When the ambulance came to take Harold away, Tilda must have been dressed. She must have followed, to take care of all that needed taking care of, but before she walked out of the now-empty bedroom, she must have turned to look at the bed, still unmade. She must have walked over and put her hand on the pillow, felt the mattress. Yes, she remembered, where the pillow met the mattress, it still felt warm. It couldn’t have been Harold’s warmth, but it was the closest she would ever come to his warmth again. She remembered stepping out of her shoes and getting back into bed, nuzzling into the warm place. Harold’s smell. Not aftershave or cologne, just Harold. Home. She couldn’t remember getting to the hospital after that or calling Laura, though she had done both.
Tilda, who had taught the concept of irony to her high school students (“One cannot escape the irony of the sinking of the Titanic; it was proclaimed to be unsinkable”), was now forever linked to the word. It was grimly ironic to her, all that instruction years ago into the meaning of the very word that she would never be able to shake in her late years, the irony inherent in the night Harold died.
Laura suggested they go to the diner on Waterton Avenue, and Tilda agreed. They sat in the booth near the door, which had been left open to catch the fresh breeze that had blown into town overnight. Saul’s was one of the few mom-and-pop businesses remaining on the avenue. Where once there had been a Woolworth’s with a soda fountain, an Asian produce market, a hardware store, and a real non-chain department store, there were now a Saks and a bank—no, ten banks, on a shopping strip of about half a mile in length. There was no hardware store anymore, only Restoration Hardware, which was no hardware store at all. On a street where once you could get groceries, home supplies, and shoes at a reasonable price, there were now boutiques with clothes only celebrities, sports figures, and hedge fund families could afford. The avenue offered nothing to sustain life, unless you could eat Tiffany jewelry or light your home with a Baccarat crystal lamp for a mere two grand.
Back in the 1980s, Waterton Avenue was a reasonable place to shop. There had always been wealthy people, but they were out of sight on their estates. Now it was the poor who were out of sight. The Escalades and Suburbans ruled, driven by stay-at-home moms who shopped in yoga clothes and pushed double-wide strollers down the street, daring anyone to get in their way.
Tilda wasn’t sure about her beloved town anymore. She had to admit to being less tolerant of what she thought to be the folly around her, especially now, without Harold. Since his death, she could barely stand what she observed in her neighborhood. Just last week, she had reached her limit. She had pulled her Subaru into a parking space clearly marked for small cars only. She deposited her quarter for twenty minutes of parking time and walked to the cleaners to drop off a few things. By the time she returned, a huge Navigator had managed to maneuver itself right next to her car—not too successfully—into a spot meant for a compact, had hit the meter next to hers on the shared metal post, and then narrowly avoided lopping off the side-view mirror on Tilda’s appropriately small car. The mammoth car in question was of course over the line, it being a habit of these monstrosities to always take up two spaces because of their unseemly girth. It was clear Tilda couldn’t possibly get into her car. There was no room to even open the door. She thought about trying to squeeze in on the other side and climb over the gearshift to make it into the driver’s seat, but the car on her passenger side was pretty close, too. She might be able to make it, but her lumbar spine began to twitch at the thought of it.
Tilda looked around, trying to spy the social miscreant who could do such a thing and then wander off to enjoy the day—or at least the next two hours. No luck. She looked for the parking-ticket guy. No luck. A cop? No luck. So she pulled the writing pad she always carried with her out of her bag and wrote: Dear driver, please note that you have made it impossible for me to get into my car. Please learn how to properly park your car, which technically is not a car, but a truck masquerading as one. And do you really need a vehicle of this size? Many generations before you have managed to raise kids, brave the elements, get to work, and shop, etc., in actual cars.
Writing the note had taken the edge off her anger. And it was anger. Her generation had worked and raised kids, had done it all—and with cars that were fuel-efficient. Why had this generation forgotten so much? She wished she could go home and tell Harold. They would’ve talked about her experience, been mildly incensed, and then they would’ve found the humor in Tilda’s reaction, in that note. They would’ve laughed together until the anger vanished.
She put another quarter into her side of the double-headed meter, which miraculously was still working, and went to CVS to use her 25 percent discount coupon on a few household items.
“You should eat something, Mom,” Laura said, watching her mother crumble the bun on her plate. “Aren’t you going to at least taste your soup?”
“Hmm?” answered Tilda, remembering the ride home that day, after she had returned to see the monster car gone and her own car unscathed, with plenty of room for her to open the door and drive away. “Yes, of course, I was just . . .”
“Just gazing off into space?” offered Laura.
“No, just thinking.”
“You do that a lot these days, gaze off and go someplace in your mind. I feel like you’re not really here,” said Laura.
Tilda saw the concern in her daughter’s face, but instead of feeling the need to reassure her, Tilda sighed and looked down.
“I need to talk to you, Mom, but I don’t know if this is a good time. Do you want to talk to me?”
Tilda pulled herself up in the green leatherette seat that had been part of the diner’s decor for as long as she could remember. She looked into Laura’s brown eyes, just like Harold’s, soulful and kind. She folded her hands on the table and resolved to give Laura her attention.
