This Is Where I Leave You

say.
    “Judd!” my mother gasps, horrified.
    “Some of it is done very tastefully. And especially now, being single and all. It’s a great resource.”
    Phillip bursts out laughing. Betty Allison’s face turns red, and my mother sits back in her chair, defeated. Hannah Allison and her two first names have been wiped off the board.
    “He’s just being funny,” Mom says weakly.
    “I would have to disagree,” Betty says.
    Phillip is laughing so hard that tears stream down his face as he slides down in his shiva chair. Everyone in the room looks at him, horrified by the sight of unfettered glee in a shiva house, but in a minute or so he’ll be done laughing, and then, to anyone who sees him, his tear streaked face and red eyes will seem entirely appropriate. 10:30 p.m.
    The last visitors have finally left. You can feel the house exhaling, returning to its normal proportions. After my shabby behavior toward Betty Allison, Linda began quietly shooing out the guests, her voice soft but unyielding as she told them that we’d been through a long and emotional day.
    Unbeknownst to me, the sleeping arrangements were decided while I was out earlier. Wendy has pretty much taken over the upstairs, commandeering Phillip’s room for the baby’s Portacrib, her own old bedroom for Ryan and Cole, and the guest room for her and Barry. Phillip and Tracy are on the sofa bed in the den behind the kitchen. Paul and 78Alice have unceremoniously taken my childhood bedroom, which is where I always stayed when I visited with Jen. But now, being the lone single sibling, I have been relegated to the basement, which seems to be the default for me these days.
    As kids, Paul and I shared a room until he sprouted pubic hair and moved down to the basement, where the hiss and clank of the boiler would drown out his Led Zeppelin, his phone calls with girlfriends, and his ever busier masturbation schedule. Paul had been allowed to furnish the basement as he saw fit, which is why the sofa bed cannot be fully opened without hitting the corner of the Ping-Pong table, which is itself positioned against a support column, so whether it’s a game of Ping-Pong or a good night’s sleep you’re after, you’re going to be shit out of luck.

    11:06 p.m.
    DeaThis exhausting. Whether it’s from the trauma of burying my father or from spending the entire day in close proximity to my family, I barely have the energy to take my pants off before collapsing on the mostly opened sofa bed, my legs tilted upward toward the Ping-Pong table. There, beneath the house, in the oblong shadow cast by the single naked light bulb, I can feel the panic rising, the sense that I’m disappearing. A few miles away, my father is buried in a grassy bluff overlooking the tangle of blacktop where the interstate and thruway intersect. We are both underground, both gone from the world. At least his legs are fully extended.
    I turn on my cell phone. As expected, there’s a new voice mail from Jen. She’s been calling me every day for the last few weeks, determined to achieve some level of amicability and open communication to facilitate a quick and peaceful divorce and so that she can believe she’s been forgiven. She always cared a little too much about being liked, and the guilt over her betrayal isn’t nearly as upsetting to her as the fact that I now despise her. I’ve taken to keeping my phone off and not returning her calls. I am still perfecting the art of hating her, and until I’ve got it down, I don’t feel ready to engage. This infuriates her, and so she tries every possible approach to draw me out: contrite, dispassionate, tearful, philosophical, plaintive, and witty. Sometimes I play her messages, left over the course of weeks, all in a row, listening to the erratic swing of her tone between each beep. Tonight she actually descends into something of a rage, telling me I can’t keep avoiding her, threatening to empty our joint checking account if I don’t return her call by tomorrow. No doubt she’d like to be divorced by the time she and Wade have their baby. I especially like today’s voice mail, because she’s shouting at me like I’m standing right there in front of her, like it’s an actual conversation. Still, just to be safe, first thing tomorrow I’ll run out to the bank and withdraw the bulk of what’s left in our checking account. It was around twenty-two thousand dollars last time I checked, although the balance has probably fallen a bit