One Last Thing Before I Go

cortex and that was that.
    * * *
    They come by every other Sunday, Elaine and Ruben, because he is their son and they love him, and because they think he’s lonely. These visits kill him, because he loves them too, and because he knows his sad little life hurts them, maybe even more profoundly than it sometimes hurts him, which means these visits probably kill them too. So every other weekend they spend an hour or so together that leaves them all depressed and depleted, but they never miss it, and if that’s not the best definition of family, then he doesn’t know what is.
    “So,” his father says, somewhat awkwardly, while Elaine is out in the hall on her third or fourth trip to the incinerator. Silver generally refrigerates his Chinese leftovers and subsequently forgets about them until they’ve congealed into something beyond the help of his microwave. “Any women worth writing home about?”
    “Have you gotten any letters from me?” Silver says.
    His father shrugs, ignoring his sarcasm. “You should come to temple.”
    “Dad.”
    Ruben raises his hands defensively. “I’m not selling. I’m just saying, plenty of single women.”
    “Are you really pitching temple as a dating service?”
    “Best one there is. Do you really think all those people are coming to pray? I pray. The cantor prays. They mingle. Welcome to organized religion.”
    “And what about God?”
    “God doesn’t want you to be alone any more than I do.”
    “I’m trying, Dad.”
    Ruben nods. “If that’s true, I’d hate to see what happens when you stop.”
    Silver is about to retort, something unnecessarily biting, and so he is relieved when his mother reenters, cutting off the conversation. She looks at them inquisitively, Silver sprawled on the couch, his father perched on the edge of the kitchen table, and can tell she’s interrupted something. “What are you boys talking about?”
    “Women,” Ruben says.
    Elaine nods meaningfully. “Any worth writing home about?”
    * * *
    When his parents leave here, they’ll swing by Chuck’s house for a barbecue. There, amid the aroma of homemade marinade, the shouting of boys and pissing of babies and dogs, life will reassert itself around them, and they will be whole again.
    When they leave here, Silver will go down to the Blitz and drink himself numb, then fall asleep in front of the comforting flicker of his television. Hopefully, he’ll remember to take off his shoes. There’s nothing more depressing than waking up in your shoes.

CHAPTER 9
    T he Lockwoods had been Casey and Denise’s neighbors for about ten years. Denise and Valerie played tennis together twice a week, and once Rich arrived on the scene, he and Steve Lockwood would sometimes sit out in the backyard in the evenings and have a scotch together. Casey, who had lettered in swim, was given carte blanche to swim her laps in the Lockwoods’ pool whenever she wanted, which was what she’d been doing on the night in question. She was feeling anxious about Princeton, and she’d always found something soothing about night swimming.
    Around fifteen laps in, she realized she was no longer alone. She looked up to see Jeremy Lockwood sitting on one of the lounge chairs, drinking from a silver flask as he watched her swim.
    “Hey,” he said when she stopped, waving to her with the flask. “Don’t stop on my account.”
    He was two years older, had just gotten back from Emory to work at his dad’s firm for the summer.
    “I heard you were back,” she said, climbing out of the pool. With anyone else, she might have been self-conscious in her bikini, but she’d known Jeremy long enough to have dared each other to show their privates in his basement back in second grade, and so the rules were different.
    Casey grabbed a towel and sat down at the foot of his chair. He leaned over to kiss her cheek, a method of greeting he’d picked up in college that still felt a little strange to her. “Look at you,” he said appreciatively.
    “What?”
    “You got hot.”
    “Shut up.”
    “I heard you got into Princeton.”
    “I heard you changed your major.”
    “I heard you were valedictorian.”
    “I heard you broke up with Hailey.”
    “Hadley.”
    “Well, it doesn’t matter now, does it?”
    Jeremy smiled and took a sip from the flask. “With moms like ours, who needs Facebook?”
    “I know, right?”
    He offered her the flask, and she took a sip. He had filled it with some of his father’s scotch. The good