The Nakeds Page 9

  “I’ve got someone,” Martin said, surprising himself.

  “Sure you do,” Tony said, sarcastically. “That’s why you’re always cooped up in that hellhole of yours—because you’ve ‘got someone.’ ” He set the lime down on the bar where it rocked back and forth a couple times before it was still. He looked at Martin hard. “You know, you haven’t been yourself since Margo left town. If I looked like you, if I had your pretty-boy face, I’d have the wettest dick in town. My dick would be so wet I’d need to wrap it in a towel to keep it from flooding the floor. My dick would be so wet I’d need to keep a sponge in my pants. I’d have to wring my dick out before I left the fucking house. My dick—”

  “It’s not Margo,” Martin interrupted.

  “Then who is it?” Tony leaned toward him. He wagged his finger in Martin’s face. “You miss your wet dick, is what you miss.”

  Martin shook his head.

  Tony turned and eyed the entrance, where two tall, pretty girls in miniskirts and go-go boots, in pearly pink lipstick with white-blond hair, were stepping inside, looking for a place to sit. Tony watched them slip into a booth and set their oversized purses on the table. One of them was adjusting her breasts in her halter top. “Hey, isn’t that Margo’s friend, what’s-her-name?” he asked Martin.

  Martin turned to look. “Annabelle. Yeah, that’s her. You had sex with her in the backseat of my car.”

  “How’s your car anyway? You haven’t been driving.”

  “I told you, transmission’s shot to hell.”

  “Get that shit fixed.”

  “And back tires are flat.”

  “Both tires?”

  “Yeah,” Martin said, realizing how weird it sounded.

  “Maybe someone doesn’t like you, man. Both tires sounds like weird-ass revenge to me,” Tony said.

  “The bus doesn’t bother me,” Martin said. “You can get fucked up and not have to worry.”

  “Thought you didn’t even drink, man—until tonight.”

  “Yeah, I don’t. If you wanted to get fucked up, though, you could.”

  “I don’t know about you anymore. You’re not the same guy you were.” Tony was talking to Martin, but smiling over at Annabelle.

  “I need to get going,” Martin said, slapping his hands on his thighs. “I’ve got work tomorrow.”

  Tony ignored him. “Should I call that girl over? She’s got a pretty little friend for you,” he said.

  “I’m seeing someone else,” Martin lied.

  “What’s her name?”

  “She’s a nurse.” Martin finished his drink and stood up.

  Tony was waving Annabelle and her friend over, smiling like a horny dickhead, Martin thought, and barely noticed when Martin slipped out the front door.

  25

  HER FATHER wasn’t there to fix what was broken and he couldn’t take Hannah to the market or to the movies on a whim. He could call her on the phone and make a plan, coming over like a visitor. That’s what he did on Saturday mornings, came over like a visitor—a rushed visitor who pulled up to the curb and beeped his horn, who only got out of the car when Hannah opened the front door.

  At the car, he hugged her hard, helped her into the front seat, and then slipped her crutches into the back. They were quiet for the first few minutes, like people who didn’t know each other. He tapped on the steering wheel and nodded at nothing, and Hannah felt uncomfortable and nervous. He was her dad, she knew, and she shouldn’t feel the way she felt. Finally, he asked about her leg and the cast, wanting to know if she was in pain, if any of her friends from school had come over to visit, and if the twins across the street had stopped by since she’d been home from the hospital.

  She told him that her leg didn’t hurt, but it didn’t work either. “I’d rather have it hurt than be so useless.”

  He nodded, sadly.

  She told him that the twins were away at camp for the whole summer, but that before they left, they played a lot of hopscotch and mostly ignored her. She said she didn’t really blame them, that not a lot of kids wanted to play indoors in the summer.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “You’ll be moving soon anyway. You’ll make new friends when you move.”

  He took her to her favorite place on Main Street for breakfast, a café with blue-and-white-checked tablecloths and matching napkins, with big windows and the best banana pancakes in town. They sat where they always sat, at the same table with the same three chairs.

  “Christy wants to meet you.” Her father leaned back and stared out the window.

