Wonder Boys - Michael Chabon [92]
Deborah took a long, slow look around the table at the wreckage of dinner and the early high spirits in which the meal had begun.
“This party sucks,” she said. She walked around behind me, and as she went past I caught a bitter whiff of dirt from the pocket of her bathrobe and realized that she was not chewing on any piece of gum.
She laid a hand on James’s shoulder.
“Come on, sport,” she said. “Let’s go hide that matzoh.”
THE TABLE HAD BEEN cleared, the remnant of our tribe assembled. We hurried through the ragged end of the service. Deborah had disappeared upstairs—to wait for the mushrooms to kick in, I supposed—and Emily did not return. Irv skipped through the grace, mumbling along in tired Hebrew, stopping frequently to rub his eyes. Then it came time to open the door to Elijah the Prophet, and at Irv’s request, James got himself out of his chair and stumbled into the kitchen to admit that longed-for phantom, for whom a glass of wine stood ready and waiting in the middle of the table. Many years earlier, I knew, family tradition had made it the job of Sam Warshaw to open the magical door.
“No” said Irv, his voice a little hoarse. “The front”
James looked back at Irv, then nodded slowly and went over to the front door. He had to throw his shoulder against it to get it unlocked, and it produced a suitably eerie creaking of the hinges when he pulled it open. A cool breeze blew into the room and stirred the flames of the candles, and I looked at Irv, who was watching the air around him as if he could see it moving. If Elijah ever did show up to drink his glass of wine, I knew, it would mean that the Messiah himself was on the way, and the night would be as day, and the hills would skip like rams, and fathers would be reunited with their drowned sons.
James sat back down in his chair, heavily, and gave us all a queasy smile.
“Thank you, son,” said Irv.
“Hey, Irv?” I said, deciding, after all this time, to ask the Fifth Question, the one that never got asked. “How come old Yahweh let the Jews wander around in the desert like that for forty years, anyway? How come he didn’t, just, like, show them the right way to go? They could have gotten there in a month.”
“They weren’t ready to enter the Holy Land,” said Marie. “It took forty years to get the slavery out of them.”
“That could be,” said Irv, looking over at James, his eyes deep and shadowy. “Or maybe they just got lost.”
On this word, “lost,” James suddenly tipped back in his chair, hand wrapped around yet another glass of Manischewitz, and closed his eyes. The glass slipped from his hand and chimed against the edge of the table.
“Damn,” said Philly, impressed. “He passed out.”
“James,” said Irene, hurrying around the table to him. “Wake up.” She spoke sharply, in the cool and brusque manner of a mother who fears the worst. His eyes fluttered open, and he smiled at her. “Come on, sweetie, come upstairs and lie down.”
She helped James out of his chair and guided him up the creaking stairs. Just before she passed from view she turned and looked back at me, her jaw set. What kind of teacher was I? I looked away. Marie got up from the table and ran into the kitchen for another damp cloth.
Ten minutes later Irene reappeared, wearing a short black satin jacket, trimmed with a white fur collar. It was a tight fit.
“Look what James gave me,” she said. “He had it in that little bag of his.” She ran a hand along its collar. “Ermine.”
“Is he all right?” said Philly.
She shook her head.
“I just got off the telephone with his mother.” She looked at me with a puzzled expression, as though she couldn’t understand why I’d told her such outrageous lies about that poor young man lying upstairs in Sam Warshaw’s old bed. “They weren’t home, but the housekeeper gave me a number to call. It was a country club, St. Something, they were having a party. They’ll be here in two hours.”
“In two hours?” I said, trying to connect the words “mother