During the jealousy resistance phase, one night she told the doorman not to allow me up for an incest session. That alarmed me, but it shouldn’t have. The physical craving for so complete a physical satisfaction — a narcissistic ecstasy that no one else could or would supply her — was addictive. The next morning she answered my greeting with a grumpy, “I didn’t sleep well.”
“Is that my fault?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said.
“You missed your bedtime story,” I said.
“Come here now,” she insisted.
“No. Thursday night.”
“What’s your phone number? You know, it’s outrageous that no one can call you at home. If you won’t give me your number, I’ll get it from Laura.”
That was the first time she tried to bring her father in as a greater authority figure than me. “Stick doesn’t have this number. This isn’t my home,” I said. “And I don’t really work for your company. I’m doing research.”
“Come here,” she groaned. “I’ll read you a story,” she added brightly. “I’m a good lover, you know.”
“You’re a great lover — but you’re not sincere.”
She whispered, “Let me make you happy.”
“You don’t want to make me happy,” I said. “I’ll be there Thursday. The next time you don’t let me in will be the last time I’ll come to see you.” I hung up. There were no more cancellations.
Despite the unprecedented intimacy my daily feeding of her narcissism required, I was convinced that she was nothing more than a patient to me until an interruption in our work proved otherwise. In late August, Aunt Ceil, Julie’s mother, suffered another stroke and died. Since my family was told by the institute that they didn’t have my New York number, Edgar, of all people, informed me on their behalf and offered a ride in his limo to Great Neck. He had joint real estate investments with Jerry, Uncle Bernie’s son-in-law, and would be attending the funeral. This was another reinforcement to Copley of my dangerous connection to the larger business world. I made sure to tell Stick who was providing my ride when I canceled our Thursday meeting.
I also warned Halley that I wouldn’t be available to tuck her in and refused to discuss why although she was sure to learn the reason from Stick. When she said, “How about Friday?” I said softly, “No.”
I can imagine what Stick fantasized Edgar and I would say to each other during the ride to temple. In fact, we reminisced about Great Neck High, the old men who played gin at the country club, and the toughness of his father and my uncle in business. Edgar launched into an anecdote about Bernie to illustrate. “You know,” Edgar said, “when your uncle bought Home World he was having trouble with the Mafia hijacking trucks. Hijacking! The union drivers would pull over nicely at such and such a time in a rest stop and have a cup of coffee while goombahs would take their load. Then they’d call the cops. It was a regular thing, taking about ten percent off the top. That was fucking up his profit margin big-time. So supposedly Bernie goes to see the Godfather — who’s drooling in a wheelchair in his mansion. Somehow Bernie knows him—”
I explained, “When they were kids they used to lead gangs against each other in the Bronx.” I knew the story he was telling, but I was interested in his version.
“No kidding? That’s for real?”
“That part is real,” I assured him.
“So Bernie tells him …” Edgar started to laugh and he began again, “So Bernie, he brings this big hulking Jew with him,” Edgar laughed again so hard that he paused, swallowed and continued, “Bernie says, ‘This man here is on a leave from the Israeli Army. He needs work and he has lots of buddies from Tel Aviv who need work and if my trucks keep having trouble, they’ll be riding in every one for me as security men. You know about the Israeli Army,’ Bernie says. They’re used to fighting Arab terrorists so they don’t mind getting their hands dirty,’” Edgar smiled. “And that was why the Home World trucks made their rounds without losing any inventory. Now here’s the payoff. Supposedly the big hulking Jew was a cantor from a synagogue in Texas.” Edgar laughed. We were exiting the LIE, heading for Community Road. He looked through the smoked-glass window at a Mercedes flanking us. The driver was a jeweled woman with a deep tan. Beside her was an African-American nanny. In the back, a toddler sat beside an infant in a car seat. “God,” he said to their comfortable domesticity, “I wish that story was true.”
“It’s true,” I told him.
“Really? You’re shitting me.”
“I know it’s a true story.”
“Are you sure? You knew it? Why didn’t you stop me?”
“I’m sure. I didn’t stop you because I wanted to know if you had it right. And you don’t. The hulking Jew wasn’t a cantor. He was a colonel in the Mossad.”
“You’re shitting me,” Edgar said.
“No. Uncle was good at matching men with jobs they were qualified for.”
“Don’t be a bleeding heart.”
“Between the two of us, Edgar, you’re the sentimental one.” He was. He stayed beside me through our entrance at the temple and, despite gestures of invitation from men important to him in business, pulled me down the center aisle row after row. Twice I mumbled, “Here’s good.” Edgar insisted on our progress until we got to the front where Julie sat in a black dress, an arm around each of her children.
“I brought him,” Edgar said to her.
She stood up. I had only a moment to see that her hair was cut very short, her skin looked five years younger than when we last saw each other, and that her warm brown eyes, calm before she saw me, were immediately wet. She was in my arms and that’s when I knew something was wrong with me. Julie’s strong back, the feel of her long body in my arms, had always, always and I thought forever, been both a thrill and a comfort. Although my mind told me to embrace her thoroughly, if only to express sympathy, my body revolted. My arms were stiff, my legs tense, and my belly reluctant to be flush with her.
“It’s so good—” she said in my ear and tried to squeeze my unyielding chest. “It’s so good to see you.”
I pulled away as soon as I could, mumbling I was sorry. She wiped away a tear and smiled. “Here are my babies,” she gestured to a handsome eleven-year-old curly-haired boy and a shy nine-year-old girl — my cousins, and I realized in a flash, the only heirs I was likely to have. Was I that alone? Not even to have been introduced to my future?
The listless ceremony began. Her dead father, Harry, was the loved parent; Ceil had been a critical and self-absorbed woman. Probably I was the only one who knew how little Julie liked her and felt loved by her. Not that the loss of her mother left her cold. On the contrary, she wept harder at this funeral than at her father’s, out of guilt and regret.
But I wasn’t the only one who knew what she was feeling, I reflected. I looked around for her husband and only then noticed he wasn’t present.
When we rose to follow the casket to the grave, Julie gathered her children with one arm and reached for my hand with the other. “You’re with us,” she said. Her eyes were red and tears kept flowing, although her voice was strong and clear. As we led the way out with the other Rabinowitzes, between mumbled thanks to mumbled expressions of condolence, Julie whispered asides to me. I didn’t prompt them and they were non sequiturs, as if I were a part of her mind. “I’m thinking of moving to New York,” she said, a moment after being released from a hug by Cousin Aaron. Guiding her boy and girl into the limo parked behind the hearse, she thanked the rabbi for his eulogy, then said to me, “I’m getting a divorce,” and ducked inside.