Free This Is Where I Leave You by Jonathan Tropper Page B

the multiple chins, the sagging necks, the jowls, the flaps of skin over eyes, the spotted scalps, the frown lines etched into permanence, the stooped shoulders, the sagging man breasts, the bowed legs. When does it all happen? In increments, so you can’t watch out for it, you can’t fi x it. One day you just wake up and discover that you got old while you were sleeping.
    There were so many things I thought I might become back in college, but then I fell for Jen and all my lofty aspirations evaporated in a lusty haze. I just never imagined a girl like that would want someone like me, and I had this idea that if I applied all of my energy toward keeping her happy, the future would sort itself out. And so I disappeared without a trace into the Bermuda Triangle of her creamy spread thighs, scraping through my classes with B’s and C’s, and when, shortly after graduation, she accepted my proposal, I remember feeling, more than anything, an overwhelming sense of relief, like I had just finished a marathon. And now I have no wife, no child, no job, no home, or anything else that would point to a life being lived with any success. I may not be old, but I’m too old to have this much nothing. I’ve got the double chin of a stranger in photographs, the incipient swell of love handles just above my hips, and I’m pretty sure that my hairline, the one boundary I’ve always been able to count on, is starting to creep back on me when I’m not looking, because every so often my fingers discover some fresh topography on my upper forehead. To have nothing when you’re twenty is cool it’s expected, but to have nothing when you’re halfway to seventy, softening and widening on a daily basis, is something altogether different. It’s like setting out to drive cross-country without any gas money. I will look back at this time and see it as the start of a slow process that ends with me dying alone after living out my days in an empty apartment with only the television and a slow, waddling dog to keep me company, the kind of place that will smell stale to visitors, but not to me, since the stale thing will be me. And I can feel that miserable future hurtling toward me at high speed, thundering across the plains in a cloud of dust like a wildebeest stampede.
    Before I know it, I’m on my feet, ducking and weaving through the crowd, intercepting random bits of conversation, keeping my eye on the sanctuary of the kitchen door.
    “...Paul, the older one. He spoke very nicely...”
    “...on a ventilator for three months ...basically a vegetable...”
    “...a place down on Lake Winnipesaukee. We do it every year. It’s beautiful. Maureen brings the kids...”
    “...recently separated. Apparently, there was a third party involved...”
    That last one pierces me like a fishhook - but by then I’m at the door, and I’m not looking back. I step into the air-conditioned quiet of the kitchen and lean up against the wall, catching my breath. Linda is crouched at the fridge, absently chewing on the nub of a raw carrot like a cigar, trying to make room for all of the food that’s been delivered.
    “Hey there, Judd,” she says, smiling at me. “What can I get you? And, bear in mind, we have pretty much everything now.”
    “How about a vanilla milkshake?”
    She closes the fridge and looks at me. “That, we don’t have.”
    “Well, then, I guess I’ll have to run out and grab one.”
    Her smile is sweet and maternal. “Getting a little intense in there?”
    “We passed intense a while ago.”
    “I heard the shouting.”
    “Yeah ...sorry. And thank you, you know, for all of your help, for taking care of Mom and everything.”
    She looks startled for a second, seems on the verge of saying something, but then just pops the carrot back into her mouth and smiles. From the other room, we can hear my mother laughing.
    “Well, Mom seems to be enjoying herself, at any rate.”
    “She’s had a long time to prepare for this.”
    “I