Portnoy's Daughter Novel Excerpt Something's wrong with the grave. I catch sight of it through the weather-beaten headstones, and it appears to have dirt piled around it. I walk a little faster, cursing that I hadn't bothered to change out of my pants suit and sling-backs before heading out here. It's a nice-enough June day—not too hot, bright blue sky—but it must have rained recently; my heels are sinking into the soft earth as if I'm being sucked downwards. Then the headstones part, and the vista opens before me, and I realize that holy-fucking-shit the grave's been robbed. I break into a run. Robbed? Why would anyone rob Grandma Sophie's grave? There's nothing in her coffin but her bones! No, her grave's just been dug-up. Robbery is still an open question. But why has her grave been disturbed? No, violated! Where the fuck are the Elysian Fields grounds people? Or maybe they did this to her! Actually, don't they dig up everybody after forty years and stick them in a vault? Okay, maybe, but this isn't one of those industrial graveyards with thousands of corpses; I don't even think they have a vault here, and anyway she only died twenty-five years ago! Arriving breathless at the grave's edge, I see a shovel propped up in the shallow grave bed, and then I realize—staring at something in plain sight but not comprehending it immediately—that my father is lying in the hole! Prostate cancer! I think viciously, as if the disease betrayed me. It's not supposed to kill! Cut him down a mere three days before his surgery! And in his own mother's grave! This last thought I have as I jump into the grave bed and, in that fraction of a second during which I'm airborne, I realize that I've been duped. Duped myself, okay. I'm always a bit quick on the anxiety trigger, sure, but the man ain't dead. I should have known, I think bitterly, that my father is exactly the kind of person who'd dig up his mother's grave. Pops opens his eyes and screams when my feet land, startling him. Then, seeing it's me, he immediately begins laughing. "Chaz! You scared the shit out me!" he guffaws. "The fuck are you doing?" I'm suddenly furious. "Come, come," he laughs, gesturing from the ground. "Are you alright?" I ask kneeling—heedless of my very expensive pants suit—so he can kiss my lips in greeting. "I'm fine. Just tired." "Okay, yeah. I can understand. You've got like three feet here—what are you, part mole? But what are you doing?" "Nothing. I'm resting." "Why are you exhuming Sophie?" I demand roughly, aggravated that he's evading the question. His brow furrows. "I don't know. I just felt compelled." "Well, what are you going to do when you get to her coffin?" "I hadn't thought that far ahead." "Pops!" "I guess I'll open it." "And?" I query in an exaggerated tone. "I'll get in it." "Oh Pops!" I cry. "Is money so tight that you can't afford your own coffin?" Actually, what I wanted to say was: why is it always the same thing with you? Enough already with the mother fucking, with the Oedipal saga, for Christ's sake! She's been dead for twenty-five years! But apparently it's never over: You live next to her graveyard! You walk out here to moon over her headstone! Somehow that's not enough? You have to dig her up, too?! Is this some kind of joke? How can you keep reenacting the same tired patterns? Aren't you bored? I'm bored! But I don't get anywhere having this conversation with Pops. That he's so dense—that he can't perceive that he's playing out these dramas in his own head—dramas that just happen to be invisible to everyone else on the planet—makes me want to bang his head against a wall, and so I've learned to deflect this conversation with humor. Every time I feel myself tempted to say something like, "Move on already! Who the fuck cares what happened in your childhood, it's already sixty years ago and your parents have buried it—literally—so why can't you?" I just make a joke instead. "Is money so tight that you can't afford your own coffin?" I'd deadpanned. He laughs. "Chaz, bubelah, why don't you go back to the house and make yourself comfortable?" "I just came from the house," I say testily. "I didn't drive six hours so I could read the paper in your kitchen, while you lie in a pit 800 feet away." "I thought I'd be done before you came," he admits, "but I got sidetracked by this nap. And you're early." Yes, well, I'd have been even earlier if I hadn't stopped to fuck Luke, I think, and cringe. With my engagement ring on! Really tacky, Chaz. "Why don't we both go back to the house?" I propose. "You go. I should finish up here, I think," he says, sitting up to survey his handiwork. "C'mon, Pops," I coax. "If we go back to