Without Jenny

by Mark Gunther

  “Mom. I’m glad you came. I didn’t know if you could.”

  Joy reached, awkwardly, to embrace her; Rose took Joy’s hands.

  “Joy, please. She was my granddaughter. You are always my daughter. You don’t deserve such pain. I’m so sorry.”

  “Are you alone?”

  “Yes, Reb Pinchas couldn’t get away.” She always referred to her husband as Reb, even in private conversations.

  “Or he won’t eat in my house.” He was strictly kosher.

  “Please, Joy, not today. I love you, and I loved her. I’m so sorry. Zichrono livracha, may her memory be a blessing. It’s a terrible thing, but she’s with God now.”

  “How do you know that, Mom?”

  Rose patted her on the shoulder. Joy wanted to believe that Jenny was in a better place. But what could be better than living with your mother and father and brother and getting everything you needed while life carried you forward? Who made this future for Jenny? How could Mom even think that? Of course, Joy thought, Mom’s daughter is alive. Jenny wouldn’t be dead if she hadn’t had me. Maybe this is her fault, too.

  Arm-in-arm, Joy and her mother walked three steps to the front row. Joy sat Rose next to Hiram. He patted Rose on the knee and kissed her cheek. Joy liked that. Jake sat between his grandfather and his father. It was hard to look at them all at once, all these people that Jenny had been made of.

  A lectern banked by flowers stood to one side of the stage and a large photo of a happy Jenny decorated the other. Joy wondered vaguely how the picture got made. She was the one who usually did that sort of thing. The casket sat stage center, quietly minding its own business, unfazed by all the people. Joy wondered if Jenny actually was inside it and she tried to picture her lying there.

  “I can’t remember what she looked like, Danny,” she whispered to her husband.

  “You still could go look at her now,” he said.

  “Come with me?”

  “No. I don’t want to see it.”

  A lifeless body in a strange, brand-new dress and black shoes, Danny’s tallis draped over its shoulders. It, Joy noticed. There is no her.

  Rabbi came to the podium. The whispering crowd quieted.

  “With any death, the element of the incomplete is always present, but with a child it is overwhelming. So much of her life was not yet lived, her accomplishments forever unaccomplished. However, Jenny did not regard her life as incomplete, and so neither can we. We have only one reality, and in this one Jenny lived a life that was perfect, whole, and graceful. Her death is inexplicable, yet it occurred at the end of a chain of causes, as does every moment of each of our lives. The death of a child cannot be justified, or explained. Jenny was and will remain our leader by example, challenging us to live joyfully, lovingly, and with the kind of focus she brought to all her activities. Jennifer Hannah Rosenberg was born . . . ”

  Joy could never accept Jenny’s life as complete. Sighs and chuckles emanating from the crowd showed the eulogy was masterful—clearly Jenny was recognized in his words.

  What did Jenny look like? What does she look like now?

  Danny squeezed Joy’s hand, and she came back to the moment. He got up and approached the lectern. He embraced Rabbi.

  I didn’t hear what he said about her.

  Danny began speaking. Joy shrank from the disrupted cadence of his voice. She knew his words, he had read them to her last night, but she could hear only total incomprehension as her man spoke of love betrayed by disaster.

  She had tried to prepare something. She fumbled in her pocket for the piece of paper, held it in her hand while Danny talked, twisting it around, making little tears in the corners. Joy stood as Danny finished, seeing his tears through hers, his hand lightly caressing the casket as he moved toward her. They embraced briefly, avoiding each other’s eyes, cheeks softly touching. Joy stood at the podium looking out at the crowd. She looked over at her family, her mother’s face impassive, Dad with a half-smile, Danny’s arm around Jake, all of them watching her. She turned to the front, notes forgotten as she crushed the paper in her hand, her voice quivering.

  “Never in a million years would I have imagined standing here. We were doing so well! We were happy! I loved Jenny more than anything. I couldn’t wait to see her every morning. She loved me.” Tears streamed. She stopped, looking up. “The world deserved her. She deserved a whole life. I just don’t understand this.”

