The Bookseller's Sonnets

by Andi Rosenthal

  From my bag, I heard my cell phone ring.

  Michael said, “Do you want me to answer that?”

  I shook my head. “It might be my mother. She was trying to get through earlier.” Then I stood and said to the others, “Will you excuse me for a moment?”

  I picked up the phone. The display said “unknown ID.” I pressed the talk button as I crossed to the other side of the room. “Hello?”

  “Jill? It’s Robert.”

  “Hi,” I said. I could barely get the one syllable out.

  “How is she?”

  “Not so good,” I said, in a low voice. I repeated the doctor’s words almost mechanically. “It’s only a matter of a couple of hours, at this point.”

  There was silence at the other end of the line. “I’m so sorry, Jill,” he said quietly. It occurred to me, all at once, that this was something I was going to have to get used to hearing.

  “So I won’t be in tomorrow,” I said finally.

  “Not a problem. It’s under control,” he said. “I’ll let Larry know.”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “And also,” he said, “I thought you would want to know that Aviva had a girl.”

  “She did?” I could feel more tears coming into my eyes. “That’s great.”

  “They’re both doing fine,” Robert said. “The baby weighs seven pounds, five ounces. No name yet,” he said, “not until the eighth day.”

  “Right,” I said, aware that I could barely contain the emotion in my voice. “I forgot about that tradition.”

  “Listen, I don’t want to keep you. You have my cell phone, so let me know what’s going on.” I could sense that he was choosing his words with some care. “I know there are people here who will want to know.”

  I swallowed again. “I’ll do that, Robert. And thanks again.”

  “Take care, Jill.”

  “You, too. Bye.”

  I pressed the End button and went back to where Michael and Mitzi and Beth sat, talking a little to one another.

  “Aviva had a girl,” I told Michael. And then, by way of explanation, I said to the others, “She’s one of my friends at work. She went into labor this morning at the office.”

  Mitzi smiled tiredly. “That’s good news.”

  I nodded mutely.

  “And it makes perfect sense,” Beth added. “Not that it’s any comfort, but there’s a midrash, a tale told by the sages, that says on the day Rabbi Akiba died, Rabbi Judah the Prince was born. And on the day Rabbi Judah died, Rav was born. The point is,” she smiled sadly, “that God never takes a righteous soul from the earth until another one is born to replace her.”

  The nurse knocked on the door. “You can go in and see her now,” she nodded at me. “Only one or two at a time.”

  “Do you want me to go with you?” Beth asked, in a soft voice. “I’d be honored to say some prayers for her.”

  “It’s what she would want,” Mitzi said.

  I nodded. “Please.”

  “Why don’t I go in with you now?” Beth said, “and then I’ll come back and send Michael in to you.”

  I looked at him. “Would that be all right?”

  “Of course,” he said. “I’ll stay here and keep Mitzi company.”

  Beth took a small book with Hebrew lettering on the cover from her bag, and I watched as she pinned a black silk yarmulke to her beautiful hair.

  “Are you ready?” she asked.

  I nodded again, unable to speak. She gently took my arm and led me out of the room. She opened the door of the ICU, and I stepped over the threshold. Together, we walked down the long line of cubicles, each with its own sound of machines that were keeping people alive.

  “She’s in number five,” the nurse said.

  We approached the bed. I felt one of Beth’s hands reach for mine, and together we walked towards my grandmother, who lay in a hospital gown, with a breathing tube stretching from her mouth to the machine next to her bed. Another tube drained blood from her brain. And another was hooked up to an IV in her arm.

  Her eyes were closed. There was only the quiet beeping of the respirator, and the shallow sound of her mechanized breaths.

  “She looks very peaceful,” Beth whispered softly, as she let go of my hand. I looked at my grandmother’s face. Beth was right; she looked as if she were asleep.

  She opened the prayerbook. “May I say the final confession?”

  “Please,” I managed to say again.

  In a quiet, reverent voice, she began to speak:

  Compassionate God, God of my fathers and mothers

  God of my ancestors, whose souls have already returned to You

  May my prayer reach You in Your infinite mercy

  For as You turned Naomi’s ear to Ruth’s pleas, I entreat You: hear my

  prayer.

  I ask of You, Holy One, please forgive me for the sins

  That I sinned before You throughout the days of my life.

  I beg You to consider the mitzvot that outshone my evil deeds.

  I implore You to understand the things that I have done.

  Holy One, my pain and suffering may be sufficient atonement.

  But I ask You instead to take my light, the soul that You granted to me

  in love

  As expiation for the wrongs that I have committed.

  In Your wisdom, know of my good intentions and my good deeds,

  Remember that I tried to bring Your infinite light to this world.

  For as You have understood and pardoned the mistakes

  And misdeeds of your children, in generations past

  May it be Your will, Adonai, my God and God of those I have loved

  That I may be pardoned and forgiven.

  God of Compassion, liberate me from the darkness of my sin,

  Healer of Souls, free me from my illness and suffering.

  Source of Blessing, grant a complete healing

  To me and to all those who are not fully whole.