the house, I'll tell you something really intimate." "What is it?" he leans forward eagerly. "Back at the house." "But what's it about?" he persists. "And I'll make you a hot chocolate," I say, confident that this addition will finally persuade him to abandon his disinterment project. "Later." And then I'm enraged. "Look," I snarl. "I've had a bad day. Okay? But I'm here, okay? And I don't want to spend another second sitting in your mother's grave!" Now I'm shouting, but I mean, really, for Christ's sake, how can he be so blind to the awkwardness of the situation? Never mind the fact that I'm sitting on moist earth in a $2,000 Donna Karan suit. Never mind that we are grievously flouting the generally-accepted codes of conduct for behavior in graveyards. All I'm asking for is a tiny bit of self-awareness: at least he could realize that not everyone shares his fascination with his mother! When he moved out to Connecticut—into the backyard of her graveyard, as it were—I could have killed him. That Sophie ended up buried in Connecticut—and not in New Jersey with her husband and the previous generation of Portnoys and Ginskys—and in a graveyard behind a church—God forbid!—as charming and apparently Unitarian in practice, if not denomination, as the Our Lady of the Elysian Fields church is, but still—was the fault of Sophie's death in a car accident, Jewish law requiring burial within forty-eight hours, and bizarre regulations regarding the transporting of corpses across state lines. Aunt Hannah had been driving Grandma Sophie home from a visit to their house—ten miles up the road from where Pops lives now—when a pick-up truck collided head-on with the passenger side of the station wagon. Eventually, it emerged that the most severe injury Aunt Hannah had suffered was the guilt, but at the time, she was hospitalized, leaving Pops to make all the decisions. To say he was a wreck—having just adopted me and been slapped with divorce papers by Caroline—is an understatement, and so Sophie was buried in the nearest graveyard that would take her: the Elysian Fields. Which is to say, it's really Pops' fault that she was buried in a church, far from her husband and family. Perhaps out of guilt, or as yet another plot development in Pops' Oedipal drama, or both, Pops moved here to be close to her and to nothing else. Because he is as isolated in New Loch Ness, Connecticut as that poor monster is in the lake. "But Pops," I'd pleaded, "there's nothing out there! What if you need help? What if you're snowed in? What if you're hurt?" He'd pooh-poohed my concerns and now: cancer. Cancer, and an operation on Monday, and who has to drive six hours up the Eastern Seaboard to take him to the hospital? Me. And also to go with him to the wedding on Saturday, but that's just multi-tasking. If I'm really honest, though, it's not just the inconvenience of him being out in the boonies that enraged me. It's the fixation. Her, her, her, her, her. Let it go! Enough already! And also my fear, my premonition maybe, that if he moved out here, to be her grave-tender, that sooner or later I'd end up in just such a predicament as I'm in now: wallowing in mud in Sophie's open grave. "You've had a bad day?" Pops asks, his face full of concern. "Oh Pops. Let's just go," I groan. "What happened?" he asks, putting his hand on mine. "I don't want to get into it. Phil said my sexual memoir sucked." "Oh boy," Pops says, rolling his eyes. "You know what I think of Chicken, but he's right about that. When he's right, I guess he's right." My draw drops. Is he fucking kidding? This is his idea of being sympathetic? Supportive? "What happened?" he asks, luring me into vulnerability, only to attack me? "You didn't like it either?" As soon as the question is out of my mouth, I think: pathetic. Of course he didn't like it; that's why he said that Phil was right. Hello Chaz! Why repeat the obvious? But I'm so crushed that I can't hide my disappointment. Et tu, Pops? And I thought he'd be proud of me! Writing a sexual memoir just like he did! Resisting convention, rebelling against narrow-mindedness, declaring war on prudishness—weren't these the values he'd instilled in me? Wasn't my sexual memoir the apotheosis of his teachings? "It's not that I didn't like it. It's just that it's so . . . ." Seemingly oblivious to my pain and seething, he searches for the right words, finally settling on: "self-righteous, male-bashing, and repetitive. It's way too long. A whole chapter on menstruation? I mean, who cares? The sex isn't funny or interesting enough. You seem to have had a lot of pedestrian sexual experiences, so it's hard to know why you think you're brave for