Meiselman: The Lean Years

The Day Before

Unable to tuck away recent humiliations, Meiselman rocked listlessly in his oldfangled swivel chair. Skeletal and thinly cushioned, it squealed like a distressed baby seal. He grabbed a number two pencil off his desk, drew out his thumbs, and, teeth gritting, pressed against the implement’s midsection. On the brink of the snap, he pulled back.

The second humiliation, the one after Shenkenberg’s slight over the phone, was proving too much for Meiselman to bear. How his boss Ethel had yelled at him. Barked across the hallway through her open office door. Are you kidding me, Meiselman? Can you not follow a simple instruction? Loud enough for the other administrators in the back offices to hear, the underlings’ faces surely twitchy with smirks and mock horror over the number two’s apparent comeuppance. Rarely did she yell like this. Never before had she directed such fury at him.

He did not blame Ethel for the humiliation. Meiselman, you are not to talk to him, she had repeatedly instructed him since finalizing the Shenkenberg appearance over a month ago. What logical reason could she have for placing such a restriction on her Events and Programs Coordinator, her number two? Shenkenberg must have put her in this intolerable position. In the past, speakers had issued irrational demands regarding specific sound systems, guarantees over minimum and maximum crowds, and food—they all expected to be fed—and in each case Meiselman, through Ethel’s direction, had rejected the demands. We are not running a soup kitchen, Ethel liked to say.

Shenkenberg, however, was different. Shenkenberg was a draw, a major one at a time when Ethel was selling an expansion to the village, so Meiselman had no choice but to comply with the author’s most unreasonable demand that he speak to no one except Ethel, the library’s director and number one.

Helpless to hush the sulky whistle jetting from his nostrils, his deadeye stare out his office door fixed on his boss across the hall, who stood in front of her desk, achy back to Meiselman, arms spread, hands clutching the desk’s edges, a poring-over-battle-maps posture. The arms and shoulders of a swimmer. Not a dasher, but a long-distancer or butterfly specialist. Immense, yet elegantly hewn from hours spent kickboxing. Meiselman, who stood several inches taller, always felt shorter next to Ethel. He liked that at any time of the day he could lean left and take in one of her exciting pairs of heels and the fat rose tattoo above her ankle, its red petals and green leaves thick and rich like birthday cake frosting. Get too close and the thorns would slice, a sting he would feel only later in the shower.

Ethel finally called him into her office, and as he crossed the hallway from his office to hers, Meiselman determined he was willing to apologize for violating her instruction to not contact Shenkenberg directly, but would reiterate the absurdity of trying to plan a gala event with such a restriction in place. He might also mention how he did not appreciate the dismissive, annoyed tone Shenkenberg took with him, or the way Ethel dressed him down in front of his subordinates.

Stepping into her office, he spotted her hands underneath her white blouse, clutching at her back. She cried, It’s really radiating today. Grab my coat will you? And the bag, by which she meant her purse, which was the size of a gym bag and the color of split pea soup. Its cumbersome buckles on the flap pockets were purposeless. Magnetic snaps kept the pockets closed. When Ethel showed up with it last month, she’d joked to Ada, the only other marginally fashionable woman in the office, that the bag cost as much as a baby from the Far East. Its color matched Ethel’s fingernails, down to the shade.

Escorting his boss to the car, Meiselman shuffled down the hallway half a step behind, trying to come up with a manly, or less womanly, way of handling the purse. He tried clutching it by its handles, as if holding a satchel of money, but he feared he was creating crippling stretch marks in the purse’s leather. He settled for a forearm cradling.

In the middle of the hallway, Ethel stopped them at the alcove, where her secretary, Betsy Ross, sat behind her L-shaped desk eating macaroni and cheese from a Tupperware, a gossip rag flat on her keyboard. Ethel tapped the desk’s edge and inquired about a letter. Betsy Ross responded with a nod and wink. Meiselman was unsure whether he understood the understanding. As Ethel and Meiselman stepped away, Betsy Ross called after him.