  Hannah noticed that the gold Star of David he had always worn around his neck was now replaced by a shimmering two-inch cross.

  “Well?” he said, turning to her.

  “What?”

  He picked up his napkin and wiped his mouth, though there was nothing on it that she could see. “I’m sorry—about all of it. I know it must be hard on you. The accident, the timing—I know it’s terrible.” He reached across the table and rubbed her arm.

  Hannah wanted to pull her arm away but knew that her dad would be hurt, so she left it on the table between them. She was aware of the awkwardness of his touch and how he seemed as uncomfortable as she was. She wondered what his life was like now, if Christy had children who he was pretending were his own.

  When the waitress came up to the table, Hannah’s dad ordered banana pancakes and eggs for the both of them. And for the first time, at least in front of her, he ordered himself bacon, which surprised her because he was the one who had always insisted on keeping a kosher house. He even offered Hannah a slice, held an oily strip out to her—the limp thing flopping over his hand.

  “No, thanks,” she said.

  “People always said bacon was tasty and I didn’t believe them. I thought it was just salty, but it’s really tasty,” he said.

  “Mom’s got a boyfriend,” she told her dad, when really she knew that Dr. Seth wasn’t her boyfriend at all but a married man who rushed out the door before dinnertime.

  “Really?” Asher said, and she couldn’t gauge his reaction, his face giving nothing away. Hannah was nervous, found herself answering questions he didn’t ask. “Mom’s doing fine. She takes good care of me. When the house sells, we’re going to start over.”

  “As long as you don’t forget about me,” he said.

  “I won’t,” she said.

  “What are you doing tomorrow morning?” He was chewing and talking at once, a drop of grease on his bottom lip. “Want to come to church with us and then afterwards we’ll take you to the beach? You can watch me surf. Would you like that?”

  Hannah cut into her pancakes with the fork and lifted a bite to her mouth, looking at him. She gathered up her courage and asked the question before she could change her mind. “Dad, aren’t we Jewish?”

  “Some Jews find Jesus,” he said, scratching the scar on his cheek. “Some Jews find Jesus and ask him into their hearts.”

  She wasn’t hungry anymore and she wasn’t sure who this man sitting across from her was, smiling like he meant it, talking about Jesus and the big swells of Huntington Beach. She didn’t know who he was, eating slices of pig, and she wanted her other dad back, even if he looked unhappy most of the time.

  “This bacon sure is tasty,” he said again. “Are you sure you don’t want a piece?”

  • • •

  After breakfast, they went to the park. Hannah was staring at the swing set, her favorite thing, remembering when her dad used to stand behind her, pull her to his chest, and push her into the sky.

  Her crutches were leaned up against the bench, just to the left of her cast. When they’d first approached the bench, Asher had reached for the crutches, offering to take them out of her way.

  “No,” she said, pulling them back, needing to know where they were at all times and insisting they stay within reach. She wanted them right by the bed when she slept. She wanted to be able to reach over and fiddle with the rubber hand rests, to scratch at the r
ubber blades that went under her arms, as she was doing now.

  “Isn’t that your friend from school? Eddie something-or-other?” her dad said, pointing. Eddie and his very tall friend were climbing up the slide that was meant to look like a snake.

  “Yeah, that’s him.”

  “He’s so short. Isn’t he little for his age?”

  “I guess,” she said.

  “Good-looking little guy, though.”

  Hannah thought that maybe those pills weren’t working after all and felt guilty for hoping that they didn’t work in the first place. “He’s growing,” she said unconvincingly. “He takes pills. They’re going to make him grow. They’re going to cure him.”

  “Doesn’t look like they’re working,” Asher said.

  “You don’t know that,” she said.

  He shrugged.

  They were quiet for a few minutes.

  “He’ll probably be a mensch,” her dad finally said.

  She looked at him.

  “All he’s going through now, it’ll build character.”

  Hannah looked at the pink scars on her father’s cheek and thought that they looked a lot like the scars on her stomach.

