The Nakeds Read online

“I’m a nurse,” Penny said, stating the obvious.

  “I know what you are,” Nina said, wearily, but she wasn’t looking at Penny. She was looking at Asher, who was physically standing there, yes—he had just let go of Hannah’s hand and was now wiping the misty tent—but seemed to have mentally stepped away, out the door and down the hall and into the elevator and out to the parking lot and into the car and down the street and onto the freeway and to her house, whoever she was, and into her shiksa arms.

  Asher sighed. He thought about putting the lamb down on the nightstand but couldn’t let go. He held on tighter. He had no idea why. With his free hand he reached for Hannah’s again.

  Leaving Nina was something he’d been doing more and more often, leaving whatever room she was in, sometimes literally getting up and walking off, sometimes picking up a magazine or book or turning on the stereo, leaving that way, and sometimes doing what he was doing now: two feet planted firmly, but vanishing still.

  Nina started to cry again. She reached into her purse and rummaged around for more tissues. Her nose was running; she could feel wetness above her lip.

  Penny hurried over and opened the drawer by Hannah’s bed, pulling out a box of Kleenex. She popped it open, plucked out a few sheets, and handed them to Nina. “Here,” she said.

  Nina gratefully took the tissue and blew her nose.

  The nurse set the box of tissue on the nightstand, apparently putting their past behind them. “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “I know. I know you are. It’s not your fault. Of course it’s not you,” Nina said sincerely.

  Women never ceased to amaze and confuse Asher, the way they could hold one opinion of each other and then a gesture or a short, innocuous conversation could instantly change their assessment. He stared at Nina and the nurse, perplexed, imagining that soon they’d be greeting each other with overwrought hugs and cheek kisses.

  “I’ll just leave the three of you alone.” Penny paused at the door. “Mostly she’ll just sleep now, but if she wakes up and wants anything, needs anything, ring that buzzer like I showed you,” she said before turning away.

  “It’s so cold in here,” Nina stammered when the nurse was gone. “I don’t want my baby girl to be cold.”

  Asher imagined what a better man would do in such a situation, or a man who still loved his wife, and then forced himself to do just that. He put the lamb down on the nightstand next to the box of tissue. “I’m sorry,” he said. He walked over and put his arm around Nina’s shoulder—and she let him.

  6

  MARTIN HAD been living in a studio apartment above his parents’ garage rent-free for the last four years. It was one room, but it was many rooms to him, his living room and den, his bedroom and kitchen. It had even been his guest room when Tony got too fucked up to drive home and stayed over, sleeping on the floor without a pillow, with a towel for a blanket, and when Margo had lived around the corner. It was where they played house, where they made coffee or mixed margaritas from a sugary powder and fumbled through drunken sex. Now, though, the studio was the place where he was always alone, where he hid with his secret, where, when he slept, he was exactly parallel with his Chevy Nova, which was beneath him in the garage and covered in a white sheet like a dead person.

  Martin thought about other people who didn’t drive: blind people, people with muscular diseases who couldn’t control their limbs, really old people. Lots of people used public transportation, he told himself. He took the bus or rode his bike. No one had to convince Martin to stash his car key in a drawer and leave the piece of shit Nova in his garage; he just did it.

  It sat there, a neglected secret. Sometimes he kicked the car. One time he spat on the corner of the hood not covered up by the sheet. He used a hammer and the fattest nail he could find to give it two flat back tires. The fucking thing just took up space. He wished it would disappear.

  Pot was a secret too. He stopped buying it from Tony and instead took the bus downtown and walked the streets, 3rd and 4th, sometimes all the way to 7th, until he found someone haggard enough to approach. Most nights he couldn’t sleep, thoughts of the girl kept coming and coming, and he’d smoke the sweet joints until he passed out. Drinking was a secret now too, something he only did alone, like masturbating or picking his nose. “I don’t drink anymore. And I don’t smoke pot either,” he lied to Tony.

  “What did you do, find God?” Tony said, laughing.

  Martin tried to laugh with him, but what came out was a stilted chuckle that made both of them stiffen.

  “Hope we can still hang out.”

  “Yeah, sure,” Martin said.

