269: Outsmarted
Zippy stared dumbly at the empty little box, because she'd just bought the pack yesterday and she couldn't possibly have smoked through them all in twenty-four hours. But there it was, empty, nothing for her fingers but cardboard and cellophane.
She bummed a cigarette from the cardiologist puffing away nearby, but couldn't bring herself to make smoker's small talk.
Coat tugged tight around her, leaning against the brick hospital wall because each scooped seat of the faded plastic patio furniture held a rain-puddle. Better dry and standing, even if her damn knee throbbed in the cold and even if the cold air caught in her tobacco-irritated throat and made her cough. Better still to be warm and inside, but she needed space, and quiet; room to think and room to pray, and she needed to not be around the rest of her family right now.
Zippy drew smoke into her lungs and held it, eyes closed, counting seconds until the exhale. Tateh was in a bed five floors up, her father-the-rabbi... looking so old, looking frail, looking near to dead.
(The illusion lasted only until he opened his mouth and berated them all for standing around like idiots-- she thought of the old joke, Vai, so who's minding the store!?-- but nevertheless he looked very small there on the white sheets.)
No time for this, she was out here to think, out from the chatter and argument of her brothers and their wives and their children and Tateh's voice trying to impose order on the room but cracking instead.
So. They could argue, and she could think, and figure it out. She the smart one, after all. She the smart one, and this was merely a problem to be solved and outsmarted.
The facts, the facts were-- she released the breath, smoke and crystalling exhale mingling, creating a fog between her and the world-- the facts were, one, that Tateh couldn't be by himself anymore. Broken hip. He'd be put on a waiting list for hip replacement surgery, the doctor had said, but between now and then he'd need help and even after that he shouldn't be on his own. Eighty-four, he was certainly past that point now, how had they not noticed, any of them?
How had she not noticed this, Zippy phrased it, because of all of them certainly she should have. She was the one he talked to the most, every other day a phone call or a visit, and how had she not seen that he was getting too old, too old to be on his own?
The tip of the cigarette flared with her inhale; she dropped her head back against the brick, tired, she was tired, if only the damn ugly plastic patio furniture wasn't wet, if only someone else could figure everything out for a change, if only this and that and if only G-d would remove all your troubles...
Two: a home, an institutionalized home, was out of the question. A decent one anywhere in the city would be a financial strain past her father's pension-- his apartment was still feasible thanks only to the landlord being both friend and congregant-- and past even what they could afford if each of them contributed a few hundred a month. Not that she had that to put in anyway, not with Ben calling every other week for this unexpected tuition fee or the story of how the roommate had managed to destroy their microwave and could he borrow some cash for a new one...
And she was not about to see her father go to strangers, to a building run by strangers. No. No. Not Tateh. Not her papi.
Three, three. Three was that Aaron's twins Sammy and Simeon were both still at home, and, alright, true, Sam and his fiancée had been talking about getting their own place after the wedding, but come on, they're college kids, so, oy, who knows how likely that is to happen anyway really? G-d willing, yes, but until then-- and the wedding wasn't going to be until June. Months distant. Suffice to say, no extra room at that particular branch of the Levine household.
Her cigarette had burned down to a butt, smolder of the stub nearing her fingers. She watched the consuming red creep closer, watched trace amounts of smoke uncurl themselves into the air, and finally dropped the butt to the wet pavement with a little shudder at the knifing breeze that came from nowhere.
Winters, hell, she was getting too old for them. At fifty-seven... alright, fifty-eight now, dammit... the cold, it cut. At fifty-eight she had no business standing outside in January, fingers jammed into her armpits. Where were her gloves? Back in Tateh's room.
She closed her eyes again. Cheek turned to the roughness of the brick wall, toes numb in her shoes, and an ache in her bones.
She'd thought that a cliché of the alter kockers she'd known, the grumbled chorus of "my bones ache"-- but no, it was true, as so much else the old bastards said was. The ache was focused in her knee-- it had settled in for the long term and made itself comfortable, like relatives from Poughkeepsie during a holiday-- but it made itself known everywhere. Traveled forth from the knee in little sojourns along the sciatic nerve and the-- whatever the other was-- oh hell, she knew it, she certainly did after all that fucking hospital and therapy for it, what was it? -- the other nerve, anyway, and the pain shot along them both whenever she stepped wrong or careless now, leapfrogged to the next joint and took up residence there too.
