call me back, it’s long-distance, which is a big thing to doctors, I have no idea why. Besides, I’m totally backed up on this tenth-anniversary edition. I keep thinking, On the one hand, I am so lucky my magazine has lasted ten years, on the other hand, why am I putting out a special edition, it’s a nightmare.”
I am hit suddenly with an exhaustion I get only when I converse with my sisters. I feel as if my mouth and ears are going to fall off my head. “I’ve got to go,” I say. “I’ll call you tomorrow.” I hang up. The phone rings. “Hello?”
“Mom?”
“Hi, Jesse, where are you?”
“It’s not my fault.”
“What?”
“It was an accident.”
“Goddamnit.” I burst into Joe’s study. “Jesse had another car accident.”
“Is he all right?” Joe spins around in his desk chair, knocking into phone books from different cities, stacked like building blocks around him.
“He’s all right.”
To make room to sit, I shove over a bunch of radio tapes that are littering his couch. “He’s on his way home. He had to tie his car door closed with rope. His insurance is going to go through the roof, but maybe we can convince the driver not to notify his insurance company. Would you take care of this?”
“I’m going out of town next week,” he reminds me.
“So you have time. Besides, they have phones in Iowa.”
Joe just looks at me. He knows and I know that I am going to make this call. We’ve been married too long to have a conversation we’ve had sixty times before and already know the ending of.
I hear a car and peek through the blinds to see Jesse pulling up to the curb. He slides over to the passenger side and gets out. He strolls to the door, his shoulders moving back and forth enough to cause, with each step, the slightest ripple of muscle across his T-shirt.
“I’m home,” he yells, but not too loudly. There’s a bit of dread in his voice.
“Come in here. We’re in Dad’s study.” I hear the refrigerator open and close, and then Jesse appears, swigging water from a large plastic bottle.
“What happened?” Joe asks.
Jesse slaps a hand against his head and lets his mouth hang open a second to let us know he’s been through hell. “I was sitting there, okay, just opening the door, when this guy comes around a curve at about, I swear, sixty.”
Joe slips his fingers under his glasses and rubs his eyes. He’s tired in anticipation of this discussion. “You were parked?” he says wearily.
“Yeah, I was parked. That guy should look where he’s going. Thanks to him, I couldn’t take Ifer home.”
“Who’s Ifer?”
“Only my best friend, Dad. God.”
“Ifer is Jennifer, but there are so many Jennifers in the class that she calls herself Ifer. I told you, you forgot.” This is something I do to Joe when I am feeling cranky. Make him feel guilty for not remembering all the fascinating things I tell him.
“Why doesn’t she call herself Jenny?” asks Joe.
“Ifer is Kasmian,” says Jesse.
Joe’s glasses land back on his nose and his eyes snap open. He knows he’s just heard something that is going to turn out to be satisfyingly off-kilter. He’s no longer interested in the car accident. Too mundane. Jesse’s fine, he’s sitting right in front of him. But Ifer could turn out to be as intriguing as the woman in Iowa he’s going to interview who bakes six-foot-tall cakes. “So Ifer is a Kasmian name?” he says.
Jesse uses a tone of voice that means that you are ignorant but he will condescend to enlighten you. “In the Kasmian religion, Dad, four letters is good luck. ‘Luck’ is four letters, get it?”
“I hope these Kasmians aren’t nuts like those people who drank that drink in some South American country,” I say. “What was it? It starts with a large letter.”
“Kool-Aid,” says Joe.
“I didn’t remember Kool-Aid? My God.”
“Kasmians drink only Coke. Four letters, get it?” says Jesse. “This guy owes us. He could have killed me.”
I take a few breaths, just for punctuation. “Look, the important thing is that you’re fine. That your leg wasn’t outside the car or anything.” This is the important thing, and it’s not that I don’t know it, but I say it for only one reason: So I feel entitled to say the next thing, which I feel guilty about. “But it’s your fault.”
Jesse slams the bottle down. “The guy came around a blind curve. I can’t see behind a blind curve, can I? I am really having a hard day. I don’t need this. It’s not my fault I can’t see a guy coming around a blind curve going eighty.”
“Did he take the door off the car?” I ask. The phone rings. I pick it up. “Hello?”
“Georgie Porgie won a Pulitzer.”
“That’s great.”
“Your sister’s something, isn’t she?”
“Yeah, she’s great, Dad.”
He hangs up. I hang up.
“Georgia won the Pulitzer again. How can he call? I don’t think he has a phone in his room. The only phone I saw was a pay phone.”
“Did you give him quarters?” asks Joe.
“Are you kidding? Why would I do that? To torture myself?” I turn to Jesse. “I had a hard day too. I had to put your grandfather into the geriatric/psychiatric facility at UCLA.”
“Oh yeah, how come?” Jesse collapses in a chair. His long legs stick straight out into the room; he’s waiting to trip someone so he can insist it’s not his fault.
“He’s having memory problems.”
“He’s always had memory problems. He doesn’t even know my name.”
Joe laughs.
“It’s not funny, Joe.” Now I’m angry with them both. “He’s having other problems too. He hit someone, he’s been screaming just out of the blue whenever he feels like it. He can’t walk—his balance is off. They think his medication’s out of whack. You could both be a little compassionate.”
“I have no compassion for your father, and you know why,” says Joe.
“Why?” Jesse asks.
“None of your business,” I say. “So Jesse, did he take the door off the car?”
“No.”
“Well,
