George and Lizzie

by Nancy Pearl

  Everyone helped Lizzie make the arrangements for the funeral service and the reception at her parents’ house afterward. Allan and Elaine of course flew in from Tulsa immediately and were, along with George, Marla, and James, wonderful about dealing with all that death requires the survivors to do: working out details with the funeral home, helping Lizzie select her parents’ caskets, calling various governmental agencies and financial institutions to report the deaths (Allan did this, thank goodness), but it fell to Lizzie to do what she felt were the two hardest tasks.

  Lydia had died instantly in the accident, despite obediently wearing a seat belt and having the driver’s-side air bag work as promised. But Mendel, sitting in the passenger seat, was not as fortunate. For some reason his air bag hadn’t inflated. In spite of that, he survived the collision, but with his body badly broken and his fine mind knocked silly. The doctors told Lizzie there was nothing to be done, he’d never be Mendel again, that even if his body healed and he awoke from the coma he was blessedly in, the kindest thing she could do for her father was to let him die.

  Mendel and Lydia had left no instructions for her. There was no will, nothing giving her power of attorney, and nothing at all to help her decide what was to be done with them, dead or alive. She had a slight memory of her parents coming home from an elderly long-retired Jewish colleague’s funeral and Lydia scoffing at all the attendant rituals, at the procession to the cemetery, at the shoveling of dirt on the casket after it was lowered into the grave, at the professional friends and professional enemies who came together at his death to professionally mourn him. And then adding, unless Lizzie misremembered, that despite the rigmarole she’d decided that she’d like a rabbi on hand during her funeral. But nothing religious.

  “That makes no sense. They’re totally opposite desires,” Lizzie complained to George. “But I do sort of hear her saying that in my mind. Or at least I think I do. What if I made it up? What if we do one thing and it turns out that she really wanted the other? Oh God, George, this is just like them. What do you think we should do?”

  “Well, before we decide about the funeral, I think we, or you, have to decide about Mendel first, don’t we? And we should do it fairly quickly, although it won’t matter to Lydia if you stretched Jewish law and waited a few days before she was buried.”

  So this was the first hard task: telling the doctors that she wanted to end her father’s life, if you could call the state he was in life. At first it seemed like a no-brainer (like Mendel, himself, at this point and now forever). But it still felt weirdly wrong when, during a meeting with her father’s doctors, she told them to “pull the plug,” as Allan had indelicately put it. Was it really a plug? An electrical connection? What if the God that Mendel and Lydia didn’t believe in stepped into the picture with a convenient power outage so that those words wouldn’t have to be said, and the decision would be taken out of her hands? In the end, the life-support system was turned off, and now neither Mendel nor Lydia could mourn the other, as she felt they would have wanted but dearly wished they had made explicit.

  “Did they purchase funeral plots?” Elaine asked.

  Lizzie didn’t know.

  “Did they want to be buried or cremated?”

  Lizzie didn’t know.

  “What do you want to do, sweetheart?” George asked.

  Lizzie didn’t know. She wanted to run away. She wanted to find Jack. She wanted to be back in Terrell the Terrible’s poetry class and meeting Jack for the first time. She turned to George. “Can you decide, George? Because I don’t know what to do.”

  George considered the two options. “I’d say burial, I think.”

  “Okay,” Elaine said, “then the next steps are to choose their caskets and find funeral plots.”

  “Yes,” Lizzie said. “I suppose that’s what we have to do.”

  “I’ll start calling cemeteries,” Allan said.

  Even harder than talking to the doctors was calling the rabbi who was going to conduct the funeral service. Because the Bultmanns had never affiliated themselves with any religious institution, the first problem was locating a rabbi. “You would think,” Lizzie said to Marla, “that for people who avowed no interest, zero, nada interest, in religion at all, Mendel and Lydia would have wanted nothing to do with the rituals of funerals either.”

