Witz полностью

Across the Island He sits in the Registry, on a suitcase His father had once bought in Miami at the aeroport as extra luggage for the souvenirs he’d bring them home, anything he’d buy on impulse come his boarding: the blizzards of snoglobe, postcards never to send, that poseable pink flamingo. Here mourning the hold defiled, laid to waste in the process of such heldover His head nightly grief — which is talking, dining, praying in necessity’s urgent order, the priorities of the overscheduled martyr: slipcovers as if they’re flayed scholar-skin hanging from the arms of the sofas set with recliner matching, stuffing-spilled pillows slipped irretrievably into cracks behind couches against the paperpeeling walls, the chairs upended, unseated, the upstairs beds and even Wanda’s tousled by guests too drunk and Amenfed to have made it home alone, their smokes smote atop the carpet and, also, as black clouds upon the ceiling, the arms of the overhead fan broken, the emptied glasses smashed, plates pooled in a bronze sea of oil crossed by Shiva’s knives — bloodblunted, gristly, twisted in hands shook poorer of their nerve; protective plasticwrap smoothed and saved for nothing, foiled, with the drawers hanging open; to what would’ve been Hanna’s horror, no one’s bothered to cleanup.

Enough.

O, if only His parents would have died! It would have been enough.

If only His parents and His sisters would have died, it would have been enough.

If only His parents and His sisters and His PopPop would have died, it would have been enough.

If only His parents and His sisters and His PopPop and then all of Them, except the firstborn, would have died, it would have been enough.

If only His parents and His sisters and His PopPop then all of Them, save the firstborns, and then even Them, and then even the saved firstborns they die, dayeinu, Gottenyu, it would have been enough…to say, this’ll probably futz you scarred for life, what did Israel call Him, boychick, and then would say along with Hanna, this hurts us more than it hurts — nu, you’re thanked then praised, almightily. And not just that and living and unharmed, which are as lentils flung to the spring’s harsh wind, the lost half of the afikomen sharded small in the light of His parents and people dead, it’s that He’s safer now than ever, emerged bathed clean, roofslept, and with His fortune secured, the return’s reward, the birthright collecting interest…enough to say, stop that kvetch, but me no buts, I’ve had enough of all your whine. This geshray and bitch bemoan. That nothing’s enough. Nothing’s good enough for you. An only son, how He’s an only Messiah, too, and whether false or not no matter as so far unopposed — hymn, He’s thinking, and that’s supposed to be a pass, a snowday, a Florida vacation taken off from the mind and its daily duty. What an overprivileged pisher. Taking each breath for granted curse. You’re never satisfied. Impossible to please. But this, it’s not His fault He was faulted this way. Brought up to expect so much more of Himself that He rages that better others fail. Responsible, that’s how He’s raised, that’s how He would’ve been at least then college, career, a wife with kinder of their love, themselves to be bathed clean, roofed, and sleeping rich in a house of their own that didn’t have to be recreated as consciously as here, as He would’ve bought that way, they would’ve. Nextdoor with weekly suppers simple. And then adjacent plots with matching stones, opposite His parents, her having taken the Israelien name, the veil of His mother that is the oven’s hood. Graves visited monthly and wellmaintained, we’re talking. Again, remembered with a rock.

As the prophets always say, He’s not getting off that easy…