Chapter 33
33
I’m so hungover I’m awake before dawn, exhausted but unable to sleep. I read through the slew of texts Sasha sent last night, but there’s no way I’m going to respond to them. Instead, I drag myself into the shower.
The hot water feels good, melting away the angriest edges of my pounding headache. I lean against the wall’s chipped ceramic tiles, inhaling steam, just trying to breathe.
Today’s the wedding.
Shit.
Dragging myself out of the shower, I want to go lie down again and not get out of bed until the very last possible minute. The wedding isn’t until evening, so maybe I can spend most of the day under the covers...but then I remember Rosie has my car, and my mother will be over at some point to drive Paul Mudd and me out to the damn summer camp. And I also have to keep my phone on, since my mother’s going to call when she gets here.
Ugh.
I put on my robe, swallow a few aspirin, and shuffle into the living room. I’m no longer startled by the sight of the golem stationed at the door. He’s not naked this morning. He’s wearing a T-shirt and sweatpants, which I vaguely remember encouraging him to put on before I passed out. With the luck I was having last night, if I hadn’t made him wear pajamas, a fire alarm would have gone off and I would have been forced to put a bare-assed golem on display for all my neighbors to see.
Wonder what Hot Josh would have to say about that. Bet he would’ve been at a loss for a snappy comeback for the first time in his snide little British-Jewish life.
“Coffee?” the golem inquires politely.
“Yeah,” I say. “Let’s go get some coffee.”
On our way to The Other Chicago Bean, I pull out my phone and idly open TikTok. The first video in my feed is from @GoGo-RoRo. I watch with the sound off as she shows her adoring audience a sneak peek of her wedding shoes, her bouquet, and her party nails; the wedding dress, of course, will be a surprise until the live stream of the ceremony.
I notice that the video, posted only thirty-two minutes ago, has more than eleven thousand likes, and nine hundred comments. My little sister, the internet celebrity. When she starts blowing kisses to the screen, a new comment pops up, from a user called AltMight07: “There’s still time to change your mind, Rosie—you know you need a real MAN.”
God, TikTok is full of weirdos.
I click from the video over to Rosie’s actual profile, which I hadn’t even bothered to look at when Mom made me follow her. I’m surprised to see that Bryan’s claim about Rosie having “like a million followers” was barely an exaggeration: she has almost four hundred thousand, and lots of clearly popular pinned videos of exercise tips and bike-ride-alongs. One of the pinned posts boasts two million views. Who knew my little sister was a genuine social media influencer?
Everyone but me, apparently.
We’re walking back from The Other Chicago Bean when my mother calls. It’s not quite ten o’clock, and I know she’s going to want to be at camp early to make sure everything’s in place and Rosie’s feeling supported. Hopefully not too early, but it’s totally out of my control at this point. We’ll be on her timetable. I’ve really screwed myself over by getting roped into driving there with my mother.
And a golem.
“Good morning,” I say, answering the phone.
“How are you feeling?” Mom says by way of greeting.
“Fine,” I say, even though my head is still pounding.
“I’ll be at your place in an hour,” she says.
“An hour? The wedding’s not until five—”
“I assume Paul will already be at your place?”
“That’s quite an assumption.”
My mother waits.
“Yes,” I admit grudgingly. “He’ll be here.”
“See you at eleven,” she says, and hangs up.
At eleven on the dot, my mother rings the buzzer. I shove the Cubs cap onto the golem’s head before letting Mom upstairs.
She makes quite an entrance: her makeup is fully done, and her silver curls are practically shimmering. She’s already wearing her mother-of-the-bride attire, a very flattering sea green pantsuit with a sequin-lined pocket square.
“You’re already dressed,” I say.
“I like to get ready at home,” my mother says, eyeing the golem and me. He’s still in a T-shirt and sweatpants. I’m in a hoodie and track pants. “I see that you two will be getting dressed out at the camp.”
“Seeing as we’re going to be there five hours early, might as well.”
“There’s nothing wrong with being early.”
“Agree to disagree.”
“You know who else hated being early,” my mother says, and then stops abruptly.
We both know that the answer is my father, but neither of us says so. We could have shared a smile about his perennial I’m on Jewish time, sorry! excuse for being late. Instead, I mumble something about getting our stuff together.
