This Is Where I Leave You Read online

  J O N AT H A N T R O P P E R

  D U T TO N

  Also by Jonathan Tropper

  Plan B

  The Book of Joe

  Everything Changes

  How to Talk to a Widower

  J O N AT H A N T R O P P E R

  D U T TO N

  DUTTON

  Published by Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A. Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.); Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England; Penguin Ireland, 25 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd); Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd); Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi—110 017, India; Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd); Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England Published by Dutton, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. Copyright © 2009 by Jonathan Tropper

  All rights reserved

  REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA Tropper, Jonathan.

  This is where I leave you / Jonathan Tropper. p. cm.

  ISBN: 1-101-10682-4

  1. Divorced men—Fiction 2. Fathers—Death—Fiction. 3. Brothers and sisters—Fiction. 4. Family—

  Fiction. 5. Self-actualization (Psychology)—Fiction. 6. Psychological fiction. 7. Domestic fi ction. I. Title.

  PS3570.R5885T47 2009

  813'.54—dc22

  2009006934

  Set in Warnock Pro

  Designed by Alissa Amell

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copy­

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  Mom and Dad

  Chapter 1

  Dad’s dead,” Wendy says offhandedly, like it’s happened before, like it happens every day. It can be grating, this act of hers, to be ut­

  terly unfazed at all times, even in the face of tragedy. “He died two hours ago.”

  “How’s Mom doing?”

  “She’s Mom, you know? She wanted to know how much to tip the coroner.”

  I have to smile, even as I chafe, as always, at our family’s patented inability to express emotion during watershed events. There is no occa­

  sion calling for sincerity that the Foxman family won’t quickly diminish or pervert through our own genetically engineered brand of irony and evasion. We banter, quip, and insult our way through birthdays, holi­

  days, weddings, illnesses. Now Dad is dead and Wendy is cracking wise. It serves him right, since he was something of a pioneer at the forefront of emotional repression.

  “It gets better,” Wendy says.

  “Better? Jesus, Wendy, do you hear yourself?”

  “Okay, that came out wrong.”

  “You think?”

  “He asked us to sit shiva.”

  “Who did?”

  “Who are we talking about? Dad! Dad wanted us to sit shiva.”

  2

  J o n a t h a n Tr o p p e r

  “Dad’s dead.”

  Wendy sighs, like it’s positively exhausting having to navigate the dense forest of my obtuseness. “Yes, apparently, that’s the optimal time to do it.”

  “But Dad’s an atheist.”

  “Dad was an atheist.”

  “You’re telling me he found God before he died?”

  “No, I’m telling you he’s dead and you should conjugate your tenses accordingly.”

  If we sound like a couple of callous assholes, it’s because that’s how we were raised. But in fairness, we’d been mourning for a while already, on and off since he was first diagnosed a year and a half earlier. He’d been having stomachaches, swatting away my mother’s pleas that he see a doctor, choosing instead to increase the regimen of the same antacids he’d been taking for years. He popped them like Life Savers, dropping small squibs of foil wrapping wherever he went, so that the carpets glit­

  tered like wet pavement. Then his stool turned red.

  “Your father’s not feeling well,” my mother understated over the phone.

  “My shit’s bleeding,” he groused from somewhere behind her. In the fifteen years since I’d moved out of the house, Dad never came to the phone. It was always Mom, with Dad in the background, contributing the odd comment when it suited him. That’s how it was in person too. Mom always took center stage. Marrying her was like joining the chorus.

  On the CAT scan, tumors bloomed like flowers against the charcoal desert of his duodenal lining. Into the lore of Dad’s legendary stoicism would be added the fact that he spent a year treating metastatic stom­

  ach cancer with Tums. There were the predictable surgeries, the radia­

  tion, and then the Hail Mary rounds of chemo meant to shrink the tumors but that instead shrank him, his once broad shoulders reduced

  T H I S I S W H E R E I L E AV E YO U

  3

  to skeletal knobs that disappeared beneath the surface of his slack skin. Then came the withering of muscle and sinew and the sad, crumbling descent into extreme pain management, culminating with him slipping into a coma, the one we knew he’d never come out of. And why should he? Why wake up to the painful, execrable mess of end-stage stomach cancer? It took four months for him to die, three more than the oncolo­

  gists had predicted. “Your dad’s a fi ghter,” they would say when we vis­

  ited, which was a crock, because he’d already been soundly beaten. If he was at all aware, he had to be pissed at how long it was taking him to do something as simple as die. Dad didn’t believe in God, but he was a life­

  long member of the Church of Shit or Get Off the Can. So his actual death itself was less an event than a final sad detail.

  “The funeral is tomorrow morning,” Wendy says. “I’m flying in with the kids tonight. Barry’s at a meeting in San Francisco. He’ll catch the red-eye.”

