that day more than you.”
“You helped both of us.” He looked at her for a long, unblinking moment, and then said, “All right. I’m going to tell you something now that I really wasn’t planning on telling you. But I’m just going to do it. And once I do, you’re obviously free to think anything you want about me.” He crossed his arms, looked away and then looked back at her. “You know how I couldn’t come that day because I was in LA?”
“Yes.”
“I wasn’t in LA. I was hiding out at the Royalton Hotel in midtown. I just couldn’t bring myself to go up there and hear them give my son a definitive diagnosis. They were the experts, and once they said what I pretty much knew they were going to say, they couldn’t unsay it. I should have gone up there with Ash. But I just couldn’t bear it.”
Jules stared at him, her eyes first wide, then narrow. “Really?” she said. “You did that?”
“I did that.”
“Wow.”
“Say something,” Ethan said.
“I just did. I said wow. As in, I can’t believe that you did something . . . so morally bad. And that you did it to Ash.” Despite herself, Jules began to laugh.
“I can’t imagine why you’re laughing,” said Ethan, who wasn’t smiling at all, but appeared very somber and still.
“What you told me is just so unlikely,” said Jules. “You did something really not good, and I don’t know what to make of it.”
“I’ve been telling you for a long time that I’m not so good. Why doesn’t anyone believe me? Did you know that I yell at people too? People I work with? I never used to do that, but everything’s become so stressful. I yelled at one of the writers and called him a hack. Then I spent the entire table read apologizing to him. My temper is short, and I’ve made some horrible decisions. You know the spin-off Alpha? The one that just got shelved? The studio lost a shitload of money on that because I insisted it would work. I sort of convinced myself that everything related to Figland would turn to gold. But that can’t happen if it isn’t good; and the spin-off was pretty lame. But I pushed it through because I got delusional about the Figland brand. They’re all mad at me over there, but they won’t say it. This has actually not been a good moment for me professionally, but I act like it is. And I hid out in a hotel room for two nights while you went up to New Haven with Ash to have Mo diagnosed.”
“I really cannot believe you did that,” Jules said. It was terrible what Ethan had done to Ash, abandoning her at such an important moment, but the fact that he hadn’t confessed it to Ash, and had confessed it to Jules instead, gave this exchange a sudden intimacy.
He looked at her with his familiar, searching eyes, and said, miserably, “I don’t even know that I love him.”
Jules gave this a moment, and it seemed rude to refute it, but she felt strongly that she had to. She folded her arms and said, “I think you do.”
“I’m telling you, I don’t know.”
“You don’t have to know. Just do the right things around him. Be loving. Be attentive. Don’t leave it all on Ash again, okay? Just say to yourself, This is love, even if it doesn’t feel like it. And then go barreling ahead even when you feel cheated that this is how things have turned out. He’s your little boy, Ethan. Love him and love him.”
Ethan was silent, and then he nodded. “Okay,” he said. “I will try to do that. I will really try, Jules. But Jesus, there is nothing of Old Mo in my kid. Nothing.” Then he added, worriedly, “You won’t tell Ash?”
“No.” But Jules thought, suddenly, that if Ethan told Ash, then maybe Ash could tell him about Goodman. It was all about leverage, and Ash would have it at that moment. But Ash wouldn’t want to do that; she would never want to.
Ethan said, “All right, that’s enough about this. Thank you for letting me unburden myself to you. Please don’t hate me, at least not overtly. I will really think about what you said. And now here’s the part that’s not about me; here’s the part about you and Dennis. Every day, in my work life, there are people who want me to give them something because it’s my job to do that, and then there are other people who want me to give them something because they think it’ll advance their careers. I usually end up saying yes to everyone, regardless, because it’s easier that way. When in fact the person I really want to give something to is you. You and Dennis,” he amended. Ethan reached into his pocket and felt around. “Shit,” he said. “I know I brought it.” He frisked himself. “God, where is it? Oh wait, here we go.” Ethan extracted a small, folded piece of paper and smoothed it out; it was a bank check with his signature on it. He handed it to her and she saw that it was made out to her and Dennis, in the amount of one hundred thousand dollars.
“No!” Jules said. “This is a ridiculous amount. And Dennis will never let you do it.”
“Is it fair to let a depressed person call the shots?” Jules didn’t answer him. ?
??This’ll make life a little easier,” Ethan said. “That’s something that money can really do. You know I’m not really into things—but money isn’t just for things. In my experience it also paves your life, so you don’t have to think about all the constant worries and problems. It just makes everything run so much more smoothly.”