Meiselman, she said. The purse suits you.

Not everything about being the number two is glamorous, he wanted to answer the secretary, who every day paired tan pants that tugged on her crotch with a white blouse whose short sleeves exposed pale, rashy triceps. But he stayed quiet, and they continued down the hallway, Meiselman still a half-step behind his boss.

Mitchell was waiting for Ethel and Meiselman outside his office, which was next to the exit door. Shoulder leaned against his office doorjamb, hands resting on the handle of his umbrella, its tip digging the hallway’s linoleum, the library’s IT specialist updated Ethel on his outlandish plans for the expansion. You’re the boss, she said, nothing more than perfunctory encouragement so she could continue on her way.

Ethel winced in pain as she pressed her hip into the door’s metal bar. Meiselman swung his arm around to assist, and right as the door to the parking lot cracked open, the stormy gray sunlight framing the door, Mitchell halted their departure once again, this time with a bellow of Meiselman’s name.

Something you want to tell us, mate? he added.

Meiselman mustered a sullen stare Mitchell’s way, but the IT specialist read Meiselman’s glowering as incomprehension and lifted his umbrella to stab the purse’s body. He bounced his hip off the doorway, leaned forward, and, flashing his crooked, coffee-stained teeth, cackled in Meiselman’s face. Mitchell accentuated the laugh with a brotherly cuff of Meiselman’s neck, glancing at Ethel for recognition. Ethel feigned mild amusement.

The hairy-knuckled, shiny-fingernailed hand of Mitchell relaxed on Meiselman’s shoulder, and he resumed discussing with Ethel his plans for the library’s digital future. If this man who spent his days fixing printers and disassembling motherboards was not spoiling Meiselman’s new lavender dress shirt with his touching, he was, at the very least, putting a wrinkle in it, and Meiselman was fed up, literally and figuratively, with everyone putting their dirty paws on him. This would be the moment when he would stop taking it from the Shenkenbergs, the Betsy Rosses, and the Mitchells of the world. After thirty-six years, Meiselman had reached a limit, a breaking point. Eyes bugging, forehead flushing, Meiselman grabbed the purse by its handles, and using his free hand, he grabbed Mitchell by the forearm and pressed his thumb against the wrist’s jutting bone. Never put your hands on me uninvited, Meiselman said, coolly. Mitchell drew his hand back, arms raised in surrender.

No need to get all huffy, the IT specialist said. Just joking, mate.

No touching in the workplace, guys, an exhausted Ethel said, pushing through the door. A good general rule.

Why did Meiselman not keep squeezing until the underling was down on his knees pleading? Where had thirty-six years of letting up and standing down gotten him?

Ethel eased herself into the driver’s seat of her silver Mercedes and asked Meiselman to fasten her seatbelt. Certain movements are unbearable, she said. By this hour of the day, her nostril-tickling perfume had worn off. What he smelled now was raw. The sweat that dampened the folds of her chubby neck mixed with the powder she used to whiten her face to a ghostly complexion. What more could he do for her? he wanted to ask. Did she need help carrying her purse into the condominium? Did she need help undressing and getting into bed? He would promise to turn away. Could he throw the comforter over her hurting body? Instead, he said, That Mitchell is always touching people.

But all she said was: You’re not going to call Shenkenberg again. Right?

Saturday

Pre-dawn and that nasty Mrs. Woolf is mowing. Yesterday, it was the screen door whipping open and slamming shut, the bent base of her ratty beach chair clacking the pavement with every lean forward to water the overgrown grass and dandelion clusters bordering her stoop. The day before yesterday it was what seemed like the never-ending whorl of a discharging garden hose.

