Jackpot Summer, page 22
“Let’s sort this out in the car,” Harriet said. “Julia is going to kill me if she gets a ticket.” She threw her head back and laughed as charming crinkles formed around her deep-set eyes. “My wife and law enforcement do not see eye to eye on traffic violations.”
Wife? Wife! Sophie could have kissed Harriett. She would kiss Julia, whoever she was. She had been worried about Ravi stepping out for nothing. Why had Ravi never mentioned that Harriett was gay? He clearly overestimated Sophie’s level of self-confidence.
After hot showers and brief naps at the hotel, Ravi was en route to a nightclub in South Beach and Sophie was facing her father on a pickleball court at Boca Breezes.
Sophie and Leo had never played a racket sport together in their lives, but that was just the tip of the current weirdness. When she visited her parents in East Brunswick or Beach Haven, it meant, until very recently, returning to the place where her height was etched on the inside of a closet and her gnarly high school retainer had fossilized in a medicine cabinet. Boca Breezes was an alternate universe that didn’t house any ghosts of her childhood. She was reminded of what people said about visiting Australia, how strange it was to see the water in the toilet flush in the opposite direction. It was worse not having Noah with her this time. Despite knowing she inherited her artistic side from him, Leo felt more distant and unknowable than ever.
“Your grip is wrong,” Leo called over the net. “Lower it. And less wrist when you swing, okay? Tennis and pickleball should not be confused.” She didn’t play tennis either, but her father didn’t seem aware of that.
“I’ll try.” She didn’t really give a fig how to hold a pickleball racket. She wanted to see how Leo held a paintbrush, to discover similarities in the way they applied acrylic to canvas. Was he also terribly impatient waiting for paint to dry? Did he ever work with gouache? Was he a sketcher? Sophie had spent her life feeling close to but different from her family members. When they made obligatory pilgrimages to museums, the other Jacobsons would look at a painting for at most fifteen seconds before someone would grumble “I don’t get it” or “Where’s the gift shop?” Their favorite works were always the ones with a bench in front. She tried to remember what her father had said on those sojourns, but all she could recall was feeling like an outsider. Where her family saw scribbles and random strokes, she found beauty. Where they missed meaning, she sussed out themes and intentionality.
“Actually, no.” Sophie walked off the pickleball court and placed her paddle in a bin. “I really don’t feel like playing right now. I came here to see you. To talk.” She had told Leo she was coming to Florida to support Ravi’s debut at Basel and said nothing of wanting to talk. It occurred to Sophie this was probably the first time in her life she’d requested a private audience with him.
She sat down on a bench. Leo joined. “What’s on your mind?”
“I want to talk about your paintings. The ones we found in the attic. You totally brushed me off when I asked about them, but it’s important to me. You and I have this thing in common—this huge part of my life—and you never even mentioned it.” A lump formed in her throat. “Why didn’t you tell me that you’re an artist?”
A long silence followed. Her father’s face was inscrutable. She pictured Ravi hobnobbing at the party in South Beach and suddenly wished she was there too.
“Fine. You want to do this, we’ll do it.” He leaned against the back of the bench, settling in. “I don’t talk about it because it’s a part of my life that dredges up difficult memories. And, unlike your generation, I don’t feel the need to discuss every last feeling and emotion I have.” The floodlights angled at the court cast him in an eerie spotlight. “But you’ve come all this way, so let’s talk. From the time I was a little kid, I loved to draw. I spent all my free time creating these comic books. I was good. My teachers made a fuss about my art projects. I even won a few prizes.”
Sophie looked at the scraggly hairs on her father’s arms and tried to imagine him as a little kid doing a project, like the children in her classroom. “Dad…that is so cool.”