  At all. But there, unable to be refuted, was Lizzie’s memory of what Lydia had said. Or had not said.

  Elaine called their rabbi in Tulsa for advice. After doing some quick research, he came up with the name of a young woman who had gone to rabbinical college with his own son and was now working on a PhD in Middle Eastern studies in Ann Arbor and assisting at Temple Beth Shalom, a building into which not one of the Bultmanns had ever set foot.

  Lizzie liked the sound of Rabbi Gould’s voice, and she suspected that her mother would have approved of a female rabbi even if she didn’t like what the rabbi might have to say. She had a brief fantasy that maybe she and the rabbi could be friends once this was all over. But first she had to convey her parents’ (or at least her mother’s) wishes, and could only think to say without any preamble, “My mother wanted a funeral with a rabbi, but she was a devout atheist, so she wouldn’t want God mentioned at the service.”

  There was a long silence on the phone. Lizzie wondered if this was the first time Rabbi Gould been asked to officiate at a funeral and now, most unluckily, had to deal with such a request. Oh God, Lizzie prayed to herself, unaware of the irony, please, please don’t let her refuse. I can’t do this again.

  Finally, Rabbi Gould spoke. “There has to be at least one prayer that mentions God. Otherwise it wouldn’t be a Jewish ceremony. It’s a memorial prayer called El Maleheh Rachamim, ‘God Full of Compassion,’” she went on. “It’s the first time the deceased person is labeled as deceased by name. Do you want to know how it came about?”

  “Um, not really,” Lizzie started to respond, but the young rabbi was on a roll.

  “In Poland in the 1640s there were a series of terrible massacres—the Chmielnicki Massacres—and this prayer was a way for an entire community to be named and therefore remembered. Over time it developed into a more personal prayer that was used as a way to memorialize the dead and ask for God’s protection over them throughout eternity.”

  “I guess that’ll be okay,” Lizzie replied, tired of the issue, of the last difficulty her parents had directed her way, however unintentionally. But what kind of parents would neglect to tell their daughter what she should do with them after they die? Lizzie’s kind, obviously.

  * The Outside Linebackers *

  One of the outside linebackers was Brandon Melandandri (nicknamed, inevitably and, as it turned out, ironically, Dandy). The best years of Dandy’s life were the years he spent in high school. Once he graduated, Dandy disappeared into drug addiction and homelessness. The last Lizzie knew he was living on the streets in Detroit. It was a pretty undandy ending. The other was Anoush Shashvili, who went on to become a semisuccessful writer of horror films. Because Lizzie felt that real life was scary enough without the addition of the supernatural, she never saw any of his movies. In fact, she made a point of studiously avoiding them, and refused to let George see them either. Anoush’s first film, which received a lot of praise, was Slash/Dot/Vampire Blood. Lizzie thought the title probably said it all.

  * Playdates *

  Lizzie and George loved the weekends most especially during the fall and early winter when it was pretty much all football all the time. Late in August, between James and Marla’s wedding and their own, George surprised Lizzie with season tickets to both the football and basketball games. Saturday afternoons were spent either watching the Wolverines play in the Big House, as the Michigan stadium was known, or else watching the away games on television. Of course it wasn’t just the Michigan games that were important. Naturally George wanted to watch Oklahoma State play, and then there were the postgame shows, and then he and Allan rehashed the OSU game and sometimes th
e University of Oklahoma game as well. Usually, after talking to Allan, George would call his grandfather to talk some more. The Goldrosens really loved football. Every once in a while Lizzie thought it was ironic that she couldn’t tell George about the Great Game and those twenty-three guys whose names she would never forget.