Staring down at his neighbor from his bedroom window, Meiselman thinks he perceives a grin in her mess of wrinkles, as if she knows her behavior is nasty, as if her terror is deliberate. Sadie, her dog, bleats over the mower. The dog’s curly white chin hairs remind Meiselman of the ladies at the nursing home where his mother volunteers. Patches of shaved pelt suggest disease. A triumphant, complicit bleat, possibly. The neighborhood will not sleep as long as my mistress is alive. Or the dog is Meiselman’s ally and the cry is a plea: Save me from this old lady’s derangement. Yesterday, she was watering weeds. Today, she is mowing an aimless trail. There is a limit to my obedience.

The front lawn’s ankle-high grass jams the mower, stalling the old lady’s progress.

Whenever conversation turns to the neighbor’s chaotic lawn, Meiselman’s mother recalls Mr. Woolf’s stately stone trail that extended from the front of the house to the sidewalk. After her husband’s death, Mrs. Woolf stopped spraying and, over time, the bursting weeds split the stone slabs into shards.

The growl of the mower strengthens as it jerks free.

Violations and abuses must be nipped in the bud, lest they accumulate and strengthen. But what type of neighborly response do these intrusions warrant, and why should it fall on Meiselman to ask others to behave decently? He can call the police with an anonymous complaint. Neighbors will then watch from behind closed curtains as this woman, who is no longer fit to live amongst the citizenry of New Niles, is carted away to an institution for the elderly. Nothing, however, is straightforward anymore. State specialists will conduct surveys and interviews. The violator will execute her right to face the complainant. Victimhood will be questioned and reversed. In the end, it will be Meiselman who is carted off.

Meanwhile, Deena sleeps soundly through this crisis. Typical Deena. Pogroms could be breaking out in the street, and this woman who does not compare prices at the grocery store, dumps change into a jar every couple of weeks never to be used, drives with the gas gauge pointing red, and refuses to shut the front door in the summer when the air conditioner is blowing (or in the winter when the furnace is firing), would stay sleeping. Deena, his wife of four years, lacks foresight. Worries, decisions, the long term, it all falls on Meiselman.

Three flicks of the window, three dull hums of rattling glass do not disturb her sleep. Thirty years old, six years younger than the boyish Meiselman, and wrinkles are already developing off the corners of her mouth, a product of the way she sleeps, meatless lips pressed together, deep concentration in this one area of life. A body half his size, the build of a scrappy utility infielder, a player brought off the bench late in the game to sacrifice a runner over, who then stays in the game as a defensive replacement. Every championship team needs one. Quirky, is how his mother once described her. She looks so quirky in those little jeans. Yet her body requires great amounts of sleep. Could it have something to do with her breathing, and the enormous energy expended to push air through such flat nostrils? Or her body needs long periods of rest to grow all that hair. A head of hair larger than her actual head. Curls like Meiselman’s, although not as tightly wound, more like a spider plant, the tendrils bending downward at their ends.

His knuckles drum the window, triggering a stretch of her long neck. How will a body this size carry a baby? How will the doctors extract the child without having to slice her belly? Two bangs of his fist rouse her from the mattress.

What’s that noise? Deena grumbles.

Mrs. Woolf testing our resolve. She’s mowing, today.

Staggering to the window to join her husband, she says, We can turn on the air and close the window, so you won’t be so bothered.

Perfectly cool evenings. For this we have screens, he says. Make me make sacrifices? Make me alter my lifestyle?

Getting old is frightening, Deena says. She shouldn’t be mowing at all with that leg.

Don’t feel sorry for her. Prosthetics these days are bionic. She chooses a pegleg. Everything she does is queer. And she moves fine. A barely noticeable limp. Meanwhile, I’m going to be a mess if I don’t get any sleep.

She could, at her age, be losing all sense of time.

I’ve read articles about victims mimicking the behavior of their aggressors.

That’s vicious, Meisie. And you sound like your mother.

Convinced his wife will not join in his outrage, Meiselman returns to bed sore, Deena following behind.

Not my mother. This is me talking, he says before turning his back on her and pulling the comforter over his body. I’ve lived on the same street as that woman my entire life. I can tell you stories. Yelling at me when my ball would roll onto her lawn. Letting her dog defecate on the sidewalk. Never a neighborly word.