Leo put out a hand. “Let me finish. You know I didn’t come from much money. Your grandpa Jack had a decent job as a foreman but let’s just say I never had a birthday party or anything like you kids had. One day, your grandfather came home from work all excited. He had this black satchel in his hand—I remember your Bubbe called it a ‘valise—a filthy valise.’ Anyway, he found this bag in an alley during his lunch break. Said it was abandoned in plain sight. He looked around for the owner, supposedly. When no one came forward, he opened it. Ten thousand bucks. That’s what he found inside. Back in 1962, that was a life-changing amount of money. I don’t need to tell you how that feels.”
“No, you do not. And he didn’t have to discount it for present value or pay taxes on it either.”
“Correct, though he would have been better off with less. Your grandmother was very upset. The idea of keeping money that didn’t belong to them, which wasn’t earned, it didn’t sit right with Bubbe. But my father was a persuasive man. When he wanted something, he got it.”
“But Bubbe Esther was so tough. I feel like she and Mom were a lot alike,” Sophie said. A section of her hair, frizzed from humidity, escaped her braid and she pulled out the elastic.
“Your grandfather was a redhead too,” Leo said, touching one of Sophie’s curls. “Before he lost it all.”
“More things I didn’t know.” Sophie shifted back from the edge of the bench and felt a warm tingle when Leo put his arm around her. “So what happened with the money?”
“You’re right your bubbe was tough, but only because she had to be. Nothing good came of the money. Your grandfather gambled a chunk of it away in Atlantic City and in underground card rooms. Bought ridiculous luxuries he had no use for. What does a shtetl boy need a crocodile belt for? He invested in ludicrous ventures that were probably fraudulent. Within two years, our family was in worse financial shape than before. Grandpa Jack owed money all over town. Bubbe Esther never forgave him. He died young. A heart attack that was no doubt caused by all the grief that money brought about.”
“Wow.” She resisted pulling out her phone to update her siblings. Her father was opening up and she wouldn’t squander this moment.
Leo’s grim face throughout Thanksgiving, well before the brawl, flashed before her. His declining to tour the second floor of Laura’s house on account of bad knees, even though he was pounding the asphalt for pickleball daily, suddenly made sense. His anxious gaze every time Noah took a sip of beer or mentioned giving money to this person or that person. The I-knew-this-would-happen attitude when they all started fighting. Leo was having terrible déjà vu watching his children’s behavior, and he no longer had Sylvia at his side for support.
“So it wasn’t the pastrami that did Grandpa in,” Sophie said.
“I’m sure that didn’t help. Anyway, I—the boy who thought he’d draw comics like Charles Schulz or paint something good enough to hang in the Metropolitan Museum of Art—had to put down my pencils and go to work. I was fifteen.”
“That’s terrible,” Sophie said.
“No, it’s not,” Leo said, his voice firmer than before. “I’ve had a great life. A stable career where I earned every penny I have honestly. An artist’s life is difficult, and I wanted security above everything else. I put that part of my life aside, met your mother, had you four kids and never looked back.”
“So you think a windfall is more of a curse than a blessing,” Sophie said. “Ever since the Powerball, I can’t paint a damn thing. Though it’s probably because I’m actually a talentless hack. I used to think I could make it in the art world if I had the time to really hone my craft. But now I have all the time in the world, and I’m paralyzed at the easel.” She bit down hard on her lower lip to stop a potential crying spell. “Dad, what do I do?”
“Ask your mother,” Leo said.
Sophie gaped at him.
“Sorry, sorry. Reflex.” He offered a chagrined smile.
“On that note, there’s something I’ve been wanting to say to you,” Sophie said. “Remember at the airport when you said you’re not like Mom and you don’t know how to fix everything?”
He nodded.
“Neither did she. She didn’t always know what to say to us. Not all of her advice was correct. She begged me to date Ruben Cutler even though he was clearly gay. She convinced Laura to get bangs. Bangs were not a good look on Laura. The difference is that she was always there. No matter what, if we needed her, she was there. There were definitely times she steered us in the wrong direction. And that’s okay. She wasn’t perfect, but she did try her best. That’s all we really need, the four of us.”