  Wendy’s husband, Barry, is a portfolio manager for a large hedge fund. As far as I can tell, he gets paid to fly around the world on pri­

  vate jets and lose golf games to other richer men who might need his fund’s money. A few years ago, they transferred him to the L.A. offi

  ce,

  which makes no sense, since he travels constantly, and Wendy would no doubt prefer to live back on the East Coast, where her cankles and postpregnancy jiggle are less of a liability. On the other hand, she’s being very well compensated for the inconvenience.

  “You’re bringing the kids?”

  “Believe me, I’d rather
not. But seven days is just too long to leave them alone with the nanny.”

  The kids are Ryan and Cole, six and three, towheaded, cherubcheeked boys who never met a room they couldn’t trash in two minutes flat, and Serena, Wendy’s seven-month-old baby girl.

  “Seven days?”

  “That’s how long it takes to sit shiva.”

  4

  J o n a t h a n Tr o p p e r

  “We’re not really going to do this, are we?”

  “It was his dying wish,” Wendy says, and in that single instant I think maybe I can hear the raw grief in the back of her throat.

  “Paul’s going along with this?”

  “Paul’s the one who told me about it.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He said Dad wants us to sit shiva.”

  Paul is my older brother by sixteen months. Mom insisted I hadn’t been a mistake, that she’d fully intended to get pregnant again just seven months after giving birth to Paul. But I never really bought it, especially after my father, buzzed on peach schnapps at Friday-night dinner, had acknowledged somberly that back then they believed you couldn’t get pregnant when you were breast-feeding. As for Paul and me, we get along fine as long as we don’t spend any time together.

  “Has anyone spoken to Phillip?” I say.

  “I’ve left messages at all his last known numbers. On the off chance he plays them, and he’s not in jail, or stoned, or dead in a ditch, there’s every reason to believe that there’s a small possibility he’ll show up.”

  Phillip is our youngest brother, born nine years after me. It’s hard to understand my parents’ procreational logic. Wendy, Paul, and me, all within four years, and then Phillip, almost a decade later, slapped on like an awkward coda. He is the Paul McCartney of our family: betterlooking than the rest of us, always facing a different direction in pic­

  tures, and occasionally rumored to be dead. As the baby, he was alternately coddled and ignored, which may have been a significant factor in his becoming such a terminally screwed-up adult. He is currently living in Manhattan, where you’d have to wake up pretty early in the morning to find a drug he hasn’t done or a model he hasn’t fucked. He will drop off

  the radar for months at a time and then show up unannounced at your house for dinner, where he might or might not casually mention that

  T H I S I S W H E R E I L E AV E YO U

  5

  he’s been in jail, or Tibet, or has just broken up with a quasi-famous actress. I haven’t seen him in over a year.

  “I hope he makes it,” I say. “He’ll be devastated if he doesn’t.”

  “And speaking of screwed-up little brothers, how’s your own Greek tragedy coming along?”

  Wendy can be funny, almost charming in her pointed tactlessness, but if there is a line between crass and cruel, she’s never noticed it. Usu­

  ally I can stomach her, but the last few months have left me ragged and raw, and my defenses have been depleted.

  “I have to go now,” I say, trying my best to sound like a guy not in the midst of an ongoing meltdown.

  “Jesus, Judd. I was just expressing concern.”

  “I’m sure you thought so.”

  “Oh, don’t get all passive-aggressive. I get enough of that from Barry.”

  “I’ll see you at the house.”

  “Fine, be that way,” she says, disgusted. “Good-bye.”

  I wait her out.

  “Are you still there?” she fi nally says.

  “No.” I hang up and imagine her slamming her phone down while the expletives fly in a machine-gun spray from her lips.

  Wednesday

  Chapter 2

  I’m packing up my car for the two-hour drive to Elmsbrook when Jen pulls up in her marshmallow-colored SUV. She gets out quickly, be­

  fore I can escape. I haven’t seen her in a while, haven’t returned her calls or stopped thinking about her. And here she is looking immaculate as ever in her clinging gym clothes, her hair an expensive shade of honey blond, the corners of her mouth inching up ever so slightly into the tentative smile of a little girl. I know every one of Jen’s smiles, what they mean and where they lead.

  The problem is that every time I see Jen, it instantly reminds me of the first time I ever saw her, riding that crappy red bike across the quad, long legs pumping, hair fl ying out behind her, face fl ushed with excite­

  ment, and that’s exactly what you don’t want to think about when con­

  fronted with your soon-to-be ex-wife. Ex-wife in waiting. Ex-wife elect. The self-help books and websites haven’t come up with a proper title for spouses living in the purgatory that exists before the courts have offi­

  cially ratified your personal tragedy. As usual, seeing Jen, I am instantly chagrined, not because she’s obviously found out that I’m living in a crappy rented basement, but because ever since I moved out, seeing her makes me feel like I’ve been caught in a private, embarrassing moment—watching porn with my hand in my pants, singing along to Air Supply while picking my nose at a red light.