writing about them. Your reflections about sexual tension at work are so legalistic—just dull really. And your conclusion—that celibacy is better than the compromises required to get married, or have casual sex—actually, your conclusion is unclear on this point—but whatever it is, it strains credibility." "Why don't I just burn the manuscript?" I suggest. Jesus Christ. All Phil had said was that he didn't see how he could refer my sexual memoir to his publisher or agent since he had "his own reputation to protect." Also, that the sexual memoir didn't have universal appeal and read like something I'd written just to get attention. And that I'd be ashamed of it in the future. And that it wasn't a story in any sense; that the writing was leaden; and that my descriptions of sexual acts were like something you'd read in pornographic comics. In fact, why stop with burning the manuscript? Why not just throw myself onto the pyre of the burning pages and self-immolate? That sounds like the most appropriate response to the crime I've committed by trying to write. "I don't think you have to burn it to start over," Pops reflects, "if you think it's worth even doing that." "I didn't ask for your opinion!" I scream, outraged—again—at his indifference to my feelings. But is it just indifference? Maybe there's something else—like Pop's myth of his own unique importance—at stake. Maybe instead of being proud of me for following in his footsteps, he resents it! He wants to be the only Portnoy to have written a sexual memoir or something? Oh please. I'm his daughter. The man can't put aside rivalry for the sake of his daughter? Does he not realize how destructive his remarks are? "It's so easy to take pot-shots and call it criticism, Pops! But it hurts! It really hurts! I'm so upset about what Phil said that I'm thinking of calling off my wedding!" Years of yelling with Jack and Sophie have immunized Pops to the social meaning of a raised voice. Looking vaguely triumphant, he says, "So that's your 'something intimate.'" "Actually, it's not," I snap. "Well, you know my feelings about that," he continues. "I'm against you marrying anyone with such a ridiculous last name. It's absurd for anybody, but for you? 'Chastity Broth.' It sounds like a nineteenth century snake oil." Thank a fuckload for that nugget of wisdom, Pops. As if "Chastity Portnoy" was a walk in the park. The teasing I endured as a child! And the loneliness in high school! No teenage boy wants to find himself on a date with a girl named "Chastity." It's not like he has to ask if he can feel me up: my name says it all. "It has nothing to do with that, Pops," I whine. Christ, I could just punch him. Like I wouldn't marry Phil Broth because of his last name? I wouldn't be taking his last name anyway! "I want to write. That's what I want to do when I grow up, okay? I love it—I'm never more absorbed than when I'm writing. It's my path to self-actualization. And self-knowledge. Why do you think I wrote my sexual memoir? To figure out who I am! Isn't that what you did? Put your sex life in perspective—figure out what it all means—by writing it down? I'm just following your path to self-awareness! And, along the way, learning that I love to write! But Phil is such a competitive bastard, he can't support or encourage my writing. As if I'm some kind of threat to him." Even as I'm talking, though, I'm thinking: why am I bothering? Pops' response to my sexual memoir is probably motivated by the same sense of threat and competitiveness that's got Phil defending his turf. Pops is never going to understand. If he even cares. Well, that's probably not fair; he cares, he's just not exactly attuned to the finer points of gender dynamics. I don't dare, for instance, mention to him today's interaction with Blattblatt, which—more than Phil perhaps, or maybe Blattblatt was just the final straw—was what sent me running to Luke. Certainly, Blattblatt's one of the reasons for my horrendous mood and ready rage this afternoon, but I'm not even going to go there. I know Pops' views on sexual harassment too well already. "Chicken's just publishing the toilet paper he uses to wipe his ass," Pops pronounces. "If you want to write, you don't have to be married to him." "I know that!" I hiss, scandalized at the hint—or am I imagining it?—that I might be marrying Phil to promote my writing career. "If anything, writing is a reason not to marry him. Writing is self-actualization; marrying him is a dead end!" "Speaking of self-actualization," Pops says blithely, "I'd like your help getting laid." What? "It'll be my swan song," Pops continues. "I want just one, spectacular lay before I die." "You're not going to die on Monday," I sigh, exhausted by the realization that he'd probably—if subconsciously maybe?