‘Never a neighborly word’ is your mother, Deena says, slithering across the bed, her hand worming its way toward his body. Her fingers crawl up his undershirt and settle on his stomach. You are cold. Two fingers slip underneath the waistband of his white underwear and immediately find the puffy mole above the hairline. She begins digging at it with her nail as if it were a speckle of mud. Yesterday it was Shenkenberg and Ethel. Today it’s Mrs. Woolf. You have to learn to turn the other cheek, she says, now twisting the mole.

Deena’s touching does not feel particularly good. Her hands are cold, a dry hangnail scratches, and her preoccupation with the mole is making him feel bad about his body. On the other hand, he’s finding a degree of pleasure from her lips, which graze the side of his shoulder as she speaks. Saturday morning, however, is not the right time. Sunday night is when they now have sex.

Soon after they got serious about trying, sex was timed to her cycle, but after months of failure, Deena decided that too much planning, too much timing, was an invitation to the evil eye. A new approach had them having sex on Friday nights, a time of blessing, a time when prayers are answered, the optimal time for procreation. Superstitious remedies were pursued, as well. Deena ate mandrakes, drank willow water blessed by an Israeli seer, recited Psalm 145 daily, and visited the graves of rabbis. Deena’s barrenness, though, could not be cured, and frustration ended this routine.

Sunday night has become the unspoken, official time. There are spontaneous moments, yes, but not after nights when he has barely slept. Even soldiers, he has read, are guaranteed six hours. Also, predawn light is filtering into the room, and maybe early on in the marriage, Meiselman had a fondness for daytime sex, confident that whenever Deena looked at him she saw only his prime qualities, namely, his mop of curls tightly clustered like a cauliflower floret, dimples distinguishable even underneath his fastidiously manicured beard, and teeth white and straight like the keys of a piano: no chips, no cracks, no cavities. An earnest, conscientious man. Now, however, he suspects, the daylight draws attention to his marks of decay, blemishes that make him look rigid, fusty, and humorless: caving cheeks, clipped hairs poking out of a pyramid-sloped nose, wild hairs curling out from the eyebrows and earlobes, a hunching back that causes a barely perceptible face lunge, breasts that have turned puffy around the areoles, and hands that at rest resemble claws, the hands of a stalker, a beast on the prowl. Lately, he has become increasingly self-conscious about crumbs and snot collecting in his beard.

Deena may have him pinned, but she is a lightweight, and he can easily turn the tables and end her shenanigans. A crudity breathed into his ear suddenly has him reconsidering. Something about her knowing what can help him fall back asleep. A screechy giggle tacked on. Even the pain from how she pulls on the mole now feels good. His body is starting to transition, and it may be a fine diversion until the newspapers arrive, and he should be able to finish quickly. Most importantly, it will relieve the pressure of making sure it happens tomorrow night. Therefore, he conveys his appetite with an eager, forceful kiss, to which she responds in kind.

One second. She pushes herself off his body. I need to brush my teeth. I need to make myself nice.

He pulls her down by the bicep.

You taste fine. I smell nothing, good or bad.

For me. I am revolting myself.

The door to the master bathroom closed, he works at keeping himself primed, but the unhealthy sound of her unsteady urine flow—tinkle, gush, tinkle, gush—as if there may be a granular blockage—dispirits him. This, along with the other sounds of her preparation—lathering, spraying, brushing, spitting, swishing, more spitting, more spraying, slapping—leads to a further waning of desire. Sounds that establish expectations. I’m clean, I’m spotless, I’m yours. Minutes ago, they were transitioning smoothly. Now they run the risk of being out of synch, one body primed while the other needs prodding. There have been times when both bodies were unable to transition in unison. He sensed she went along hurting and burning.

Outside, a car bounces into the driveway, squealing to a brake and sending Meiselman running from bed to window right in time to watch the black bandana-ed delivery woman heaving the newspapers out her minivan window. Thump, thump, thump. The Chicago Tribune, The New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal, all gift subscriptions from his father, landing on the driveway.