  “You don’t sound sure.”

  “What do you want from me, a promise?”

  Tony shrugged.

  “Don’t be a pussy,” Martin said.

  “You’re the pussy,” Tony said. “No drinking, no smoking. What else is there?”

  Martin’s parents had owned two restaurants for the last decade and had just recently purchased a third. When Martin didn’t have a shift at one of them, he started drinking vodka as soon as he woke up. He’d stay in bed all day in a ratty T-shirt and pajama bottoms with a short glass balanced on his chest, trying to rewrite his own personal history. He’d close the windows so that day looked like night, and he’d smoke pot, joint after joint or bowl after bowl, until the room filled with a sweet, thick gray smoke that burned his eyes.

  Since the accident he’d complained to his mother a couple times a week about a headache that didn’t exist so he could skip work and stay home. It seemed he couldn’t sleep enough—eleven, twelve hours a night, waking only to pee or drink water—and then there were naps, long, three-hour binges in the afternoons that he was thankful hurried the night up.

  Martin tried not to think about the girl. He tried to forget. But he knew that trying to forget was really just remembering.

  His secret followed him to the shower, where he used the hottest water, where he scrubbed so hard and with so much vigor that his skin turned pink, but only the dirt came off.

  He brought his secret with him to his family’s breakfast table. He had decided against another bowl of cereal alone and come down from the studio because he wanted to see his parents smile at him and raise their coffee cups in hello. They knew nothing about the terrible act that now defined him; they thought he was just their son, the same morose young man he’d been since puberty.

  His sister, Sandy, only played with her food. She folded the slices of bacon over so that they looked half-eaten. She spit her orange juice into her teacup when she thought no one was looking. What wouldn’t she do, he wondered, to escape a calorie?

  Sandy was a cheerleader and knew everyone. She knew, in fact, someone who knew someone who knew the girl who was hit by a car, so while she wasn’t eating her breakfast—just changing the shape of her scrambled eggs by rearranging them on her plate, altering their mass with a quick press of her spoon that only Martin saw—she recounted the event as if she were there and saw the whole thing. She told her family that the girl’s name was Hannah Teller and informed them that she was six years old and on her way to school. First grade. Kennedy Elementary. “Too little to be walking alone,” she said.

  “Terrible,” her mother said.

  Sandy told them it was trash day and reminded them that the streets on that block didn’t have sidewalks. “I’m glad we live where we live. We’re lucky,” she said.

  “It’s a safe block,” her mother agreed.

  Sandy elaborated, telling them that the girl nearly died, that she still might die. Hannah Teller was really, really, really sick, her insides all messed up. “Organs had to be removed,” she said.

  “We’re eating.” Martin glared at his sister. “Well, some of us.”

  Sandy ignored him and went on. “Someone hit her and left her there. She’ll probably die. That’s what people are saying, anyway.”

  Martin’s father reassured Sandy that medicine had come a long way. He reached over and patted
his daughter’s hand. “If she didn’t die last week, she’ll most likely survive,” he said, confident. “Isn’t that right, Emily?”

  His mom nodded energetically.

  Martin shifted in his chair and felt like he might break apart. He imagined his body crumbling into pieces.

  “Eat something, Marty.” His mother spooned scrambled eggs onto his plate. “Have some bacon,” she offered.

  Martin accepted the eggs but shook his head no about the bacon.

  “Who would hit a little girl and just leave her there?” Sandy said.

  “Horrible thing,” his father said, spreading marmalade on a piece of wheat toast, dark crumbs flying.

  “I overheard a couple of women at the supermarket talking, and apparently someone saw a very old man in a truck driving around erratically one block over,” his mother said.

  “Figures,” Sandy said. “Some senile guy from Senior World snuck out with the car keys.”

  “What kind of car?” Martin said, trying hard to sound normal.

  “A truck, Marty. I said that,” his mother said. “One of those ridiculous trucks with the huge wheels. They said the man was very old, bald, wrinkled. One woman said he had a patch over one eye. Imagine, driving with such limited vision.”

  “Whenever I see someone in one of those trucks,” his father interjected, “I think asshole. I think dickhead. I think—”

  “It’s a little early for that kind of talk,” his mother said.