Winters are a bitch when you get old, Zippy told herself, and you are old.
She did not think on how her knee had only really started hurting like this since the night she'd drunk down a bitter tea that had taken the top of her head off and left her shaking until dawn.
Zippy thought of asking the cardiologist for another cigarette, but when she looked the man was gone, two nurses huddled in his place by the door with double white tendrils uncurling from their hands. Coffee steam, and cigarettes, Zippy judged, and closed her eyes again.
Three was... no, four... four was Isaac and Therri, because three had been Aaron and Beth, and Isaac didn't have the room either because Josh had just lost his job and moved back in with the family and while Becky was going to Israel it wouldn't be for six months yet and that contingent of course on whether it would be safe. Five under that roof, no room for an old Tateh.
Zippy stamped her feet on the concrete to try to warm them, then winced as her knee protested this. She scrubbed at her face with her palms.
Up to her, then. Tateh counting on her, the eldest, as he always had, always had. The smart one.
She should go back inside, into the warmth, into the noise, into the concentrate of too much family in one place. Explain to everyone what would have to be done, as Mameh had always done when it came to the practicalities.
She asked the nurses for another cigarette, instead.
***
It took three days from realizing what it was she'd have to do to actually make herself do it.
Phone call, several tries before she dials the number through, her other hand clutching her cigarette like a lifeline.
Her ex-husband answers for which at least she is thankful. She can't stand speaking to his wife.
"Hello, Finn Nelsen," he says, a neutral greeting to a stranger, and for a moment her heart is a thick throbbing block in her trachea, feels exactly the same as swallowing through a sore throat. The pain catches her off-guard, it's eight years now since the divorce and she should really be well over this, dammit, but he greets her like a stranger and that's what they are now to each other, strangers, just strangers, after two children and eighteen years-- strangers, after all that-- and she could really, really use a friend right now.
"Hello?" he says again, since she hasn't answered, and she takes a breath.
"Finn. Hi. It's me. Zippy."
"Ah. Zipporah." Awkward silence. She imagines him standing in the hall or possibly his study with the phone, in gray-socked feet, in a sweater, the phone held between shoulder and ear. She imagines his expression-- perhaps irritation, perhaps the stony resignation that she saw so often on his face during the last months of their marriage.
He clears his throat, and she rubs at her temple with the palm of the hand that holds the cigarette. "I'm calling about Rachel," she says, though certainly he's guessed that-- what else do they talk about, but their daughter, especially now that Ben's over eighteen?
"I've already seen her grades," he responds neutrally, and that cuts too, the way he's expecting a fight. She knows she's earned it, made him dread the phone calls and the screaming matches, and the knowing doesn't make it any easier to bear.
"Not about her grades," she sighs. "I need-- it's-- it's possible she may need to move back in with you for a while. I mean, fully." There's silence in answer, no way to read Finn's reaction from that; she takes a drag on her cigarette and presses on. "I need her room. May need it, anyway."
A few beats, then Finn says slowly, "Of course she has her room here. It is no problem."
No "why" spoken, but it's there, of course. Along with a You dragged us to court four times to win custody of her during the week, and now you want to give her back?
"Okay. Okay, thank you," she says aloud. Her eyes are burning. Damn cigarette. She holds it away from her face, closes her eyes. Feels the hard plastic of the receiver against her ear and thinks of Finn's arms, that have not held her in going on ten years now, but they are strong arms and she wishes they could circle her one more time, that he might be there, strong and quiet and a man, there to say by virtue of his shoulders and his aftershave that it will be all right.
He doesn't ask for the why, and she says she'll call him again when she knows more, and he says alright, and she says alright, and he hangs up, and that's that.
***
Family meeting. Well, okay, just her and Isaac and Aaron, grabbing them each by their shirtsleeves and nodding at the corridor. Tateh is talking to Rachel-- she behaves for him, at least, oy vey-- and doesn't notice her and her brothers making their escape.
There are no seats in this bit of the hall so they stand, the three of them, on the tile that reflects the fluorescent lights, nurses moving past with charts and folders in hand.
