Flatscreen Page 3

  IMDB aside, the web was filled with info on Kahn. Google gave me gold: a WoMAN MaGAzine piece about Sheila Glent-Kahn’s relationship with costume designer Mary Aldridge, a Variety interview with Kahn from ’87, an entire page dedicated to Wood and Nail (which had earned a cult following among craftsmen), a series of profiles and interviews with both Kahn and Glent-Kahn ranging from late seventies to present day.

  Spent the afternoon reading about Kahn, not sure why. But I soaked it in, felt ensconced by the details of his life as if they were my own, as if it were my story, humble beginnings, child of immigrants, celebrity—American dream and nightmare because it all gets tangled in broken car parts, legs that don’t work anymore, wives that don’t love anymore, children who couldn’t give a shit. Felt like crying at the screen and its whiteness, a background that loomed large beneath the tiny letters that were the words of Kahn’s life. Couldn’t cry. Tear ducts stuck, dry.

  Mom walked in, picked dirty clothes off my floor, put them in a laundry basket.

  “Where are all your socks?”

  A question so abstract I wasn’t sure what it meant. Seemed important, though, like a man without socks could never get by, not in New England with winter coming strong.

  “What’s happening to me?” I said.

  “You like clean clothes, don’t you?”

  Took a shower with the lights off. Didn’t want to see my out-of-shape body, or anything at all. Imagined Jennifer Estes in nothing but orange mesh, whispering in Spanish, cradling me beneath the flowing stream of water.

  eight

  Jenny(s) from the Block:

  • My fascination with Latina women runs deep, but is uncomplicated. To summarize: a succession of busty, bootied nannies rocked me gently, tamed my tangled mane of curls, let me eat all the beans I wanted, flatulence be damned.

  • Maria, Mom’s former helper, brought me pickled cactus from the homeland, starched my rumpled shirts into submission.

  • Seventh through eleventh grade, rocks or not, heart hemorrhaged fountains for Jenny from the block. She stayed taped to the inside of my locker until the Affleck fiasco of ’02, when I saw her for the masochistic traitor who allowed the star of Pearl Harbor free reign over her divinely molded etc.

  • Latin culture—or what little I know about it (thank you Mr. Gill and the USA-all-the-way public school curriculum)—seems like a nice one for obvious psychological reasons. Family, food, and girth are celebrated; TV soaps spin narrative quilts for daytime junkies; plus: warm weather, good dancing, pig meat. Qualities worth fighting for, hence all those revolutions.

  • I needed something worth fighting for.

  nine

  Jennifer’s Facebook was without posture. Like she’d answered the questions rapidly, no consideration of real-world consequence. She liked eighties movies, still mourned Bradley Nowell. Occupation: EMT. Relationship Status: Single.

  Mom reappeared, racket in hand.

  “I’m going to the club if you want me to drop you at Whole Foods. Benjy said he’d pick you up in an hour.”

  I was twenty, didn’t have a license. Benjy had been old for his grade. When he turned sixteen Dad had bought him a Range Rover to make up for marital misconduct. Car was yellow, colossal, called the Short Bus by the clever kids. For a while Benjy was popular, until Sam Arnold got his mom’s old minivan, let people have sex in it for ten bucks.

  When I turned sixteen Dad had run out of guilt or money, because I got nosebleed Celtics tickets, no car. Not that I minded. Happy to be chauffeured. Downside was when Benjy went to college, I was left with the infantilizing prospect of being driven around by Mom. Fortunately, she was up to the task. Maybe it was her way of staying connected; inches from each other with arms crossing as we reached for the heater knobs or the radio; chance for a unifying song, something Jewy, familiar, Billy Joel, Neil Diamond; shared memory of an idiotic relative dancing drunkenly at a cousin’s bar mitzvah.

  Her car was a white Camry. She’d bought a Mercedes SUV after the divorce, but sold it later to pay medical bills when her brother got prostate cancer. Now Ned was dead and I bet she wished she’d kept the car, as the money she’d spent on health care didn’t help in the end, and the medical costs had sealed her fate as a social pariah among the wallet-conscious women of Quinosset.

  Turned on the radio; Mom turned it off.

  “Gives me a headache.”

  Skirt hiked up. Blue veins, thick as guitar strings. Closed my eyes. Mom called Grandma in Florida, wished her a happy holiday. I was put on the line.