“We could never pay it back.”
“I don’t want you to. The point is that you work really hard, you’re dedicated, and New York is so tough and unforgiving. Dennis will come around eventually. Something will change for him, I know it will. But in the meantime you’ve got to leave this apartment, Jules. It’s a step. Go put a down payment on someplace bright and modern that gives you a hopeful feeling each day. I’ll cosign the mortgage. I want you to feel like you’re getting a new start, even if you aren’t, exactly. Sometimes you just have to trick yourself a little. Move someplace with an elevator; those stairs are a bitch. Also, give Rory her own room already. She needs it! And buy her some more pencils and wood and whatever else she wants. There’s nothing worse than money anxiety. I used to hear my parents arguing about money, and I was positive they were tearing each other’s flesh from their bones. I thought that in the morning they’d come out of their bedroom with their skin hanging off. Plus, constantly worrying about money is boring. Use your brain to think about your clients and their problems. Use it to be creative.”
“There’s no way I can take a hundred thousand dollars from you.” Jules held out the check and tried to tuck it back into his shirt pocket.
“Hey, what are you doing?” he said, dodging her, laughing slightly. “Come on, take it, Jules, take it.”
“I can’t,” she said.
“I’m sorry, you have to, I’m afraid it’s too late,” Ethan said, and he stood and backed away, as though there were nothing he could do about it now.
• • •
A little while after Ethan left, Rory stormed the bedroom where Dennis slept, climbed up on the bed, and stood above him. When he opened his eyes in the darkened room his daughter was looming, one leg on either side of his chest. “Daddy,” she announced. “Guess what? Ethan Figman gave Mom a hundred dollars. And he said, ‘Take it, Jules, take it.’ I heard them from the hallway. A hundred dollars,” she boomed, scandalized.
Dennis got out of bed and came into the living room. “Ethan was here?” he asked.
“Yeah,” Jules said. “He called and asked if he could come over. He brought some really good brioches, if you want one.”
“I don’t want his really good brioches. And as you already know, I don’t want his money. Was it all in twenties or one crisp new bill? I mean, this is so pathetic, Jules, so humiliating, I can’t believe it. Why would you take it? What are you, a homeless person?”
“What are you talking about, Dennis?”
“Rory told me about the hundred dollars.”
“Oh, she did?” Jules laughed in a single, hollow syllable.
“What?” he said, confused.
She brought over the check, holding it out to him in such a way that, when discussing it later, he could not say she had thrust it at him.
Dennis took it, looked at it, and closed his eyes. “Jesus,” he said. He sat down on the couch and put his hands to his head. “I was insulted by the idea of a hundred dollars. But now I’m much more insulted. I don’t know what to do anymore.”
“Dennis, it’s okay,” Jules said.
“If you want to get out of this marriage, then just do it,” he said. “You didn’t ask for this.”
“I’m not saying anything like that. Why are you talking about it?”
“This isn’t good. I was fun to be with back before the stroke, back before they changed my meds, wasn’t I?”
“Yes, of course.”
“God, I hate the word ‘meds.’ I hate that it’s something I have to think about. I try to remember, I was fun, and I can be fun again. But I keep finding myself unable to do that. Or else I do something all wrong. That girl from Kentucky with the liver mass—if it was malignant she’s probably dead by now. Oh Jesus, now I’m going to obsess about her again. Everything is such an effort. I’m not crisp like you and Rory. And I know I’m going to lose you.”
“You’re not,” said Jules. Here he was in the middle of the day, in soft, creased clothes. He had lost all crispness the night he ate the food containing hidden stores of tyramine, and then she and everyone had continued marching through the world while he struggled. He might lose her if they stayed as they were. She saw this now, and it was like looking ahead to the very sad ending of a novel, then quickly shutting the book, as if that could keep it from happening. “Dennis, we have to get out of this moment in our lives,” she said. “We have to leave this place, for starters. This apartment. You have to keep trying whatever you can try. Newer medications. More exercise. Mindfulness. Whatever. But I think, just this one time, we need to accept Ethan and Ash’s help.”
Dennis looked at her searchingly, and then Rory reappeared; her timing was always exact in this way, as though she was guided by electrical impulses that led her toward the heat in any given, tense moment. She stood before her parents, looking from one face to the other. “Is that the hundred dollars?” she asked her father.
“Yes.”