"Okay, I've got it worked out," Zippy says, and auto-reaches for a cigarette before remembering where she is.
Isaac is leaning his rangy body against the wall next to Tateh's room number, and giving her a quizzical glance. Aaron stands on his feet, centered, solid. A mustard stain on his tie from the hospital cafeteria hot dog, the lights gleaming off his mostly-bald head just like on the floor.
"I'll take Tateh, once he's out of here," she says.
Isaac shoots a glance at Aaron; Aaron's mouth tightens; Zippy notices neither of these things, staring as she is at the orange-brown splotch on Aaron's tie.
"I know everyone else's house is pretty full already-- my place, it's just me and Rachel, nu, so... anyway, I've talked with Nelsen--" (the familial shorthand for her ex. Tateh had started it, she could count on one hand the number of times he'd referred to her husband by his first name, always it was the goy if disapproving, or that man; the surname was the most neutral version.)
"--and Rach can go on back with him full-time. That frees up my second bedroom-- I'll keep the bunk in case Ben or Rachel is visiting for the weekend, but Papi should have no problems with the lower bed, we can get a new mattress on, move in his things from his apartment. With Ben and the other kids helping that shouldn't take more than a weekend, right, so Papi doesn't have to stress himself over it while he's in here, he can just come right out from surgery to my place once he's released from observation--"
"Zippy," says Aaron.
"--and it is not as though I am so very far away, so, for rehab, Papi should be able to get back here easy enough. I can cover taxi rides for him here and back out of my budget okay, and I can take later shifts at the library for a few weeks so I can come with him--"
"Zippy--" says Aaron.
"--but, nu, if you two want to chip in on getting him to and from that'd be great, you have cars, it works out, so--"
"Zipporah," says Aaron, and she stops, and blinks at him. Her brother stands with his cheeks puffed out, hands jammed in his pockets. Isaac is rubbing a bit at his forehead.
"Vos?"
"Zippy-- we've already got it worked out, okay?"
She doesn't get what he's saying, it's Greek for a minute. Actually, she'd do better with Greek-- six years studying the Septuagint, after all... she stares. "You've worked out the rides for him?"
Isaac clears his throat. "No, Zip. We've all been talking about it-- Papi can move in with Aaron, and Sammy and Julie will take over Papi's apartment instead. This way they don't have to hunt for a place after the wedding, the apartment is a good size for them, they know the landlord, they can make the payments..."
Aaron nods. "And since my place, and Sam's bedroom, is ground floor, no more stairs for Tateh to fight with. Sam and Julie have already started boxing up their stuff-- we're going to clear the room out and remodel it so he has a lot of space when he gets his walker."
And Isaac adds the finishing blow: "Papi said it was fine, Zip."
She looks back and forth between them, feeling ambushed. They...
"You... you've all been... you didn't tell me. Any of this."
Isaac, peacemaker that he is, spreads his hands. "We tried. Every time we started discussing this together, you..."
"You got up and left," Aaron says bluntly.
Zippy feels the hallway wall at her shoulders and wonders when she backed against it, wonders when her hands clenched into fists. "I was-- I was trying to think what I was going to do about Tateh, so sue me for--"
"Yes," Aaron says. "What you were going to do about Tateh. Never mind what anybody else might suggest, never mind what he might want. We know."
"Aaron..." sighs Isaac, and Aaron just shakes his head and looks away, to the nurse's station. He says, "Dammit, Zippy, do you think you're the only one who cares about him?"
"What..? No, of-- of course I don't--"
"Then stop acting like it," Aaron grunts. "He's our father too, alright? I get it, you want to be the one to take care of him, he's your tateh, all yours, you're daddy's little girl, and the eldest, but we're not kids anymore, Zippy. We're not kids, and nobody's told you to baby-sit us."
Isaac puts a hand on Aaron's arm; Aaron's in no mood for it and shrugs it off. Zippy finds herself angry, hot-angry, the white anger that makes everything too sharp and too clear and in which she says things she never ever means to, the anger she rarely feels because the Prozac mutes everything.
