Chapter 18 #2
Only briefly, because: “We’re women,” all three of them snap, and then, looking horrified to have been caught doing the same thing in the same moment, turn back to one another and resume fighting.
“Of course you are,” Sam says, not that they’re listening to him anymore. “I just meant—I was hoping—for God’s sake, would you just listen for a second?”
All three of them fall silent, which alerts Sam to the fact that he delivered that last bit more than a little too loudly.
The last remaining customers in the deli glance up at the volume and then scurry out, leaving the place as dead and empty as it was at the peak of the aftermath of Jake’s Kiss of Death review.
Would any of this even have happened if not for that stupid review?
If Luce hadn’t had the excuse of wanting to help out at the deli?
If Sam hadn’t been so wrapped in everything, been paying more attention to what was really going on?
“What?” Iris snaps. “You think you can fix this, Sam? You? You’re not even part of this! What do you know about—”
“I know,” Sam returns, his voice dropping into a low, dangerous register, “how easy it is to lose your family, Iris, all right? I know! The three of you are acting like—”
“The three of us?” Luce demands, throwing Sam a glare that makes him wince. “I’m not acting like anything; they’re the ones who don’t even think of me as a—”
“We were just trying look out for your future,” Daisy cries. “We’ve never lived apart, and you’re the one we always had to carry, you know! Never making your own friends, or—”
“I make my own friends!” Luce looks and sounds near tears of rage now. “I have plenty of friends! And a partner! And a job lined up, which is more than either one of you has got! Just because I wasn’t invited to as many birthday parties as you when we were seven—”
“The three of you,” Sam bellows, drowning them out, “are acting like there aren’t any consequences to this!
Like you can just stand here and be horrible to one another and then let it all pass under the bridge, because you’re family and that’s what happens.
But sometimes it isn’t what happens! Sometimes you break something, and you can’t ever take it back or put it right again, and then you have to carry it—”
“Oh my God,” Iris says, rolling her eyes, “not everything is about your trauma, Sam, okay? You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about, and—”
“Actually,” a soft, female voice says from somewhere behind Sam, “in my experience, he’s got that one dead right.”
All four siblings spin, mouths dropping open, to see Deb standing in the doorway.
Once he’s over the shock of seeing her—and with no small amount of relief—Sam lets Deb take over.
He’s grateful when she instructs him to go to his office and wait for her; he’s even more grateful when, a few minutes later, the shouting dies down, and she saunters in sans triplets, looking pleased with herself.
“I sent them over to Joanie,” Deb explains, sitting down in the chair across from the desk and smiling at Sam.
“You’d never believe it based on how in touch she, uh, really isn’t with her own feelings, but she’s great with this kind of thing for other people.
She’ll make them all sit in a circle and agree that they can only talk when they’re the one holding some weird crystal or amulet or whatever else from that junk pit of a shop, and shut them up when they go too far.
” When Sam makes a doubtful face, she laughs.
“I’m serious, you know. I’ve seen her do it.
How do you think your mother and I get through funerals and bat mitzvahs without making fools of ourselves?
” When Sam blinks in surprise, she winks and adds, “What? I don’t tell you everything, you know.
Anyway, it’ll be easier for Joanie than you. You’re too close to be objective.”
“Well, that’s… probably right,” Sam admits, and slumps down slightly onto his hands. After a second, feeling the oddness of their positions acutely, he adds, “Do you want to switch seats? It’s weird being on this side, when it’s, uh, technically your office.”
“Nah,” Deb says, and, grinning at him, kicks her feet up onto the desk. “Kinda like the view from this side, honestly. Much less to worry about over here.”
“That’s definitely right,” Sam mutters, and sighs, and then smiles back at her, helpless not to. “It’s good to see you. Thanks for coming.”
“Oh, sure,” Deb says, waving a hand as though it’s nothing.
“Talya’s off presenting a paper at some academics-only conference this week, and it seemed like a good time to stop in, see how it’s all going.
If I’d realized it was going to be World War III when I showed up, I might have picked a different week, but maybe it’s for the best that it worked out like this.
You don’t, sorry to say it, really have my expertise in sister-on-sister crime. ”
Sam grimaces, thinking of some of the fights he witnessed between Deb and Mara before the Great Yom Kippur Schism, after which communications between them largely ceased.