  The Wolverines were only a so-so team in the early years of George and Lizzie’s marriage. Their best season was 1997, when the Associated Press ranked them number one, but Lizzie’s fondness for the game never depended on her team winning. What she liked was learning about the different players. The quarterback who came to Ann Arbor from Selma, Alabama, and spoke with such a deep southern accent that none of the other players could understand him, and Lloyd Carr, the head coach, convinced him to become a wide receiver, where communication skills were not so vital. The linebacker who graduated from hated in-state rival Michigan State and then transferred to Michigan for his fifth year in order to study accounting and play one last season. The cornerback who won every award, including the Heisman Trophy, the first defensive player to do so. The freshman punt returner who was paralyzed the fifth play of the Wolverines’ opening game. That sort of thing.

  Sundays were spent watching the pro games. To please Lizzie, George adopted Detroit as his second favorite team. He saw this as an enormous sacrifice, because it practically guaranteed a frustrating Sunday, since the hapless Lions went down to defeat nearly every week. The pain of the Lions losing was always exacerbated when the Dallas Cowboys games weren’t televised. “They’re America’s team,” he’d mutter. “Why can’t those idiots make them the game of the week?” And when the Cowboys lost he was pretty inconsolable for a few hours.

  Lizzie especially loved the Sunday-night game no matter who was playing. She’d pop a huge bowl of popcorn, cut up some apples and carrots, and pour them each glasses of beer, and she and George would sit close to each other on the sofa and watch the game unfold, forgoing dinner. Lizzie enjoyed listening to George respond to the action on the field. She liked hearing him analyze different plays. She was happy to let him exclaim over illegal chop blocks, successful blitzes, and missed field goals. She enjoyed his rants about abysmal time management and horrible red zone calls.

  George sometimes joked that he was relieved that the Cowboys didn’t play the Lions in the regular season until 2002. He told Lizzie that he wasn’t sure they could have handled being on opposite sides of a football game before then, when they were an old married couple—seven years!—and could deal with all their differences as adults. Lizzie couldn’t tell if George intended this to be a joke or not. She rather thought not.

  Lizzie was sometimes of the opinion, disloyally (whether to George or to the basketball team itself was never clear to her), that there were way too many games on the schedule. George wanted to attend as many of them as his and Lizzie’s schedules allowed. She once suggested that they just move into Crisler Center during the basketball season. Lizzie found going to the games—basketball or football—exceptionally relaxing, because she knew that Jack would never in a million years attend a game of either sport, so there was no chance she’d run into him there, and that knowledge was a huge relief tinged with sadness.

  One issue Lizzie had with basketball was the last few minutes of close games. To some extent the same was true for football, but the pace of a basketball game made it much more intense. Lizzie couldn’t take it. She worried too much about the players who were under the enormous pressure of making a free throw when the game depended on it, or who were called for walking and were thus responsible for turning the ball over to the opposition. She couldn’t stand it when a coach screamed at a player. George supposed that he understood Lizzie’s feelings, but it still boggled his mind that if the score was close and the clock down to three or so minutes to play, Lizzie couldn’t watch the rest of game. If they were at home she would leave the living room, go into the kitchen or bedroom, and shut the door behind her so she couldn’t hear the cheers or groans. Sometimes she was unable to stay away, but mostly she just waited for George to come and tell her the outcome. It was less painful that way. When they were watching the games in person and Lizzie felt too stressed, she’d close her eyes and cover her ears, trying not to hear or see what was going on. Or if it was too excitingly nerve-racking, she’d make her way to the closest bathroom and sit on the toilet, reading the graffiti on the walls and door until the game ended and she and George could go home. After a few too many evenings in the first year of their marriage spent like that, Lizzie would bring a book to the game.

  * Honeymoon for Four *

  When George started college in Stillwater, Allan and Elaine called him, without fail, at nine o’clock every Sunday morning. Although the knowledge that he’d have to talk to his parents early the next day occasionally put a crimp in his Saturday-night activities, he never told them that he’d rather talk to them at, say, nine at night. The calls followed a basic pattern. He and Allan would discuss in minute detail the Cowboys’ latest football or basketball game, even if they’d already been at said game together (along with his grandfather Sam) the day before and had had a similar discussion after the game was over. Their discussions were longest and most intense about football, and during these extended conversations Elaine could be heard on the extension, breathing impatiently. When it was her turn she’d lovingly grill George about the state of his emotional and physical health, then move on to the books they were reading, interesting articles they’d read, and films they’d seen or wanted to see.