"Gevalt, excuse me for breathing, Aaron, excuse me for having spent the last week trying to figure out what to do about our father when, apparently, the entire rest of the family decided without me what was going to happen and couldn't bother letting me know so I didn't worry myself an ulcer over him--"
"Right, tell you about it so you could try and take charge, being the only one intelligent enough to decide what to do," Aaron snaps. "Zipporah, you are my sister, I love you dearly, but as God and His tzaddikim are my witnesses, you are the most domineering, overbearing..."
"Excuse me," says a nurse, sharply, and it stops there. Be thankful for small mercies. "Excuse me, but I'm going to have to ask you all to take your family discussion outside."
Zippy sputters uselessly, grinds her teeth together. Aaron's face is flushed with his anger as well. He sets his jaw against her like Jericho walls. "You want we should talk outside, or what?" he asks. She shakes her head once, sharp, her own chin a knife against the air.
"Why talk? You don't need my opinion, obviously."
Only after Isaac pushes off from the wall, wordless, and heads back into Tateh's room-- and damn him for taking Aaron's side, what is this, she and Isaac, they are like this most of the time-- only then does she see Rachel. Rachel who's been standing there in the doorway who knows how long.
"Nice, Mom," Rachel says in that tone of cool contempt only a teenager can deliver so easily. "So I'm getting kicked out and can move back in with Dad? Sweet. I like how you asked me first about this."
The anger, the white anger....
"Rachel, so help me-- yes, Rachel, you can go back to your fucking father, may the angels carry you over there faster, since that's so much more important to you than what happens to Papi, go, be gone, I'll help you pack up your fuckin' mascara and safety pins--"
Zippy realizes that's her voice speaking, too late. Rachel's face pale and jaw clenched and black-painted lips thinned... and the nurse is here, saying ma'am, you're going to have to leave or calm down--
She leaves.
She goes outside, out into the courtyard with its high brick prison walls and its dead shrubbery and the ugly furniture and the cold. Her hands shake, she drops the pack, the cigarettes hit the concrete. Paper poison cylinders rolling out into the puddles and the dirt, ruined, a mess, everything is a mess, balagan, balagan, once more everything is ruined.
Can't stop crying once she starts. Once more she has somehow managed to break it all into shit, once more she's somehow managed to outsmart only herself.
fandom: oc
muse: zippy levine
word count: 3100
She bummed a cigarette from the cardiologist puffing away nearby, but couldn't bring herself to make smoker's small talk.
Coat tugged tight around her, leaning against the brick hospital wall because each scooped seat of the faded plastic patio furniture held a rain-puddle. Better dry and standing, even if her damn knee throbbed in the cold and even if the cold air caught in her tobacco-irritated throat and made her cough. Better still to be warm and inside, but she needed space, and quiet; room to think and room to pray, and she needed to not be around the rest of her family right now.
Zippy drew smoke into her lungs and held it, eyes closed, counting seconds until the exhale. Tateh was in a bed five floors up, her father-the-rabbi... looking so old, looking frail, looking near to dead.
(The illusion lasted only until he opened his mouth and berated them all for standing around like idiots-- she thought of the old joke, Vai, so who's minding the store!?-- but nevertheless he looked very small there on the white sheets.)
No time for this, she was out here to think, out from the chatter and argument of her brothers and their wives and their children and Tateh's voice trying to impose order on the room but cracking instead.
So. They could argue, and she could think, and figure it out. She the smart one, after all. She the smart one, and this was merely a problem to be solved and outsmarted.
The facts, the facts were-- she released the breath, smoke and crystalling exhale mingling, creating a fog between her and the world-- the facts were, one, that Tateh couldn't be by himself anymore. Broken hip. He'd be put on a waiting list for hip replacement surgery, the doctor had said, but between now and then he'd need help and even after that he shouldn't be on his own. Eighty-four, he was certainly past that point now, how had they not noticed, any of them?
How had she not noticed this, Zippy phrased it, because of all of them certainly she should have. She was the one he talked to the most, every other day a phone call or a visit, and how had she not seen that he was getting too old, too old to be on his own?
The tip of the cigarette flared with her inhale; she dropped her head back against the brick, tired, she was tired, if only the damn ugly plastic patio furniture wasn't wet, if only someone else could figure everything out for a change, if only this and that and if only G-d would remove all your troubles...