  I make this accounting before You, Adonai my God,

  God of my mothers and fathers,

  For I know my life and my death are in Your hands.

  May a complete healing from my sin and suffering be Your will.

  But if my death be Your will, at this time and in this season,

  In Your infinite Love, let both my death and my life atone for all my

  wrongdoing.

  Grant me protection and shelter beneath the wings of Your divine

  presence.

  Grant my soul a share in the world to come.

  O Compassionate, Merciful, Holy One of Blessing:

  Bless my dear ones, those who remain among Your living

  With whose light my soul is illuminated,

  In whose eyes and hearts and memories shall my light continue to live,

  As into Your eternity I commit my soul.

  For You have forgiven me, and pardoned me,

  And granted me atonement, O God of Infinite Light.

  Shema Yisrael, Adonai Eloheinu Adonai Echad.

  Hear O Israel, The Lord our God, The Lord is One.

  Adonai Hu Ha’Elohim. Adonai Hu Ha’Elohim.

  Adonai is God. Adonai is God.

  She closed the book. We stood together for a few moments in silence, listening to the sound of the machines breathing for my grandmother. Then Beth touched my arm.

  “I’ll send Michael in to you,” she said. “So you can spend a couple of minutes alone with your grandmother.”

  I didn’t say anything, knowing that Beth understood. She quietly slipped past me, and walked back down the corridor. I could hear the sound of her black shoes on the white linoleum floor.

  I looked at my grandmother again, at her hands, her face, her arms, torn between wanting to remember her, and not wanting to remember her like this.

  Her skin looked tired and papery, and yet, the numbers on her arm looked sharp and unfaded, as if they had been put there just days before. I took one of her
small hands in my own. It shocked me that her hand still felt warm. It was as if I could still feel life in her hands, as if she were about to grasp my hand happily in hers as she always did when I saw her.

  I wanted tears to come; I wanted to say something meaningful to her. More than that, I wanted her to open her eyes. I wanted to hear her say one last thing to me. I wanted her to die the way people die in movies, where they come back for one moment, just long enough to impart the moral of the story, and then they slip away, peacefully, as the camera cuts away to a glorious image of the sky.

  I leaned over to kiss her cheek. I didn’t know what to say, so I didn’t say anything at all. I simply kissed her goodbye, and as I did, I noticed that there was still a scent of coffee in her hair.

  I heard the familiar sound of Michael’s footsteps as he approached. He didn’t rush to take me in his arms the way someone would in a movie. Instead, he came to stand at my side. We didn’t speak. I watched him as he looked at her with tenderness in his eyes. After a moment he placed his hand on hers.

  I put my arm around him. Up until that moment, I had thought of this as my loss only. And I realized, as I brushed my face against his shoulder, that it was his loss, too, because they had never gotten to know one another. I thought about the hate and the history that had been a barrier between them. This was the only contact they would ever have.

  We stood together for another couple of minutes, at her bedside, not speaking. Then he put his arm around me. We held each other as we watched her breathe, watched as the numbers on the monitors continued their slow descent. After a while, he took my hand and led me out of the room.

  24

  She died. At 2:00 in the morning, long after Beth left, long after Michael put Mitzi in a cab for home, and long after he had fallen asleep in the waiting room, the doctor came in to tell us that her blood pressure had finally dropped to the point where her heart stopped functioning.

  The doctor held my hand when he told me. Then he left me and Michael alone for a few minutes, presumably so we could be alone in that first outpouring of grief. But the outpouring never came. Michael held me close, and I could feel his body with all of his life still surging through it, and as he held me, I wanted to close my eyes and feel something, anything. Instead, my eyes fell on the upholstery of the couch we had been sitting on for more than eleven hours, and I found myself wondering why I was looking at the pattern of the green and purple fabric, studying it as intensely as if I would be tested on it later.

  I waited for tears, for grief, for any kind of emotion at all, but I felt frozen, as if I were standing on a stone whose cold, hard surface had suddenly taken over my body, numbing me, shielding me. We stood, holding one another for a couple of minutes, and then the doctor, discreetly, came back into the waiting room.

  He asked us if we knew of the funeral home where we wanted her to go. We did; Mitzi had tearfully called my cell phone earlier in the night with the all of phone numbers for the rabbi, the temple, and the funeral home most frequently used by their congregation. The doctor told me someone would need to make the call, to let them know that my grandmother’s body was being released to them.

  One of the nurses offered to help, but ultimately, Michael made the call, in a low voice, at the other side of the room, while I asked the doctor if my mother could call him when she arrived. I knew that she would want to hear from him exactly what had happened and I wasn’t sure that I could explain it to her in a way that she would accept.

  The doctor gave me his card, and told me in a kind voice that she could call him anytime. After that, there didn’t seem to be anything else to say, so we stood up at the same time and shook hands. I was reminded of work, of how I was not supposed to linger at that final moment of an artifact donation, and I saw traces of my own professional training in his demeanor.

  I thanked him for caring for my grandmother, and he nodded briefly, as if he wished it could have turned out differently. Then he turned and walked back into the ICU. Michael finished talking to the funeral home, and we picked up our coats and bags and walked towards the elevator in silence. The elevator took us back down to the main floor, and we walked down the long white corridor and through the glass doors, out into the night.

