The Family Markowitz

by Allegra Goodman

  “I think peach is a hard color,” Estelle is saying. “It’s a hard color to find. You know, a pink is one thing. A pink looks lovely on just about everyone. Peach is a hard color to wear. When Mommy and Daddy got married, we had a terrible time with the color because the temple was maroon. There was a terrible maroon carpet in the sanctuary, and the social hall was maroon as well. There was maroon-flocked wallpaper. Remember, honey?” she asks Sol. He nods. “Now it’s a rust color. Why it’s rust, I don’t know. But we ended up having the maids in pink because that was about all we could do. And in the pictures it looked beautiful.”

  “It photographed very well,” Sol says.

  “I’ll have to show you the pictures,” Estelle tells Miriam. “The whole family was there and such dear, dear friends. God willing, they’ll be at your wedding, too.”

  “No, I don’t think so,” says Ed. “We’re just having the immediate family. We’re only having one hundred people.”

  Estelle smiles. “I don’t think you can keep a wedding to one hundred people.”

  “Why not?” Ed asks.

  Sarah clears the fish plates nervously. She hates it when Ed takes this tone of voice with her parents.

  “Well, I mean, not without excluding,” Estelle says. “And at a wedding you don’t want to exclude—”

  “I don’t think it’s incumbent on us to invite everyone we know to Miriam’s wedding,” Ed says crisply. Sarah puts her hand on his shoulder. “It’s not even necessary to invite everyone you know.”

  Estelle raises her eyebrows, and Sarah hopes silently that her mother will not whip out the invitation list she’s written up. The list with forty-two names that, mercifully, Ed has not yet seen.

  “I’m not inviting everyone I know,” Estelle says.

  “Grandma,” Miriam says, looking up. “Are you inviting people to my wedding?”

  “Of course not,” says Estelle. “But I’ve told my cousins about it and my dear friends. You know, some of them were at your parents’ wedding. The Magids. The Rothmans.”

  “Whoa, whoa, wait a second,” says Ed. “We aren’t going to revive the guest list from our wedding thirty years ago. I think we need to define our terms here and straighten out what we mean by immediate family.”

  “I’ll define for you,” Estelle says, “what I mean by the family. These are the people who knew us when we lived above the bakery. It wasn’t just at your wedding. They were at our wedding before the war. We grew up with them. We’ve got them in the home movies, and you can see them all forty-five years ago—fifty years ago! You can go in the den and watch—we’ve got all the movies on videotape now. You can see them at Sarah’s first birthday party. We lived within blocks; and when we moved out to the Island and left the bakery, they moved too. I still talk to Trudy Rothman every day. Who has friends like that? We used to walk over. Years ago in the basement we hired a dancing teacher, and we used to take dancing lessons together. Fox trot, cha-cha, tango. We went to temple with them. We celebrated such times! I think you don’t see the bonds, because you kids are scattered. We left Bensonhurst together and we came out to the Island together. We’ve lived here since fifty-four in this house. We saw this house go up, and their houses were going up, too. We went through it together, coming into the wide-open spaces, having a garden, trees, and parks. We see them all the time. In the winters we meet them down in Florida; we go to their grandchildren’s weddings—”

  “But I’m paying for this wedding,” Ed says.

  At that Estelle leaves the table and goes into the kitchen. Sarah glares at Ed.

  “Dad,” Avi groans. “Now look what you did.” He whispers to Amy, “I warned you my family is weird.”

  “I’m really hungry,” Ben says. “Can we have the turkey, Grandma? Seriously, all I’ve had to eat today was a Snickers bar.”

  In silence Estelle returns from the kitchen carrying the turkey. In silence she hands it to Sol to carve up. She passes the platter around the table. Only slowly does the conversation sputter to life. Estelle talks along with the rest, but she doesn’t speak to Ed. She won’t even look at him.

  —

  Ed lies on his back in the trundle bed next to Sarah. She is lying on the other bed staring at the ceiling. Every time either of them moves an inch, the bed creaks. Ed has never heard such loud creaking; the beds seem to moan and cry out in the night.