  “Hi, Grandma.”

  “You never call,” she said. “Your brother calls.”

  Mom forked over her Amex, dropped me on the corner. She didn’t want to deal with the parking lot even though it was half-empty. Most people were home preparing to break their fasts. Lox and bagels laid across tables, champagne uncorked, cashmere adorned. But Dad’s family was going to Pam’s sister’s place. Benjy and I weren’t invited. Fine with me. I liked grocery shopping. I was an excellent chef, a lover of the culinary arts. Had spent hundreds of hours in the thrall of the Food Network watching Giada’s pot of puttanesca bubble seductively with anchovy guts; Rachael Ray babble on in kiddie-speak, slobbering over her own mute creations, erotically licking egg-E.-colied chocolate from a wooden spoon; iron chefs, dressed as kings in their bleached cotton kitchen wears; modern cowboys—tanned, mustache-trimmed, cured of Marlboros—stirring five-alarm 80-percent-lean all-meat chili beneath Texas skies.

  My palate was unparalleled. Could catch a hint of freshly cut Brie from three houses away, smell the pizza boy before he’d turned onto our street. Knew the tannins in my tea by name, gagged at an extra teaspoon of cinnamon, understood the subtle benefits of star anise.

  Started in the veggie aisle, testing the ripeness of avocados, comparing California-grown peppers to Mexican ones, debating pros and cons of fresh lettuce vs. prewashed. Whole Foods was also stomping ground for the idle wives, empty nesters—mothers of my former classmates. As I held a bunch of fresh basil to my nose, thinking, Naples, gardens, stone courtyards, one of these women tapped my shoulder.

  “Eli Schwartz. Look at you.”

  Burgundy velour tracksuit, baby-blue trim. Quinosset colors. Top zipped down to reveal a peeling swath of cleavage. Big fake smile, the kind Mom couldn’t manage.

  “Well, don’t you look just like your handsome father?”

  “Hi, Mrs. Sacks,” I said. “How are you?”

  Knew how she was. Last summer she’d been caught hum-jobbing Eddie Barash, local kosher caterer. Everyone felt bad for her husband Mark until their daughter Sherri explained that her mom’s transgression was a perfectly understandable reaction. Apparently Mark had an “addiction to prostitutes” and “needed help.” He’d spent the summer at sex addicts camp in Palm Springs, having sex with other sex addicts. Sherri had shipped off to a camp friend’s place in Westchester, leaving Mrs. Sacks alone to ponder her fractured fam, play hide the Hungarian pastrami with Eddie.

  “I’m fine. Just picking up some extras for the breakfast. We just got back from the island. Sher is in town, does she know you’re home?”

  “No. I haven’t spoken to Sherri in a while.”

  Not a lie. Hadn’t spoken to her since eighth grade when she’d told Emily Dollinger I had only one ball. (I have two.) Childhood friends, nothing more, though I clung to the fringes of her social circle. Once she threw a party and I stole her dad’s baseball card collection because he didn’t appreciate it. Cards weren’t even in plastic cases.

  “Sher is at GW. She loves it. Loves it.”

  “Loves it?”

  “L-O-V-E-S. Loves it.”

  “You sure she doesn’t just like it?”

  “Hahaha. Oh, Eli, you’re a joker too, just like your dad.”

  “My dad?”

  “So where are you at school?”

  “I’m taking time off. Figuring things out.”

  Mrs. Sacks eyed my groceries. “You’re the cook, or y
our mother?”

  “I like to cook.”

  “Maybe you’ll come make me dinner one day.”

  “Sure,” I said, unsure if she was joking, just conversing, or serious.

  “And how’s your father? Seriously. You look just like him. Blow him a kiss for me, okay?”

  Next stop: ethnic food aisle, where I browsed the Thai marinades, tried to figure out whether wasabi paste was better than the powder kind. As I turned the corner into coffee/tea/condiments, I noticed a familiar face—a middle-aged brunette bent over reading the label on a box of tea. Red thong peeking out of her jeans. She was beautiful.

  Before I was caught staring, another woman approached.

  “Sheila,” she said, softly touching the woman’s neck with her fingernails. “I got the Chapstick.”

  Kahn’s ex-wife.