I better go get the papers, Meiselman yells through the bathroom door. We’ll finish later.

•      •      •

Some rules gleaned from his father through the years: Grown men should never wear sweatpants or sneakers unless they are playing sports. Sweaters are appropriate only when worn with a jacket. A jacket does not require a tie, but a tie always requires a jacket. Every man should own a blue blazer and gray slacks. Every man should own a pair of brown and black dress shoes. Jews do not wear black to funerals. There is a rule about herringbone whose exact wording he cannot remember, but its gist is that it is a pattern to be pursued.

Meiselman has rules of his own. On brutal summer days, even on weekends, he never rolls the sleeves of his collared dress shirts higher than the elbows. The summer after they married, Deena pressed him to wear sandals. He agreed on condition he be allowed to wear socks. When he swims in a public body of water, he covers himself with an undershirt and swim trunks manufactured from an old pair of khakis cut at the knees. Even in front of his wife he refrains from casual nudity, slipping on his white underwear underneath his towel after a shower. This is irrespective of you, he answers his wife’s teases. Would you parade naked in the king’s court? The entire world is God’s court. This is how a teacher Rav Fruman explained it. (The exception to this rigidity is after sex. Meiselman, feeling free on his naked walks to the shower, basks in his largeness and sinewy build. Once washed, he returns to screening himself.) Meiselman has spoken to his boss, Ethel, about a dress code for the library administrators, but his arguments do not move her. People need to be sensible, she argues. People are not sensible, he argues back.

Standing at the front door of his house in a tank top and white underwear, Meiselman considers the rush of sprinting down the driveway in such an outfit. What a vildechayah, spying neighbors would surely chatter. In that man’s house dishes are stacked in the sink, cats run wild, fruit rots in wooden bowls, and the couch upholstery has unidentifiable brown stains. They would assume he lacks a steady job. Humiliations should be avoided, not pursued. Therefore, Meiselman pulls a trench coat from the closet. In the mirror, he catches his reflection. The beltless coat has left his shins exposed, the look of a flasher. Silly, maybe. Improper, no.

His house slippers are missing from the doormat. Deena is constantly moving them. The slippers smell. Their insides hemorrhage yellow batting. They will be chucked, she threatens. Why spend money on something only worn in the house? It’s not enough that I have to see you in them, she counters, dryly, always dryly. This argument may end in a tease, with Meiselman cuffing Deena’s neck and shoving her face into the slipper. He may cover her mouth, only a matter of time until she is forced to inhale the stink. Deena may giggle wildly, attempting to break free, playfully slapping away the slipper. Playing offense, she may flick his nipples, his Achilles heel. Someone eventually gets hurt. He bangs her nose against the slipper. She smacks the temple of his glasses. Annoyed, angry, they walk away. A chronic need to have the final word, she often steals the slippers and stashes them deep under their marital bed.

(Admittedly, the slippers are starting to revolt Meiselman. Each time he wears them it is as if he can feel the organisms responsible for the putrid smell creeping across his feet and nesting in the spaces between his toes, latching onto his calloused heels, yellowing his skin, mutating the texture of his nails.)

Slinking into the bedroom to snag the slippers from underneath his bed is not an option. A freshened Deena may think his priorities have changed, and he has come to finish the job. His priorities have not changed. Confirming that the world has not endured any cataclysmic events during the nighttime and reading the recap of yesterday’s White Sox game are his only priorities.

There is a chance she has fallen back asleep, but rummaging for his slippers risks waking her and ruining his morning reading of the newspaper. The moment he sinks into his recliner, Deena might shuffle into the living room, stretch herself across the couch, prop pillows under her head and comment groggily about her dreams, as if he is her therapist. It was like your father and I were married. You and your mom were quite upset when we broke the news. Your brother was happy. Your father was poking my ribs, teasing, It won’t work if both of us don’t emote.

