One Last Thing Before I Go

out an errant brick. He saw Him less as a deity than as an omnipotent butler/handyman.
    As he got older, God’s presence became more intrusive. Silver didn’t want Him listening in on his calls, could imagine God’s chiding expression when his thoughts turned vaguely and then very specifically impure. You would think having God around would have put a crimp in his burgeoning autoerotic sex life, but somehow, even He wasn’t a match for the hormones of a fourteen-year-old boy. You invented this stuff, Silver would remind him on those occasions when he felt himself caught wet-handed.
    And then, one day, in his later teens, he looked up at the sand-swirled ceiling and recalled with fond nostalgia how he used to see the face of God up there, and only then did he realize that God was gone, that he’d lost track of Him a few years back. It was like hearing about the death of a great uncle you hadn’t thought about in years. You attempt to mourn, settle for nostalgia, and then move on, willfully ignoring the vague sense of unsettlement that lingers, until it gradually fades into one more thread in the tapestry of loss and regret we all weave as we grow up.

CHAPTER 27
    D enise is surrounded by Denise. There are three of her, four if you count the real her, the one standing between these angled mirrors in the bridal salon. Four brides, in understated, backless white gowns. She loves the dress—so much more dignified than the frilly gumdrop of a dress she wore her first time around. And yet, somewhere in its ethereal simplicity there seems to lurk the faintest hint of apology; the rueful admission of her marital past.
    She is in no state of mind to come to this fitting, but canceling the appointment seemed like a statement of some kind, to Rich, or to herself. She is angry at herself for this sudden bout of confusion, furious with Silver for causing it—at least, she thinks he’s the cause—and angry at Rich for . . . no good reason she can think of. After years of Silver’s bullshit, and then the divorce, life was like a knot that she had finally, through great effort, managed to untangle, and now here she was tying it all up again.
    She turns to study herself in profile. Her stomach is flat, her breasts still poised, her skin smooth. She has held up well. Through it all, she has stayed in shape, healthy, and, dare she say it, pretty. The bride on her right is glowing. But the bride on her left looks like she’s been in a bar fight. She runs her fingers along her swollen cheekbone. Two weeks before her wedding. She wants to be the kind of person who can laugh this off, or at last shrug and say them’s the breaks. But she’s never been that girl. Things get to her. That was why Silver had been so good for her, and so bad for her.
    Henny, the seamstress, comes back in and fixes her with a critical eye. “You lose weight since your last fitting.” She is Russian, or Ukrainian, or Chechnyan. Something tragically Slavic. Her accent is so thick, it feels like she is forcing her words through a membrane.
    Denise shrugs. “Stress.”
    “Why stress? This is happy time. The happiest.” Henny starts to pinch at the material near her waist, and then blanches visibly when she catches a glimpse of Denise’s reflection in the mirror. “He hit you?”
    Denise laughs. “No! Of course not. I had an accident.”
    “You don’t marry a man who hits.”
    “He didn’t hit me. I got hit by a door.” Even as she says it, she knows it sounds unconvincing. There are some things that, for whatever reason, you can’t deny without sounding like a liar. “Do you really think I’d be considering marrying someone who hits me?”
    Henny nods. “You get married in two weeks, no?”
    “Yes.”
    “So, you are not considering. You are done considering. Right?”
    “Right.” She wished the woman would just shut up already.
    They will be married by Silver’s father. She feels bad about that, feels that she is compelling him to betray his own son. But he’s the only game in town. She met briefly with Rabbi Davis at the Orthodox shul, but he had a long printed list of requirements—that they use a glatt kosher caterer, that she go to the mikvah the night before and take a dip in the ritual bath, that she present evidence of Rich’s Jewish birth—so she politely placed the sheet back on his desk and retreated as fast as she could.
    Rabbi Silver, whom she suspected had always felt some measure of responsibility for her broken