“What’s on your mind?”
“Okay,” said Laura, pushing back her brown hair, where a few strands of silver were beginning to shine through. “I don’t want to upset you, just promise you’ll hear me out.”
“What is this all about, Laura? I’m fine. Why are you so focused on me these days?” Tilda felt her resolve begin to fade as her heart started to beat a little faster.
Laura leaned in over the table and spoke softly. “Please don’t get annoyed. I’m beginning to think you do it on purpose so I’ll stop, and then we never get to talk.”
Tilda took in a breath and said, “Okay, I’ll try, I promise, but you have to know I’m all right. It’s just August. It’s only been four months.”
“I know, I know, but even before Dad, the house was getting to be too much . . .”
“Oh, Laura, this isn’t where this is going, is it? Honey, please. You know I love that house. Now more than ever, I could never leave it.”
Laura’s eyes filled with tears, and she fumbled in her bag, looking for a tissue.
Tilda paused and looked at her daughter. She remembered the time in the school auditorium when Laura, who was ten, stood in front of the audience and forgot all the lines of “Paul Revere’s Ride” she was supposed to recite. After a few painful seconds that seemed like hours, Laura hung her head without saying a word and then dove her hands into her pockets, looking for the tissue her mother always made her carry.
A sensitive child, and a sensitive adult, she did manage to be very efficient and productive, and to be a good mother in her own right. Just too hovering at times, as a mother and as a daughter. That was it, not so much a helicopter parent (or daughter) as a hovercraft. Tilda smiled to herself at the thought of it. She remembered reading somewhere that the hovercraft’s design, enabling travel over land and water and ice, made it most useful in missions of search and rescue—and here was Laura, seated across from her, on a rescue mission.
Now it was Tilda who leaned in over the table. “Honey, it’s okay, really. Look, I’m eating my soup.” Tilda picked up her spoon and took a big dramatic slurp, the smell of chicken and ore
gano alone whetting her appetite. Tilda’s noisy slurp made Laura laugh—a response Tilda had learned to extract from her daughter over the years during hard times.
As Laura put her tissue away, Tilda took the lead.
“What if we made a deal? What if you gave me a year to get back on my feet? You know, that year of getting to acceptance. Isn’t that what they say, that you need to go through the five stages of grief? Then we’ll talk about what to do with the house and with me.” Tilda wasn’t being entirely forthright with her daughter. She had spontaneously devised a tactic to buy herself some time, to get out from under Laura’s hovering. Tilda, in fact, did not expect her grief to be handled so tidily. She expected to mourn for the rest of her life, but Laura certainly didn’t need to be in on her true feelings on the matter.
Laura was quiet, pondering. For a minute Tilda was afraid she was about to start sniffling again.
“Do you remember the last night of shiva?” Laura asked.
“Yes,” answered Tilda, wondering where Laura was going now. The whole shiva experience had been, in the opinion of the family (that is, Tilda, Mark, and Tilly) a bit forced. All Tilda remembered definitely about that period was how insistent Laura had been about it. “We need to sit shiva, and not just one or two days. The whole seven. For Dad.”
Mark had receded into the background on this, as with all things pertaining to Laura’s need to uphold the rituals belonging to the Jewish side of her family. Not being Jewish himself, and knowing Laura’s need to express her own Jewishness, however untraditional her Jewish background and conversion had been, he knew better than to offer any alternative. Tilly, also not Jewish (although Laura hadn’t given up hope that maybe one day . . .), just rolled her eyes, but since she was a teenager and did this about most things, her parents ignored her. Tilda tried to remind Laura that her father had not been a practicing Jew since they’d moved to Connecticut. Tilda also threw in that she was not sure how she felt about seven days of mourning in front of a bunch of people she probably didn’t even know that well—and that being the widow gave her more than a little voice in the matter—even if the weeklong occasion would be at Laura’s home and not her own.
Laura had finally won the day, however, by bringing up her father’s ties to his past, adding that while he had given up on religion after his mother’s death, his cultural roots were deep. Tilda knew this was true. Harold was full of stories about his parents, whose families came from Lisbon. “My family, on both sides, can trace our roots in Portugal back for centuries,” he told Laura. “And I can tell you—they didn’t have it so easy. During the war, my parents were here, but we had relatives still in Portugal, under Salazar, and he may have offered a safe haven against Hitler, but he was no friend of the Jews. He just wasn’t interested in world domination.”
Laura used to sit for hours, listening to her father’s stories of the old country, more history lessons than true family history, always sprinkled with tales of forbidden Jewishness dating back centuries, of hidden identities, of lighting Shabbat candles in darkened rooms and praying over unleavened bread in hushed voices.
One day, when Laura was twelve, she came home from her Catholic elementary school and asked her parents, quite ceremoniously, to meet her in the living room. Once they were seated before her, she announced, “Mom, Dad—I’ve decided to become a bat mitzvah.”
