The Family Tabor

by Cherise Wolas

  “Yes, please,” she says when a waiter asks, “Another glass?”

  Love. So much love. She has so much love for the Tabors, so much love for her children with Simon, Simon when she married him, and even though it’s not been full strength for a while, she does still love him. So how will she explain to him, to them all, that if Simon is serious about this Jewish business, she will divorce him.

  She can’t articulate her reasons for this vehement reaction she is having to the very notion of her husband’s desire. Her father-in-law has spent his life bringing Jewish families here—is being honored for it tonight. And how many stories has she heard about how often he has stepped in, as umpire, as referee, mediating between the older generations he brought over and their children, and then their children’s children, when the older generations want the younger—those too young to remember the old country and those born here—not to abandon the old ways. And yet she, raised with the old ways, cast them aside for love. She’s been a member of Harry’s tribe, and leaving Simon would be a willful discarding of that tribe, and the heritage braided into their beings, whether tightly or loosely it doesn’t much matter; she will be rejecting all of them, the ancestors and the survivors, too.

  She’s been a loving wife, daughter-in-law, and sister-in-law. She’s attended the Jewish holidays with a smile and interest and cheer. She’s learned to eat lox and red onions with bagels and cream cheese, to not mind the sweet kosher wine served at Passover. But does her prior acceptance now require she accommodate her husband’s potential religious conversion, from a lackadaisical Jew to a Jew who is all-in?

  She’s always thought herself free from prejudiced beliefs, considers herself open and accepting, so what should she make of her abject refusal to experience any of what Simon might be after? To not at all want him to check it out, try it on? What does this anger, this negation say about her? That she’s heartless, shallow, mean, unyielding, unmovable, or something worse? Or does it speak only to the inherent differences that have always existed between them, and not just regarding religion? Church is where she goes for herself, and she knows Simon was hurt by her secret, but it’s a private place where she examines the issues—hers, his, theirs, the present and the future—directly when she can, obliquely when she fears the answers she might be given.

  These Jews she loves subscribe to a compassionate God, while the God she grew up with was uncompromising, unyielding, wrathful, a hand lifted to heaven or aimed at hell. How can she tell them she prefers a bright line between right and wrong, the black and the white of rules, being cleansed of her sins, that their God is not for her, that she doesn’t want to be immersed in Jewish life, that her soul will not permit it.

  Their children can be part-time Jews with their father, she wouldn’t be able to stop that from happening, but they will not be Jews when they are with her. She doesn’t know if she would begin taking them to church, have them baptized as they weren’t at birth, set them on the path to their First Communions and confirmations, how she—they—would manage not merely shuttling the girls between separate houses, but between conflicting versions of God. All those peregrinations, too much to consider now, will eventually have to be considered.

  She looks up at the velvety blackness of the sky punctured by stars. Where does the rest of the moon go when only half of it is visible? Simon would know the answer to that, but it’s something she might have to learn on her own, when the question is one day posed to her by Lucy or Isabel.

  She feels a slight loss of balance, though she’s sitting. Is she tipsy? A little or a lot? Three champagnes shouldn’t be enough to do her in.

  There’s Harry, walking slowly. The vitality she associates with her father-in-law seems to have deserted him, a slump to his shoulders that always seem capable of supporting whatever might come. He is diminished on this of all nights, and the thought that he might be ill crosses her mind. She nearly raises her hand and calls out to him, but then doesn’t. She can’t tell where he’s headed, but she watches him until he passes out of her sight.

  Maybe it’s not so complicated after all. Maybe Simon’s desire to be a Jew is simply the opening she hadn’t known she was seeking. That’s not true. She’s been thinking about the kind of opening she needs to unwind, perhaps, what they have created. How easily she pictures herself alone with their daughters in the house she would arrange differently, breathing more easily in a space cleared of Simon’s intensity. And that thought, that she might breathe more freely without the husband she once adored, settles so strangely, so comfortably, into her heart.

  She must be tipsy, otherwise why are these tears trailing down her cheeks? This morning she would have jostled herself into a better humor, told herself she didn’t have anything really serious to cry about, and now there are so many reasons.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  ARE THEY REALLY AT the end of something here? Because Simon expressed for the very first time an interest in possibly being a true Jew? It can’t be that, he thinks. Of course not. And yet watching his wife from a distance, chatting, smiling, responding, sipping from her glass, greeting those who were strangers to her, at ease on her own, he’d been unable to guess what was in her mind. Once, they would have known how the other responded to conviviality, unhappiness, a crisis, but that’s no longer the truth. How strange that after years of being joined together in the exalted and the mundane, they might now be on opposite sides of the moon. One glance away, and Elena was gone when he looked again.

  He needs a break from this gaiety, this loneliness in a celebratory crowd. He wants space and quietude. He should wander downstairs and find someone out front who’s smoking a cigarette, ask to bum one and inhale the toxins into his fastidious body, now all sinew and muscle from his running and running and running, and exhaustion from his enduring failure to sleep. No, he shouldn’t do that, shouldn’t engage in a self-hating act; he should instead find his father.