Two: a home, an institutionalized home, was out of the question. A decent one anywhere in the city would be a financial strain past her father's pension-- his apartment was still feasible thanks only to the landlord being both friend and congregant-- and past even what they could afford if each of them contributed a few hundred a month. Not that she had that to put in anyway, not with Ben calling every other week for this unexpected tuition fee or the story of how the roommate had managed to destroy their microwave and could he borrow some cash for a new one...
And she was not about to see her father go to strangers, to a building run by strangers. No. No. Not Tateh. Not her papi.
Three, three. Three was that Aaron's twins Sammy and Simeon were both still at home, and, alright, true, Sam and his fiancée had been talking about getting their own place after the wedding, but come on, they're college kids, so, oy, who knows how likely that is to happen anyway really? G-d willing, yes, but until then-- and the wedding wasn't going to be until June. Months distant. Suffice to say, no extra room at that particular branch of the Levine household.
Her cigarette had burned down to a butt, smolder of the stub nearing her fingers. She watched the consuming red creep closer, watched trace amounts of smoke uncurl themselves into the air, and finally dropped the butt to the wet pavement with a little shudder at the knifing breeze that came from nowhere.
Winters, hell, she was getting too old for them. At fifty-seven... alright, fifty-eight now, dammit... the cold, it cut. At fifty-eight she had no business standing outside in January, fingers jammed into her armpits. Where were her gloves? Back in Tateh's room.
She closed her eyes again. Cheek turned to the roughness of the brick wall, toes numb in her shoes, and an ache in her bones.
She'd thought that a cliché of the alter kockers she'd known, the grumbled chorus of "my bones ache"-- but no, it was true, as so much else the old bastards said was. The ache was focused in her knee-- it had settled in for the long term and made itself comfortable, like relatives from Poughkeepsie during a holiday-- but it made itself known everywhere. Traveled forth from the knee in little sojourns along the sciatic nerve and the-- whatever the other was-- oh hell, she knew it, she certainly did after all that fucking hospital and therapy for it, what was it? -- the other nerve, anyway, and the pain shot along them both whenever she stepped wrong or careless now, leapfrogged to the next joint and took up residence there too.
Winters are a bitch when you get old, Zippy told herself, and you are old.
She did not think on how her knee had only really started hurting like this since the night she'd drunk down a bitter tea that had taken the top of her head off and left her shaking until dawn.
Zippy thought of asking the cardiologist for another cigarette, but when she looked the man was gone, two nurses huddled in his place by the door with double white tendrils uncurling from their hands. Coffee steam, and cigarettes, Zippy judged, and closed her eyes again.
Three was... no, four... four was Isaac and Therri, because three had been Aaron and Beth, and Isaac didn't have the room either because Josh had just lost his job and moved back in with the family and while Becky was going to Israel it wouldn't be for six months yet and that contingent of course on whether it would be safe. Five under that roof, no room for an old Tateh.
Zippy stamped her feet on the concrete to try to warm them, then winced as her knee protested this. She scrubbed at her face with her palms.
Up to her, then. Tateh counting on her, the eldest, as he always had, always had. The smart one.
She should go back inside, into the warmth, into the noise, into the concentrate of too much family in one place. Explain to everyone what would have to be done, as Mameh had always done when it came to the practicalities.
She asked the nurses for another cigarette, instead.
***
It took three days from realizing what it was she'd have to do to actually make herself do it.
Phone call, several tries before she dials the number through, her other hand clutching her cigarette like a lifeline.
Her ex-husband answers for which at least she is thankful. She can't stand speaking to his wife.
"Hello, Finn Nelsen," he says, a neutral greeting to a stranger, and for a moment her heart is a thick throbbing block in her trachea, feels exactly the same as swallowing through a sore throat. The pain catches her off-guard, it's eight years now since the divorce and she should really be well over this, dammit, but he greets her like a stranger and that's what they are now to each other, strangers, just strangers, after two children and eighteen years-- strangers, after all that-- and she could really, really use a friend right now.
"Hello?" he says again, since she hasn't answered, and she takes a breath.
"Finn. Hi. It's me. Zippy."
