Kathleen realized she was also flattered. “It’s kind of you to think of me. I’m just not sure I’m going to be up to it.”
The rabbi put her hand on Kathleen’s arm and said softly, “I went through this with my mother. And while I don’t presume to know what it’s going to be like for you, my bet is that you’ll be able to do some reading. All I’m really asking is for you to go through what we’ve got and help with a list of titles. I’ll find you some catalogs, and you could check out the Web, maybe visit a bookstore, or one of the big temple libraries. I can even ask someone to drive, if you like.
“I really need this to happen. I’m trying to revive the religious school, and there’s talk of starting a preschool. But we don’t have a single children’s book published after 1975.”
“That’s terrible,” Kathleen said, professionally offended. “No one’s bought anything since then?”
“If they did, the books are long gone.” Michelle glanced at the kitchen clock. “But I’ve got to get going. I don’t want to be late for my first Cape Ann Interfaith Clergy meeting. Jim Sherry told me there’d be a good turnout. Seems everyone wants to meet the first lady rabbi on the North Shore. Cool, huh?”
Kathleen walked her to the door and thanked her for coming.
“I’m not letting you off the hook,” the rabbi said. “I really do need your help. More to the point, the temple needs your help. Please say you’ll think about it.”
“I’ll think about it,” said Kathleen, smiling at the hard sell.
“Good-bye,” said the rabbi.
“See you,” said Kathleen.
“God willing.”
“God willing?”Kathleen repeated softly, closing the door. What an awful thing to say. It makes me feel doomed, she thought, heading back to the kitchen. The meadow of Sweet Williams on the deck flashed into sight. Doomed or blessed. Either way, the rabbi was right. It was out of her hands.
JOYCE FELT AS IF she’d wasted the first half of June in the car driving to and from soccer practices, and soccer games, and soccer dinners.
Nina’s team had led their division all year and was now in the play-offs, and Nina was a big part of their success. She was a great ball handler, a generous teammate, and an apparently fearless player who inspired the other girls. Joyce was in awe of her daughter’s athletic ability; Frank had to be the source of those genes, just as he was the source of her long toes and shell-like, little ears.
Joyce went to the games because Nina wanted her there, especially now that each match mattered so much. And Joyce was glad to be there, especially for the time-outs and pauses in the action, when Nina sought her eye. Those moments recalled the days when her daughter would shout, “Look at me, Mommy,” in the pool or on her bicycle or swinging upside down on the monkey bars. “Mommy, look at me.”
By now, Joyce understood the language and basic strategy of the game; even so, soccer bored her silly. She tried to distract herself by watching the crowds, but the other parents were too predictable: white of skin, khaki of pant, never an amusing T-shirt in the bunch. And unlike her, they seemed genuinely interested in what was happening on the field.
“From the outside, I may look like a soccer mom,” she confessed to Kathleen on the phone one night after a game. “But on the inside, all I want is for my kid to pick up a book and read of her own free will. Don’t get me wrong, I’m really proud of Nina. But I do envy the parents of kids who are into chess or dance or theater. I’d rather watch sixteen performances of Annie than sixteen soccer games. Although I’m sure that gets old.”
Kathleen looked forward to Joyce’s calls and stories. Her own days dragged, hour to hour. “All this waiting is doing me in,” she said. “First, there was the waiting for the lab report, then waiting for the incision to heal, and for school to end, and for treatment to start. I can hardly sit still long enough to read the newspaper. My garden is keeping me sane, though. If I didn’t have to weed and water, I’d jump off the A. Piatt Andrew Bridge.”
“Oh, you can’t do that,” Joyce scolded. “You promised to take me out to Salt Island.” She loved hearing how Kathleen’s voice grew lighter during their conversations.
When Kathleen began the radiation treatments, Joyce mailed her a rusted toy metal ray gun she found at a thrift store. Kathleen sent back a note on a postcard from Three Mile Island. Whenever they spoke, Joyce found a new use for the word zap, and Kathleen laughed every time.
