The Family Tabor

by Cherise Wolas

  “I don’t want to be married to someone I may no longer recognize.”

  “I know. But exploring my religion isn’t going to render me unrecognizable.”

  “It will.”

  “Why do you think that?”

  “Because I do.”

  “That’s not an explanation, Elena.”

  “Drop your ‘That’s not an explanation,’ Simon. We both agreed on a definition of marriage. Two paths side by side, walking in the same direction.”

  They’ve reached the far end of Agapanthus Lane and Elena turns swiftly, pulling ahead, forcing him again to increase his pace.

  “I know,” he says, jogging up next to her. “I still agree with that definition.”

  “We’re married and building a life you now want to change. And to change in a way that doesn’t work for me at all.”

  “But it might not change.”

  “Simon, your exploration will lead you somewhere. Your explorations always do. You took up yoga and biking, now you run. And with each pursuit, you explored it deeply, and got deeper into it, and made a lot of alterations that might seem little to you, but have affected us all. The food we have in the house, the dinners we eat, the fact that you and I rarely have a glass of wine together anymore, the fact that when you are home on a weekend, your pursuits gobble up hours you ought to be spending with our children, or in an activity we all do together. And I’ve made all those adjustments. Because all those pursuits made you less antsy, slightly more content. But this is something else. You’re asking me to be open to a potential tectonic shift in our lives, and I’m not. I’m saying no, and it’s not a matter of whether you become slightly more observant or fully observant. To me there’s no difference at all. None of it is for me. And it’s not how I want to live my life. But the choice is yours.”

  Elena goes silent as they pass the Margaret Mead palm. Usually, like Lucy, she says, “Double M,” but not now. Now, she’s staring ahead, a sheen of sweat on her forehead, her breath coming fast.

  He wishes he could tell her what she wants to hear. But he can’t. What astonished him twenty-four hours ago feels like accepted truth today. In telling Elena that story yesterday afternoon in bed, he finally heard what his body’s been insisting he attend to, the sleeplessness merely an ironic way to wake him up. An enlightening imperative was handed to him, and a mighty comprehension lit him up from within—that finding his people, learning about his people, perhaps becoming one with his people, might ground him in new and essential ways, allow him to uncover or recover the inner stability and happiness he has been missing.

  He wonders if yesterday will mark the last time he and Elena make love, the last time they are naked together. Whether their bond—already weakened, he understands that now clearly, she has affirmed that now clearly—will eventually collapse, that collapse traceable back to today.

  But he doesn’t have a choice.

  She does, and he can’t blame her, and he decides he won’t blame her, will never blame her, for planting her feet, closing down her mind and heart, threatening consequences if he explores this new aspect. He has seen her like this before, over conflicts far less severe, not at all momentous. She is immoveable, unswayable; never once has he been able to sway her, to persuade her. Trying to convince her to give him the chance to make his discoveries about Judaism would be a hopeless endeavor.

  At the front door, Elena reaches for the knob. “What do you want …”

  He waits, hoping she will finish her sentence. But she doesn’t. And the air rushes in between them, marking both the infinity and finiteness of everything.

  He thinks of what he wants—to have her understanding, her faith in their future, to understand that if he embraces his spiritual, their marriage would not be diminished, might instead be enhanced. But he doesn’t have any of that, and will not have any of that. And love has nothing to do with this impasse. Their failure to discuss their upbringings before falling in love—he’d been concerned only yesterday it would rise up and bite them. It’s risen and it’s showing its fangs and he’s the one who introduced it into their reality. And the rift it’s already causing between them, simply by raising the notion, will not be solved or resolved or handled or fixed, not even quickly patched up, by the time he steps aboard a plane tomorrow. Whether he stays or goes, they aren’t the same people they were a day ago, or a year ago, or—no, he won’t keep fooling himself about this—they aren’t the same people they were in the beginning. And if he can’t solve it all now, he might as well go. To hesitate at this juncture, to refrain from acting, it’s a temporary repair that in the end probably won’t save them.

  “What I want to do is book a ticket to fly out tomorrow. Then drive home. That guy is coming to fix the ceiling crack in the morning, and I’ll handle that. Then I’ll take a cab to the airport.”

  Elena’s nod is sharp and quick. “Fine. I’ll pack up the girls.”

  She steps through the door, then faces him directly. “I love him. You know that. I’ll always love him. And I’m really happy he’s alive, wherever he is.” Then she disappears inside the house. The sun is bright, but from where he stands, the wide entry is caught in shadow, as black as a hidden cave.

  SIMON LOOKS AT THE mezuzah, then sits on the wide front steps. This is the intimate remembered view of his life: San Jacinto in the distance, clustered houses dotting the desert floor, the green gem of golf courses, cacti to the horizon, the sky china blue.

  He wonders what he will learn in Israel about his father and his past. And what he might learn about himself. And how he will feel exploring the possibility of becoming a real Jew, when he is in the country meant, despite everything, to allow Judaism to exist. And how he will feel when he returns home with those different kinds of knowledge.