"Ah. Zipporah." Awkward silence. She imagines him standing in the hall or possibly his study with the phone, in gray-socked feet, in a sweater, the phone held between shoulder and ear. She imagines his expression-- perhaps irritation, perhaps the stony resignation that she saw so often on his face during the last months of their marriage.
He clears his throat, and she rubs at her temple with the palm of the hand that holds the cigarette. "I'm calling about Rachel," she says, though certainly he's guessed that-- what else do they talk about, but their daughter, especially now that Ben's over eighteen?
"I've already seen her grades," he responds neutrally, and that cuts too, the way he's expecting a fight. She knows she's earned it, made him dread the phone calls and the screaming matches, and the knowing doesn't make it any easier to bear.
"Not about her grades," she sighs. "I need-- it's-- it's possible she may need to move back in with you for a while. I mean, fully." There's silence in answer, no way to read Finn's reaction from that; she takes a drag on her cigarette and presses on. "I need her room. May need it, anyway."
A few beats, then Finn says slowly, "Of course she has her room here. It is no problem."
No "why" spoken, but it's there, of course. Along with a You dragged us to court four times to win custody of her during the week, and now you want to give her back?
"Okay. Okay, thank you," she says aloud. Her eyes are burning. Damn cigarette. She holds it away from her face, closes her eyes. Feels the hard plastic of the receiver against her ear and thinks of Finn's arms, that have not held her in going on ten years now, but they are strong arms and she wishes they could circle her one more time, that he might be there, strong and quiet and a man, there to say by virtue of his shoulders and his aftershave that it will be all right.
He doesn't ask for the why, and she says she'll call him again when she knows more, and he says alright, and she says alright, and he hangs up, and that's that.
***
Family meeting. Well, okay, just her and Isaac and Aaron, grabbing them each by their shirtsleeves and nodding at the corridor. Tateh is talking to Rachel-- she behaves for him, at least, oy vey-- and doesn't notice her and her brothers making their escape.
There are no seats in this bit of the hall so they stand, the three of them, on the tile that reflects the fluorescent lights, nurses moving past with charts and folders in hand.
"Okay, I've got it worked out," Zippy says, and auto-reaches for a cigarette before remembering where she is.
Isaac is leaning his rangy body against the wall next to Tateh's room number, and giving her a quizzical glance. Aaron stands on his feet, centered, solid. A mustard stain on his tie from the hospital cafeteria hot dog, the lights gleaming off his mostly-bald head just like on the floor.
"I'll take Tateh, once he's out of here," she says.
Isaac shoots a glance at Aaron; Aaron's mouth tightens; Zippy notices neither of these things, staring as she is at the orange-brown splotch on Aaron's tie.
"I know everyone else's house is pretty full already-- my place, it's just me and Rachel, nu, so... anyway, I've talked with Nelsen--" (the familial shorthand for her ex. Tateh had started it, she could count on one hand the number of times he'd referred to her husband by his first name, always it was the goy if disapproving, or that man; the surname was the most neutral version.)
"--and Rach can go on back with him full-time. That frees up my second bedroom-- I'll keep the bunk in case Ben or Rachel is visiting for the weekend, but Papi should have no problems with the lower bed, we can get a new mattress on, move in his things from his apartment. With Ben and the other kids helping that shouldn't take more than a weekend, right, so Papi doesn't have to stress himself over it while he's in here, he can just come right out from surgery to my place once he's released from observation--"
"Zippy," says Aaron.
"--and it is not as though I am so very far away, so, for rehab, Papi should be able to get back here easy enough. I can cover taxi rides for him here and back out of my budget okay, and I can take later shifts at the library for a few weeks so I can come with him--"
"Zippy--" says Aaron.
"--but, nu, if you two want to chip in on getting him to and from that'd be great, you have cars, it works out, so--"
"Zipporah," says Aaron, and she stops, and blinks at him. Her brother stands with his cheeks puffed out, hands jammed in his pockets. Isaac is rubbing a bit at his forehead.
"Vos?"
"Zippy-- we've already got it worked out, okay?"
She doesn't get what he's saying, it's Greek for a minute. Actually, she'd do better with Greek-- six years studying the Septuagint, after all... she stares. "You've worked out the rides for him?"