Leo pulled Sophie in closer. “That, I can do.”
Sophie walked her father back to his apartment.
“You’re more talented than I was,” Leo said. “Maybe that’s why I didn’t feel any pressure to share my past with you. I don’t think I have much to teach you.”
It was maybe the nicest compliment he’d ever given her.
She hugged him good night. As she was climbing into her Uber to go meet Ravi, she realized her denim jacket was still upstairs at her Dad’s. She asked the driver to wait while she darted back inside. When she spotted her jacket resting on the arm of his sofa, she heard Leo’s voice coming from the bedroom. She tiptoed down the hall and found him staring at a framed photograph he’d clearly retrieved from the open drawer in his night table.
“Oh, Sylvia,” he was saying. “I thought I was doing the best I could. But I can do better.”
She snuck out without him noticing, her heart fuller than when she’d arrived.
FANTASTIC FOURSOME
SOPHIE
Dad is really good at pickleball
MATTHEW
I played with Austin. There are courts all over NYC now
SOPHIE
I sucked
LAURA
Our new golf club is adding 12 pickleball courts
SOPHIE
In actually important news…Grandpa Jack found 10k when Dad was a teenager and lost it all gambling. Basically I have a lot to tell you guys and we need sibling time ASAP when i get back
LAURA
omg—is that why Bubbe always called him a putz
SOPHIE
Assume yes
MATTHEW
It all makes so much sense. The way Dad is about money
SOPHIE
yep. Also he wanted to be an artist
LAURA
whoa
MATTHEW
Noah—I may be driving past the shore this wk en route to philly. Time for dinner?
LAURA
Noah—Hannah said you didn’t snap her back
SOPHIE
N—Dad got some more furniture. Still all beige
LAURA
N, u ok?
NOAH
Yeah i’m good
SOPHIE
N—I almost forgot to tell u. Dad keeps mom’s picture in his night table. He talks to her!
NOAH
Cool
10
Laura
“Now I will apply a twenty-four-karat-gold-enriched body lotion to your back. Gold has wonderful properties, including increased circulation and evening of the skin tone. The antioxidants will protect your skin from free radicals and sun damage. There are jars for sale when you check out if you’re interested.”
“Thank you,” Laura murmured into the headrest attached to the massage table, her voice muffled by a thick layer of fluffy white towel.
“For you, Mr. Cohen, we have an even stronger concentration of our Gold Dust Lather, specially formulated for men,” the other masseuse said. “Please, try to relax your shoulders a bit more. This is your time to unwind and honor your body’s intentions.”
“Mrs. Cohen, you as well. Your muscles are very tight.”
They were thirty minutes into a ninety-minute couples massage, and so far the two therapists working on Laura and Doug had chastised them for clenched fists, rigid jaws and hunched shoulders.
“It’s Dr. Cohen,” Laura said, though she rarely corrected people. “My husband. He’s a dentist.”
Doug lifted his head from the cradle and looked at Laura from his massage table a few feet away. Close enough that they could hold hands if they wanted, the spa manager had said as she led them to the treatment room. “Am I a dentist? I haven’t been at the office for a full week of work since the summer.”
“Of course you are.” Laura raised her head and met her husband’s eye. A couples massage was probably the dreamiest thing she could have imagined all the years she and Doug were in the trenches together, exhausted from frantic schedules and stressed about finances. In reality, the experience was proving a giant disappointment. Instead of unwinding, Laura was worrying whether Doug was enjoying himself. As the therapist tried to release the knots in her neck, Laura wondered if any couples actually held hands during the massage. Why would anyone do that? There was nothing romantic about getting lubed up by two complete strangers while trying to hold in farts.
“Is this your first time in Dubai?” Doug’s therapist asked. Good. They needed distraction. The wind chimes playing through the speakers weren’t doing much to decompress either of them.