—started exhuming Grandma Sophie out of his long-standing desire to fuck her. Incest necrophilia—Jesus. Is there a specialist for that in Manhattan? Because that's going to be out of even Spielvogel's league. "But I'm not going to get laid again after Monday, even if I don't die. Which I might." "You won't." "But I might," he insists. "You don't need my help, Pops. Just hire a whore." "No, I have someone in mind." "Okay, so you don't need my help," I repeat. "I think approaching her directly may be too risky. What if I get nervous and can't talk? What if she's predisposed not to like old men? What if I've miscalculated, and she actually has scruples? I want you to soften her up for me—" "—Procure for you?—" "—Prepare her for me," he corrects. "Get a sense of the situation so I'm not flying blind." "Forget it." "Chaz, I'm desperate! She'll be my last lay! I can't fuck this up!" he pleads, his eyes wide with horror at the prospect of my refusal. "Who is she?" I relent. "A model." Oh Christ. What is this, shoot for the moon and hit the fence? What kind of model is going to condescend to fuck my father? And what about repeating old patterns? A model? Like the Monkey? "Don't you think a model is a bit—" "—she'll be at Sally's wedding tomorrow—" "—ambitious," I finish, but before the word is out of my mouth, I realize that I've been set up. He's obviously thought this through. No wonder he wanted me to be his date for this wedding, which is not, in fact, Sally's. Sally is the mother of the groom, William Winthrop Hawthorne, who will be marrying his second cousin, Mary Bradstreet Hawthorne, tomorrow in an intimate ceremony attended by 350 friends and relatives. Sally Abbot Hawthorne, nee Maulsby, is an old flame of Pops'. She resurfaced in his life when he moved to Connecticut and became, coincidentally, her neighbor and—after they got past Sally's consternation stemming from Pops' having written about her in his sexual memoir—her friend, which is why Pops is invited to young Willy's wedding. (I don't think Pops could pick young Willy out of line-up if the rest of the men were Black and Willy was wearing a tuxedo.) "Please Chaz," Pops urges in his melting voice. "Why don't you just fuck Sally?" I gripe. "She's old." "She's younger than you." "And married!" "To a man a decade your senior and wheel-chair bound! Think of her as a widow," I counsel. "She can't give head," he complains. "Oh come on. She's probably improved in forty years. Just tell her to take out her dentures." At this suggestion, Pops' face freezes up, and then he begins to cry. I sigh. What now? The image of the toothless sixty-something woman, opening wide? Okay, that makes me want to cry myself. But Pops sometimes gets like this; indeed, over the years, it's gotten worse. Earlier, he'd simply freeze up, captured—as he put it—by memories, suddenly plunged back into his childhood, reduced to an infant state, stalled forever in time. Lately, he's begun crying as well. I never know what to do when this happens—I feel completely helpless. "Why are you crying now?" I ask, barely hiding my exasperation. "Pops' dentures," Pops sobs—referring to his Pops, my Grandpa Jack. "His teeth, smiling out at me from a glass by the side of the bed. Always the same Chaz." "Well, yeah, Pops. Dentures are always the same. They're fake." "No," he sniffles. "It was always the same. What my mother should have been doing, he did—submitting, apologizing, a toothless old man, even when he was young!—and what he should have been doing, she did—" "—Yeah I know. Berating, demanding, a real ball buster. Heard it, read it, know it by heart—" "—I caused their dying pain!" he wails pitifully. Oh Jesus. There's nothing to do but let him cry it all out. Telling him that, no, constipation killed his father and, no, a pick-up truck caused his mother's dying pain—he doesn't find that soothing somehow. He's just got to wail until he loses interest and finds some other reason to lacerate himself. All I can do is wait it out. Patience is not one of my virtues, particularly when I'm already on edge from an absolutely nerve-wrenching day. The misery started with Phil and his verdict that my writing is "sub par." I took the snub graciously (which is to say, no knives were involved in my response) and stormed off to work, where Ely Blattblatt asked me to do research relating to the Trenton College discrimination policy. The nerve of that plump prick. He's not even supposed to speak to me per the management-imposed DMZ between us—much less ask me to do anything—and it doesn't