  His dad shrugged, picked up his coffee cup, and took a sip.

  “Anyone who drives with a patch over one eye is as bad as a drunk driver,” Sandy said. “We should lock people like that up.”

  “We should,” his mom agreed.

  Martin saw then how rumors flew, how bogus information was validated and confirmed. He took a bite of his eggs and considered his mother’s eyebrows—two thinly painted arcs. He considered the wrinkles above her top lip, how they gathered together when she was angry or irritated, as she was now, and how they relaxed again, like an accordion. He considered how his father’s vocabulary had been changing since he and Sandy had become teenagers, how the change seemed like a pathetic attempt to go backwards and become one of them. He thought his dad looked sort of fat and dopey, sitting at the table with bacon grease around his mouth. He considered how his dad could still be scolded like a little kid. He considered his sister’s clavicle, her pointy chin, and the straps of her yellow nightgown hanging from her knobby shoulders. He wondered if she’d eventually become one of those girls who was hospitalized and force-fed from a tube.

  “What’s going on with you, buddy?” his dad wanted to know.

  Martin shook his head. There was nothing to say.

  “Hey, buddy,” his dad said.

  He hated it when his dad called him buddy. Why not son? Or better yet, his first name.

  “The new restaurant is beautiful,” his mother said to him. “Wait until you see it, Marty.”

  “You’ll love it, buddy,” his dad said.

  7

  MARTIN TOOK the bus to the new restaurant. If his parents saw him getting off at the bus stop or wondered why his car wasn’t in the lot, he’d planned to tell them that he was saving money and didn’t want to spend it on gas. If they pushed it, he’d blame the squeaky brakes or transmission.

  His parents wanted this third restaurant open to the public by midsummer. They planned to have a grand opening, a buy-one-dinner-get-one-free party.

  Three little rooms and a tiny kitchen, it was obviously smaller than their other restaurants but in a better location, just a short block from the Manhattan Beach Pier. It was two o’clock in the afternoon and already his mom and dad were drinking gin and tonics, sipping from plastic cups that they left on counters and then frantically searched for. “Where is it? Which one’s mine?” his father said, laughing, already tipsy. “I thought it was here,” his mother said. “I thought I put it down right here.” She was pointing to an empty spot on the counter. “Where did it go?”

  They wouldn’t be asking about his car this afternoon. They’d probably pass out before sunset, resting up, as they liked to call it, on the two cots they set up in the tiny room in the back of the restaurant for just that purpose before coming home.

  He helped them find their drinks. It was easy to identify which one was his mom’s because she often chewed her straw into an unrecognizable mess.

  She thanked him and took the drink from his hands. “You smell the sea?” she said, inhaling dramatically.

  “The ocean,” his father said. “We’re practically on top of it.”

  “We’re going to serve up some fresh fish, that’s for sure. Halibut and salmon, scallops too.” His mom’s voice was excited.

  “I’ve stopped drinking,” Martin lied.

  “Why would you do that?” his mom asked, obviously taken aback.

  “I don’t like the taste,” he said.

  “The taste? Please,” his dad said. “Restaurant people are social people. You’re a restaurant person, Marty. It’s in your blood, buddy.”

  “You could always drink those sweet things, like daiquiris or strawberry margaritas,” his mom suggested.

  “Too much sugar,” he said.

  “Hmm,” she said, attempting to suck something out of her mangled straw and obviously getting nothing.

  Martin picked up the trash can by his feet and moved it toward her.

  She plucked the straw from her glass and dropped it into the can. “Thanks,” she said.

  “Most parents would be happy,” Martin said, putting the can down.

  “We’re not most parents,” his mom said, laughing.

  Martin helped them pick out tile for the kitchen, chairs and tablecloths for the main room, and suggested a piano player without a singer. He told them that the place was great, but too small for a singer. If someone was singing and a customer wasn’t in the mood to listen or didn’t like the singer’s voice, he couldn’t escape.

  Martin considered the word escape.

  He considered moving to Mexico or New York, where he could be a waiter, a restaurant person in someone else’s restaurant.

  He could go to college in another city.

  He could study business or astronomy.