  Abruptly, she turned away. Danny came to get her. Rabbi read the stanzas of the 23rd psalm in Hebrew and the crowd read each back, responsively, in English. Everyone stood. He chanted the ghostly el ma’le rachamim. He began the kaddish, haltingly, so the family could join: Yisgadal v’yisgadash sh’meh rabba . . . The congregation voiced the rhythmic responses. Joy stumbled over the transliteration. The prayer soon would be drilled into her memory.

  The pallbearers, the men of her family, surrounded the casket. It rolled quietly on its gurney, industrial smoothness contrasting harshly with the jagged world it rolled through. Joy, holding Jake’s hand, followed behind the casket, no longer of the community that was estranged by the living of their own children. Her torn lapel bounced off her ribs. She took refuge in the limo, with Danny and Jake and Hiram and Rose. Jake lay down on the wide back seat.

  Hiram said, “Amazing he could write that after just a couple of hours with us.”

  “That’s his job,” Danny said.

  Joy said, “I don’t know how to do this.”

  “You will, honey,” Hiram replied. “You’ll have to.”

  “Oh, Hiram,” Rose said, tiredly. “Give it a rest. Now is not the time.”

  It was a familiar argument to Joy, his willfulness, the deprivations of his Depression-shaped youth pushing, always pushing against the gentle nature of her mother.

  “Will I, Daddy?” she said, for once taking Rose’s side. “Can you make it okay for me?”

  Hiram looked at her and held his tongue. Rose said nothing more.

  “Let’s just get through today first,” Danny said. “I didn’t know we knew so many people. Are they all coming over later?”

  No one knew. Jake fell asleep. Joy watched weekday street life move slowly by as the procession wound through her city.

  The cemetery was on a shallow slope with a western exposure, facing the ridge of green hills that were an inadequate barrier to the ocean fog that today rose in bilious gray clouds high above their crest. The limo drove up the hill slowly, past the older gravesites with their large, complicated sandstone monuments softened by a hundred years of aging, past the small family mausoleums of last century’s rich, past the Russian section garish with a photo of the deceased on each brightly polished granite headstone, to the synagogue’s small section where Jenny was to be buried. They had chosen—Was it just yesterday?—a site near the top, isolated, a place to be undisturbed. Joy imagined a little bench where she could sit each day and stare at the headstone, spending forever with her daughter.

  The procession rolled to a stop. The funeral director took Joy gently by the elbow. Danny carried the just-waking Jake. Joy was gratified to see Hiram offer Rose his arm. They were led to a set of linked canvas chairs under a blue temporary awning. They all sat. Joy felt her family next to her, but the grave demanded her attention.

  Jenny’s grave. How do I have more tears?

  The hole was dug with exacting precision, corners squared off cleanly. Four wide boards surrounded it, placed tightly to the edges. Two two-by-fours, about three feet apart, spanned the grave. The dirt was piled on a blue tarpaulin next to the hole, along with the neat stack of grass strips that would return lawn to the grave after the hole was filled.

  The line of cars grew longer as the mourners arrived, silently gathering at the grave, their funereal black offsetting the bright green lawn and brilliant blue sky. They all turned toward the hearse. The casket moved efficiently onto its gurney and the assemblage rolled to the grass. The director placed a white bouquet on top. The casket was held for t
he last time as the pallbearers guided it.

  High production values, Joy absently noted. Things proceeded on cue. Jenny would have appreciated that. The gurney stopped at the head of the grave. The pallbearers moved away and the casket had a brief moment alone, preparing. When finished, the Rabbi nodded and the casket was gently lowered into the ground.

  Joy wailed. Tears came in rivers. Danny pulled away and took Jake into his lap. Rabbi came to Joy and took her hand.

  “Come,” he said. “We have something to do.”

  “Okay,” Joy said. She stood.

  Danny put Jake on the ground, and the trio approached the hole. They had each brought a token to leave with Jenny forever. Jake had a little toy truck. Danny had the flyer from the tap performance she would never dance. His tallis already was with her, in the casket. Joy had the first candle she and Jenny had ever bought together at the Japanese Tea Garden when Jenny was not quite two.

