The main clubhouse dining room was as expected: waaaay too overstated. The green carpeting, the curtains that resembled corduroy leisure suits, the gold tablecloths on huge round mahogany, the floral centerpieces piled too high and with no sense of proportion, not unlike the plates traipsing down the buffet line. Myron remembered attending a sports-themed bar mitzvah here as a child: juke-boxes, posters, pennants, a Wiffle ball batting cage, a basket for foul shots, an artist wanna-be stuck sketching sports-related caricatures of thirteen-year-old boys—thirteen-year-old boys being God’s most obnoxious creation short of television lawyers—and a wedding band complete with an overweight lead singer who handed the kids silver dollars shrouded in leather pouches that were emblazoned with the band’s phone number.
But this view—these flashes—were too quick and thus simplistic. Myron knew that. His remembrances were all screwed up about this place—the derision blending with the nostalgia—but he also remembered coming here as a child for family dinners, his clip-on tie slightly askew, sent by Mom into the inner sanctum of the men’s card room to find his grandfather, the undisputed family patriarch, the room reeking of cigar smoke, his pop-pop greeting him with a ferocious embrace, his gruff compatriots who wore golf shirts that were too loud and too tight, barely acknowledging the interloper because their own grandkids would do the same soon, the card game trickling down, participant by participant.
These same people he so easily picked apart were the first generation fully out of Russia or Poland or Ukraine or some other shtetl-laced combat zone. They’d hit the New World running—running away from the past, the poverty, the fear—and they just ran a bit too far. But under the hair and the jewelry and the gold lamé, no mother bear would ever be so quick to kill for her cubs, the women’s hard eyes still seeking out the pogrom in the distance, suspicious, always expecting the worst, bracing themselves to take the blow for their children.
Myron’s dad sat in a yellow, pseudo-leather swivel chair in the brunch room, fitting in with this crowd about as well as a camel-riding mufti. Dad did not belong here. Never had. He didn’t play golf or tennis or cards. He didn’t swim and he didn’t brag and he didn’t brunch and he didn’t talk stock tips. He wore his work clothes of all things: charcoal gray slacks, loafers, and a white dress shirt over a sleeveless white undershirt. His eyes were dark, his skin pale olive, his nose jutting forward like a hand waiting to be shook.
Interestingly enough, Dad was not a member of Brooklake. Dad’s parents, on the other hand, had been founding members, or in the case of Pop-pop, a ninety-two-year-old quasi vegetable whose rich life had been dissolved into useless fragments by Alzheimer’s, still was. Dad hated the place, but he kept up the membership for the sake of his father. That meant showing up every once in a while. Dad looked at it as a small price to pay.
When Dad spotted Myron, he rose, more slowly than usual, and suddenly the obvious hit Myron: The cycle was beginning anew. Dad was the age Pop-pop had been back then, the age of the people they’d made fun of, his ink-black hair wispy, static gray now. The thought was far from comforting.
“Over here!” Dad called, though Myron had seen him. Myron threaded his way through the brunchers, mostly overkept women who constantly pendulumed between chewing and chatting, bits of coleslaw caught in the corners of their glossy mouths, water glasses stained with pink lipstick. They eyed Myron as he walked by for three reasons: under forty, male, no marriage band. Measuring his son-in-law potential. Always on the lookout, though not necessarily for their own daughters, the yenta from the shtetl never too far away.
Myron hugged his father and as always kissed his cheek. The cheek still felt wonderfully rough, but the skin was loosening. The scent of Old Spice wafted gently in the air, as comforting as any hot chocolate on the coldest of days. Dad hugged him back, released, then hugged him again. No one noticed the display of affection. Such acts were not uncommon here.
The two men sat. The paper place mats had an overhead diagram of the golf course’s eighteen holes and an ornate letter B in the middle. The club’s logo. Dad picked up a stubby green pencil, a golf pencil, to scribble down their order. That was how it worked. The menu had not changed in thirty years. As a kid Myron always ordered either the Monte Cristo or Reuben sandwich. Today he asked for a bagel with lox and cream cheese. Dad wrote it down.
“So,” Dad began. “Getting acclimated to being back?”
“Yeah, I think so.”
“Hell of a thing with Esperanza.”
“She didn’t do it.”
Dad nodded. “Your mother tells me that you’ve been subpoenaed.”
“Yep. But I don’t know anything.”
“You listen to your aunt Clara. She’s a smart lady. Always has been. Even in school, Clara was the smartest girl in the class.”
“I will.”
The waitress came by. Dad handed her the order. He turned back to Myron and shrugged. “It’s getting near the end of the month,” Dad said. “I have to use your pop-pop’s minimum before the thirtieth. I didn’t want the money to go to waste.”
“This place is fine.”
Dad made a face signaling disagreement. He grabbed some bread, buttered it, then pushed it away. He shifted in his chair. Myron watched him. Dad was working up to something.
“So you and Jessica broke up?”
In all the years Myron had been dating Jessica, Dad had never inquired about their relationship past the polite questions. It just wasn’t his way. He’d ask how Jessica was, what she was up to, when her next book was coming out. He was polite and friendly and greeted her warmly, but he’d never given a true indication of how he really felt about her. Mom had made her own feelings on the subject crystal clear: Jessica was not good enough for her son, but then again, who was? Dad was like a great newscaster, the kind of guy who asks questions without giving the viewer any hint of how he was really leaning on the issue.
“I think it’s over,” Myron said.
“Because”—Dad stopped, looked away, looked back—“of Brenda?”
“I’m not sure.”
“I’m not big on giving advice. You know that. Maybe I should have been. I read those life instruction books fathers write for their children. You ever see those?”
“Yes.”
“All kinds of wisdom in there. Like: Watch a sunrise once a year. Why? Suppose you want to sleep in? Another one: Overtip a breakfast waitress. But suppose she’s grumpy? Suppose she’s really bad? Maybe that’s why I never dealt with it. I always see the other side.”