  He has been rooted in one spot, but now moves, purposefully searching for that fine man who, tomorrow, will listen to Simon’s questions, and with his deep well of knowledge and experience, his intellect, his compassion and empathy, his ability to see past and future, will provide answers that will help Simon solve everything.

  He winds his way in front of the orchestra, through the many, many knots of gregarious people, across the dance floor, around all the tables, past his father’s photographed self, sidestepping the waiters pouring, but Harry is not to be found.

  Where is his father? Was he also in need of a little solitude, and is now beneath the entrance awning, taking a breather? That would be very unlike Harry, who is always the last man standing at a great party, and objectively, aside from Simon’s personal emotional conundrums, this is a great party so far.

  But there is his mother, corralled into a corner by a tall young man who is talking quickly, and she is nodding, holding her empty glass, quickly glancing around every few seconds as if she needs either more champagne or to be saved.

  “Could I ask for that bottle?” Simon says to a waiter, and when the icy bottle is in his hand, Simon makes a beeline to that far corner where Roma and the young man are standing.

  “Simon,” Roma says when he reaches her, “this is Owen Kaufmann.”

  THIRTY-SIX

  CAMILLE’S STOMACH IS GROWLING, her head buzzing from champagne drunk too quickly, and Phoebe is in animated discussion with a woman in advanced middle age who’s interesting to look at. Skin slipping ever so slightly off her sharp cheekbones, lips overly bright, tiny rivulets around the mouth splintering the coral shade, coral dress with too little fabric and too many flounces, naked knees entitled to sympathy.

  There are several more just like her, a passel of them only a few steps away, so close to one another they could be the aging petals of a single flower past its prime. She is curious, and this is the curiosity she used to love, analyzing elements that comprise a tribe’s commonality. What would she call this peculiar tribe? Fluttering Women, perhaps. Yes, she like
s that name very much.

  She cants her head to eavesdrop just as one of the women says, “We’re like dogs at a pound,” and the others nod and nod, mouths turned up in forced smiles, eyes lowered to fingers naked of those symbols of marriage.

  How would Camille describe them to Professor Jin and her fellow social anthropologists?

  “The Fluttering Women are women lost since their men died, who, with grimacing smiles, joke they are no longer the cute little puppy dogs in the window, but have been relegated to the lost and found, wagging their tails at those checking them out, praying they’ll be taken to a new home before they’re put down.”

  That very lyricism, permitted and encouraged in her field, so long as it’s based upon evidentiary facts, makes her want to explore them in more depth, uncover everything underneath, what rules might have emerged among them.

  She is further intrigued when several older men begin walking past, and the Fluttering Women begin fluttering more, encircling a few of those older men, breaking them off from the herd, surrounding them entirely, until the men, eyes darting, seeking an escape route that no longer exists, are imprisoned. These must be widowers, and those who have been allowed to pass untouched must have wives who are still alive. What strange ritual is she observing? Avoid ethnocentric conclusions, she cautions herself, seemingly strange behaviors have pragmatic functions and must be understood on their own terms—Malinowski’s warnings that she never forgets.

  The Fluttering Women are batting their eyelashes, their hands touching the widowers’ sleeves; then sharply manicured fingers are moving through the air, emphasizing their words.

  What are the women seeking? What reward do they want? That these men flatter, compliment, communicate, ask them for dates? Is this an idea for a study? The mating rituals of the widowed, old, lonely, and sad, who, refusing to relinquish hope, dream of a second or third or fourth act of love that will see them gratefully to the grave? She feels her brain tingling, wishes her small evening bag held a notebook and pen, and not just Phoebe’s lipstick that is on her lips.

  The excitement within her nearly catches fire until she thinks, is this how she’ll end up if she marries Valentine Osin and he dies? She might, if she marries him in the state she’s in, if the state she’s in prevents her from being out in the field. Unless she can return to the field as quickly as possible, her life is over. And if her life is over, she may as well forget about everything, including Valentine, and move back here to Palm Springs, ensconce herself in her old bedroom permanently.

  “CAMILLE? WHAT ARE YOU staring at? I can see your brain moving under your hair.”

  The excitement the Fluttering Women stirred up in Camille has already leached away.

  “Those women,” she says to Phoebe. “They’re all dressed up and pretending they aren’t dying for love, when it’s what they want most in their lives. Do you think we’ll end up like them?”

  Phoebe looks over at the women, avid in their attentions to the men in their crowd, remembers her last date when she was trying too hard and couldn’t find a thing to say, and she thinks she sees what Camille sees.

  “Absolutely not,” Phoebe says emphatically, then grabs Camille’s hand and starts walking. “That won’t happen to us. I’m sure of it. Let’s go find everyone, find out when dinner’s going to be served. I’m starving.”