Isaac clears his throat. "No, Zip. We've all been talking about it-- Papi can move in with Aaron, and Sammy and Julie will take over Papi's apartment instead. This way they don't have to hunt for a place after the wedding, the apartment is a good size for them, they know the landlord, they can make the payments..."
Aaron nods. "And since my place, and Sam's bedroom, is ground floor, no more stairs for Tateh to fight with. Sam and Julie have already started boxing up their stuff-- we're going to clear the room out and remodel it so he has a lot of space when he gets his walker."
And Isaac adds the finishing blow: "Papi said it was fine, Zip."
She looks back and forth between them, feeling ambushed. They...
"You... you've all been... you didn't tell me. Any of this."
Isaac, peacemaker that he is, spreads his hands. "We tried. Every time we started discussing this together, you..."
"You got up and left," Aaron says bluntly.
Zippy feels the hallway wall at her shoulders and wonders when she backed against it, wonders when her hands clenched into fists. "I was-- I was trying to think what I was going to do about Tateh, so sue me for--"
"Yes," Aaron says. "What you were going to do about Tateh. Never mind what anybody else might suggest, never mind what he might want. We know."
"Aaron..." sighs Isaac, and Aaron just shakes his head and looks away, to the nurse's station. He says, "Dammit, Zippy, do you think you're the only one who cares about him?"
"What..? No, of-- of course I don't--"
"Then stop acting like it," Aaron grunts. "He's our father too, alright? I get it, you want to be the one to take care of him, he's your tateh, all yours, you're daddy's little girl, and the eldest, but we're not kids anymore, Zippy. We're not kids, and nobody's told you to baby-sit us."
Isaac puts a hand on Aaron's arm; Aaron's in no mood for it and shrugs it off. Zippy finds herself angry, hot-angry, the white anger that makes everything too sharp and too clear and in which she says things she never ever means to, the anger she rarely feels because the Prozac mutes everything.
"Gevalt, excuse me for breathing, Aaron, excuse me for having spent the last week trying to figure out what to do about our father when, apparently, the entire rest of the family decided without me what was going to happen and couldn't bother letting me know so I didn't worry myself an ulcer over him--"
"Right, tell you about it so you could try and take charge, being the only one intelligent enough to decide what to do," Aaron snaps. "Zipporah, you are my sister, I love you dearly, but as God and His tzaddikim are my witnesses, you are the most domineering, overbearing..."
"Excuse me," says a nurse, sharply, and it stops there. Be thankful for small mercies. "Excuse me, but I'm going to have to ask you all to take your family discussion outside."
Zippy sputters uselessly, grinds her teeth together. Aaron's face is flushed with his anger as well. He sets his jaw against her like Jericho walls. "You want we should talk outside, or what?" he asks. She shakes her head once, sharp, her own chin a knife against the air.
"Why talk? You don't need my opinion, obviously."
Only after Isaac pushes off from the wall, wordless, and heads back into Tateh's room-- and damn him for taking Aaron's side, what is this, she and Isaac, they are like this most of the time-- only then does she see Rachel. Rachel who's been standing there in the doorway who knows how long.
"Nice, Mom," Rachel says in that tone of cool contempt only a teenager can deliver so easily. "So I'm getting kicked out and can move back in with Dad? Sweet. I like how you asked me first about this."
The anger, the white anger....
"Rachel, so help me-- yes, Rachel, you can go back to your fucking father, may the angels carry you over there faster, since that's so much more important to you than what happens to Papi, go, be gone, I'll help you pack up your fuckin' mascara and safety pins--"
Zippy realizes that's her voice speaking, too late. Rachel's face pale and jaw clenched and black-painted lips thinned... and the nurse is here, saying ma'am, you're going to have to leave or calm down--
She leaves.
She goes outside, out into the courtyard with its high brick prison walls and its dead shrubbery and the ugly furniture and the cold. Her hands shake, she drops the pack, the cigarettes hit the concrete. Paper poison cylinders rolling out into the puddles and the dirt, ruined, a mess, everything is a mess, balagan, balagan, once more everything is ruined.
Can't stop crying once she starts. Once more she has somehow managed to break it all into shit, once more she's somehow managed to outsmart only herself.
fandom: oc
muse: zippy levine
word count: 3100