Nina’s last day of school was followed by the make-or-break soccer match of the year. Belmont was playing Newton, which had won the past three state championships. Joyce and Frank stood, shoulder to shoulder, cheering as Nina took the field. They high-fived each other and hooted when she assisted on the first goal.
That turned out to be Belmont’s solitary score. “Let’s go, Nina,” Frank shouted between cupped hands. “Go, Belmont,” he yelled until he was hoarse, but Newton racked up one goal after another. Joyce felt her neck and shoulders get tighter and tighter. Finally, mercifully, it was over.
On the way home, Nina asked Joyce to sit in the backseat and sobbed on her shoulder. Joyce stroked Nina’s hair silently, remembering the days when she really could “make it all better” for her daughter. But what could she say now that wasn’t totally stupid? You had a good season? You’ll win next year?
At home, Nina shook her mother off, shut her door, and cried to her teammates on the phone. Joyce and Frank sat at the kitchen table, wrung out by the loss, wrecked by Nina’s disappointment. “It was so much easier when she was little,” Frank said, taking Joyce’s hand.
It occurred to Joyce, once again, that their entire relationship revolved around being parents. Less than a year after they’d got married, they’d started trying for a baby. After another year, they’d begun infertility workups and treatments, miscarriages, surgery, and finally her high-risk pregnancy.
The nurses oohed and aahed over the way Frank cared for Joyce through the months of hospital bed rest. And he’d been a champion in the labor room, huffing and puffing, weeping and beaming. “Hold on to this one, honey,” the anesthesiologist had advised.
She looked at Frank’s fingers, now interlaced with hers. They were good parents. Nina could be a royal pain in the ass at home, but her teachers loved her and she had loyal friends. That’s the way it’s supposed to be, Joyce knew. Nina was honest and bright. She would grow up to be a good person.
But there was no denying that she had crossed the threshold leading out of their lives. The end is near, Joyce thought, and laughed softly at the melodrama of the phrase.
“What?” asked Frank, smiling, waiting to be let in on the joke.
“We’re almost done.”
“With what?”
“Nina’s on her way out the door.”
“She’s only twelve.”
“Twelve going on twenty. It’s happening so fast.” Joyce thought about what the women in her book group had said about the speed of their kids’ high school years. “What are we going to do? She’s the center of our lives,” Joyce said, then more tentatively, “of us.”
Frank frowned. “Joyce, for crying out loud, we’ve got five more years until she goes to college.”
“But don’t you see the end of it from here? She’s changing so fast.”
“You’re rushing her.” He withdrew his hand. “She’s still a child, and I think that you’re letting her get away with murder on the grounds that she’s going to be a teenager.”
“Frank, she’s always been precocious. She talked early. She walked early. C’mon. It’s not just her attitude, it’s her body. She’s developing breasts, or haven’t you noticed?”
Frank stood up. “I think I’ll order pizza for dinner.”
“Are you kidding?” Joyce yelped.
“Would you rather have Chinese?”
Joyce stared after him as he went to ask Nina what she wanted to eat. Frank was worse off than she’d realized, but she lacked the energy — or maybe it was the inclination — to do anyth
ing about it.
The next morning, Sylvie’s family picked Nina up for a week on Cape Cod. Nina took the bag of brownies from Joyce’s hands, gave her a quick, sideways hug, got into the van, and didn’t look back.
Joyce felt her mood plummet. Now she had no reason to get up at seven, keep the refrigerator stocked with milk and juice, or even cook dinner. With Nina gone, Frank would probably work straight through until nine or ten every night.
She had to do something. Immediately. Joyce unplugged her computer and loaded it into the car. As she packed some extra underwear and T-shirts, she dialed Frank. “I’m going up to Gloucester.”
“Nina gone?” Frank asked sympathetically.
“Yes. I’m taking my computer.”
“Isn’t the laptop already there?”
“I hate that keyboard.”
“You never mentioned anything,” Frank said.
“Yeah, well, I do.”
“Call me later?”
“Okay.” Joyce slammed down the phone and got in the car.