  Followed the couple from a distance, watched as they filled their cart with replenishing vitamins, organic vegetables, upscale design mags. Something organic about the two of them too, the way they held hands, held up each item to obtain the other’s approval, strolled slowly, didn’t avoid eye contact with strangers.

  Even pushing the cart, Sheila Glent-Kahn had the posture of an actress, star quality presence. One of those women who didn’t wear makeup, didn’t need to. Lashes were long and real, and the way her head wove into her neck, which in turn wove into her sunken neckline, made it seem as if her insides weren’t made of separate bones and organs, just one center bone, a thin tree trunk sprouting appendages like genetically perfect branches.

  Mary was beautiful too, broad, but not overweight. Blond curls bounced like a little girl’s and provided her face with a youthful glow you might not expect from a woman whose tailored men’s clothing and well-toned triceps implied an all-work, no play, strap-it-on attitude. Both dressed immaculately—Sheila in fake-ripped designer jeans; Mary in a vest, pressed slacks, ruffled button-down. Felt like we were in the country, small town off the coast of Maine; one of the hidden crevices of America where people hide, where they all have stories (according to TV), where everyone knows you, no one knows who you are (Cheers, NBC, 1982–1993). As I wound through the aisles behind them, filling my own cart without paying much attention to what went in, I had the urge to go with them, let them nurse me back to health, mother me.

  Benjy called. Parked outside. Hurry up. Followed Sheila and Mary to checkout. They went to twelve items or less. Watched from my own lane, hiding behind a food mag as they made small talk with Nikki, my favorite cashier and unknowing object of my romantic observations.

  Outside, got in Benjy’s car, watched Sheila and Mary get in a Porsche station wagon. Wanted to say, “Follow those lesbos.” Didn’t because Benjy already thought I was an idiot.

  ten

  Facts About My Mother:

  • Not that she can’t cook. Stove-slaved for hours in evenings before Dad returned, quiet set in, sound replaced by smell, tired man too tired to acknowledge the falling sun that lit the sky and illuminated his family as they gathered, rejoined to suck the sweet flesh (chicken) Mom had so diligently prepared.

  • He preferred to read the paper. Benjy brought his laptop to the table. I ate with ugly manners. Mom couldn’t see me. Tilting stacks of magazines and mail obscured her view.

  • When Dad left, the cooking turned to cleaning. Energy was there, but her focus was gone; no attention for recipes or timed flips or fileting the salted, freezer-stiff whole kosher fish she insisted on buying.

  • I took over. Been watching her for years. She’d let me hold the knife when it was time to carve the turkey.

  • Dad bought an electric knife, though this is not a thing about my mother, or maybe it is.

  eleven

  Cooked with the screen door open, baseball on the little TV. Season was ending. Air from outside felt like winter. At peace in the kitchen, my Zen space, like others have baths, beds. Made Moroccan chicken in a tagine Uncle Ned had brought back. He’d bought the tagine from a gypsy in Tangiers for five bucks and a box of cigars. People said I was like him because he was a fuckup. Then he died. They stopped saying it.

  Meal was a masterpiece: tender chicken in light stew with green and black olives, raisins, chickpeas, garnished with pomegranate seeds; salad with candied walnuts, pear, fresh blackberries; warm pita for dipping. No one ate with me. Benjy was out to dinner with Erin Kahn. Mom drank Slim Fast in front of the tube, watching Jack Bauer save us all, again.

  Sat alone in the kitchen, table set for one, trying to eat slowly, savor. Tough without conversation. On the screen, Wakefield floated that knuckleball, dizzied batters. But there was futility in his toss, windup lazier than usual, body understanding the end of a long season. We’d won in ’04, and it was supposed to be gravy from here on out, but didn’t feel that way. Just a season among seasons, peanut shells to be swept, fresh grass awaiting snow.

  Mom was asleep on the couch, toes dangling from under the Slanket, glasses on. The weatherman chuckled, proclaimed rain, wore an ugly tie. I’d seen him once at Whole Foods—Mitch Lieberman—fawned over by eager women, each with a nice Jewish niece who stayed up nights awaiting the slow suffocation of ring on finger.