Satisfied, Rory looked at her mother, and who knew what complexities caused her to make the request, the demand, that she then made. “Mommy, kiss Daddy,” she said.
“What?” said Jules.
“Kiss Daddy. I want to see.”
“A kiss is kind of private, babe,” Dennis said, but Jules took him by both sides of his face and pulled him toward her; he did not resist. Their eyes were closed, but they could hear Rory laugh—a low, satisfied laugh, as if she knew the full extent of her power.
FIFTEEN
Then they were in another place half a dozen blocks north, a cleaner, brighter place, “an elevator building!” they remarked to each other with wonder, as if such a thing were unheard of. They actually owned this apartment, and on moving day, when the miracle elevator took them upstairs to their new, bright, though slapped-together rooms with the smell of paint and polished floors, they felt as if they had been saved. They weren’t saved; they’d only been transplanted somewhere different and better, in a co-op whose mortgage Ethan had cosigned. And Dennis’s depression was certain to hang around like a paint smell that wouldn’t fade, but still it was something. The movers worked, dropping everything in the middle of the rooms. The same framed posters—Threepenny Opera, a Georgia O’Keeffe animal skull—which they’d outgrown but could not yet replace, would soon decorate these new walls. Ash came over to help in the afternoon, and as a joke she wore one of the moving company’s red T-shirts. SHLEPPERS, it read. Who knew how she’d gotten one from them? She went right to work, tearing open cartons and helping assemble Rory’s bedroom—an actual bedroom of her own, not just a corner of a living room turned into a bedroom at night. Jules could hear them, Ash’s soft voice inquiring, and then Rory’s loud voice intoning, “Don’t put the Rollerblades away, Ash. Mom and Dad say I can wear them IN THE APARTMENT like my Indian moccasin slippers.” They were in there together, the best friend and the little girl, until the room was completely unpacked. At eight in the evening Ash was still at the new apartment, and they all ate Vietnamese food from what would become their primary takeout restaurant for over twelve years, until it closed during the recession of 2008. Jules tore the plastic wrap and packing tape from the couch and they sat on it with plates and silverware they had dug up from boxes marked KITCHEN 1 and KITCHEN 2. Rory ate too many spring rolls, one after another, then belched appreciatively and went into her new room and fell asleep in her clothes. The three adults were hopeful—even, guardedly, Dennis.
“This is going to be good,” Ash said. “I’m excited for you.”
She sat with them, talking about the apartment and her theater company and about how great Mo’s therapists were, and how he’d already shown some improvement. “He’s working so ha
rd with Jennifer and Erin. He’s my hero, that boy.” Ethan was in Hong Kong this week, and Ash was keeping all the parts of their lives going.
“When you have a child,” she’d recently said to Jules, “it’s like right away there’s this grandiose fantasy about who he’ll become. And then time goes on and a funnel appears. And the child gets pushed through that funnel, and shaped by it, and narrowed a little bit. So now you know he’s not going to be an athlete. And now you know he’s not going to be a painter. Now you know he’s not going to be a linguist. All these different possibilities fall away. But with Mo, I’ve seen a lot of things fall away, really fast. Maybe they’ll be replaced by other things I can’t even imagine now; I really don’t know. But I met this mother recently who said that she’d become so grateful that her child is high-functioning. She said she’d become proud of the term high-functioning, as if it was the same as National Merit Scholar.”
Jules thought about her own child, and though she had the suspicion that Rory would have a life that wasn’t gilded with specialness and privilege, she knew Rory wouldn’t even want that kind of life. She was happy with herself; that was apparent. And the child who was happy with herself meant the parents had won the jackpot. Rory and Larkin might well do fine; Mo, with his long, anxious face and active fingers—who knew?
On the night of the move, Ash went home at around ten, saying she was exhausted, and joking that she and the other Shleppers had a job in the morning in Queens. That night, not too far away, on the sixth floor of the Labyrinth, Ash’s mother Betsy Wolf, age sixty-five, was awakened from sleep by a headache so tremendous she could only whimper “Gil,” and touch her head to show him what was wrong. It was a bleed to the brain, and she died immediately. Later, after the trip to the hospital and the paperwork, Ash called Jules, barely able to speak, and the ringing phone in the night and the crying friend told the story. Ethan was in Hong Kong, Ash reminded her; could Jules come over now? Of course, Jules said, I’ll be right there, and she dressed in the darkness of the new, unfamiliar apartment among the unpacked boxes, and went down in the elevator in the middle of the night to find a cab.