Joyce was furious at Frank for the way he had walked out on their conversation the previous night. His problem with Nina’s sexual development was probably a textbook case, but if they couldn’t talk about Nina anymore, what the hell could they talk about? They used to talk about music. When they’d first met, they used to go to jazz clubs. They hadn’t done that in a dog’s age.
She reached the house in thirty-five minutes. That’s a stupid record, she thought, a little frightened by what she’d just done.
The house was stuffy and sad-looking, the living room still empty but for the beanbag. Joyce cranked open the windows as she dialed Kathleen, who picked up on the first ring.
“Hello?”
“Kathleen, it’s Joyce. I’m here for the week. Want to take a walk?”
“How soon can you get there?”
It was high tide, which meant Good Harbor was reduced to a dark, wet skirt of sand up near the dunes. From her perch in the center of the footbridge, Joyce watched the morning fog evaporate in wisps over the flooded plain. A parade of women passed by, bearing umbrellas, chairs, coolers, towels, plastic buckets, canvas bags, plastic bags, paper bags. Children ran ahead, heedless of their mothers’ voices, rising like birdcalls: “Be careful!” “Wait for me!”
A girl who looked to be no more than sixteen yelled, “Joey, come back here,” as a skinny four-year-old with a pierced ear raced by. She put down her beach bags and chair to light a cigarette. She rolled her eyes at Joyce and hollered, “Joey, I’m gonna kill you.”
Kathleen arrived, wearing a wide-brim straw hat and a long-sleeved man’s white shirt over white, drawstring cotton pants.
“You look very elegant,” said Joyce.
“Thank you.” Kathleen patted Joyce’s hand on the railing.
“Can I ask about the treatment?” Joyce said tentatively as they set out.
“You can ask.” Kathleen shrugged. “There’s not much to tell. It’s not terrible, it’s, oh, I don’t know.” She paused. “Strange. Painless. And it’s very fast. I get there, they zap me” — she used the word pointedly — “and then I go home.
“There are no side effects from the radiation itself. Nothing. Sometimes I wonder if the machine is even switched on. Of course, they say you don’t really notice anything until it’s almost over, and I’ve just started. Then my skin could get red, like having a sunburn, and maybe peel. And who knows what else.”
“Yikes.”
“My biggest problem is that I’m not sleeping well. But they say that’s nothing to do with the treatment. It’s the worry. And that’s all there is to it.” Then Kathleen abruptly changed the subject. “So Nina’s off with her friend for the week, right? Talk to me about life among the living.”
Joyce tried not to flinch.
“Sorry,” said Kathleen. “I shouldn’t have said that.”
“No. Say what you want.”
“No, really, I’m sorry.”
They walked for a while without talking. Kathleen kept her face turned to the water. Finally Joyce said, “Nina’s team lost the big game last night. She was heartbroken. I was heartbroken. Frank was heartbroken. But the dirty little secret is that I’m relieved that soccer is over for the year, which makes me feel like a total shit. Here my daughter is shattered, and I’m thrilled that I don’t have to watch another game until next fall.
“I wish I felt differently, but this is just something I can’t get enthused about.”
“It’s a hard age.”
“I suppose. But I keep telling myself that she’s doing well in school, and she has friends and all.”
“I meant it’s a hard age for parents,” Kathleen said. “I remember when Hal was fourteen or fifteen, and one summer all he wanted to do was watch television. I said, ‘Why can’t you go for a bike ride or read a book, like you used to.’ And he said, ‘Mom, it’s never going to be the way it was before.’
“It was as if he’d thrown a bucket of cold water on me. All of a sudden I saw the hair on his legs, and not that invisible baby down, either. A man’s hair. It took me months to get over that.”
“But I feel like I’m screwing up our whole relationship,” Joyce said. “I blow up at her for no reason, and I’m such a nag. Clean up your dishes, get your shoes off the floor, do your homework, brush your teeth, put on deodorant, get off the phone, take a shower, pick up your room. Bitch, bitch, bitch, bitch, bitch. She starts crying, and I know I ought to be quiet, but I don’t stop.