  She snored lightly, like a woman who can’t whistle trying to whistle. I removed her glasses, placed them carefully on the coffee table. Long time since I’d touched another body. Hers was cold, curled—a private space. Part of me hoped she’d half-wake at my touch, reach for my hanging hand like a nightmare-ridden newborn seeking sleepy solace. I stroked her hair, pulled the blanket to her shoulder.

  In bed, watched an indie flick about some sad sack writer, failed in New York, returning to his childhood home. He had a successful brother who encouraged him to pack it in, join the family business. Scene played out like the one I’d had with Benjy earlier. “I talked to Dad today,” the older brother said.

  Couldn’t sleep. Figured Benjy had one hand on Erin Kahn’s stomach, his fingers inching their way under her shirt as he nibbled the skin behind her ear. Got out of bed, went online. Jennifer Estes smiled seductively, like she didn’t know we were separated by glass, and she was made purely of pixels.

  “Dear Jennifer,” I wrote, “I saw you at temple, glowing in neon like a false god. Coffee?”

  Erased it just as quickly, navigated to a site where Latina women said naughty things with accents.

  twelve

  Imagined Dialogue:

  Jennifer: When I saw you, you looked pure as a newborn with your dangling, post-fashion curls and those big brown eyes. The rain fell like waterfalls, and you bathed. I knew I had to hold your nakedness against my own.

  Eli: Oh, my darling. I saw you too, rain-slickened and shining, sharing your soul with me. Let us undress and intertwine.

  Jennifer: I have always wanted to date a man who knows his way around the kitchen. I especially love tender, braised meat in heavy, red-wine-based sauce, falling off the bone. I like lemon meringue pie for dessert.

  Eli: Funny, I have just spent the day braising Asian-style beef short ribs, and there’s a lemon meringue cooling in my freezer. Here, have a taste.

  Jennifer: This is the best food I have ever tasted. I have an uncle who works for the Food Network, and he will give you your own show.

  Eli: Will you marry me?

  Jennifer: Yes, I will even convert to Judaism so your parents approve of me.

  Eli: My brother will be so jealous!

  Jennifer: But you are so cool and attractive, and he isn’t. It is obvious that your parents love you more than they love him.

  Eli: I knew it all along!

  Jennifer: I love giving blow jobs!

  thirteen

  Dan was my dealer, lived around the corner. Convenient because of my driving handicap. Inconvenient because he sold overpriced, skimpy bags.

  Dan’s dad owned a liquid hand soap manufacturing wholesaler; he’d grown up dirt poor in Roxbury, wartime baby, made his first million by twenty-five, never looked back. Dan’s mom was Dan’s dad’s second wi
fe. She lived in a condo on the north side. Wife Three lived in the house with Dad, though neither seemed particularly interested in Dan or the import/export warehouse he operated out of their basement.

  Dan’s dad was a sleaze, but he must have been smart or smart enough. Pulled up by his bootstraps, this was his reward: succession of wives, each younger, more silicone-cyborg than the last. He’d grown hefty through the years, gut expanding with bank account. Now, on his throne, Soprano-esque—larger than life, king of the castle, comfortably gluttonous. But maybe, like Tony, he too had secrets and guilt, saw a shrink on the sly, complained of fuckup son, unreliable tumescence.

  He opened the door wearing golf pants, cleats. There were both putting green and practice net in the house. Wanted to ask why he felt the need for proper attire; surely Wife Three didn’t enforce a dress code. But I liked the fact that he allowed himself the fantasy. Not embarrassed to play make-believe. Or he understood it was all make-believe: house, silicone wives, Phil Mickelson impersonation.

  A red carpet flowed down the stairs. The chandelier—all sparkles and bling—was blinding. Out front were ten-foot bronze lion statues that matched the trim on the windows.

  “Dan’s downstairs.”

  “Okay.”

  Walked through the foyer into the kitchen, where the maid scrubbed an oven pan and Wife Three sat at the table in black silk robe, reading catalogs.

  “Hi,” she said.

  Didn’t know each other’s names, but we passed by often. Felt a faint air of conspiracy between us; neither of us knew what the fuck we were doing there. I was almost her age, but she looked so much older, the way she dressed, the perm in her hair that reminded me of Mom’s. Wondered if she missed being young, fucking guys her own age—she must have had her pick—staying up late drinking cans of Bud Light, waiting for the light in the room to fall soft.