It was Beverly who encouraged him to suggest taking the grandkids to Friday-night services. If these kids were so important to him—they were; Richard practically shouted this—then he needed to think outside the box, this last phrase she relished dramatically. Sure, it was more fun to go to the movies or shopping or get pizza, but he was probably not allowed to be having fun yet with his two gorgeous grandchildren, not in his daughter-in-law’s eyes anyway. Friday-night services weren’t about having fun; they were about being contemplative. The subtler point was (and she was right, Richard could not deny it) that he was not an out-of-the-box thinker. He was completely in the box. (What was so wrong with the box? He had felt this way his entire life.) But by leaving his wife at the age of sixty, he had hurtled himself out there, out into the universe, out of the goddamn box. And if he had not done so, he never would have met Beverly. So it was up to him to do whatever it took to stay there.
“Let me talk to Benny,” Rachelle said, and her skin returned to its normal (though possibly tanning-creamed) golden color. He had placed the power in her hands once again, given her something to decide upon. That’s where she likes to be, he thought. On top. And his mind briefly traveled to a sexual moment, not with his daughter-in-law, of course (although maybe she was nearby, down the hall or in a doorway watching), but with Beverly, vibrant-eyed, sensible yet magical, unavailable yet somehow still within reach, Beverly, his hands reaching up to her, and she waved her body back and forth on top of him, a greeting, an introduction of two bodies to each other, an explosive exchange of a specific kind of information. Beverly grinding on his dick, Beverly straddling his face, Beverly all over him all day and night long.
Beverly!
*
At shul the following week—of course Rachelle had said yes to Richard’s request; there was no way she could say no to a grandfather sincerely wanting to take his children to synagogue, there was certainly a rule about that somewhere in some daughter-in-law handbook—Richard meandered lightly down the main aisle of the sanctuary, his two grandchildren, their tongues struck by silence since the moment they'd gotten into the car, shuffling behind him. He waved to the Cohns and the Grodsteins and the Weinmans and the Frankens, all the couples he had come up together with for the last twenty, thirty, nearly forty years. They had all gone to each other’s children’s bar mitzvahs and weddings and anniversary parties and thank God no funerals yet, but he supposed they would be attending those, too, until there was no one left.
How would that feel? To be the last one standing? Who was going to make it to the end? Would it be Albert Weinman, who swam every morning and golfed every weekend and ate egg-white everything? Or Lauren Franken, who’d already had a double mastectomy, and joked that she’d gotten the hard part out of the way early and it was all smooth sailing ahead? Surely it wouldn’t be Bobby Grodstein, the way he smoked those cigars after dinner.
He allowed himself to consider his practically-ex-wife, her supersized existence, the secret eating late at night (every night he could hear her opening cupboards and packages and crunching crunching crunching, echoing through the quietude of their home, their street, their town, their world, but he had given up on trying to stop her), the twice-weekly trips to Costco (even though he knew where all the food had gone, he couldn’t help but wonder out loud to her every single time she went, “What do you need?”), the flesh stacked upon flesh stacked upon flesh. No, she would not outlive him.
Would it be Richard himself? He worked out a few times a week, not as hard as he could, sure, but those knees of his . . . His blood pressure was good, his cholesterol was a little high, but nothing he couldn’t manage with Lipitor. He took vitamins. He ate his RDA of fruits and vegetables, sometimes even much, much more than the RDA. During his last checkup, his doctor had given him a friendly swat on the arm before he left the room, clipboard in hand, and promised he would live a long life. “There’s no reason you couldn’t live till one hundred,” is what he said.
Would he want to make it that long? Would he want everyone he knew to be gone? Except for his family, they’d probably outlive him: Benny, who he knew would forgive him eventually even if he had lost respect for him, and his sullen daughter, Robin, who was already too busy to visit him while he was still a fully functioning human being—what about when he was old and decrepit in a nursing home? He’d off himself before that happened. He’d off himself before he was wearing diapers. He knew it. He could prescribe himself the exact mixture he would need to send himself to a faraway dreamland, never to wake up again. For decades he had been facing the adult-diaper section in his pharmacy, studying the people who purchased them, their slow, miserable shuffle, imagining he could see right through their clothes to what was underneath. Your needs at the beginning of your life and at the end of your life were exactly the same. But Richard Middlestein was no baby; he was a man. (He felt like pounding his chest right there in the middle of the temple. Beverly!) He’d live until the day he was ready to die.