  He thinks of teaching himself and his daughters what it means to be Tabors, Jews in this day and age when the hate is again growing loud and vicious. They are the most recent descendants of the original Tabornikovs who stood as one with their people, perishing because of what they were, or surviving only because of luck, and he wants his small tribe to anchor their feet in the sand along the continuum of the millennia of history to which they belong.

  He wonders how long he will be away. He wonders if he should contact Altan Odaman and say he’s unable to attend the ILC conference in Colombia, but hopes he will be included again, or if he should not make that call and assume he will go from Israel to Palm Springs to Los Angeles and then to Medellín—alone, but prepared to discuss his legal approach for recovering the Goya paintings hidden for decades in catacombs beneath a mansion once usurped by Hitler’s men, priceless paintings stolen from the family herded into a metal train car and, at the final stop, lined up at a mass grave and gunned down.

  He wonders what he should say to his fellow partners about his hasty disappearance, the cases he will have to put on hold, the frustration his clients will feel with this delay, when they have waited lifetimes for justice to right the wrongs they have endured.

  He stares at the sky until he sees visions of the future, not a future he would have foreseen, or wanted, but a future perhaps meant to be.

  There he is, with his daughters at Friday night services at the progressive synagogue high up in the canyon. A young female cantor is on the bema, her breathtaking voice touching again and again the highest of notes, beckoning the wildlife close, as if the coyotes and the deer and the rabbits are listening, as if they, too, are gaining something from those prayers.

  And there he is, returning the girls home, finding Elena in the kitchen, dishing up bowls of ice cream for them all. She swirls on whipped cream and hands tiny cherries to Lucy and Isabel to put on top.

  And after the desserts have been eaten, they put their children to bed, like the attentive parents they have always been. Stories for Lucy, no stories for Isabel. Hugs and kisses for both. Nightlights turned on, moons and stars going round and round on the ceilings.

  But he and Elena don’t ascend to the ma
rital bedroom, do not climb into the marital bed. Instead, they sit in the living room, Elena on the comfortable couch, Simon in the uncomfortable armchair, or they are out by the small figure-eight pool, with the glasses of wine she says they don’t drink together anymore, looking back at all that happened this weekend, all that happened in Israel, and all that happened after he returned from that other desert, that land of the ancients, with the Tabor paterfamilias in tow.

  Wherever they are sitting that Friday night in the future, they are past negotiating the need he has for himself and their daughters, to instill in them a newfound love for his—for their—religion. Those discussions will have concluded without a tenable answer, as they both knew such discussions would end, but the heat of animosity will have cooled into warm understanding, an acceptance of the decision they made, that they saw through to the terminal severing. Each of them cherishing their marriage as both momentous love affair and aberration.

  Elena will say, “It’s late, you should go,” and they’ll walk out together.

  Above them, the night won’t be as starry as it is in this desert or in the one far away that Simon will have seen up close. Below them, the lights of the city they live in will glitter, and they’ll stare into the distance, at the dark bands that are the uncountable sand and the never-ending waves of the Pacific.

  They’ll hold hands for a while, because they are modern, because they are committed to raising their children with love and mutual respect, because they have become gentle with each other in the aftermath of their eventually empathetic and caring divorce. She will kiss his cheek, and close the door, and do whatever she does when the girls are asleep and she is on her own in the house they once shared.

  He sees himself touching the mezuzah he bought in Jerusalem and nailed to the doorframe, reciting the Shema, the important prayer he learned there, that he’s teaching to Lucy and Isabel.

  He sees himself driving away, thinking how he and Elena are creating their own new worlds, underpinned by the original worlds from which they came. The despair will have dissipated by then, and he will gather close to his heart the past, present, and future of his family, the obligations he has to them, and to his people, having assumed his place within the Judaism he’d once thought was not for him. And this last year, when he couldn’t sleep one night through, when he needed to find something more in his life, everything he didn’t know he was seeking in yoga poses, or biking, or running ten miles each morning, will seem far away. For hopefully he will have found it.

  And someday, the two of them, long ago a couple happily married and in love, will take other new steps, will open their altered hearts and spread their changed wings, begin searching for their own kind, remembering the hard lesson they have learned, that love, no matter how real, no matter the passion that birthed it, is not always enough.

  Simon stands then and heads inside.

  To make his flight reservation.

  To speak to his mother about anything else she has remembered from that time when Harry Tabor and Max Stern worked together in New York City, because there’s more there, he’s certain.

  To speak to his sisters about staying on in Palm Springs until he returns with their father.

  To pack up the car and watch Lucy and Isabel being kissed and hugged by their aunts and their savah.

  And then to make the return trip from Palm Springs to home.

  When the white noise of the tires on the highway has rocked the girls to sleep, he will pray, invoking that act with specific intent, that this desire to explore his Judaism, and what might result, will give him the needed strength to handle the future he and Elena will face.

  FIFTY-FOUR

  CAMILLE WATCHES HER SISTER watching their nieces in the pool.