“It is,” Laura said, forcing cheer into her voice. “It’s really something.” Japan hadn’t lived up to their expectations. It was too clean. Too much history for which they had no patience. Too many tours and hours on their feet. Too much raw fish. They spent gratuitously on things they didn’t want (hand-embroidered kimonos for the girls and platinum chopsticks for themselves) and were so overscheduled they were rarely alone and too exhausted when they were.
And so, Dubai. A second chance at a fun holiday. They had expected a classier version of Vegas. More heart-stopping architecture, fewer prostitutes. Less all-you-can-eat buffet, more exotically spiced delicacies. More designer shopping with cultural modesty to suit Laura’s middle-aged tastes, less Versace, tit-revealing glitz.
How wrong they were.
Starting with the gold. It was everywhere. Glittering, glinting and blinding them from the moment they stepped off the Emirates flight. Buildings were sheeted in gold. Cocktails were served in gold-rimmed glasses. They slept in gold satin sheets, ate off gold flatware and were now having gold rubbed into their backs at Au Spa.
A cell phone rang as Laura was being instructed to flip over.
“I have to take this,” Doug said. A glowing light shone on his headrest. As he shimmied off the table, the sheet draping him fell to the ground. His penis flopped around like a beached seal until the masseuse, eyes averted, handed him a towel.
“Now?” Laura exclaimed, but Doug was already outside the treatment room.
“Relax, missus. Perhaps you two need some gold-dusted tea in the lounge after.”
Doug never returned to the spa, leaving the remaining time for the treatment on the table, literally. It wasn’t like him to be wasteful, even these days. When she got back to the suite, Laura found him showered and dressed. She rushed to ready herself for dinner, planning to interrogate him about the suspicious call once they were seated at the restaurant.
Dinner was at the top of the Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world and just one of many Guinness World Records attractions in Dubai. Throughout the eleven courses (excluding the amuse bouche and trio of palate cleansers), Doug swore up and down that the call was work-related. She wasn’t buying it. He’d been furtive the entire trip, constantly checking his texts and taking long showers with the bathroom door locked. She didn’t have a fancy job to speak of or a graduate degree to hang on the wall, but she was no fool.
“There is no other woman,” Doug said. “I have no idea how I’m going to convince you otherwise.” He had several dots of black caviar in between his teeth and a rogue patch of gray chest hair poking through the gap between his top two buttons. At that moment, it was hard to picture him as a sought-after heartthrob. He could be attracting women on account of his swelled bank account, but Laura’s suspicions predated the Powerball.
“So then tell me about the call. What’s going on?”
He took a sip of wine. The pours in Dubai were pathetic—the only small thing to be found in the entire place. “I’m thinking of selling my practice. The person who called is a dentist in Tenafly. He’s looking for a second office.”
“Oh. Wow.” She was surprised Doug was eyeing retirement. After taxes and the future expenses of carrying their new home, car payments, golf club membership dues and the additional money set aside for the girls’ continued education, there wasn’t that much left. More to the point, he liked his work. Or she thought he did. “If that’s what you want.”
“It’s still premature. Which is why I didn’t want to discuss it,” Doug said. “Speaking of topics we don’t want to discuss…Beth.”
“That’s a person, not a topic,” Laura said.
“This isn’t Mad Libs. It’s just you were a little harsh with her at Thanksgiving. Are you going to reach out?”
Jeez, this place was turning into a sauna. Laura tried to get the waiter’s attention. The AC needed major cranking. Doug was still staring at her. “Yeah, fine, whatever. But she was harsh with me too.”
“You can be the bigger person,” he said. “While we’re talking, I also wanted to say that I’m concerned that since the girls moved out, you—”
Laura shook her finger. “Nope. Our stressful conversation quota is full for the evening.”
“Fair. What’s on tap for tomorrow?”
Laura pulled up the itinerary on her phone.
“We’re starting off at the Louvre Abu Dhabi. Then touring the campus of NYU’s first outpost in the Middle East. We finish the day at the mall.”