matter that I did write that fucking policy in the first place! Even if he weren't breaking the rules by bursting through my closed office door without knocking, I still wouldn't have been able to stomach all the twitching that goes on every time he talks—the rocking back and forth on his heels, the eye blinking, the affected near-stutter. I want to smack him in the face every time I see him, except that I know he finds a whack upside the head to be the most erotically stimulating experience he's had since he masturbated with the lavender-scented liquid soap his wife left in the shower. Although my finely-crafted response to his request was, "Get your grubby ass out of my office you over-promoted, learning-impaired fascist maggot," I believe what I actually articulated was, "I'll look into it and get back to you." FUCK! FUCK! FUCK! I never think on my feet fast enough. I should have snatched up the phone and, interrupting Blattblatt in mid-sentence, called the managing partner, Sam Oppenheimer. I should have hurled the phone at Blattblatt the moment he burst through my door. I should have posted a sentry at my door with a stapler to puncture his smirky eyebrows when he squared the corner with his Rainman gait and headed down the hall to my office. Far from getting right to work on the research (RESEARCH! Do you know how goddamned senior I am? I don't do research), I proceeded directly to Luke's office. No, it wouldn't have been too late to appeal to Sam. And no, I wasn't seeking Luke's advice about whether I should ask Sam for help. I went to Luke because he is hot and has on occasion stroked my sandaled-toes when he was supposed to be picking up paper clips or pens that happened to drop on the floor while we were talking. Here I deviated from the otherwise downward trajectory of the day for the temporary ecstasy of a pre-noon orgasm. And then I left DC for the irresistible allure of traffic on I-95 North—actually, I hit the road because I do my best thinking when I'm driving on the freeway, flying along like a bird on a lone migration—and, in fact, it was during this drive that I concluded that I probably wasn't going to marry Phil. Of course, traffic really cramps the flow of my thoughts, and today's traffic was just killing me ("I'm trying to think here!" I screamed through the window at motorists cutting me off in bumper-to-bumper congestion). My indulgence in this bout of road rage was only mildly tempered by the speeding ticket I received in Delaware, of all places (I think I was only in Delaware for twenty-one or twenty-three curse-filled minutes, excluding the seventeen minute silent-curse-filled detour by the side of the road with Mr. Policeman and his holstered weapon). Then I arrive in Connecticut to find Pops disinterring his mother. And now he's sobbing emphatically, with no sign of letting up. Patience is not one of my virtues, but what can I do? Sighing, I inch towards him and reach out to cradle him in my arms. I'm still trying to adjust our position when the boy's shadow falls over the grave, and I look up to meet his terrified eyes. Since he's wearing a shirt with "Elysian Fields" printed on it, I assume he's part of the cemetery's grounds crew. He looks like one of those dispensable teenagers in a horror film, at the moment just before he'll be eaten alive by zombies. "May I help you?" I ask the boy. Does my question sound assuaging, I wonder, as I nudge Pops, who opens his eyes and swallows a sob. Or does it just sound weird? What kind of help, exactly, could I provide to this young man right now? Directions to the next grave plot? Access to a shovel? "You're not supposed to be here." The boy's eyes wildly scan the scene—partially dug up grave, prone old man sobbing in young woman's arms. "Actually, we own this plot," I say, trying to imply that therefore it would be perfectly normal for us to dig it up. "But the grave's not refilled." The boy steps back and looks around. Seeing no one to rescue him, he perseveres: "You're not supposed to be here—I think it's dangerous or something." "That's sweet of you to be concerned about our welfare," I say, adopting a professional tone, "but we're just fine." "I need to get this hole plugged." The boy grabs his hands in nervousness. "This is my property!" Pops bursts out before I can stop him. "I'll refill it when I'm done." I close my eyes, and when I reopen them, the boy's face is contorted from the effort of thinking through the possibilities. I can see the strain of formulating the questions: Done with what? When was this grave dug? Why was it only partially refilled? Or had it been completely refilled, and someone's in the process of