This Is Where I Leave You

putting on his pants before he goes out. Sometimes he goes into these trances where he just stands there staring at the wall. I can’t bear the thought of him living alone and staring at the walls for hours on end, with no one there to snap him out of it.”
    “On the other hand, he might need some independence.”
    “What he needs is to get laid,” Linda says sharply. “That boy always had a girlfriend, remember? I lived in fear that he’d call me from college to tell me he’d knocked up some twit.” She leans forward and lowers her voice. “It’s never easy for him, seeing Wendy like this.”
    “I hadn’t thought of that.”
    “You think you’re lonely now, Judd, but you’ve got nothing on that boy.”
    “No. I guess I don’t.”
    “Which reminds me, you should go into the store when you pick him up and say hello to that Penelope Moore.”
    I stare at her, nonplussed. “You’re just full of surprises, aren’t you?”
    She puts her glasses on and turns back to her puzzle, a small smile playing across her lips. “You have no idea,” she says.

Chapter 16
    8:42 p.m.
    There was always something of a little girl about Penny Moore, with her pale skin and wide eyes, and that hasn’t changed in the years since I last saw her. When she sees me, her face lights up, and she leaps athletically over the counter to hug me. She’s dressed in jeans and a button-down oxford, her long dark hair tied loosely behind her head. From twenty feet away, she could pass for a college student. Only as she draws closer do you see the slightly looser flesh beneath her eyes, the soft commas at the corners of her mouth.
    “Hey, Judd Foxman.” She feels thin in my arms, less substantial than I remember.
    “Hi, Penny.”
    She kisses my cheek and then steps back so we can look at each other. “I’m so sorry about Mort,” she says.
    “Thanks.”
    “I saw you at the funeral.”
    “Really? I didn’t see you.”
    “I avoided you. I never know what to say at funerals.”
    “Fair enough.”
    Penny’s honesty has always been like nudity in an action movie: gratuitous, but no less welcome for it.
    “So, how long has it been?” she says. “Seven, eight years?”
    “Something like that.”
    She gives me the once-over. “You look like hell.”
    “Thanks. You look great.”
    “Don’t I, though?” she says, smiling.
    What I’m thinking is that she looks fine, pretty even, but nothing like the ripe prom queen she was back in high school. I wanted her so badly then; everybody did. But she was out of my league so I settled for becoming her best friend, a form of masochism unique to under confident teenage boys, our time together spent with her telling me about all the assholes she chose to have sex with instead of me. Time and troubles have sharpened her softer edges, and now her face is a knife, her breasts like two clenched fists under her tight blouse. She’s a sexy street-fight of a woman, and I have been alone and untouched for a while now, and just watching her lips slide against her teeth as she smiles is enough to get me going.
    “So, I heard about your wife,” she says. “Or lack thereof.”
    “Good news travels fast.”
    “Well, your brother is my boss.”
    “And how’s that working out for you?”
    She shrugs. “He flirts a little, but he keeps his hands to himself.”
    Penny’s plan was to get married and move to Connecticut when she grew up, have four kids and a golden retriever, and write children’s books for a living. Now she’s thirty-five, still living in Elmsbrook, and considers the fact that she doesn’t get groped in the workplace a perk worth mentioning.
    “You’re feeling sorry for me,” Penny says.
    “No.”
    “You never were any good at covering up.”
    “I’m feeling much too sorry for me these days to worry about anyone else.”
    “Your wife left you, Judd. It happens every day.”
    “Jesus, Penny.”
    “I’m sorry. That was harsh, and totally uncalled for.”
    “And what’s your story?”
    She shrugs. “I don’t have one. No great traumatic event to blame my small life on. No catastrophes, no divorce. Plenty of bad men, but plenty of good ones too, that simply didn’t want me in the end. I tried to make something of myself and I failed. That happens every day too.”
    “Horry says you’re still skating.”
    She nods. “I teach over at Kelton’s.”
    “I used to love watching you skate.”
    “Yes, you did. Do you remember our pact?”
    “I do.”
    We look