The thought of stepping onto the driveway barefoot and blackening the soles of his feet, sidestepping puddles, which attract birds and mosquitoes—both renowned transmitters of disease—repels Meiselman. On the closet floor he finds a suitable pair of galoshes, a type of footwear that, according to his father, all men should own.

The growling of Mrs. Woolf’s mower has ceased, and save for chirping birds and spewing sprinklers, it is quiet outside, as it should be at daybreak on a weekend in an idyllic suburb like New Niles. Some look up at the open Midwest sky and see grim monotony. Meiselman keeps his gaze straight ahead and soaks up the sight of his paradisiacal suburban street, a never-stale source of gratification. Lots are clearly delineated by thin cement walkways, driveways, and hedges. Encroachment will not be tolerated. Backsplits, like the one Meiselman’s parents occupy, spacious four-bedroom houses that appear from the street as modest bungalows, are the most common style of house in this section of New Niles. Increasingly, people from Meisleman’s community—specifically the Orthodox Jewish community—have been buying up two adjoining lots and knocking down the existing structures in order to build McMansions. Six, seven bedrooms. Three-car garages. Pools and basketball courts, sometimes indoors. Like the monstrosity at the corner that now blocks Meiselman’s sun.

Lawns are slowly rebounding from the harsh winter, except for next door. Mrs. Woolf’s jungled lot is verdant and healthy, covered with lush weeds, a bevy of planters, gnomes, and other sculptures, as if untouched by months of snow and freezing temperatures. Separating Meiselman’s home, a three-bedroom, two-story colonial—a gift from his parents—from the property of his terrorizing neighbor is a tall hedge of bushes, whose branches are bare except for a smattering of pink and green buds.

Moving down his driveway, Meiselman does not see or hear any sign of Mrs. Woolf, meaning he will not have the opportunity to finally confront her about the early morning disturbances. He veers right, crossing his front lawn diagonally in order to gather the blue newspaper bags at the end of his parents’ driveway, his galoshes squelching as they pad the dewy grass, whose blades tickle his ankles.

Because he lacks the kind of job that requires him to beat the morning traffic downtown, Meiselman assumes his father must think of him as indolent. To prove his industriousness, Meiselman has been delivering the newspapers to his father’s front door every morning for the last several years, although his father has yet to acknowledge the gesture.

Looping back to the end of his driveway, Meiselman suddenly hears new noises coming from Mrs. Woolf’s lot. The hollowed sound of stone dinging metal, light grunting accompanying the banging. Whatever his neighbor is doing will surely outrage him. Yet, he does not feel he has the energy for a confrontation. He wants his papers. He wants to find out the score from last night. So he keeps his eyes on the blue-bagged newspapers several feet ahead, instructing himself to stay focused, but right as he crouches for the bags, his eyes lift.

Through a gap in the hedge, Meiselman spots Mrs. Woolf sitting in the middle of her front yard, sundress hiked, the idle lawnmower in the space between her legs, which are spread in a v, good leg bent at the knee, pegleg flat. Behind the mower, a jerky trail of trimmed lawn. She is hammering a rock against the mower’s wheel. Purposeful work would have demanded proper tools.

The Meiselman boy, she calls out. Care to give an old lady a hand?

The ones parading as self-sufficient always end up being the most burdensome.

Some weather, he responds.

Don’t know why you’re in a trench coat and galoshes, she says. That rain from yesterday is in Pittsburgh by now. Now how about helping me get this mower back to the shed. Jammed rudder.

‘Lingering clouds with a chance of precipitation,’ says here. He has pulled the Tribune from its bag.

Should only take a minute, she says.

Have a good day, he answers.

Hugging the three newspapers, he charges up the driveway, pleased at not having involved himself in her nuttiness, yet also displeased by his impotence. Night after night of disturbed sleep, and all he could muster was a neighborly word.

Shabbat is the only day of the week he and Deena sit in the more formal living room at the front of the house. With the Tribune in his lap, Meiselman settles into his recliner—nailhead-trimmed, chestnut hide—part of the three-piece couch set his brother Gershon gifted them for their wedding. The most luxurious furniture in the entire house.