  “Me, too,” Camille says, wondering why Phoebe did not hold up Aaron Green and Valentine Osin as proof they already have love in their lives.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  THE OPTIMAL WAY TO apprehend the beauty of a crowd is from above; an overhead perch provides the monumental view, the essential perspective. Eight hundred people RSVP’d yes to the gala and all are present, except for eight kept away by summer colds, migraines, gallstones, a last-minute change in plans. Seven hundred and ninety-two people on a twenty-thousand-square-foot terrace lit up by golden lights is a prismatic sight to behold. The vast array of hair color alone is arresting, and the lackluster labels of black, brown, blond, auburn, red, silver, gray, and white fail to do justice to the range of human plumage.

  And look, from up here, one spies Phoebe and Camille Tabor turning on their heels, eager to seek out their family members, to discover when dinner will be served; and Elena Abascal, her emotions under control, cheeks dried, but flushed from the heat and the fourth glass of champagne she has rashly imbibed, is leaving behind her remote post, her orphaned chair, having decided it’s time to locate her husband, though she has not figured anything out; and Roma Tabor, relieved to be away from Owen Kaufmann, who told her he interviewed Harry on Monday for the Palm Times, a fact Harry neglected to share, wants only to find her husband, whom she has not seen in the last fifty minutes; and Simon Tabor, wondering why he is discomforted by the young man’s stare, leads his mother away, out of that terrace corner, back into the fray, responding to her whispered question with a shake of his head and his own whisper, “I haven’t seen Dad since we came in.”

  At this very moment, the orchestral music alters, only the flutist plays on, his melodious notes ringing like dinner bells, and the enormous terrace shimmers with movement, as if the jovial, delighted, slightly inebriated guests have grown fins and tails, as if they are an enormous school of ebonized fish, flowing quickly, sherbet flashes of colors from the women’s gowns like the rippling and glinting of scales. The school re-forming and re-forming as people peel away, find their tables, take their seats.

  Phoebe and Camille are joined by Elena, who appears at their side. “There’s Mom and Simon,” Camille says, waving her hand, catching their attention. Roma’s hand chops at the air.

  “Is she saying something?” Phoebe asks.

  “I think so,” Elena says. “But I can’t tell what.”

  And then these Tabors converge, at the special table set center stage, marked by a stiff silver flag that proclaims Man of the Decade & Family.

  Roma, the hem of her golden gown clutched tight in one hand, is staring at her daughters, at her daughter-in-law, at her son; then she is looking beyond them, over the crowd now all seated, and the waiters lined up off to the side, and the musicians stowing their instruments in their cases while they enjoy their own dinner break. There is no Harry Tabor striding toward them, prepared to revel in the next stage of the festivities. Roma scans every inch of the terrace, but Harry is nowhere.

  Her voice, hushed and hollowed, is unheard by anyone not a Tabor, but it has a metallic atmospheric reach, as if Roma Tabor is sending an electrical transmission far beyond where planes fly. So few words, but she is trembling when she says, “Where is Harry?”

  From this lofty advantage, it is arresting to see seven hundred and ninety-two heads turning as one toward that center table, where the Tabors stand perfectly still, their own heads turning every which way, searching for the man who is not there.

  VALLEY OF THE SHADOW

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  SEVERAL MEN, INCLUDING SIMON and Levitt, went looking for Harry and returned shaking their heads—he wasn’t out front, or taking a walk nearby practicing his speech, or in the men’s room.

  Now there is tumult all around Roma, as Police Chief Hernandez, in black tie, quiets the crowd. “In this unusual situation, I’m asking you to organize into temporary search parties to help scour the resort.” By which he means the golf courses, the sand traps, the water traps, the ponds, the pools, the waterfalls, the cabanas, the restaurants, the cafés, the bars, the spas, the gyms, the locker rooms, and all of the bathrooms. “Once my force mobilizes, we’ll take it from there.”

  Her children are together, holding hands, nodding at the directives, casting their glazed eyes and encouraging smiles at her, and she knows what they are trying to say: everything is going to be fine. Harry Tabor, husband and father and Man of the Decade, has merely wandered off, perhaps taken a fall, but will be discovered catching his breath somewhere on these groomed grounds.

  Weak of limb, Roma sits at the special center table blaming herself. He was troubled all day
and she had not investigated, had not wrung from him a confession about what was upsetting him, and her failure has brought this about.

  Despite the heat, someone has wrapped her gold shawl around her shoulders. Someone has replaced her champagne with medicinal scotch that burns on the way down. Someone has flicked off the twinkle lights, and glaring white bulbs bomb the terrace and patches of the desert. But most of that wild terrain is folded away into the deepest of blacks.

  This lovely alfresco location, up from the ground, nearer to the stars, golden twenty minutes ago, has turned into an antiseptic and terrifying place.

  The presidents of CST Property, Educate! and Lend, along with their wives, approach her, lean over her, putting hands to her shoulders, and she says, “Thank you, but please, you’ll be of more use if you help with the search,” and they nod and retreat, joining the others.

  Roma shuts her eyes against the lights, the commands, the frenetic activity, and in the distance is her baba Tatiana, returned as flesh and blood, waving her pale, blue-veined hands. Roma’s fingers tingle and she is again twelve, her hand within that soft and boneless grip.