This Is Where I Leave You

times did you visit him, any of you? Now I know, Wendy, Los Angeles isn’t exactly next door, and, Judd, you’ve been going through a rough time, I understand that. And, Phillip ...Well, God only knows what you’ve been up to. It’s like having a son in Iraq. At least then I’d know where you were. But your father made his last wish known, and we will honor it. All of us. It’s going to be crowded, and uncomfortable, and we’ll all get on each other’s nerves, but for the next seven days, you are all my children again.” She takes a few steps into the room and smiles at us. “And you’re all grounded.”
    My mother spins on one stiletto heel and plants herself like a child into one of the low seats. “Well,” she says. “What are you waiting for?”
    We all hunker down in the seats, silent and sullen, like a group of scolded schoolchildren.
    “Um, Mrs. Foxman,” Boner says, clearing his throat. “You’re really not supposed to wear dress shoes when you’re sitting shiva.”
    “I have bad arches,” she says, flashing him a look sharp enough for a circumcision.
    The one tattered remnant of Jewish observance that my parents had maintained was having the family stay over for Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. Every year, as summer bled into fall, the call would come, more a summons than an invitation, and we would all descend upon Knob’s End, to argue over sleeping arrangements, grudgingly attend services at Temple Israel, and share an overwrought holiday meal during which, tradition had it, at least one person would theatrically storm out of the house in a huff. Usually, it would be Alice or Wendy, although a few years ago it was memorably Jen, after my father, already well into his peach schnapps, told her, apropos of nothing in particular, that our dead son wouldn’t have been technically Jewish since she was a gentile. This was just a few months after she’d delivered our dead baby, and so no one blamed her for hurling her plate at him as she stormed out.
    “What got into her?” he said. On the plus side, she insisted we go home immediately, which got me out of having to attend the interminable services at Temple Israel the following morning, where Cantor Rothman’s slow, operatic tenor makes you want to prostrate yourself on the spot and accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior. 60

    4:02 p.m.
    Alice and Tracy are helping Linda in the kitchen. Horry, on Paul’s orders, has gone back to the store to finish out the day. The Elmsbrookstore is the flagship, and it stays open until nine every night. Barry is upstairs, watching a video with the boys. So it’s just the four of us and Mom, sitting on low chairs, feeling sheepish and uncomfortable.
    “So,” Phillip says. “What happens now?”
    “People will come,” Mom says.
    “How do they know when to come?”
    “We are not the first people to ever sit shiva,” Paul grumbles.
    “People will come,” Mom says.
    “Oh, people will come, Ray,” Phillip intones, doing his best James Earl Jones. “People will most definitely come.” Phillip is a repository of random snatches of film dialogue and song lyrics. To make room for all of it in his brain, he apparently cleared out all the areas where things like reason and common sense are stored. When triggered, he will quote thoughtlessly, like some kind of savant.
    Paul looks up to catch me staring at the scar on his right hand. It’s a thick, pink line that runs up the meaty edge of his palm, crossing his wrist and ending in a splotchy cluster on the inside of his forearm. There’s another, nastier one on his shoulder that radiates up toward his neck in raised tendrils the color of dead flesh, where the rottweiler missed his jugular by a few inches. Whenever I see him, I can’t help but stare at the scars, looking for the teeth marks I know are there. He twists his arm around self-consciously, hiding the scar, and flashes me a hard look. Paul has not addressed me directly since I arrived. He rarely addresses me if he doesn’t have to. This is due to a combination of factors, most notably the rottweiler attack that ended his college baseball career before it started and for which he blames me. He’s never come out and said that, of course. Other than Phillip, the men in my family never come out and say anything. So I don’t know for sure if that’s when Paul started hating me, or if that’s just when Paul started hating everybody.
    Another possible factor is that I lost my