Today’s headlines are dull. More stories questioning whether the country has found itself in a protracted conflict, everyone suddenly a general. Meiselman can safely move to Sports. Leaning forward to set the other sections down on the coffee table, he notices a steaming mug of coffee on the side table. Only now does he spot Deena across the foyer, on the other side of the house, sitting at the dining room table reading Love is Just Another Way to Feel Sorry for Yourself, the book she had asked him to bring home from the library on Friday. She had to ask only once. The coffee suggests she is not annoyed about what happened upstairs. Small gestures like the book, for her, outweigh.

Thanks for the coffee, he calls out to her.

Whatever, she says.

Or the gestures do not outweigh. Maybe they merely neutralize, and the coffee is her attempt to prove a larger point about him taking her for granted.

Meiselman, hoping to remind his wife of his attentiveness, asks, How’s that book I picked up for you?

Inspirational. Did you know there is no Hebrew word for romance?

He talks about Hebrew in the book?

No, learned that in my Judaism for Beginners class years ago. I’m making connections. Love, Deena explains, is helping another person grow spiritually.

Like how I helped you become religious?

Not that kind of spiritual, she answers. More like…here it is: ‘Helping the other person control obsessions and destructive emotions. Saving the other person by liberating him or her from volatile and dispiriting patterns.’ Let me finish reading.

Sounds Christian to me, Meiselman says. Jews don’t believe in controlling emotions. Jews believe in controlling actions.

Two minutes, I promise.

Twenty minutes later, she enters the room wearing her white-trimmed pink soccer shorts, which hug her vagina and fail to cover her cheek bottoms. Standing in front of Meiselman, she pulls back her curls, her skimpy white t-shirt lifting, exposing her cupped stomach and its trail of faint black fuzz. She rubber bands her ponytail, which flops off the side of her head like a tassel. Her way of showing him what he sacrificed for the newspapers.

He says, That mowing was something else.

Don’t let it ruin our weekend, Deena says. Besides, she’s not half as bad as our other neighbors.

It is ruining my weekend, he wants to answer, but she wants to move on, move back to the dining room and her book, and she is almost out the door, and even if this is what he originally wanted, to be alone with his newspapers, now that she is the one rejecting him, he wants her back.

That new family whose kids ride on our lawn? he says, playing dumb.

No, our other neighbors. She turns back to him and shuffles forward, slightly hunched, index fingers discharged. Your parents, Meisie, she says, poking his side.

My parents? They are asleep by ten and we rarely—

I’m joking, Meisie. Another poke under the ribs.

I know, he answers, pulling at the hairs of his moustache, forcing out a chuckle.

You thought that was funny, Meisie?

Standing over him, she grabs his sides, a sometimes-ticklish area. He catches the molesting fingers of her hand and bends them back until she collapses onto his lap, right on top of the sports section, its pages crinkling underneath. The thought of the unnatural fold she is creating in this unread section aggravates him. She rests her head against his breast and puts her hand on his neck, the tips of her fingers skimming his beard line. Using the hand of the arm hooked around her skimpily covered backside, he jerks at the newspaper, trying to wrestle it out from under her. Ends up lifting her off his lap. She grabs his wrist and with her eyes and a tilt of the head implies an interest in returning upstairs. He runs his free hand over the newspaper’s crease.

It’s been almost two weeks, she says, releasing her grip.

That’s not fair, he answers. Last Sunday, on our usual day, you ran out on me. You ran out on me to check on your father.

I just don’t want two weeks to turn into a month, she says, her pinkie digging her bellybutton.

I share the same fear, trust me. Just now is not good. Tomorrow, no matter what. Besides, we have to leave soon for shul. Glumness sags her face and body. To shift her focus, he shows her the front of the sports page. Look at this picture of Frank. Look how strong he looks. This is the year it will all come together.