  When Simon and Elena went for a walk, and their mother went to rest, they kept an eye on the girls, and exhausted every avenue of discussion about their father, until Phoebe said, “I don’t get why you’re not as angry with him as I am. As Simon is. As Mom must be, even though she’s hiding her feelings.” Then she stormed off to sit on the pool steps.

  Camille isn’t angry. She can’t help how she sees things. Their father’s impulsive flight to Israel, his disappearance without a word—the rest of them insist on analyzing his actions through their prism of acceptable behavior. She understands that, as well as the anger that’s biting on the heels of the fear. But what fascinates her most about all the indigenous tribes she’s studied is how their own prism of acceptable behavior includes acts and beliefs and rituals and magic that alter the commonplace and render the quotidian mystical. It seems to Camille that perhaps her father is seeking exactly that. The rest of her family doesn’t understand it, nor do they understand that the search for the mystical doesn’t come with a schedule; it can’t be discussed and mutually agreed upon. The one who hears the call is compelled to do whatever he must to experience it.

  “I’ll be back,” she calls to Phoebe.

  THE TALL DETECTIVE LEFT her father’s books in stacks on the floor and Camille begins reshelving them.

  Last night, she was intrigued watching the Fluttering Women with their tuxedoed widower prey, and this morning, she could not allow herself to contemplate her mother as a widow. But this afternoon, now that the worst has not transpired, what could have befallen her family has sharpened her focus.

  What kind of widow would her mother make, and what would be the nature of her grief?

  When Camille turned thirteen, Roma said to her, “Make thoughtful decisions from your head, rather than automatic ones, perhaps from your heart, whose underpinnings are harder to understand,” and a woman who thinks that way would not fall apart, prostrate herself on the grave, lose her will to live. Her mother would cry and grieve and then unpack her unconquerable strength and move forward. She would not follow the mandates of widowhood as prescribed by the Trobrianders, nor would she join the ranks of the Fluttering Women. And Camille finds that reassuring.

  But the Fluttering Women represent all those other women who might not negotiate widowhood as Roma would. Aren’t they trying to alter the commonplace of that diminishing state? Aren’t they seeking the mystical in the quotidian, as her father is trying to do?

  Shelving the final book, sitting down at her father’s desk, Camille thinks that they are.

  Studying those lonely women at the gala last night, gathered in a circle, presenting as a tribe, she felt that lost vibrant hum of intellectual energy she dreaded had dried up.

  She taps one of her father’s CST pens on the wood.

  She puts one of his Harry Tabor pads in front of her.

  Then she writes: Fluttering Women Research Study.

  She trawls back through her master’s and doctoral programs for anything she learned about widows and widowhood, and writes:

  1. Many societies delineate the different roles of widows and widowers, concentrating on the functional aspects and the inheritance of property as historically transmitted through the men. The Trobrianders were a rare exception, everything notched to the matrilineal line.

  2. The widow commonly plays the central role in funeral and mortuary rituals, arranging for the burial, the services, caring for the soul of the dead spouse.

  3. In some societies, widows may be forced to remarry, or prohibited from remarrying, or required to self-immolate, joining the dead spouse on his funeral pyre.

  That is everything she recalls.

  That might be all she ever read.

  That might be all there is.

  Is it possible she has arrived at a topic that deserves true exploration?

  A topic rarely studied and largely absent from the research literature?

  A social anthropological study exclusively about widows, funneled through a variety of perspectives: societal, familial, the nature of solitary or communal housing, the ways in which a complete and thriving life can still be enjoyed—and that’s just off the top of her head.

  There are parallels she sees: her family is still exper
iencing a liminal phase, each one of them already being transformed by Harry’s actions no matter what happens next, no matter what happens when he returns, just as death transforms, just as the widow is transformed through the reevaluation and redefining of herself, her life, her place in the family, in society, and how she, in turn, is reevaluated and redefined by others—a complete reconfiguring in that space and time of bereavement and then afterward.

  Such a study has depth and longevity, potentially extensive ramifications.

  Such a study could eventually be calibrated into a book for a broad audience. Without exploiting the subject tribe, without needing to turn herself into a character. Dr. Jin would be pleased.

  She writes: The American Widow.

  She writes: status, gender distinctions between widows and widowers, discrimination, socialization of widows within their kinship units, socialization outside kinship units, sex and the widow, remarriage.

  Then she lifts the pen from the pad and chews on the end.

  Does this mean she would stop pining for that one wild and untouched tribe at the end of the earth that no one else has ever studied?

  No.

  But the abundant widowed population could be a different kind of wild and untouched tribe that no one else has ever studied.

  And unlike the Sentineli, this tribe is contactable.

  She would concentrate on widows in the first world, rather than the obscure and unfamiliar. And that might be the right thing, or at least the right thing for now.

  Last night, when she imagined moving permanently back into her old bedroom in this house, she thought it self-defeating, but was it actually prescient? Returning not out of failure, but staying with a three-pronged purpose: to observe how her father is transformed by his journey of discovery, to analyze the alterations that will occur in her family as a result, and to study the Fluttering Women of Palm Springs.

  There is much she will need to do and she dashes down:

  * Figure out the ethnographic model, research design, research methods, and data analysis.