  “The point? The point is this,” Sarah tells him, “it was neither the time nor the place to go over the guest list.”

  “Your mother was the one who brought it up!” Ed exclaims.

  “And you were the one who started in on her.”

  “Sarah, what was I supposed to say—Thank you for completely disregarding what we explicitly told you. Yes, you can invite everyone you know to your granddaughter’s wedding. I’m not going to get steamrollered into this—that’s what she was trying to do, manipulate this seder into an opportunity to get exactly who she wants, how many she wants, with no discussion whatsoever.”

  “The discussion does not have to dominate this holiday,” Sarah says.

  “You let these things go and she’ll get out of control. She’ll go from giving us a few addresses to inviting twenty, thirty people. Fifty people.”

  “She’s not going to do that.”

  “She knows hundreds of people. How many people were at our wedding? Two hundred? Three hundred?”

  “Oh, stop. We’re mailing all the invitations ourselves from D.C.”

  “Fine.”

  “So don’t be pigheaded about it,” Sarah says.

  “Pigheaded? Is that what you said?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s not fair. You don’t want these people at the wedding any more than I do—”

  “Ed, there are ways to explain that, there are tactful ways. You have absolutely no concept—”

  “I am tactful. I am a very tactful person. But there are times when I’m provoked.”

  “What you said about paying for the wedding was completely uncalled for.”

  “But it was true!” Ed cries out, and his bed moans under him as if it feels the weight of his aggravation.

  “Sh,” Sarah hisses.

  “I don’t know what you want from me.”

  “I want you to apologize to my mother and try to salvage this holiday for the rest of us,” she says tersely.

  “I’m not going to apologize to that woman,” Ed mutters. Sarah doesn’t answer him. “What?” he asks into the night. His voice sounds to his ears not just defensive but wronged, deserving of sympathy. “Sarah?”

  “I have nothing more to say to you,” she says.

  “Sarah, she is being completely unreasonable.”

  “Oh, stop it.”

  “I’m not going to grovel in front of someone intent on sabotaging this wedding.”

  Sarah doesn’t answer.

  —

  The next day Ed wakes up with a sharp pain in his left shoulder. It is five-nineteen in the morning, and everyone else is sleeping—except Estelle. He can hear her moving around in the house adjusting things, flipping light switches, twitching lamp shades, tweaking pillows. He lies in bed and doesn’t know which is worse, his shoulder or those fussy little noises. They grate on him like the rattling of cellophane paper. When at last he struggles out of the sagging trundle bed, he runs to the shower and blasts hot water on his head. He takes an inordinately long shower. He is probably using up all the hot water. He imagines Estelle pacing around outside wondering how in the world anyone can stand in the shower an hour, an hour and fifteen minutes. She is worried about wasting water, frustrated that the door is locked, and she cannot get in to straighten the toothbrushes. The fantasy warms him. It soothes his muscles. But minutes after he gets out, it wears off.

  By the time the children are up, it has become a muggy, sodden spring day. Yehudit sleeps off her cold medicine, Ben watches television in the den with Sol, and Miriam shuts herself up in her room in disgust because watching TV violates the ho
liday. Avi goes out with Amy for a walk. They leave right after lunch and are gone for hours. Where could they be for three hours in West Hempstead? Are they stopping at every duck pond? Browsing in every strip mall? It’s a long, empty day. The one good thing is that Sarah isn’t angry at him anymore. She massages his stiff shoulder. “These beds have to go,” she says. “They’re thirty years old.”

  “It would probably be more comfortable to lie on the floor,” Ed says. He watches Estelle as she darts in and out of the kitchen setting the table for the second seder. “You notice she still isn’t speaking to me.”

  “Well,” Sarah says, “what do you expect?” But she says it sympathetically. “We have to call your mother,” she reminds him.

  “Yeah, I suppose so.” Ed heaves a sigh. “Get the kids. Make them talk to her.”

