He reached into his boxer shorts and gave himself a healthy scratch. He waited for the inevitable expression of revulsion, either from his mother or sister. His father, barely registering above catatonia would not comment. Ginsberg exhaled loudly and let out a therapeutic fart. Still nothing.
Was this what his great aunt Fanny called a “machiya,” an alleged Yiddish word to express pleasure? In aunt Fanny’s case, it was a signal she had released herself from the crushing confines of her girdle.
Was this a genuine machiya? In a life, defined by eternal disappointment, he could not imagine he was eligible. He perched by the indentation in the shape of his father, carved over the years by his father who had taken up residence on the couch due to a nervous condition. Ginsberg lifted his right butt cheek and let out another fart. Ginsberg was convinced he had been irreparably damaged by his father’s infectious doubt and thus was entitled to revenge. Take that. Brrap! He fantasized his father returning from the family trip, dropping himself into his customized hole and sniffing suspiciously. However, with Ginsberg’s luck, he would probably assume it was his own flatulence.
How had Ginsberg come to be so lucky as to be left alone in the family’s fading and faltering Georgian that would most likely be torn down when the last Ginsberg was carried out feet-first? It started, as all things Ginsberg, with bad news. Ginsberg returned home from another day of irrelevant work as a salesman at United Carbonation at which he sold bubbles. Mrs. Ginsberg must have been perched behind the front door, awaiting the sound of his slouching shuffling. She nearly pulled his arm out of his socket as he twisted the knob.
“There you are,” she said in a voice that would remind a worldly bird watcher of three-wattled bellbird of Panama. “There you are,” was her usual greeting for him that simultaneously conveyed impatience and repulsion.
Her eyes darted back and forth. “Cancer,” she hissed. Judging by the frequency of its mention, Cancer seemed to be the third Ginsberg child. Either someone had it, would get it or was lulled into complacency by such nonsense as remission. Ginsberg’s heart gave a momentary trill as if his mother was reporting she was the one with cancer. Or maybe she and his father had it? Hell, why not throw in his sister, Rachel? Ginsberg was not heartless. He knew that he would feel an emotion that was related to grief, but for the moment, the situation had a win-win flavor to it.
“Who has cancer?”
“Your uncle Seymour,” she said, throwing her doughy arms around his neck and soaking his chest with a combination of saliva, snot and the last apricot rugelach.
It took a moment for Ginsberg to remember who uncle Seymour was. It wasn’t that the extended Ginsberg clan were not close. There were cousins as near as two miles, but they might as well be on the other side of the moon. His mother complained they were always excluded from Ginsberg family functions. On the rare occasions they were accidentally invited, Mrs. Ginsberg interrogated everyone to such a degree that they never made the mistake again. Needless to say, the Ginsbergs rarely had “plans.”
Uncle Seymour was Mr. Ginsberg’s older brother who, by last count, was on his third wife and second house in Boca Raton. The Ginsbergs boys weren’t close, even as children. Seymour was allergic to his baby brother, always itching whenever he was in the vicinity. He even found a way to beg out of a hug when their parents died.
After his oncologist informed Seymour his liver cancer had metathesized and he should not make any plans beyond spring, he was further disappointed to learn that his wife, Corina, contacted his brother. Corina was a Filipina and a devout Catholic. Perhaps Seymour, who hid his Judaism, thought she might put in a good word for him to a God. Corina issued an all-points bulletins to relatives to make the trek to Florida to welcome Jesus’ birth and say goodbye to Seymour.
“We are leaving in the morning,” Mrs. Ginsberg said.
A trip to the ninth circle of Hell had more appeal than being crammed into the family Oldsmobile that seemed to be fueled by disillusionment. Ginsberg was desperate; secretly willing a blood vessel in his body to burst, figuring hospitalization was the only acceptable excuse to get him out of the trip. He struggled through the visualization exercise.
Then a Christmas miracle happened. His mother casually added: “of course, we aren’t expecting you to go. It is probably too late get permission to take off work. We don’t want to do anything to jeopardize your job.” Mrs. Ginsberg lived in perpetual fear of Ginsberg losing his job as his meagre salary was all they lived on.
Should he tell his mother that he got off every Christmas? Absolutely not. He feigned disappointment, but he need not bother. His mother was such a horrendous narcissist; she could find beauty in a fun-house mirror. “I know it sounds odd but I am sorry that you will be alone on Christmas Eve. I will miss our Christmas Eve tradition.”
Christmas Eve. The one day of the year that Ginsberg’s loneliness was elevated to the sublime. There was the fact that he wasn’t Christian and most people were. There was the fact that it was a time that most people came together as members of a loving family. And then there were the Jews.
For the Jewish community, Christmas Eve meant one thing: Chinese food. They would crowd into large booths and eat Peking Duck and drink unpronounceable lagers. Although many restaurants were open, Christmas Eve Chinese food was a night of tradition that could not be easily broken. People made reservations months in advance to host elaborate celebrations of the birth of baby for whom they would be eventually blamed for crucifying. Ostensibly it was the one night when the majority that loathed them were sequestered in their churches or homes.
Three-quarters of the Ginsberg greeted Christmas Eve like an idiot mongrel who still loved their master despite being hit it with a rolled up newspaper for the slightest infraction. “The whole world is Jewish!” Mrs. Ginsberg crowed as she pulled her dress covered in dreidles. Rachel, too, looked forward to meeting eligible and hopefully drunk doctors. Even, Mr. Ginsberg could easily be extracted from his hole in the couch. He loved egg rolls and would consume at least five at a seating.
Only Ginsberg, who could have told Pandora not to bother, knew better. The restaurant would be packed and Ginsberg family fingers would point at each other for forgetting to make reservations. In the end, they were seated at a card table by the kitchen door usually reserved for exhausted delivering drivers. Every twenty seconds, Mr. Ginsberg would have the back of his head hit, causing him to choke and litter the table with half-chewed egg rolls. Mrs. Ginsberg took the opportunity to make a tour of the room, ostensibly to greet other women who should have been as thrilled to see her as she was to see them. She rolled back to table like a haar rolling across a loch. “A bunch of more stuck-up bitches, you could not find.” She would squeeze into her chair and began the traditional argument with Rachel that shrimp egg foo young was kosher because it didn’t contain any pork or milk. Rachel was primed for an argument as she discovered all the doctors, eligible or no, were being noble by working Christmas Eve to allow their non-Jewish colleagues to enjoy the holiday. “Self-important bastards,” Rachel growled. And so it continued until the waiter brought the check and then waited for them to pay and leave.
It was one thing to be alone in a country that would prefer you went back to wherever you were kicked out of. It was another to be shunned by your own people who agreed. Finally, to be seated at a wobbly table with his so-called family, who had been placed there as some sort of genetic joke. He did not know how he could feel any more alone.
Until this Christmas Eve as he sat in underwear when he realized his father packed the TV remote control; the knobs being lost years ago. There was also nothing to eat in the house except rigatoni and dried black mushrooms. The corner store, the only accessible source of food, had closed early so the clerks could be with their families. Ginsberg tried the Chinese restaurant one more time and, as with the previous 13 times, the woman with the limited English with limited Englosh could not understand him over the din of laughing Jews hung up.