“Eve, last night...” my mother begins, then shakes her head and looks away. “Let’s have a better day today, okay?”
I give a noncommittal nod, and head to the bedroom to get everything assembled. I throw some toiletries into a bag and grab the magenta pantsuit from my closet. It’s still in the dry-cleaning bag from when I had it altered to fit me. A week ago, I was afraid it might be tight, since I’d put on a few pounds since the fitting. But I’m pretty sure I’ve dropped those same few pounds just in the past few days, eating as little as I have been, sweating so profusely, and being constantly on the move to keep up with this unexpected week.
“You’re awfully quiet this morning,” my mother says to the golem as we load everything into her compact little red Fiat 500.
“Yes,” he confirms.
Paul Mudd climbs into the back seat of the car. I’ve hated this thing ever since my mother bought it. The spring after Dad died, she traded in both of their cars—his ancient Jeep, her reliable Camry—and got this utterly impractical little thing. She can’t even drive it when it snows, which means she’s about to realize what a stupid purchase this was, but she’s so damn proud of it.
On top of being useless in the snow, it’s also not great golem transport. He’s so cramped in the Fiat’s back seat that his knees are jammed up in front of his nose. I’d offer him the front seat, but it wouldn’t be a much better fit, and the tight squeeze doesn’t seem to bother him. As I look into the back seat to make sure he’s all right, he just sits there, patiently waiting.
“Oy—Eve!”
As I’m getting into the car, I hear a distinctive voice calling my name. I turn and see Josh jogging up to me, waving. He’s in a track suit, which I normally would have found endearing, but after recent events just kind of make him look like a low-level Sopranos affiliate.
In other words, a drug dealer.
“Who’s that?” my mother asks from across the top of her little sports car. She was about to get into the driver’s seat, but is now quite obviously not going to do so until she gets to witness this interaction.
“My neighbor,” I mutter.
Shielding my eyes against the sun, I look over at Josh. The parking lot of our building has exterior stairs that go belowground to the basement laundry rooms. He seems to have bounded up those stairs and jogged half the length of the parking lot, but slows as he approaches.
“Heading out for the wedding?” Josh asks.
“Yep,” I say. “Do you need something, or...?”
“Hi!” my mother says loudly. To my utter humiliation, she walks out from behind the car and marches straight over to Josh. “I’m Rena, Eve’s mother.”
“Pleasure,” Josh says, taking her hand.
“Good grip,” says my mother.
“ Get a grip, Mom,” I say, accidentally-on-purpose loud enough for them both to hear me. This earns me an eyebrow lift from Josh, and a subtle glare from my mother. “Josh, what’s up?”
“Right,” he says, his hand still awkwardly clasped by my mother. “I just wanted to say, er, have a nice time. At the wedding. And—did you say it’s out at the summer camp? Heller-Diamond?”
“Yeah,” I say, grudgingly impressed that he remembered the name.
“It’s a Jewish summer camp,” my mother says unnecessarily.
“Right,” Josh says, nodding like he actually knows all about Camp Heller-Diamond. He smiles politely down at my mother, who has yet to let go of his hand. “Well, I just... I just wanted to say... I hope it’s a lovely event, and honestly I thought I couldn’t get out of—”
“Well, thanks, yeah,” I say, fast and loud, to bury him sharing the fact that I’d invited him to the wedding and he’d turned me down flat. That’s something I definitely don’t need my mother to know, now or ever. “We’ve really gotta get going, so...”
I flick my glance over to the back seat of my mother’s car. The windows are tinted, completely hiding the golem from view. I’m weirdly relieved that Josh can’t see him in there. Then again, wouldn’t it be great for him to know I’m not dateless after all? That I’m not as pathetic as he must think I am?
“Oh, so now you’re in a rush?” Mom says, and the twinkle in her eye makes me want to scream. My expression must be murderous, because she reluctantly releases Josh’s hand. “It was nice to meet you, Josh.”
“You as well, Mrs. Goodman,” says Hot Josh.
“Charmed,” my mother says, putting a hand to her chest. With a meaningful glance my way, she finally gets into the car.
