First Edition | Prose

First Edition features original works by Northern California Jewish writers. Appearing the first issue of each month, it includes a poem and an excerpt from a novel or short story.

Stay Up With Me

by tom barbash

This excerpt is from “The Women,” from the short story collection “Stay Up With Me”

Both my father and I were in therapy then. He went two mornings a week to an animated man named Bergman who had a book-lined office on the Upper East Side, and on Wednesday nights I saw a woman named Dr. Helendoerf down in the Village. Bergman and my father started meeting shortly after my mother was diagnosed — at my mother’s urging. When my father left therapy he seemed uplifted, which was far from the case with me. He and his therapist talked about my mother, probably, but they also talked about art and politics, even sports. Bergman was constantly finding his way into our breakfast or dinnertime conversations. “Bergman thinks the Mets should trade Piazza,” he’d say. Or, “Bergman gave me a list of Polish films for us to rent.” They were friends. I once saw them walking down our street together, which seemed like a violation of the patient-therapist relationship. I asked Dr. Helendoerf about it. I asked her if she would ever take a walk with a patient.

She tilted her head slightly to the right.

“Is that something you think you would like to do, take a walk with me?”

“No,” I said, too emphatically. “I mean, not especially.”

She allowed a long awkward silence.

“Why do you think you asked then?”

I didn’t have an answer. I began to hear a buzzing sound like a halogen light turned too high or low.

“Do you think perhaps you’re disappointed sometimes when the world doesn’t respond to you the way it responds to your father?”

“That’s probably true,” I said.

I saw her write something down.

“But I don’t want that kind of attention.”

“Then why do you think it is that you’re so angry?”

“I’m not angry,” I said.

She didn’t respond. She might have raised her eyebrows.

“I just don’t get why he’s so happy all the time.”

She continued to study me. I was fairly used to these standoffs. In the silence the buzzing started up again.

“Do you hear that sound?” I asked.

She paused for a moment. “What sort of sound?”

It was faint now, and probably from somewhere on the street.

“I guess I don’t either,” I said.

* * *

When my mother was sick I was out of the house a lot. I’d go out to work — an entry-level job I’d talked my way into at a public radio station — and then I’d stay out until everyone was asleep. Once I stayed away for nearly two weeks without telling anyone where I went. I missed her birthday party. When I reached my father on the phone he was madder than he’d ever been. And then he forgave me, which was even worse.

Dr. Helendoerf said I was repressing my reactions to my mother’s illness and “obfuscating” my emotional responses. And she said that was a big reason why I stayed in the house all the time now; I was trying to keep my family intact by staying at home. I told her that was bullcrap, if not in those words.

I called my father to see if I should pick up dinner, and a woman answered the phone. “Aw, f…,” I said and hung up.

* * *

On my way into the building, I was spotted again by Mrs. Wiederman, a gaunt red-haired woman who, like four or five others whose names I forgot, invited me to dinner every time she saw me.

“I made a pot of stew you can keep in the freezer and heat up for your suppers,” she said, whispering to protect my pride.

“We’re eating out mostly,” I said.

“Well, I’ll just leave it outside your door, then,” she said. Dishes in sealed Tupperware, aluminum pans, and plastic Baggies had been dropped off on our door-step ever since my mother died.

“You know your mother would be so proud of you,” she said as we rode the cramped and ancient elevator together.

I thought about the arguments my mother and I’d been having over my lack of direction.

“Why?” I asked.

She seemed confused by the question.

“Because you’re a lovely young man,” she said. She stepped toward me then, held my face in her cold damp hands. I smelled mouthwash and old-lady perfume. Then I felt the walls of the elevator shiver. She was actually going to kiss my face.

“Get away,” I said, pulling back. “Did you even know my mother?”

She gasped, and then stared at me with her mouth open, as if I was dissolving before her eyes. “Oh … ” she said. “Oh, dear.” When we got to her floor she stumbled out of the elevator.

“And we don’t need any more of your shitty dinners,” I yelled.

I felt pretty bad about this later.

Tom Barbash is the author of the new short story collection “Stay Up With Me” and the novel “The Last Good Chance.” His nonfiction book “On Top of the World: Cantor Fitzgerald, Howard Lutnick, and 9/11: A Story of Loss and Renewal” was a New York Times bestseller. He lives in Marin and teaches in the MFA writing program at California College of the Arts.