THE
LAST JEW
STANDING
Coming
August 16, 2007
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Rachel
had vanished from my life almost five years before,
while she was pregnant with Josh. Their life without
me involved a series of unsuccessful jobs, and living
conditions which worsened from apartments to furnished
rooms to crack hotels as her savings dwindled. More
often than not, the Rachel that Josh saw was drunk or
passed out. For him, there were nights alone in soiled
diapers, while Rachel was out drinking or unconscious
at his side, oblivious to his cries. Once, after she
brought the boy back to Austin, I found him screwing
the cap onto her wine bottle and putting it back into
the fridge. Once I yelled, “NO!” as he reached
for the flame on the stove. He shrieked and covered
his head, anticipating a blow.
Rachel
had returned to me, drunk, when Josh was three and a
half, with the idea of dumping him on my doorstep and
going off on her own to drink herself to death in peace.
But then she told me her deepest, darkest secret, the
worst thing she ever did. When she found out that I
loved her anyway, she decided to stay. She remained
with me for the following eight months. On the couch.
Josh
understood that she’d dumped him and he didn’t
take it well. When she came back, he resolved never
to let her go.
Meanwhile,
I got promoted to lieutenant, which let me delegate
authority, stay off the street, and come home at five,
a situation unprecedented in my lifetime on the Austin
Police Department. I’d never wanted to be a cop,
never wanted to be on Homicide. Now they’d put
me in charge. But I knew my work made Rachel nervous.
I cut a deal with her: if there’s danger, a bad
situation, a standoff, I send someone else. I have a
family now.
I
even offered to retire. At 18 years of service, I could
leave with a chunk of my pension, but that would mean
a financial setback. Rachel wasn’t bringing anything
in and I sensed she didn’t want us to lose the
income. I told her if she said the word I’d hand
in my badge, but she had to say the word.
She
resolved to keep a lid on her drinking, this resolution
meeting with periodic and partial success. “I’m
not like I was,” she said once. “I haven’t
touched cocaine this whole time.” She meant since
she started drinking again. She might have been telling
the truth. On the other hand, she had a tendency to
wake up and not remember what she’d done the night
before. Or, for all I knew, who she’d done it
with.
Rachel
might stick to wine in the house, only two glasses in
an evening, but I could tell it hurt. She was way past
the point where a glass or two of Chardonnay would take
the edge off. One Friday she greeted me at home with
the announcement that she was “going off.”
“What do you mean?”
“I
need a few days to myself.” She had her coat on
already. I didn’t see an overnight bag.
She
added, “I need money.” I stared, until she
said, “Now.”
The
once turned-up corners of Rachel’s big blue eyes
had sagged under the weight of childbirth and drinking.
In spite of the puffiness, the muscles in her face grew
taut, like she couldn’t quite breathe. She needed
air fast.
I
gave her two hundred I kept in my sock drawer. She drove
off in the used Subaru wagon I’d bought her.
I
spent that weekend distracting Josh as best I could,
promising him she’d come home soon, she was only
going away on a break.
“Why?”
Good
question, kid. And why did I give her the two hundred?
Because she would have gone anyway. If I let her go,
if I gave her expense money, she would come back. I
hoped.
She
was gone until Monday afternoon. When she made her way
through the front door, I let Josh hug her once. Then
I suggested he let Mommy take care of herself. She spent
two hours in the bathroom and a day in bed. I never
asked where she’d been.
This
became her pattern every month or so. She’d be
gone for days at a stretch. Eventually I learned to
see the warning signs: agitation, short temper. The
sudden personality changes that made Josh, and now me,
increasingly nervous. After a while she’d come
back ‘sick,’ lay in bed, apologize at length
and remind us why we loved her. She’d tell Josh
stories and sing to him. She’d take us out to
the park, or to the movies. She’d clean the house,
make elaborate dinners, and aerobicize like a fiend
“to sweat out the toxins.” This last item
improved her mood, briefly. I couldn’t deny that
it had a positive effect on her appearance. What had
been sagging was now rising and growing firm again,
including her cheeks. Her high, wideset cheekbones took
shape. Her lips looked full again, instead of just chapped
and withered. She brushed out her long, brown hair.
She stood taller, slouched less. She began to look the
way she did before, like a movie star, if a weary one.
I felt bad for appreciating the change.
What
Josh couldn’t see was the other Rachel, the one
who I met twelve years before, when she was twenty-five
and tall and graceful, with long smooth legs and full
round breasts and thick hair combed back from her tanned
face. Beautiful like a model. Strong, dynamic. She worked
as a real estate broker, making money in a depressed
market. Stepping out of her independence and her feminism
for five minutes now and again to serve dinner to her
husband, Joey, and his partner, me, because she thought
playing house was funny. Flirting with me in plain view
of her husband in the months before his death, forbidden
love with Oedipal undertones. He was my mentor, after
all, my father figure, so what did that make her? My
heart did the samba whenever she looked at me. I thought
she was playing games. Then I found out she wasn’t.
After
the smoke cleared from Joey’s death, I realized
I had a chance with her. It was passion that brought
us together. She touched my hand and I felt it in my
toes. We had a good time together, a historical moment,
but a brief one.
It
was my fault that she started drinking again. She’d
kept a lid on it for ten years by then. She had a good
pattern going, working hard, exercising and staying
busy. And I screwed that up, with the crazy life I brought
her into, the dangers and the threats that I couldn’t
keep away from our home.
What
if you were in love. And the person that you loved was
beautiful and brilliant. She had a fire in her heart,
a passion for living, you could feel it when you were
near her. Then what if she was in a car accident and
it screwed up her body, and her outlook. It even seemed
to put out her fire. You wouldn’t just leave her
by the side of the road, would you? Especially if, when
the car accident happened, you were the one driving.
I
was pretty sure she loved me. She’d put up with
a lot from me in the past. I’d tough it out for
her.
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