“Er, Eve,” Josh says, looking back at me. His big brown eyes, so thickly lashed and hooded under those heavy brows, intensify his every expression. His gaze seems apologetic, almost regretful. “I just wanted to say, I really do wish I could’ve—”
He touches my arm, gently, and there’s a spark.
Literal static electricity snaps between us, and we both spring back, startled. Then Josh chuckles, laugh lines crinkling around his dark lashes, and against my better judgment I’m smiling like an idiot right back at him.
“Sorry about that,” he says. “It’s those damn old dryers downstairs. Swear to God, every shirt I have has been weaponized in that thing. I’m a bloody electro-man these days, just zapping shit all the time. Every hero needs an origin story, I suppose.”
“And every villain,” I say, wiping the smile from my face and forcing myself to remember that this guy is probably a criminal.
My mother honks the horn of her car. Apparently now that she’s no longer got her talons in my hot neighbor, she’s remembered how eager she was to hit the road out to camp. I shake my head, lifting my head in a half wave as I turn away from him.
“See you around.”
“Right,” he says. “Oh, wait—I got you a little something...”
“What? Why?”
“You said it was also your birthday this weekend?”
I’m startled. Had I really mentioned that when I banged on his door, drunk, and asked him to the wedding? I must have, but am genuinely shocked that he’d remembered that detail, even after turning me down.
“You didn’t have to—” I start, but he cuts me off with a little wave with one hand as he digs in his pocket with the other.
“It’s nothing, really,” he says. “Truly nothing. Two dollars’ worth of nothing. Swear. It’s just a little something that—well—it’s just a silly little something.”
He hands me something small; an oddly lumpy wad of bright blue Hanukkah wrapping paper.
“Thanks,” I say, taking it gingerly from him.
“Sure,” he says. “Well, er, right, then. See you.”
Shoving the unexpected gift into my coat pocket, I get into the passenger seat of my mother’s car. I buckle myself in and hunch down as far as I can, not wanting to accidentally lock eyes with Josh as we pull out of the small parking lot. Behind me, I hear the golem grunt.
My mother looks over at me, her eyes hidden by the giant rhinestone-lined cat’s-eye sunglasses she’s wearing. Yet somehow I can still see the obnoxious twinkle behind the dark shades.
“When it rains it pours, huh?” Mom says, tilting her head first toward the parking lot, then toward the back seat.
“Mom, just drive.”
She shrugs and obliges.
I briefly wonder if I should open the little present from Josh. Before I can decide, we’re on the highway. Immediately, I’m grabbing for the oh-shit handle, swearing under my breath and praying that the golem’s protection somehow extends to preventing motor vehicle accidents. Somehow I’d forgotten that my mother graduated with honors from the Bat Out of Hell driving school.
“Mom, maybe slow down a little,” I say as I watch the speedometer creep past eighty. “It’s not like we’re going to be late.”
“I’m not going that fast,” my mother insists, swerving across three lanes without so much as glancing at her mirrors or tapping her turn signal.
A high whining wail of a siren begs to differ as flashing blue-and-red lights barrel up behind us.
“Tell it to the cops,” I mutter.
Jaw clenching, my mother puts on her turn signal for the first time in decades and pulls over by the side of the highway. An officer approaches her window. She rolls it down and blinks up innocently.
“Good morning,” she says.
“Ma’am,” says the officer. He’s a Black guy with a neat mustache and a paunch. From my position in the passenger seat, I can’t read the name glinting from his chest. “License and registration.”
My mother nods for me to grab the registration out of the glove box, and she fumbles with her purse to get out her license. In the back seat, the golem shifts, letting out a low, inquisitive rumble.
“It’s fine,” I hiss to him as I hand my mother the registration.
“You aware of how fast you were going?” the cop asks my mother as he takes the documents from her.
“I’m sorry, Officer,” she says. “I don’t know, actually. I was just going with the flow of traffic.”
This is obviously bullshit, since there are very few cars out at the moment. The officer has noticed this as well, as evidenced by the simultaneous lift of his brow and quirk of his lips. He looks briefly over his shoulder at the quiet strip of highway just behind him, waiting a full twenty seconds before a car goes by. In a sprawling metropolitan area frequently plagued with wall-to-wall traffic, this Saturday morning is practically car free.
