Mae finally came to call them in to dinner, and as they sat down at their usual places, Adam saw his mother stare down the length of the table at him. It was a look that would have wilted concrete. His father was at the opposite end, with both couples lined up on either side. Their children were still being fed in the kitchen, and Adam hadn't seen them yet. They'd been shooting basketball hoops and secretly smoking cigarettes outside. His own children never came. His mother saw them alone with Rachel, on her own time. Adam's place was between his father and sister, like someone they had made room for at the last minute. He always got the table leg between his knees. He didn't really mind it, but it always seemed like a sign from God to him that there wasn't room for him in this family, even more so in recent years. Ever since his divorce from Rachel, and his partnership in his law firm shortly before that, he had been treated like a pariah, and a source of grief and shame to his mother in particular. His accomplishments, which were considerable in the real world, meant absolutely nothing here. He was treated like a creature from outer space, and sat there sometimes feeling like ET, growing paler by the minute, and desperate to go home. The worst part of it for him was that this was home, hard as that was for him to believe. They all felt like strangers and enemies to him, and treated him that way.
“So, where have you been lately?” his mother asked in the first silence, so that everyone could hear him list off places like Las Vegas and Atlantic City, where there were gambling and prostitutes and roving bands of loose women, all of whom had been summoned there for Adam's use.
“Oh, here and there,” Adam said vaguely. He knew the drill. It was tough to avoid the potholes and pitfalls, but he usually gave it a good try. “I was in Italy and France in August,” he reminded her, he had spoken to her since.
There was no point telling her he'd been in Atlantic City the week before, dealing with another crisis. Mercifully, she had no idea where he'd been on Rosh Hashanah and didn't expect him to come home. He only made the effort on Yom Kippur. He glanced at his sister then, and she smiled at him. For an instant, in a momentary hallucination, he saw her hair get tall with white streaks in it, and fangs come out. He always thought of her as the Bride of Frankenstein. She had two kids, whom he rarely saw, who were just like Gideon and her. He went to everyone's bar and bat mitzvahs, but other than that, he never saw them. His nephews and nieces were all strangers to him, and he admitted to Charlie and Gray that he preferred it that way. He insisted that everyone in his family were freaks, which was precisely what they thought of him.
“How was Lake Mohonk?” he asked his mother. He had no idea why she still went there. His father had made a fortune in the stock market forty years before, and they could have afforded to go anywhere in the world. His mother liked to pretend they were still poor. And she hated planes, so they never ventured far.
“It was very nice,” she said, foraging for something else to spear him with. She usually used whatever he told her to clobber him. The trick was not to give her any information, other than what she read in the tabloids, which she purchased religiously, or what she saw on TV. Generally, she sent him clippings of the ugliest pictures of him, standing behind one of his clients being handcuffed and taken to jail. She always wrote little notes on what she sent, “In case you missed this …” When they were particularly bad, she sent them in triplicate, mailed separately, with little notes on them that began, “Did I forget to send you …”
“How're you feeling, Dad?” was usually Adam's next attempt at conversation, which always had the same response. He had been convinced as a boy that his father had been replaced by a robot left there by creatures from outer space. The robot they had left had a piece of defective machinery that made it difficult for it to speak. It was capable of it, but you had to kick the robot into action first, and then you realized the battery was dead. His father's standard answer to the question eventually was “pretty good,” as he stared into his plate, never looked at you, and continued to eat. Removing himself mentally entirely, and refusing to enter into the conversation, had been the only way his father had survived fifty-seven years of marriage to his mother. Adam's brother Ben was turning fifty-five that winter, Sharon had just turned fifty, and Adam had been an accident nine years later, apparently one that was neither worth discussing, nor addressing, except when he did something wrong.
He couldn't remember his mother ever telling him she loved him, or wasting a kind word on him since he was born. He was, and had been even as a child, an embarrassment and an annoyance. The kindest thing they had ever done for him was ignore him. The worst was scold him, shun him, berate him, and spank him, all of which had been his mother's job when he was growing up, and she was still doing it now that he was in his forties. All she had eliminated over the years was the spankings.
“So who are you dating now, Adam?” his mother asked as Mae brought in the salad. He assumed that because he hadn't gone to synagogue, and had to be punished for it, she had brought the big guns out early this time. As a rule, she waited to level that one at him till after dessert, with coffee. He had learned long since that there was no correct answer. Telling her the truth, on that or any subject, would have brought the house down.
“No one. I've been busy,” he said vaguely.
“Apparently,” his mother said, as she walked swift and erect to the sideboard. She was slim and spare and in remarkably good shape although she was seventy-nine years old. His father was eighty, but going strong, physically at least.
She took a copy of the Enquirer out of the sideboard then, and passed it down the table, so everyone could see it. She hadn't sent him the clippings of that one yet. She'd apparently been saving it for the high holidays, so everyone could enjoy it, not just Adam. He saw that it was a photograph taken of him at Vana's concert. There was a girl standing next to him with her mouth wide open and her eyes closed, in a leather jacket, and her breasts exploding out of a black blouse. Her skirt was so short it looked like she had none on. “Who is that?” his mother asked in a tone that suggested he was holding out on them. He stared at it for a minute, and had absolutely no recollection, and then he remembered. Maggie. The girl he'd gotten a seat on the stage for, and whom he had taken home to the tenement she lived in. He was tempted to tell his mother not to worry about it, since he hadn't slept with her, so obviously she didn't count.
“Just a girl I was standing next to at the concert,” he said vaguely.
“She wasn't your date?” She was torn between relief and disappointment. She'd have to choose another weapon.
“No. I went with Charlie.”
“Who?” She always pretended she didn't remember. To Adam, forgetting the names of his friends was just another form of rejection.
“Charles Harrington.” The one you always pretend you don't remember.
“Oh. That one. He must be gay. He's never been married.” Her point on that one. She was in control now. If you said he wasn't gay, she'd want to know how you knew, which could be incriminating. And if you threw caution to the winds and agreed with her, just to get the hot potato out of your lap, it would inevitably come back to haunt you later. He had tried it with other topics. It was best to say nothing. He smiled at Mae instead as she passed the rolls again, and she winked at him. She was his only ally, and always had been.