  “Hey, Grandma,” says Ben when they get him on the phone. “What’s up? Oh yeah? It’s dull here, too. No, we aren’t doing anything. Just sitting around. No, Avi’s got his girlfriend here, so they went out. Yeah, Amy. I don’t know. Don’t ask me. Miriam’s here, too. Yup. What? Everybody’s like dealing with who’s going to come to her wedding. Who, Grandma E? Oh, she’s fine. I think she’s kind of pissed at Dad, though.”

  Ed takes the phone out of Ben’s hands.

  “Kind of what?” Rose is asking.

  “Hello, Ma?” Ed carries the cordless phone into the bedroom and sits at the vanity table. As he talks, he can see himself from three angles in the triptych mirror, each one worse than the next. He sees the dome of his forehead with just a few strands of hair, his eyes tired, a little bloodshot even, the pink of his ears soft and fleshy. He looks terrible.

  “Ed,” his mother says, “Sarah told me you are excluding Estelle’s family from the wedding.”

  “Family? What family? These are Estelle’s friends.”

  “And what about Henny and Pauline? Should I disinvite them, too?”

  “Ma! You invited your neighbors?”

  “Of course! To my own granddaughter’s wedding? Of course I did.”

  “Ma,” Ed snaps. “As far as I’m concerned, the only invitations to this wedding are going to be the ones printed up and issued by me, from my house. This is Miriam’s wedding. For her. Not for you, not for Estelle. Not for anyone but the kids.”

  “You are wrong,” Rose says simply. Throughout the day these words ring in Ed’s ears. It is he who feels wronged. It’s not as if his mother or Sarah’s mother were contributing to the wedding in any way. They just make their demands. They aren’t doing anything.

  Miriam is sitting in the kitchen spreading whipped butter on a piece of matzo. Ed sits down next to her. “Where’s Grandma?” he asks.

  “She went out to get milk,” says Miriam, and then she bursts out, “Daddy, I don’t want all those people at the wedding.”

  “I know, sweetie.” It’s wonderful to hear Miriam appeal to him, to be able to sympathize with her as if she weren’t almost a doctor with severe theological opinions.

  “I don’t even know them,” Miriam says.

  “We don’t have to invite anyone you don’t want to invite,” Ed says firmly.

  “But I don’t want Grandma all mad at me at the wedding.” Her voice wavers. “I don’t know what to do.”

  “You don’t have to do anything,” Ed says. “You just relax.”

  “I think maybe we should just invite them,” Miriam says in a small voice.

  “Oy,” says Ed.

  “Or some of them,” she says.

  Someone rattles the back door, and they both jump. It’s just Sarah. “Let me give you some advice,” she says. “Invite these people, invite your mother’s people, and let that be an end to it. We don’t need this kind of tsuris.”

  “No!” Ed says.

  “I think she’s right,” says Miriam.

  He looks at her. “Would that make you feel better?” She nods, and he gets to give her a hug. “I don’t get to hug my Miriam anymore,” he tells Sarah.

  “I know,” she says. “That’s Grandma’s car. I’m going to tell her she can have the Magids.”

  “But you make it clear to her,” Ed starts.

  “Ed,” she says, “I’m not making anything clear to her.”

  —

  At the second seder, Estelle looks at everyone benignly from where she stands between the kitchen and the dining room. Sol makes jokes about weddings, and Avi gets carried away by the good feeling, puts his arm around Methodist Amy, and says, “Mom and Dad, I promise when I get married I’ll elope.” No one laughs at this.

  When it’s time for the four questions, Ed reads them himself. “ ‘Why is this night different from all other nights? On other nights we eat leavened bread. Why on this night do we eat matzo?’ Ben, could you put your feet on the floor?” When Ed is done with the four questions, he says, “So, essentially, each generation has an obligation to explain our exodus to the next generation—whether they like it or not.”