  Our clock radio had gone off at the usual time, six o’clock. Michael reached out a hand to silence it. I had remained awake, watching the sky change from black to gray to pink to blue, hearing the sounds of the city as it awakened.

  I finally heard from my parents during a layover in London, at about four in the morning. I gave them the news, and telling them was as terrible as I had feared it would be.

  My mother said they would take a cab from the airport and meet me at my grandmother’s apartment. I told my mother, a little tentatively, that Michael would be with me. Thankfully, she didn’t object, but she didn’t sound happy about it, either.

  I woke him at around eight. I was already dressed, and had made coffee. I brought it in to him and watched as he sat up in our bed and drank it. He ran a hand through his tousled hair and yawned. I sat on the edge of the bed next to him.

  “How are you doing?” he finally asked.

  I shrugged. “I didn’t sleep.”

  “Why didn’t you wake me up?”

  “No need,” I said. “I’m glad you were able to sleep.” I put my hand over his. “And I’m glad you were there with me last night.”

  He leaned over and kissed me. “I know.”

  We didn’t say anything for a moment. Michael drank his coffee. “My parents called,” I told him.

  “So your mom knows? You told her?”

  I nodded.

  “I’m sorry. That must have been really hard,” he said sympathetically.

  “Yeah. It was.” I swallowed. “We’re meeting them up at Omi’s apartment later on. They’re going there straight from the airport. I think they’re planning on staying there.”

  “That makes sense,” Michael said. “But are you sure you’re okay with me going up there with you? I was thinking that you might want some time with them on your own.”

  I smiled at him. “The only thing I’m sure of is that I want you with me. I already told my mother that you’d be coming up with me.”

  “What did she say?” he asked cautiously.

  “Not a lot,” I told him. “But I don’t think she was surprised.”

  “Are you OK with that?”

  “We’ve been through enough in the past twenty-four hours,” I said. “They can think what they want.” I shrugged. “Whatever.”

  We looked at one another, and I watched him smile tiredly.

  “What time do you want to head up there?”

  I looked at the clock. “Soon,” I said. “Mitzi said she’d be there to let us in. And then she was going to the hardware store to get some keys made for us and for my parents.”

  “You spoke with her already?”

  “Don’t be silly.” I grinned at him. “I emailed her this morning at six thirty. She gave me her email address last night. And she wrote right back to me.”

  He chuckled. “She’s amazing. Tech savvy at eighty-five.”

  “These women are full of surprises,” I said. “I hope I’m just the same at their age.”

  Mitzi let us in to the apartment and handed me the keys. “I have another set for your parents. This way, you can all come and go as you need to,” she said.

  “That’s great. I really appreciate it,” I told her. “And I think my parents are planning on staying here, so don’t be alarmed if there are people coming and going for the next few days.”

  “Do you know if they’re planning to sit shivah?” she asked. “Because we could do that here. All of your grandmother’s friends live in the neighborhood, so it’s good for them to have someplace close by. And then you don’t have to have it at your house.”

  “We wouldn’t mind,” I said.

  Michael nodded his agreement before he said the obvious. “But your mother might.”

 
; “Well, that’s for you to figure out. But it can be tough, at a time like this, having people you don’t know coming to your house. At least, here is familiar, for them and for you. And besides, you know, you don’t have to sit for the whole seven days. Nowadays people just sit for two or three. You can talk with Rabbi Beth about it.”

  “We will,” I said. “I don’t want to make any plans until my parents get here. I feel like my mother should be the one to decide.” I tried my best to sound practical and efficient. “The funeral home said that they needed us to bring them some clothes. So we need to choose what she’ll be buried in.”

  “You know where she keeps her clothes,” Mitzi pointed to the bedroom.

  “Sure, but do you know if she had a favorite article of clothing? Anything she felt strongly about?”

  Mitzi shook her head. “Not really. You know, all she really cared about was the long sleeves. She was funny about that number on her arm. And you know, a lot of the elderly people in this neighborhood have them. Me, I was one of the lucky ones, being born in this country. I would tell Anna, listen, why do you let yourself get overheated in the summer. It’s nothing we haven’t seen before. But she was very stubborn about it. Well, you know. I thought it was like she wanted to pretend that it never happened.”

  “Maybe,” I said. “But I’ve known a lot of survivors who feel the same way.”

  “That’s right. You work at the museum. I keep telling myself that I need to get down there one of these days.”

  I smiled. “If only I had a nickel for every person who said that to me.”

  “You really should go,” Michael said. “It’s a great place. Even for someone like me, who isn’t Jewish. I’ve learned a lot from visiting there with Jill.”

  Mitzi patted his arm. “So you go ahead, pick out a nice outfit. She liked blue. You’ll find a lot of blue in there, I’m sure.”

  “We will,” I said. “And if it’s okay, I’ll knock on your door when I’ve picked a few things out, if you’d like to help me choose.”

  “I’d be honored,” Mitzi said. “Now let me leave before I get too emotional.”