  Then they each took a handful of earth and, one by one, dropped it onto the casket.

  It can’t be helped. This is what happens. I have to leave her here.

  Hiram and Rose were next. Then Danny’s parents and his brother. Handful by handful, into the grave. After the family, the friends, in a long, dark line led by Carly and Lizzie, each dispensed a shovel full of earth. Some held the shovel upside down, another Jewish custom unknown to Joy. Each spadeful undid the days of Jenny’s life, one by one, back to the day of her birth. They came then, each one of them, to Joy and Danny and Jake, and to Hiram and Rose, gripping hands, wordless kisses, then melting back into the crowd. Joy and Danny stood near the grave’s edge and watched the casket disappear.

  The workers placed the vault. Danny’s brother Joey and some of the other men took the shovels and put their backs into it, jackets flying, ties dangling. Carly, Lizzie, and a couple of the other women left to prepare the house for visitors. People began to drift away. Soon the grave was full. There was leftover dirt. That makes sense, she thought. The casket gave itself to the grave and left some dirt behind. She thought briefly she should take some home, but she had no way to carry it.

  “Can we go now?” Joy asked.

  3.

  HOME DID NOT resemble the place she lived. People were packed in, shoulder to shoulder. The din was enormous. Joy fought suffocation on her own couch, defended by her women, Lizzie and Carly, stalwart on each side of her. Excruciating seconds ticked by.

  “What time is it? Do I have to stay here?” she asked repeatedly. Like a concussion victim.

  “You’re home, honey,” one of her girls would say. “Nowhere else to go. We have you.” But Joy wanted only to go, to go where Jenny was.

  One by one the guests came to her, and some part of her would think Oh, this is a nice thing, I should remember this person was nice to me, maybe they’d like a drink, maybe Danny can get a drink for our guest.

  She remembered a husband, her lover. She wondered if he was home from work yet, and the crowd asynchronously parted to reveal him surrounded by his men, his brother, their fathers, others, his head in his hands. Looking in his eyes ripped her open. Rose sat in an easy chair, in the corner, with Lizzie’s mom and a couple of other old friends. Joy would hear a small piece of a conversation and lift her head, try to understand it, and her shepherds would take it as a sign.

  “Here, honey,” the girls would murmur softly in her ear, “drink this, just a little water, eat this, just an orange slice, close your eyes, just for a minute, we’ll be right here.”

  Once she heard the sound of the men talking. Someone laughed.

  “What could possibly be funny?” she asked her girlfriends.

  “I can go find out,” said Carly, but Lizzie put a hand on her arm.

  “Let them be.” she said.

  Danny’s brother Joey was on the phone in her office, behind the closed door, slowly cancelling Jenny out of their future. Danny had needed her help to find all the phone numbers. She could imagine the conversation: “Jenny won’t be coming to camp next summer, can you please send the refund?” “Oh yes, we saw it on the news, so terrible.” Getting an authorization to return the box with the new clothes; invoking the tuition insurance to make the payments to the school; cancelling the next hair appointment; cancelling the evaluation with the orthodontist. No braces now, I can at least be grateful Jenny won’t have to suffer that. All the minutiae that made up the life of a ten-year-old girl taking time and thought and effort to end.

  When Jake came to Joy, her heart would gladden and her face soften in the moment before his loss crushed her, but still she could take him into her lap hold him close with wooden arms, maybe say “I love you,” but too often saying nothing at all. After a while, Sarah or Amanda would come looking for him and they would go off. She wondered what they were saying to him when she didn’t know what to say. Some brave parents brought their kids, Jenny’s friends, the little girls from the sleepovers, not so little any more, but still hesitant and afraid, mumbling something about how they liked Jenny, staying glued to their mothers. Allie was different. She held out her hand to Joy.

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Rosenberg,” she said. “I asked my grandma to find Jenny and take care of her in heaven. I know they are both in heaven.”

  Joy reached past the barricades, taking the proffered hand with both of hers, saying “Thank you, honey, thank you so much. Thank you for coming. Thank you for remembering her. I’m sure your grandma heard you and is looking forward to playing with Jenny, too.”

