before she returned.
“I wasn’t sure you were coming back,” I said.
“Neither was I,” she replied. “But I was afraid you’d keep the pills.” She retrieved the bottle from the bathroom and helped herself to another.
“You want to fuck yourself go right ahead,” I said.
“You already told me that when you rejected me in the parking lot.”
I don’t remember what else was said that night.
The pattern, by now, was familiar: accusations and tears, harsh words, and, eventually, reconciliation.
An attempt at makeup sex, cut short by the sorry state of my inflamed penis. We fell into a wordless cease- fire and, finally, a restless sleep.
Or at least I did. When I jerked awake, she was staring at me, bouncing slightly, seemingly full of life. Only her zombie eyes betrayed the fact that she was on her second straight day without sleep.
“Number Three,” she stated.
Our “Worst Fight Ever” took place just two weeks into our relationship, on our way back from a Meat Loaf concert. Then, a week later at an around-theworld party in my dorm, we fought a sangria-fueled reenactment of the Spanish Civil War. During a recent makeup session we’d listed our Top 5 Fights on the chalkboard in her kitchen, hoping the sight of so much water under the bridge would inspire future harmony. So far, the list had only succeeded in presenting more opportunities for argument, as new battles jockeyed for position with the old.
“Seriously?” I asked, pointing to the bruises on my arm. “Number Two, missie. Might give Number One a run for its money, if there’s any scarring.”
“Pussy,” she said, punching me in the arm.
Neither of us felt like returning to the Falls, and after two days the room felt more prison than escape. We climbed into the car and began the drive back to school. Daphne celebrated the start of our journey with another Simpamina.
“Where do you even get them?” I asked.
“From Dino,” she replied.
Dino was a Roman she’d dated during a semester in Italy when she was an undergrad art major. He’d been a genius artist, or so she said. I tended to ignore most of what she said about Dino, as in addition to vast artistic talent he’d apparently been endowed with a cock molto mostruoso and the equivalent of a graduate degree in Italian lovemaking. While I was generally confident in my own size and skills, talking Dino reminded me that Daphne was our relationship’s wiser and wilder elder, making me feel like a groping pretender.
“Ah, Dino,” I said. “Your friend with the Flintstones name.”
“That wasn’t funny the first time you said it. Or the six thousand times since.” Daphne’s spine stiffened for a fight. And I was feeling stupid enough to give her one.
“Dino,” I continued. “The genius artist who’s what, thirty? And still lives with his parents.”
“You know damn fucking well that’s the traditional living arrangement in Italy. It’s not like the consumerist hell we live in here. Family values actually mean something.”
“Just saying. Real geniuses don’t live with their parents.”
Her response was fast, effective, and very nearly fatal for both of us. She grabbed my arm, pulling me — and the steering wheel — toward her. As I leaned the other way to straighten the wheel, she punched me, without letting go of my arm, around my head and neck as hard and as fast as she could. What she lacked in strength, she more than made up for in speed.
“I hate consumerism!” she screamed.
The car began to spin, slowly, but still precariously out of control. I struggled to restore authority over the vehicle with my free arm while deflecting punches with the other. “I hate consumerism!” she continued to yell again and again, like a chanting monk.
Now we were facing oncoming traffic. Cars swerved past us, their drivers’ faces rigid with shock, terror, and fury at an unpredictable universe.
I began to smile, the same dumb expression that was plastered on my face when the Civic completed its 360-degree turn and slammed broadside into the center divider.
We sat in the emergency lane, motionless and silent. Until Daphne leapt out of the passenger seat, skirted three lanes of interstate traffic, and disappeared into a snowy copse of trees.
I banged the steering wheel angrily. I had a pretty good case for leaving her here. Let her hitch a ride.
She’d get home eventually, full of piss and vinegar and maybe unwilling to ever forgive me, but fuck it: This time our relationship was done. Number Two had become Number One and there was no going back.
I slammed the wheel a few more times, cursing Daphne, Dino, myself, and lastly my parents for being such assholes that I’d had to even take this goddamn trip. Then I unbuckled my seat belt and played a real-life game of Frogger across the highway, hoping to find her.
It wasn’t very hard. She’d fallen to her knees about thirty yards from the road. I approached slowly, softly repeating her name, trying to get a read on her emotional temperature. I interpreted her silence as welcoming so I moved in, placing a hand on her shoulder. A sharp burst of pain in my own shoulder provided instant feedback as to just how badly I’d misread the situation.
The switchblade was another Italian souvenir, something she began carrying full-time after a female student had been raped on campus. She dislodged the knife from my shoulder. I had time to scream in pain before she stuck me again, this time in my thigh. Then she went for the chest. Some instinct toward self-defense ordered my forearm to push back, flinging her backward almost comically into a snowdrift. I tried to step toward her, but the pain in my leg dictated otherwise. I crumpled to my knees and rolled onto my back, staring at the dark gray sky, bleeding into the snow, waiting to die.
DURING THE KIRSCHENBAUM SEDER OF ’84, hopped up on hormones and Manischewitz, I kissed then- thirteen-year-old Tana Kirschenbaum while we were supposed to be hunting the afikomen. I even made a run at fondling her breasts — marvelous then, nothing but improvement sinceuntil, to my great dismay, she shut me down. It wasn’t that Tana didn’t like me: She just already knew better than to trust me. And while I lost a potential conquest, I found a sister. In the years since, Tana had been chief strategist to my romantic entanglements. She helped me make sense of my feelings when love was in bloom and, when it wasn’t, listened patiently to my sins. In return, I offered sage advice regarding her own affairs of the heart, which tended to be long on deep, meaningful embraces but short on the downand-dirty. “He’s definitely gay” was my most frequent observation.
With the exception of last Thanks giving — it’s hard to believe that a year has passed since my Long Weekend of Glorious Ingratitude — the Kirschenbaums have provided the setting for most major holidays. My own parents are short on family ties: Mom’s clan of no-nonsense Protestants reside mainly in her native Indiana, while Dad’s relationsto call them lapsed Catholics doesn’t quite capture the length of the fall — always seem to be engaged in some blood feud precluding any possibility of face-to-face contact. Larry Kirschenbaum, who’s thrice defended my father on charges of driving under the influence, is the closest thing Dad has to a friend. Still, my father harbors an abiding suspicion, repeated each time we pile into the car to go, that the invitation allows Larry to write off the cost of the meal.
This year’s table seats thirteen, which for the Kirschenbaums is an intimate affair. No one is sober enough to retrieve dessert. I’m fairly certain that Dottie, Tana’s heavily mascaraed but otherwise remarkably preserved mother, is flirting with me. There really isn’t any other way to make sense of her so far unquenchable interest in my current job, slinging soft-serve at the Carvel on Jerusalem Avenue.
Dottie’s stocking foot, now tracing a line up my leg, confirms my theory. Awkward, as I’m sitting next to her husband. Doubly awkward, as I’m pretty sure Dottie and my father have engaged in carnal gymnastics on more than one occasion. Sure enough, Dad — who’s spent most of the night fixated on Tana’s glorious rack — is glaring at me with a look that might be intimidating if not drowned in scotch. I’m relieved to see that Mom’s too deadeyed to notice, thanks to Dr. Marty Edelman, an orthodontist whose recent vacation to Napa Valley apparently produced no detail too small or insignificant.
While I can imagine worse fates than sinking my Fudgie the Whale into Dottie’s Cookie-Puss, the idea of going where my father’s been strikes me as a little too Oedipal for comfort. I excuse myself and step outside for a