He hates to even think it—it makes him so sad for the triplets he can hardly bear it—but: “Is that how you and my mom were, then? At their age?”
Deb laughs, a bright, bell-like peal. “Me and Mara? God, no. Of course not. We were much worse.” In the tones of a fond reminiscence, she adds, “We did have a couple of humdingers like that here at Silverman’s, I’ll grant you.
She threw about half a tub of whitefish salad at me once, you should have heard my mother go on about the cost and the mess.
You missed meeting your grandma Sandy, but she could really blow her top when she was mad enough. ”
“Yeah,” Sam says, the corner of his mouth lifting. “I’ve got the sense that’s a family trait. The three of them are certainly giving one another a run for their money.”
“Oh, stop, that’ll work itself out in the end.
” Deb waves a hand. “Part of the reason you have sisters is to fight with them. It’s how you grow.
I would’ve kept fighting with Mara ’til the day one of us died if she hadn’t bowed out, and I still would now, if she ever showed up ready to go a few rounds.
Sometimes I even wish she would. It wouldn’t be fun, but.
” She shrugs. “A lot of what’s worth doing isn’t any fun. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it.”
“I’m not sure if I should take comfort in that,” Sam admits, “but I do, a little.”
“Good, Sammy,” Deb says, offering him a smaller, sadder smile. “That’s good. It hasn’t been much fun here these past few months, has it?”
Sam sighs heavily, slumping forward to put his head in his hands.
“No,” he says, and then, rather more honestly, “Well… yes and no,” and then, so honestly he feels like it might peel his skin off, “It’s kind of been the most fun I’ve ever had and the least all at once?
I think maybe the best way to describe it is like…
” He pauses for a moment thinking, and then, on another heavy sigh: “Imagine… finding a winning lottery ticket at the exact moment you’re struck by lightning, thinking it’s for ten million dollars, recovering from being struck by lightning, going to cash in the ticket, and discovering it’s only worth five dollars and, also, somehow, you owe them an additional twenty. ”
Deb makes a face at Sam. It’s a familiar face, but the familiarity is not, in this case, very comforting, since Sam is used to seeing it directed at customers who have said something like, “Can you tell me—is the salmon here grass-fed?” or, indeed, “Please cut all the pastrami seasoning off of the pastrami.” He makes one back, which he intends to communicate that he knows he doesn’t sound like he’s doing amazing, but which, based on Deb’s raised eyebrows, mostly communicates that he feels like crawling under the desk and never emerging again.
In fairness to her, that is more or less how he feels.
“That bad, huh?” Deb says finally. “I thought the numbers had been looking better?”
“Oh, it’s not the numbers,” Sam says. “Or it is the numbers, sort of, but not directly. They have been doing better! It’s just the reason they were bad in the first place that’s getting to me.”
“Sammy, tell me you’re not still hung up on that stupid review!” Deb sounds mildly appalled now. “You can’t let these things get to you like this; it’s been months.”
“It’s not the review I’m hung up on,” Sam says, hearing the note of bitterness creep into his voice and not caring enough to fight it back, “so much as the reviewer, actually.”
Deb raises her eyebrows again, so high this time that they nearly meet her curly, salt-and-pepper bob. “Sorry… what?” Lowering her voice, she adds, “Not that I’m judging, but isn’t Norman Endicott a little old for you?”
So Sam tells her about Jake, wishing he could pretend even to himself that he didn’t want to—that he wasn’t, to a genuinely painful degree, desperate to talk about the whole thing with someone.
He’s been so desperate to do so that he’s been considering going to Joanie, but he’s glad it worked out like this.
Deb’s a good listener, asking occasional clarifying questions like, “Wait, the guy from the car? Back when you were in high school?” and “Wait, he waited how long to tell you?” and, at the end, “Listen: Do you want me to have him killed? Because I know a lot of archeologists, and while I wouldn’t call any of them likely to be excellent hitmen, I can promise they’ll know where to bury a body. ”
This last makes Sam laugh, which is at least a relief. It occurs to him as he does that it’s the first time in days, as though Jake took all the mirth with him when Sam told him to go. “I don’t think having Jake assassinated—”
“That little shit isn’t important enough to assassinate,” Deb corrects, as though the point is quite critical to her. “It would be a straightforward murder, and it would serve him right.”