  Allie slipped back against her mother.

  “We just lost Mom a few months ago. Jenny was her favorite of Allie’s friends,” said Allie’s mom, arm protectively around her. “She liked how forthright she was.”

  “Yes,” Joy said wistfully. “She certainly was that.”

  “We all will miss her, Joy. I’m so sorry. Whatever we can do . . . ”

  Joy thanked Allie’s mom for bringing her. She would never know them like this again, these vibrant girls she eavesdropped on when they inhabited the backseat of her car, sweet girls soon enough to be women with men and breasts and children of their own to lose, growing up with the ever-shrinking memory of someone they knew in grade school who got killed when a building fell on her (what was her name?), going on to full lives, their parents filled with joy and pride at their accomplishments, the Bat Mitzvahs or confirmations or quinceaneras, the graduations, the weddings, grandchildren coming, everyone’s perfect happy life going on and on while Joy stayed glued to her couch, shrinking, cadaverous, clutching the ever-more-distant memory of the daughter she once had, the forever dead ten-year-old, the most consequential thing ever to happen to her.

  Wednesday. Thursday. Friday. Danny’s staff closed the office down at 2 PM each day. Only his secretary was Jewish, but all eleven of them came each day. Danny showed her the sales guys furtively checking their smartphones. I might lose him to these people, she thought. He would go back, business would flower, they would need him and love him and crave his presence while she still would be couch-bound and bereft.

  Each afternoon the house inhaled strangers and their food, and exhaled them in the early evening. They came in a constant parade, these mourners, by the dozens. Joy received them all. The honest ones looked at her, simple looks, held her hands and ventured a kiss with closed eyes, a whispered condolence. The dishonest ones chattered on gratingly about death, life, purpose, reason. Joy wondered about the ones who didn’t come at all, didn’t want to know, couldn’t tell their children, paralyzed by the fear. Who has the courage to stay with the wizened witch, the shrew? Who walks that road with her? Only those who need no invitation.

  As the sun approached the horizon each day, Rabbi would clear his throat and everyone would stand. Mincha, the afternoon service, was recited quietly, often in silent meditation, the spirit of fifty people lifting the house against the pressing weight of grief. The family said kaddish at the end, in call and response with the congregation, a prayer for the dead without a mention of death. It took a certai
n kind of genius for the medieval rabbis to make that choice for the prayer of remembrance, Rabbi had said, life’s divine prevalence a counterweight to the pernicious backdrop of death.

  People shared memories of Jenny, of Joy and Jenny, Jenny and Jake, and when the room fell quiet, after the stories, Ma’ariv was said, the evening service, another kaddish. The house would empty.

  Joy and Danny sat, immobile, until someone told them to go to bed.

  4.

  THERE WAS EVENING and there was morning on the sixth day, the first of a lifetime of transformed Shabbats. She hardly had eaten since Monday. Everything was ugly on her caved-in body, grief denying her even the simple act of standing erect.

  Lizzie and Amanda came to stay with Jake while Joy and Danny went to the synagogue. Back when they had joined, in the self-directed confidence of their young family life, Danny had wondered if they really needed to become members. “Couldn’t we just do fee-for-service?” he asked her, but to Joy it was the civic-minded thing to do. Take her place, preserve the institution, stand up and be counted on the High Holidays. Today, the memory of that arrogance burned as Judaism, in its patience, held her. Her disaster was not survivable; she was neither strong nor solid, just one more Jew living one more disaster in a history laced with them.

  They parked in front of the synagogue’s tired old building in a residential Richmond district block. The sanctuary was on the second floor. The rumpled man at the top of the stairs wore a comfortable suit without a tie, jacket unbuttoned, his tallis draped around his shoulders, a pin reading Host prominent on his lapel.

  “I’m so sorry for your loss,” he said. “May her memory be a blessing.”

  He knew them. It couldn’t be helped. Who would have thought I would need this? Joy thought. He handed them their prayer book and Chumash, the Torah with commentaries, and opened the sanctuary door.