  She’d conclude by relating the latest absurdity his grandmother had either said or done and the kerfuffle that resulted. This last almost never came as a surprise to George, since his grandmother had usually given her version of whatever outrage it was when he had a Sabbath dinner with them the Friday evening before, another regular occurrence. During his four years in Stillwater, at no time did it occur to George that his family was taking up an awful lot of his time. In fact, spending every Friday night with his grandparents was a good opportunity to invite his friends for a taste of real rather than dorm (and later, fraternity) food. That Gertie never liked any of the people he brought over, especially the girls, he attributed to the fact that not one of them was Jewish. She had been particularly outraged when he brought the girl he was dating sophomore year to their Passover seder and Melody came in wearing shorts, a somewhat snug T-shirt, and sandals. “Do you believe the rudeness?” George heard Gertie mutter to Sam. Did this cause him to break up with Melody shortly after the dinner? He had a suspicion it did.

  The Sunday-morning conversations with his parents continued when George graduated and moved to Ann Arbor to begin dental school, but immediately after Lizzie and George got engaged they increased exponentially in duration. It turned out that Allan and Elaine now wanted to talk to Lizzie as well as their younger son every week. That took time. And now that George and Allan weren’t attending football games together, their conversations about the Cowboys (both the OSU and Dallas teams) intensified and lengthened. There was much sports news to discuss.

  Roughly the first six months of 1995 were taken up with discussions about the wedding: where and when and what kind it would be. Once that was settled, the conversation turned to honeymoons. Lizzie loved these weekly phone calls with Allan and Elaine, but was glad to be done with the subject of weddings.

  One Wednesday evening early in July, Lizzie and George were just finishing dinner, when the phone rang. Since Lizzie refused on principle to ever answer a ringing phone except when she knew it was Marla or George, she ignored it. It was George’s parents.

  “Hey, Georgie,” Elaine said. “Daddy and I had a great idea about your honeymoon. Can we talk to Lizzie too?”

  “Our honeymoon,” George mouthed as he handed Lizzie the phone and then went into the bedroom to get on the extension.

  Elaine began. “I guess the first thing is, have you decided on where you’re going yet?”

  Lizzie waited for George to respond and Georg
e waited for Lizzie.

  “No, nothing really final,” George finally said. “We haven’t talked about it much.”

  “We did think about Australia,” Lizzie said quickly, “since Todd won’t be at the wedding. The real wedding, I mean. I know he might come to Tulsa.”

  Lizzie actually liked the idea of going to Sydney. It seemed to her to be a city that Jack would choose to live in. Maybe she’d find him there.

  This diverted Elaine from the subject at hand. “Yes, and even if he does come we have no idea whether he’ll bring someone,” Elaine said. “I swear, he goes through girlfriends like we used to go through boxes of Cheerios when you boys were little. I can’t keep track of them.”

  “He’s changed his name to Kale, did he tell you that, George? Legally changed it, I mean. I suppose that’s what we’ll have to call him, but I’m not sure I can do it with a straight face. Kale, a leafy green vegetable,” Allan said gloomily. “It might as well be chard or parsley. I hope he’s still wearing his retainer,” he added in a tone that conveyed the all-too-futile hope that this might be the case.

  “Oh, stop, Allan, you’re getting off the point of the call. So, kids, we had this great idea, or at least we think it’s a great idea.”

  There was a longish pause.

  “Yes,” George said encouragingly.

  Allan said, “We’d like to pay for the honeymoon as a wedding present.”

  “No, Dad, that’s too much,” George immediately said. “You’re already giving us the party. You don’t need to pay for our honeymoon too.”