“I’m on my way to my daughter’s wedding,” my mother adds, offering a small but hopeful smile.
The officer leans down a little and looks at me, as if to confirm she has a bride in the car.
“My other daughter,” says my mother.
“Well, congratulations,” he says. “I’m still gonna have to write you a ticket.”
“What?”
My mother is genuinely stunned. Despite her lead foot, I don’t think she’s ever gotten a ticket. Dad was always the one parking where he shouldn’t, rolling through stop signs, racking up a pile of violations, and driving their insurance through the roof. It infuriated Mom, and now here she was getting a speeding ticket.
The officer walks back to his car, and my mother grips the steering wheel so hard her knuckles go white.
“Fuck,” she spits, furious. “Fuck, fuck, fuck!”
I’m gaping. I don’t think I’ve ever heard my mother drop the f-bomb before. Hearing her fire off four at once takes me aback. Even the golem seems astounded, ceasing his shifting to watch my mother’s display of rage.
“Mom,” I say. “It’s no big deal—”
“Eve, please just be quiet.”
“Mom, come on—”
But before I can say anything else, I feel the golem gripping my seat. I’m not sure what he’s doing at first, then I realize he’s trying to figure out how to get out of the cramped back seat of this car without plowing through me in the process. He’s looking over his broad shoulder at the police officer, his jaw set. I turn around and mouth for him to be still, but the golem blinks at me, uncomprehending.
“Threat,” he says, pointing out the back window at the officer.
“No, not a threat,” I whisper, hoping my distraught mother can’t hear me.
“Enemy,” insists the golem.
“He’s not our enemy,” I say, louder. “He’s just doing his job.”
“Just doing his job,” snorts my mother, who apparently heard that part, at least. “That’s what they said about the fucking Nazis.”
“Mom,” I say, horrified.
At the word Nazi , the golem practically goes through the roof. Like it triggered some sort of automatic deployment, and now he’s in full-on destroy mode. Not good. I crane my neck, trying to meet his eyes and convey to him that this is not a situation that warrants him going berserk.
“Sit down,” I hiss. “He’s not a Nazi. He’s just a cop, and he’s not even doing bad-cop stuff. My mother was speeding, she’s getting a ticket, it happens.”
Even though he’s supposed to listen to me, the golem still looks like he wants to get out. If he decides to do it, to disobey me, I’m not sure how I could stop him. He outweighs me by a hundred pounds—okay, fifty—and his strength is supernatural.
But he’ll listen to me.
He has to...doesn’t he?
My intestines begin quietly knotting themselves into a writhing mass of uncertainty. I can’t even imagine what would happen if the golem confronted the cop. Would he hurt the policeman, or would he get shot? What would happen if a bullet pierced the golem’s flesh? Would blood pour out? Would dust?
I don’t want to find out.
I glance over at Mom to see if she’s clocking our conversation. But she’s still hunched over the steering wheel, eyes now closed, face taut. Why is she so upset about a stupid speeding ticket? She clearly needs comforting but I’m not sure what to do, or why she’s overreacting like this. I’m caught between my distraught mother up front beside me, and the itching-for-a-fight defender in the back.
The officer returns to my mother’s window, handing her back her license and registration, now with a speeding violation atop the pile. My mother takes it with a shaking hand, unable to conceal her consternation. Once again, the golem tries to rise, and I shake my head at him furiously, praying that he just stays put for two more minutes.
“Drive carefully the rest of the way to that wedding, now,” the police officer says. “Just watch that speed, get there safely, all right? Enjoy the day.”
My mother says nothing.
When the cop saunters back to his squad car, my mother shoves the paperwork into her purse with such violent energy I’m afraid she’s going to hurt herself.
“Do you want me to drive?” I ask.
“No,” she seethes, and starts the car.
The remaining forty minutes of our drive are spent in total silence. My mother uses cruise control to ensure no further speeding. The tension in the car is thick enough to choke on. The golem fumes in the back, my mother fumes in the front. As for me, I’m beginning to fear I don’t understand the depths of their rage—or, if I’m being honest, my own.
But it’s fine , I tell myself. We’re all good people.
Or good golems. Whatever.
Everything’s going to be fine.