  —

  That night in the moaning trundle bed, Ed thinks about the question Miriam raised at the first seder. Why are there four of everything on Passover? Four children. Four questions. Four cups of wine. Lying there with his eyes closed, Ed sees these foursomes dancing in the air. He sees them as in the naive illustrations of his 1960s Haggadah. Four gold cups, the words of the four questions outlined in teal blue, four children’s faces. The faces of his own children, not as they are now but as they were nine, ten years ago. And then, as he falls asleep, a vivid dream flashes before him. Not the children, but Sarah’s parents, along with the Rothmans, the Seligs, the Magids, and all their friends, perhaps one thousand of them walking en masse like marathoners over the Verrazano Bridge. They are carrying suitcases and ironing boards, bridge tables, tennis rackets, and lawn chairs. They are driving their poodles before them as they march together. It is a procession both majestic and frightening. At Estelle’s feet, at the feet of her one thousand friends, the steel bridge trembles. Its long cables sway above the water. And as Ed watches, he feels the trembling, the pounding footsteps. It’s like an earthquake rattling, pounding, vibrating through his whole body. He wants to turn away; he wants to dismiss it, but still he feels it, unmistakable, not to be denied. The thundering of history.

  SARAH

  Sarah parks at the Jewish Community Center of Greater Washington, her large purse on the seat next to her, along with a bunch of marked assignments. She has written copiously on each one, making her comments in green because the students find red threatening. Sarah took a series of pedagogy workshops years ago, and she scrupulously applies the techniques she learned. Her students, all adults, always comment on her warmth and motherliness. They don’t realize that these are aspects of Sarah’s professionalism. They do not see the teacher within, by turns despairing and chortling.

  She takes out her compact and applies fresh lipstick, gathers all the papers and her purse, and strides into the building. She walks quickly, with a firm step; she has short gray hair, and eyes that had been blue when she was younger but are now hazel flecked with gold. The class is called Creative Midrash, and it combines creative writing with Bible study. Like the commentators in the compendium the Midrash, the students write their own interpretations, variations, and fantasies on Biblical themes. Sarah developed the concept herself, and she is happy with it because it solves so many problems at once. It forces the students to allude to subjects other than themselves, while at the same time they find it serves their need for therapy—because they quickly see in Scripture archetypes of their own problems. Above all, Creative Midrash forces the students to read, so they realize they aren’t the first to feel, think, or write anything down, for God’s sake. She always begins on the first day by playing a tape of Vaughan Williams’s Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis.

  It is five-thirty in the afternoon, and they are waiting for her, all ready to go, their notebooks out and turned to a fresh page, their pens poised. They love pens: fountain pens and three-color ballpoints,
even elaborate, hollow pens that store twelve different ink cartridges inside. “Fifteen minutes of free writing,” Sarah says, and they begin, covering their white notebook pages. She watches them. They range in age from thirty to somewhere near sixty, three women and one man. They are, in their own words, a mom, a retired homemaker, an actress, and a landscape-maintenance specialist. Sarah watches them all and thinks about dinner. She has a chicken thawed and the leftover sweet potatoes, but they need a vegetable. She’ll have to stop and pick up something on the way home. She has to get something else, too. They are out of something, but she can’t remember what. Something small, perishable. “All right,” she says. “Why don’t you finish up your thought.” She waits. “Then let’s begin. Debbie.” She turns to the actress. Debbie has long hair and pale-blue eyes. You could call her nose large. It is a strong nose, beautifully straight. Everyone, including Sarah, takes out a copy of the poem Debbie wrote last week, and Debbie shakes back her hair and intones:

  Eve

  flesh of your flesh

  bone of your bone

  wo man

  womb an

  I am Eve

  you are my day and night

  I am Eve the twilight

  in between

  sweet soft neither dark nor bright

  and how did I feel when

  I was born from your dream?

  no one was interested

  Tomatoes! The thought comes to Sarah unbidden. That’s what she has to pick up, because the ones in the fridge spoiled.

  from my birth I belonged to you

  you had named the beasts

  already you had named me

  you are the sun and I the moon

  you burn

  but I pull the waters after me

  I slip from your garden to consort

  with the enemy

  because I would rather be wild

  than beget your patriarchy

  I would rather cover you with shame

  you can have the cattle the foul of the air