Tilda had been mystified by the request, but Harold’s smile gave away his pride. He may have given up on his religion, but his daughter, for reasons yet unknown, had found it. He quizzed her to be sure she knew what she was asking. “You want to formally enter the Jewish faith, to become a member of the Jewish community, on your thirteenth birthday. Is that right?”
It was clear she had given it thought. When Harold asked her why, she answered that it was her heritage, and she felt a need to claim it. Parental discussions followed behind closed bedroom doors, beginning with the most obvious questions: “What is this all about?” and “Why now?”
But Tilda knew why. It was because of Harold and his stories. Later she’d tell him, “If I had been telling her stories of my Italian grandparents and the history of their suffering, she’d have wanted to be a nun.” And yet, there was no argument, never any doubt, really. If Laura was serious (and apparently she was), if she wanted to be Jewish, then she would be. While supportive, neither Tilda nor Harold was interested in taking up the cause, meaning Harold didn’t renew his faith and once again Tilda didn’t convert. What they did do, however, was find a rabbinical student, Amy Geller, who for a period of one year took Laura through her studies and helped her prepare her haftarah. Laura never waivered. Her commitment was a marvel to her parents.
Without joining a temple, the family held the service and the party at the local veterans’ hall, which was much nicer than anyone expected, the caterer’s plants and decorations making all the difference. The whole affair—friends and Laura’s entire seventh-grade class—was a success. On Monday morning, Laura’s teacher, Sister Sophie from France, led a discussion on the meaning of becoming a bat mitzvah.
Although the school’s policy clearly stated the school provided an education “for students of all faiths,” Tilda and Harold weren’t so sure. But the principal, Mother Marie Clare, ensured them that Laura, a fine student, was welcome to complete her education at St. Madeleine’s. And so she did, with honors.
She continued to practice her Judaism, and Harold finally joined the small temple in Water Haven, which held services in the Congregational church, so Laura could be a member in good standing for High Holiday services. But Harold never reaffirmed his faith, although he did continue to regale Laura with tales of his family’s struggles in Portugal.
And so in the days following his death, to honor her father, Laura made sure all the principles of sitting shiva were upheld. She prepared her house for guests to arrive, so that after the service, all she had to do was turn on the coffeemaker and uncover the dishes. Before the first guest had arrived, she had placed a bowl of water and white paper guest towels on a table by the door. Inside on the mantle she lit the Yahrzeit candle. While she didn’t hold the family to it, she herself didn’t bathe, she covered mirrors, and she wore a torn piece of black ribbon on her dark dresses for a week. She let Mark know—as well as the rest of the family, albeit rather unnecessarily, Tilda thought—that in no uncertain terms, there would be no sex during that time, either.
All this Mark endured and Tilda, too. She and Mark and Tilly had forged a bond during this time. Being a proudly agnostic trio, they took comfort in their mild amusement while, at the same time, going along with Laura’s wishes. At the end of the week, though, after the last guest had left, Tilda hugged Laura. “Thank you,” she said to her daughter. “I know I wasn’t for it, and maybe I was a little unenthusiastic . . .” Laura then had put up her hand to stop her. “No, dear, let me finish,” Tilda insisted. “It was, the whole thing, really, it was a big comfort. I mean it. Your father would have been proud.” She had meant it. During that week, Laura’s house had smelled of coffee and cookies, of brisket and cabbage, and of wax burning. There was something primal, archetypal about the ritual that went beyond the brain, directly to the heart, Tilda now remembered.
“Mom, shiva, remember? The last night?”
“Yes, what about it?” Tilda said, pulling herself back into the present.
Laura looked at her mother.
“I told you then that the period of mourning is called shneim asar chodesh, when a child mourns the death of a parent, for twelve months. Laura drew her eyebrows together, deep in thought. “I’ve been wrong about all of this.”
“All of what?” asked Tilda, almost afraid of what she might be unleashing by the question, a long introspective soliloquy, something Laura was prone to in her quest always to be a better person.
“This morning on the phone you asked if I missed Dad. I didn’t answer. I didn’t think I could, really. I think I’ve been afraid to let go, to admit . . .”
Tilda reached for a tissue and handed it to Laura. It was a kind gesture, but oh how Tilda did not want to proceed with this line of thought. On the one hand it appeared that Laura was on the verge of finally expressing her grief—a good thing—but Laura’s grief could prove overwhelming, for her and for Tilda, who struggled mightily every day for control over it, for a semblance of normalcy.
Laura began to sob quietly. She stopped and tried to talk, several times, before she was able to continue.
“I miss him every day, a lot, so I try not to think about it. I just get busy. The busier the better, because if I think about it, I can’t stand it. I can’t understand it. It wasn’t supposed to happen. He wasn’t sick; he wasn’t old. He wasn’t supposed to die.”
The waitress came over and began to clear the table. “Is everything okay?” she asked. “Can I get you anything?”
“It’s okay, really. We’ll just be a few minutes,” said Tilda.
“No worries. Take your time.” The waitress brought over a water pitcher, refilled their glasses, and left them alone.
“I know, I know,” said Tilda, in an effort to comfort her daughter. “I try not to think about it either. So unfair, so fucking unfair.”
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