  They were quiet again, watching the kids play. Eddie’s friend so outweighed him that he was having a difficult time on the teeter-totter. He was stuck several feet up in the air and starting to cry. “OK, OK,” his friend was saying, popping up from his seat, sending Eddie to the ground with an audible thud. “Don’t be a fucking baby.”

  The two boys walked to the jungle gym then, the taller boy leading the way and Eddie sheepishly following behind.

  “Did that big kid just say the f-word?” her dad said.

  “They all do,” she said.

  Asher said nothing.

  There were two different boys on the snake slide now.

  A young pretty woman pushed her little boy on a swing.

  A pair of girls in matching bathing suits played in the sandbox.

  “You could do that,” her dad said, pointing at the girls.

  “I’m not allowed near the sand.”

  “Oh, yeah, that’s right,” he said. “Remember when I used to push you on the swings?”

  She nodded.

  “I’ll push you again,” he said, putting his arm around her.

  Just then Eddie looked over. He was once again at the top of the snake slide, waving at Hannah, all enthusiastic, standing taller than he could ever hope to be, and then he was on his stomach coming down fast, flying right out of the snake’s mouth and onto the grass. He stood up, wiped off his little chest and knees, and made his way over to them.

  “Can I sign it?” he said, excited, having not yet seen the cast, the metal cuff in the middle nearly twisted all the way to the left.

  “I guess,” Hannah said.

  Eddie looked at her leg and changed his mind. “Oh, I, I don’t have a pen,” he said.

  “My dad does. Don’t you, Dad?”

  Asher was reaching into his pocket when Eddie’s voice stopped him. “It looks weird,” the boy admitted.

  “It’s only temporary,” Asher said, angrier than he wanted to sound.

  “Didn’t you move far away, Dr. Teller?” Eddie said. “My mom said that you’re not a Jew anymore or at least you don’t want to be one. She said that us Jews don’t really have a choice, though. We are what we are—that’s what my mom says.”

  “Is that right?” Asher said.

  “She said that you’re never coming back, that you’re running toward the hills.”

  “Well, I—” her dad began, but he was interrupted by Eddie’s friend, who looked annoyed, standing by the teeter-totter with a hand on his hip, screaming Eddie’s name.

  “I got to go,” Eddie said. And then over his shoulder, “I’ll see you at school, Hannah.”

  As soon as Eddie left, Hannah asked her dad, “If my leg’s not broken anymore, what’s wrong with it?” She kicked at the air with her good leg and didn’t look at him, but stared straight ahead.

  “These things take time,” he said.

  And that was becoming the phrase she hated more than any other phrase because she knew it was a lie and that when people said these things take time they really meant these things might take time or these things might not happen at all. What they were saying is that you needed to be patient regardless, and Hannah thought that was wrong because people shouldn’t be told to wait for what might never come. It was like waiting for her dad to call out to her from the other room when he wasn’t even in the house, when he didn’t even live there anymore.

  26

  MARTIN WAS walking toward the nurses’ station and thinking about Penny’s hips. And then there they were, and the rest of her too, coming down the hall. There she was in her white nurse dress and boxy nurse hat and spongy nurse shoes. Just as he was imagining her naked, she approached, slapping his chest playfully with patient charts. “What are you thinking about, Marty?” she said, coyly.

  He shrugged, smiling.

  “Thought so,” she said, smiling too.

  He asked about the boyfriend she had mentioned the last time they had talked.

  “He doesn’t love me anymore,” she said matter-of-factly.

  “Then he’s a fool,” he said.

  “Peter doesn’t listen to a single thing I say. I’ll be talking about a patient and he’ll be staring at his fingernails like he’s never seen them before, or he’ll be reading the instructions on the coffeemaker. He makes the coffee every morning and still he’ll be studying those stupid instructions like they’re the key to his damn future.” She paused. She looked at him. “One door closes and another one …” her voice trailed off.

  “What do you mean?” he said, although he knew exactly what she meant.

  “There’s you standing here,” she said.