  “Hey,” she says.

  10

  J o n a t h a n Tr o p p e r

  I toss my suitcase into the trunk. “Hey.”

  We were married for nine years. Now we say “Hey” and avert our eyes.

  “I’ve been leaving you messages.”

  “I’ve been busy.”

  “I’m sure.” Her ironic infl ection fills me with the familiar impulse to simultaneously kiss her deeply and strangle her until she turns blue. Neither is an option at this juncture, so I have to content myself with slamming the trunk harder than necessary.

  “We need to talk, Judd.”

  “Now’s not a good time.”

  She beats me to the driver’s-side door and leans against it, fl ashing me her most accomplished smile, the one I always told her made me fall in love with her all over again. But she’s miscalculated, because now all it does is remind me of everything I’ve lost. “There’s no reason this can’t be amicable,” she says.

  “You’re fucking my boss. That’s a pretty solid reason.”

  She closes her eyes, summoning up the massive reserves of patience required to deal with me. I used to kiss those eyelids as we drifted off to sleep, feel the rough flutter of her lashes like butterfly wings between my lips, her light breath tickling my chin and neck. “You’re right,” she says, trying to look like someone trying not to look bored. “I am a fl awed person. I was unhappy and I did something inexcusable. But as much as you might hate me for ruining your life, playing the victim isn’t really working out for you.”

  “Hey, I’m doing fi ne.”

  “Yeah. You’re doing great.”

  Jen looks pointedly at the crappy house in which I now live below street level. It looks like a house drawn by a child: a triangle perched on a square, with sloppily staggered lines for bricks, a lone casement win­

  dow, and a front door. It’s flanked by houses of equal decrepitude on

  T H I S I S W H E R E I L E AV E YO U

  11

  either side, nothing at all like the small, handsome colonial we bought with my life’s savings and where Jen still lives rent-free, sleeping with another man in the bed that used to be mine. My landlords are the Lees, an inscrutable, middle-aged Chinese couple who live in a state of perpetual silence. I have never heard them speak. He performs acupuncture in the living room; she sweeps the sidewalk thrice daily with a handmade straw broom that looks like a theater prop. I wake up and fall asleep to the whisper of her frantic bris­

  tles on the pavement. Beyond that, they don’t seem to exist, and I often wonder why they bothered immigrating. Surely there were plenty of pinched nerves and dust in China.

  “You didn’t show up to the mediator,” Jen says.

  “I don’t like him. He’s not impartial.”

  “Of course he’s impartial.”

  “He’s partial to your breasts.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake, th
at’s just ridiculous.”

  “Yes, well, there’s no accounting for taste.”

  And so on. I could report the rest of the conversation, but it’s just more of the same, two people whose love became toxic, lobbing regret grenades at each other.

  “I can’t talk to you when you’re like this,” she finally says, stepping away from the car, winded.

  “I’m always like this. This is how I am.”

  My father is dead! I want to shout at her. But I won’t because she’ll cry, and if she does, I probably will, and then she’ll have found a way in, and I will not let her pierce my walls in a Trojan horse of sympathy. I’m going home to bury my father and face my family, and she should be there with me, but she’s not mine anymore. You get married to have an ally against your family, and now I’m heading into the trenches alone. Jen shakes her head sadly and I can see her lower lip trembling, the tear that’s starting to form in the corner of her eye. I can’t touch her, kiss 12

  J o n a t h a n Tr o p p e r

  her, love her, or even, as it turns out, have a conversation that doesn’t degenerate into angry recriminations in the first three minutes. But I can still make her sad, and for now, I’ll have to be satisfied with that. And it would be easier, so much easier, if she didn’t insist on being so goddamned beautiful, so gym-toned and honey-haired and wide-eyed and vulnerable. Because even now, even after all that she’s done to me, there’s still something in her eyes that makes me want to shelter her at any cost, even though I know it’s really me who needs the protection. It would be so much easier if she wasn’t Jen. But she is, and where there was once the purest kind of love, there is now a snake pit of fury and resentment and a new dark and twisted love that hurts more than all the rest of it put together.

  “Judd.”

  “I have to go,” I say, opening my car door.

  “I’m pregnant.”

  I’ve never been shot, but this is probably what it feels like, that split second of nothingness right before the pain catches up to the bullet. She was pregnant once before. She cried and kissed me and we danced like idiots in the bathroom. But our baby died before it could be born, stran­

  gled by the umbilical cord three weeks before Jen’s due date.