This Is Where I Leave You

The lights go out again while Judd is in the shower, and Alice is again in her bathrobe in front of the fuse box. Judd tries to hide that he is aroused.

At breakfast, Paul reveals that their dad left half of the business to himself and split the other half among Judd, Phillip, and Wendy. The store has been struggling during the recession, so Paul proposes to buy their shares. Phillip wants to help run the business. Paul refuses, claiming Phillip would mess things up. Tracy tries to mediate as the men fight. Jen appears. She hugs Hillary and says she’s sorry about Mort. Phillip punches Paul.

Jen and Judd talk. The smell of the lox nauseates her, and Jen runs to the bathroom to vomit. Judd thinks about the way their sex became routine and reflects on the other things that annoyed him about Jen, like how she constantly overspent their budget.

Jen tells Judd the baby is his since Wade is sterile. Judd laughs at the irony. Jen says Wade will support her but complains that people look at her like the “town whore.” Judd knows she’ll never apologize to him. He feels mostly outrage and regret, imagining a sad childhood and adolescence for this child, shuttled between two parents with Wade as a stepfather. Judd thinks, “I’ve always wanted to be a father, but not like this, not with the deck already stacked so badly against me” (137). He’ll never be free of Jen and Wade now; he’ll have to stay in their lives for the child. He wishes he could be happy and thrilled. He wishes he could be with Jen, the way things were supposed to be. He realizes the previous stillbirth harmed their marriage.

Jen asks him what he is thinking, and Judd says he wishes this had happened before her and Wade. Jen cries. Tracy introduces herself. Phillip joins her and insults Jen by saying he’s going to hook Judd up with someone younger and hotter. This annoys Tracy. Jen tells Phillip she’s pregnant, and Judd realizes, “I am going to be a father, just when I’ve lost my own” (141).

Judd wonders if the previous baby might have saved his marriage, when “losing it accelerated [their] downward spiral into the thorny underbrush of marital decay” (142). He imagines raising that child, then catches himself in the fantasy. His marriage with Jen, Judd thinks, was like a plane that had lost an engine but could still fly. He remembers how excited they were about the baby, and then how he was late to the doctor’s office when Jen couldn’t feel any movement. By the time he arrived, Jen had already learned the fetus had been strangled by the umbilical cord in the womb. She was weeping, and Judd felt she blamed him for not being there.

Judd’s family discusses Jen’s visit. Wendy is jealous of Jen’s attractiveness. Hillary says things might not be over between Judd and Jen; sex is just an itch. They all want to know why Phillip is dating an older woman. No one thinks it will work out. Phillip and Judd are leaving when Paul enters and punches Phillip in the face. Phillip tells everyone Jen is pregnant. Alice, crying, runs upstairs and slams the door, and the lights go out.

Phillip drives Judd in his Porsche and says he’s trying to fix his life, and dating Tracy is part of that. Phillip drops Judd at the skating rink, where Penny is practicing. Judd skates with her, and though the moment is romantic, he thinks:

After all this time, we are little more than strangers to each other, each of us pretending otherwise for our own sad reasons. I don’t even know if I’m here because she’s someone I once loved, or because I’m just lonely and desperate (153).

Penny is attractive, but something about her feels off. Phillip is late picking Judd up, and both are solemn. Judd remembers an act he and Phillip used to do that made their father laugh, and “it suddenly occurs to me that we will never see our father again, and I feel a crushing desolation deep in my belly” (156). Judd notices Phillip’s T-shirt is on inside out.

Judd watches in judgment as Arlene, a rude, unattractive, and overweight woman who is visiting, collapses the folding chair in which she is sitting. The family discusses the news that Judd is going to be a father.

Ryan and Cole, Wendy’s boys, swim in the pool while Wendy looks at magazines, complains that she’s fat, and teases Judd about when he will have sex again. Wendy falls into the pool, and Horry dives in to help her. Horry tells Wendy her husband should treat her better, and Judd thinks Wendy might be crying.

Judd feels greeting visitors is “like [being] a rock band on tour, same set list, different town” (165). Their Uncle Stan is older, lecherous, and flatulent. Judd’s mother entertains the crowd by sharing child-rearing wisdom. Sounds of Alice and Paul having sex upstairs come over the baby monitor. When Paul joins the family a while later, Uncle Stan applauds.

Penny visits. She and Judd sit by the pool and talk, then swim. Judd thinks about Wendy and Horry, “looking at each other in this exact spot a few hours ago, this haunted pool that seems to pull dead and buried love to its surface” (172). Penny and Judd kiss, and for Judd, kissing a woman who is not Jen is “exhilarating and surreal” (173). He considers telling Penny about the baby. After she leaves, Judd calls Jen’s phone. Wade picks up. That night, Judd dreams of being chased by a rottweiler and running on his prosthetic leg.

In a flashback to his high school years, Judd watches Alice Taylor during a party. As he approaches her, he accidentally knocks into Tony Rusco, who kicks Judd in the crotch. Alice soothes him. As Judd is walking home, Paul pulls up in his car and takes Judd to Tony Rusco’s house. Judd doesn’t want to go and is upset when Paul hits Tony. Paul tells Judd to kick Tony in the balls in return, and Judd doesn’t want to. Tony’s mother sets a snarling rottweiler loose on the Foxman boys. They run to the car, but the rottweiler attacks Paul. Judd drives him to the emergency room. Judd feels “[t]he silent consensus, evident in Paul’s glare, my father’s pained expression, and my mother’s lack of intervention, was that the wrong brother had been mauled” (183). When Judd finally kissed Alice Taylor, he cried.