redigging it? The boy's eyes fix on the shovel that Pops has laid aside. His breathing picks up speed and he flushes. "That's not our shovel." "Of course not," Pops says. "Do you think I'd take your equipment without asking?" "Are you?" the boy's voice falters. "We're just leaving," I say, hoping that we can avert further excavation of the issue. "Are you," the boy gulps. He opens his mouth. Inhaling is plainly burdensome for this lad. "Does he need an inhaler?" Pops wonders, momentarily allowing his fascination with this boy's medical problems to distract him from his own misery and indignation. "Neck. Neck." The boy's hands fly to his neck, and he forces breath out of his nose. "I think there's something wrong with his neck." Pops says in a concerned tone. "—rophiliacs. Necrophiliacs? Are you neck? Necro—" "—No, you idiot," I berate him. "Necrophiliacs fuck the dead. We're both alive, in case you haven't noticed. And we're not fucking, we're just talking. What are you a virgin? Don't know the difference between fucking and—" "—Necrophiliacs!" Pops explodes. "This is my mother!" The horrified response on the boy's face suggests that digging up one's parent is infinitely worse than digging up an objet d'amour. "And we're leaving," I emphasize. The boy appears to be on the verge of turning on his heels and setting a sprinting record. "There's nothing to worry about," I say, and he doesn't move. "We're not doing anything untoward." The boy blinks. "Bad." I guess "untoward" isn't one of the handful of words in the English language with which he is acquainted. "C'mon Pops." I hold out my arms; thankfully, Pops takes them and stands. "But what are you doing?" the boy asks, utterly bewildered. I pause and raise my eyebrows. Pops wipes dirt off his pants and says simply, "Mother will be very disappointed not to have bulbs." "My father is a passionate gardener," I elaborate, as I climb out of the hole. It's a messy task, accomplished at the expense of my crisp pinstripe suit, which is a total loss, and my sling-backs, from which I'll be scraping caked, dry mud for weeks. I tug on Pops' arms to help him out of the grave bed, but I'm nervous about hurting him. (I never know when old people's limbs are going to drop off.) "Want to give me a hand?" I ask the poor, confused boy. He seems grateful for something to do, and between the two of us, we manage to drag Pops onto level ground. "Should I, um." The boy's voice falters again. Pops and I stare at him. "Finish refilling the grave?" he manages to ask tentatively. "Please," Pops says definitively. The boy wipes his hands on his shirt and nods. "Okay. I'll be back." He turns and tries to walk away, but one leg wants to run, leading him into a lopsided, fast-paced limp. He finally allows himself to break into a jog, which he maintains for a short distance before apparently feeling stupid and slowing to a walk again. Watching him, my eyes fall on a nearby headstone: "Felix Frankfurter, 1910-1983, No relation to the Supreme Court Justice." Strange that I hadn't seen it before, I think, and note the sense of relief it gives me. If I end up in the Elysian Fields next to Pops and Grandma Sophie, I want my headstone to say (as it can, truthfully), "No relation to the freaks next to me." Well, maybe it needs to say, "No genetic relation to the freaks next to me," to be entirely truthful and free from ambiguity. Or maybe the genetic relationship is implicitly understood in the phrase "no relation"? Comprehending the magnitude of insanity into which I was adopted still leaves me stupefied. I turn to look at the root of that insanity or, at least, what's left of her. For the progenitor of such a corrupted blood line, her headstone inscription is misleadingly syrupy: "Sophie Portnoy (1906-1977) who the boys called 'Red'/Nurtured, loved, and with her clever head/Husband, son, and daughter led/Forever stands in their good stead." Pops wrote that. Of course, he was high on that dangerous combination of booze and grief when he penned that abomination, and no one in the family had the heart to stop him from having it inscribed on Sophie's headstone. I want to ask him if it's too late to change the inscription on the headstone but, thinking better of my impulse, I gesture towards his home and ask: "Shall we?" I'm relieved when he takes my arm with his right hand and, dragging his shovel in his left, begins walking haltingly alongside me. After a few steps, though, he stops and turns to the partially unearthed grave, fading from view in the falling dusk. He considers it and, before he resumes walking, asks me, "Is it really so unusual to want to return to your mother's body to die?