  His parents stared at him.

  “Your skin looks a little pink.” His mom reached up to touch his cheek and Martin recoiled. “OK, then,” she said, insulted.

  “The place is too small for a singer,” he said.

  “You think the place should be bigger?” his dad said.

  “I don’t mean small,” Martin clarified, although that was exactly what he meant. “I mean cozy. It’s fine.”

  “Cozy, huh?” His mother looked around the room as if she’d never seen it before.

  “Oh, god, it’s fine,” Martin said, feeling like he was about to cry or confess—but he kept quiet, following his parents over to a big desk in the corner, where he gathered himself together, even helping them pick out a soap dispenser from a shiny, fat catalog—one that promised to spit out a perfect circle of lather with just a tap. He voted against the seashell wallpaper his mother wanted for the women’s bathroom. He admired the stoves his father had already installed.

  “State of the art. It’ll all be yours one day, buddy. When I die, it’ll go right to you.”

  “To you and your sister,” his mom said.

  “That’s right,” his dad said.

  “Don’t talk about dying,” Martin said. “Please.”

  “Let me show you the canisters and the coffeemaker,” his dad said then, putting his arm around Martin, leading the way.

  Martin stood there, nodding and smiling, feigning interest in every shiny thing. He thought about his secrets, the weight of them, and how that weight was sure to double and triple, how he felt it in his arms and shoulders and back, how he was certain it would one day break him. He thought about his sister turning into nothing—surely soon she’d be just air and a set of clacking teeth. He had the u
rge to take off his shoes and socks, to leave them in the center of his parents’ new restaurant, and walk away. He wanted to take off his shirt too, and his jeans, his underwear. He wanted to run naked out the door and down to the beach. He would take the sand quickly, and when he reached the water, he’d wade right in and keep going, ignoring its pressure to hold him back, until the water was deep enough to take him under, and then he’d swim out, mile after mile, until there was no going home, until he lost his opportunity to decide.

  “You sure you won’t join us for one little drink, Marty?” His mom frowned, disappointed.

  “We’re celebrating,” his dad said, trying to lighten the mood. “Smart purchase, don’t you think?”

  “Yeah,” Martin said.

  “What’s wrong with you, buddy?” His dad lowered his voice. “You don’t seem like yourself.”

  “And your skin is pink. It’s so pink,” his mom said.

  8

  ONCE INSIDE the mall, Martin headed to the food court, where he ordered a Coke and nachos with extra jalapeños. He put his food down on a little round table, eased himself into a plastic chair, and thought about buying a gift for the girl. It was eleven a.m., a Wednesday, and the shopping center was mostly quiet. Faint music came from speakers he couldn’t see. The smell of popcorn and pizza and egg rolls permeated the air. Every few feet sat huge planters with trees in them that Martin had always assumed were real, but now, up close, he realized they were fake. The Eyeglass Hut and Pretzel Palace were to his right and KC Records and Books to his left, and a shoe store directly across from him.

  A couple teenage girls obviously cutting class stood just inside the shoe store and Martin watched them as he ate. The taller girl held up a rust-colored go-go boot—the kind Margo used to wear—and turned it over to check out the price tag on the bottom, and shrugged. She kicked off her own shoe to try it on. The shorter girl was chewing gum, nodding enthusiastically. A big pink bubble covered half of her face.

  A security guard eyed Martin as he passed by, which made him feel as though everyone knew what had happened, what he’d done, even strangers at the mall. Martin looked down at his food, the orange cheese already hardening in front of him. When the guard was out of view, he pulled the tiny bottle of vodka from his pants pocket and poured the last of it into his Coke. He ate the chips and cheese and jalapeños, one fat ring after another—including the seeds he usually avoided—until his mouth felt scorched. He resisted the urge to touch the fake green leaves to his right and tried not to cry. He was always trying not to cry these days and felt like a pussy. He watched the tall girl walk around the shoe store in both boots, pausing a minute to check herself out in the long mirror. The girl with the gum was talking to a very fat guy behind the counter, flirting, tossing her hair over her shoulder and blowing those bubbles, keeping the poor loser occupied while the tall girl made her way out of the store in her new boots.