•      •      •

How his son can degrade himself by sitting in the back of the men’s section with the riffraff, the scoffers, the proudly tardy, the new members with no standing, men who will never be asked to be officers, who do not pay full dues, and who step out after the Torah reading to drink whiskey in the kitchen, his father does not understand. The people in the front rows—the officers, the board members, men who have been coming since the shul’s founding, men who post plaques commemorating the deceased—talk just as much as the men in the back rows, he argues to his father. Not as much, and it’s about business. And maybe, sometimes, politics, Israel. It would not hurt to engage in meaningful conversation, every now and then, something other than sports, for crying out loud. Should one not sit with one’s contemporaries? Goofballs who talk narishkayt? Can one not be a positive influence, an island of piety? Besides, it’s not the back back. It’s more the middle. Harvey, leave him alone. Let him sit with his friends if he wants to.

Another example of his father not having steered him wrong. Meiselman should have heeded his father’s advice and taken a seat closer to the front. Now, for as long as the two men attend the same shul, or until Meiselman has a son to use a buffer, he will be stuck every Shabbat morning feeling squeezed by Ben Davis’s hulking body. The shoulders of the two men rub, their knees knock, yet only Meiselman shrinks in his seat. Today, this inability to own his space is frustrating Meiselman more than usual. The wooly smell of Ben Davis’s pilly sweater, which he wears even during the summer, sticks in Meiselman’s nose, its stray fibers tickling his neck.

In spite of a main sanctuary that seats seven hundred, the shul is neither august nor awesome. Its gray industrial carpeting, fluorescent lighting, walls painted a simple white, and rows constructed out of stackable chairs—gray fabric, gold trimming—gives it the feel of a convention center. At the front of the room is an unadorned stage with an ark whose curtains are a spiritless brown. To the side of it sits the rabbi. A frosted glass partition divides the men from the women.

It’s usually so freezing in here, Ben Davis says, the same complaint he utters every week before pushing up his sweater sleeves.

Spring is here. Time to take off the sweater, Meiselman wants to encourage his seatmate. Wear a blue blazer. Do you not see that every other man is either in a suit or jacket? But they do not have this type of relationship. When Ben Davis wipes his nostrils raw on one of the bathroom paper towels, Meiselman never offers him a tissue from his travel pack. Likewise, Meiselman does not suggest to Ben Davis that he excise the skin tag hanging off his eye, and never has he uttered a word of concern or curiosity about the withering, black thumbnail or the black spots dotting his eyeballs.

Good week? Meiselman asks.

Eh. You?

A greeting that has become a formality, a way for the two men to segue into their weekly review of the White Sox.

Four hits, no runs, Meiselman says.

Runs, shmuns, Ben Davis responds. The problem is this guy Wright; a below average fastball that he consistently leaves over the plate.

A team is only as good as its fifth starter, Meiselman says. That’s what worries me about this year’s squad.

Light physical contact with other men does not generally bother Meiselman. At times, he even finds it pleasurable; the tickle of a barber’s infinitesimal snipping, the comb’s lifting of the hair, or the tailor running chalk across the rear, or the hair of a woman in a crowd grazing Meiselman’s neck. Men, contact with other men is the subject of this meditation. With Ben Davis, Meiselman feels as if his shoulder is sliding off a brick wall. Ben Davis, meanwhile, sits unaware of the touching.

Trying to talk his way through this discomfort, Meiselman says, Did you see that picture of Frank in the paper this morning? Did you see how strong he looks?

Strong, shmong.

Meiselman shushes Ben Davis as the usher comes down the aisle. A ticket for talking during services—fifty dollars, all proceeds going to charity—would be a hardship for a man like Ben Davis, presumably, although Meiselman cannot not be positive, seeing he does not know what the man does for a living. Work is another matter the men do not discuss. Why his lips are always chapped, why his hands have sores on the knuckles, why the president of the shul comes to him in the middle of services when there is a leak, a decomposing rodent behind the fridge, or a bird trapped in the vent are some of