A Brilliant Novel in the Works Read Online Free Page B

Julia, “I really like your brother.”
    “Me too,” she says.
    It’s a rare moment. There’s no humor in our words. There’s
no irony or sarcasm. It’s not a quote from a Woody Allen film.
There are no secrets underneath what we say out loud.
    If there’s anything underneath, it’s a mutual worry about
her brother’s health. Protestants sometimes act like they’re
invincible. Jews, we’re nothing if not for our diseases and how
we talk about them.
    Her brother has a disease that is more commonly found
in Jewish genes. In my own twisted way, I feel both honored
and guilt-ridden about this fact, this kid from Iowa with a
Mediterranean disease. But I don’t talk about his health much to
Julia because I know Julia’s invincible Protestant
tuches
will kick
my weak Semitic
tuches
if I talk about it as much as I want to talk
about it. So I talk about nothing—
shtuyot
, as my mom called it.
    “For you,” I say, “it doesn’t count as much to like him,
because you two are related.”
    “No,” she tells me. “Related makes it even more impressive.”
    I sometimes forget: this is a woman who didn’t even go to
her father’s funeral.
    Even though I once pegged myself as a lousy secret keeper,
I’ve gotten shamefully good. It started out as helping her
brother pay one late gas bill that he was too ashamed to talk
to Julia about, and by the end of the year, I had paid for a
transmission for his car and two surgeries for his intestines
and now I’m the one too scared to tell Julia.
    But under the influence of a few martinis, I want to tell her
about it. I want to tell her everything. Spill my intestines out
on the dashboard and see where that takes us. We could even
clean up the mess with cocktail napkins that have messages on
them from all her beautiful, muscular, non-balding, gentile
lovers. But I’m sober enough to realize that I’m too scared to
let out so much of my intestines. “Don’t be such a coward,”
she once said to me over a game of Monopoly when I wouldn’t
buy Marvin Gardens.
    She was right about Marvin Gardens.
    I say to my wife, “I should write a story about Shmen and Ally.”
    “Don’t write about my brother,” she says, even though she
doesn’t need to say anything with how tightly she is squeezing
my thigh.
    “No,” I explain, “I can write it from Ally’s perspective. With
that scientific mind of hers. It would be fun. I bet she has an
interesting story to tell. And I’d like to show how good Shmen
is with the kid.”
    And then Julia squeezes my thigh even tighter.
I start thinking seriously about their story. I start thinking
how much I’d like to tell it, if only for a few pages. But Julia
still doesn’t let go of my thigh.
    Julia looks over at me and then back at the blurry road.
“I’ve been thinking,” she says, “about a baby.”
    “You mean the constipated one next door that drools on
everything?”
    “Have you thought about a baby?”
    “No,” I say. It’s not exactly the truth and it’s not exactly
a lie. The truth is that I
have
thought about a baby, and I’ve
decided that it’s something I don’t want to think about. Even
saying the word “baby” is something I can’t handle for at least
another couple dozen martinis. Not tonight. Maybe not in my
lifetime.
    She lets go of my thigh. I hear that familiar sound of her
blowing the frustrated air out of her mouth.
    It’s a typical situation for me: the plot gets too twisted too
quickly and now I can’t find my way out.
    Or even worse: I can’t find a way in.
    I roll the window down, just a crack, to get some fresh air.
    “Yeah,” I say. “I should really write a story about Shmen and Ally.”
    I LOVE THE WAY YOU POOP WHEN YOU POOP WITH ME
    If I told you the fact that my boyfriend and my seven-year-old daughter
performed a strip show in the living room—swinging their shirts in the air
before throwing them at each other—you’d probably get the wrong impression.
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    FACT: The average human