“And Frank seems totally unwilling to admit that she’s growing up. He gets on her case about schoolwork or talking back to him, and then I get furious at him for picking on her, and we fight about that.”
“Don’t worry, Joyce,” Kathleen said gently. “It’s just a stage. You’ll grow out of it. And then she’ll go to college.”
“And then what do I do?” Joyce asked, her voice suddenly pinched.
Kathleen faced out at the ocean and chose her words carefully. “There’s work. Reading. New interests. Hobbies. You start talking to your husband about things besides the kids. It’s good. It’s never the same, but it’s good. And it fills you up, pretty much. In time, it really does fill in. A lot of people seem to take music lessons. And then someday, maybe you get grandchildren.”
“Nina is twelve! I don’t want to see grandchildren for a long time, thank you very much.”
“I’ve been ready for grandchildren for ages, but my sons don’t seem to be anywhere near it. In the meantime, I took up daylilies. Sounds prissy, but they are the love of my life.” Kathleen smiled. “Don’t tell Buddy I said that, okay?”
Joyce held up a hand in the “Scout’s honor” position.
“I knew nothing about plants until the year Jack left for college,” Kathleen said. “I took one of those garden tours and met a woman, a bit of a kook really, who had three hundred varieties of daylilies in a wonderful rock garden. Now I have, oh, probably thirty kinds myself. Seeing which ones are blooming is one of the great joys of summer for me.”
They were already in front of the red motel, which marked the end of the beach when the tide was this high.
“I suppose I could take a drawing class,” Joyce said.
“If that’s something you’re interested in.”
“Not really. It’s a generic kind of fantasy. I don’t have any talent for it. Besides, it doesn’t solve my work problem. I’m not sure I can fake a shred of interest in school bus safety, which is my next big assignment.”
“But, Joyce, you have to go back to Magnolia and tell what happened next.”
“Oh, my God, you read it! And you’re still willing to be seen in public with me?”
“Come on. It’s good. How did they let you get away with it?”
“With what?”
“The politics, I guess you’d call it. The race politics. A black woman and a white landowner is hardly the usual romance formula, is it? Isn’t the man supposed to be older and more experienced? Isn’t the girl
supposed to tame the man? Jordan was so restrained, and she’s such a, well, hussy sounds so politically incorrect, but, heavens.” Kathleen put her hand to her heart in mock shock.
“There are so many issues: literacy, race, secrets. The sex is only one part of it. Though the racy parts are plenty racy. All that black and white skin. It makes one wonder,” Kathleen said, arching an eyebrow.
“The imagination is a wonderful muscle,” said Joyce. “At first, I thought all I was doing was writing something commercial that would allow me to buy a house up here. The means to an end. But I really got into her, into Magnolia, and the story. And the historical period. I’m glad you saw the politics.”
“You must have done a lot of research. Where did you find out the little details like how they starched the petticoats, and where they got ice?”
A high-pitched voice interrupted Joyce’s answer.
“Mrs. Levine.” The girl on top of the lifeguard stand was on her feet, with a megaphone to her mouth. “Mrs. Levine, up here. It’s me, Krista!”
Kathleen waved and walked toward her. Joyce followed.
“Krista! How are you?” Kathleen asked, holding on to her hat as she looked up at the big, blond girl above them.
“I’m good. And you?”
“On a beautiful day like this, how could I be anything but fine,” Kathleen said brightly. “This is my friend, Joyce Tabachnik.”
“Hello, Mrs. Tabachnik.”
“What are your plans for the fall?” Kathleen asked.
“Salem State.”
“Oh, good for you. I’m so proud of you.”
“Yeah, me, too,” Krista said shyly.
“Let me know how it goes, will you? I’ll even help you with your homework.”
Krista laughed. “You were always so nice to me.”
“That’s only what you deserve, dear. Good luck. Come see us, okay?”
Krista picked up her megaphone and answered, “Bye, Mrs. Levine.”
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