  • • •

  Did it occur to Penny that he was the one who hit Hannah that morning? He wasn’t sure. He thought that maybe she’d thought of it and then pushed it away, that she didn’t admit it to herself on any conscious level, or maybe she admitted it but, as is the way with attraction, was able to ignore it or pretend it wasn’t so, so that only the good feelings surfaced. Obviously, Penny knew he was a guy who kept coming around the hospital even though he didn’t want anyone to know he was coming around, and that he had left gifts for Hannah, although he didn’t want anyone to know that he had left those gifts.

  Penny had told him that gift-givers always wanted credit and that they rarely left gifts without some sort of card or note attached. She said that not wanting credit was one of the most attractive things about him.

  “Wait,” Penny said now, stepping in front of Martin to get to the little gate that gave her access to the nurses’ station. She tapped the gate open with a swaying hip and dropped her charts on the counter. She walked over to the far side of the station, and then stood on her tiptoes, getting something from a top shelf. He watched her calves flex and thought about kissing her. She pulled a white bag from the shelf and scooted it over to him.

  “What’s this?” He opened the bag and immediately smelled cinnamon. “You remembered,” he said.

  He liked the way her face was older than his face, with faint lines that only made her more beautiful. He liked the way she talked and walked. He liked what she knew about bodies—and how she talked about her patients. He liked her optimism, the fact that she believed they were very near curing cancer when everyone knew that they were nowhere near curing it. And he liked the way she talked about curing cancer, saying we, as in we’re very close—as if she herself, Nurse Penny, was at the forefront of the research. “We’re just this close,” she said, putting her two fingers an inch apart.

  “You keep coming around here,” she said. And again, “You’re pretty like a girl, Martin Kettle.” She used both his names which seemed to him old-fashioned or charming, and her face wasn’t like any face he knew, certainly not Margo’s face, which seemed like a dumb girl’s next to Penny�
�s.

  “Why nursing?” he asked.

  “Because it’s a good thing to do with your life,” she said, looking like she meant it. “I was thinking about becoming a veterinarian because I like animals, but, you know, I like people more.”

  Martin smiled.

  “I know you wait tables at your parents’ restaurants, but what else? What are you going to be?” she asked him.

  He shrugged and turned away, looking toward the hall where a patient on a gurney was struggling with a couple of orderlies. It was nearly one a.m. and Martin asked why the guy was even awake.

  “They’re on their way downstairs,” she said, twirling a finger by her ear to indicate the guy was crazy.

  “Oh,” Martin said.

  The guy was trying to get up off the gurney, he was screaming about his wife, who, Penny told Martin, had long been dead.

  “I want to see my wife,” the patient said, and then he fell back on the gurney and seemed to fall asleep.

  “What do you want to be?” Penny asked again.

  Martin thought about the question.

  I want to be a better man.

  I want to be the man who didn’t hit the girl.

  I want to be who I was before I hit the girl.

  I want to be a man who hit the girl and then got out of his car to make sure she was breathing.

  I want to be a man who didn’t hit the girl, but stopped by the side of the road, and held her, a man who gave her mouth-to-mouth and brought her back to life.

  “I’ll probably go into the restaurant business. Like my dad. It’s in my blood,” he said, trying to sound convincing. He took a bite of the cinnamon roll, which wasn’t warm, but it was tasty anyway.

  A buzzer went off and Penny jumped to attention, looking at the blinking panel in front of her, figuring out what patient, what bed. “Mrs. Ryan probably wants a pain pill,” she said. “She had spinal surgery a few days ago. Sweetest woman. Hardly ever complains. I’ll be right back.” Penny snatched a chart from the counter. “Wait here, eat that,” she told him over her shoulder.

  When she returned from attending to Mrs. Ryan, Martin asked her questions about Hannah and Penny answered them. She told him that Hannah had just turned seven, on July 16, and that she’d gone through a lot: a ruptured spleen, a fractured femur. And worse, something too complicated to explain was wrong with her leg, Penny said, something more serious that would afflict the girl forever. Hannah would limp really badly or, more likely, never walk again. When Martin heard that, he felt sick and guilty all over again. He took a step back. It was one thing to hit the girl, but another to maim her for life.