“Where’s your wheelchair? I’ll go get it,” Bob says as though everything’s normal. “That was some fall you took! A real doozy.”
“Get away from me,” Rose says.
Bob sways over her, pleading. “Please, Rose, please. I didn’t know what to do. We were all so worried, what with you here alone and refusing to move. Maureen was desperate.” He turns to appeal to the confused spectators. “How could she take care of this big house all by herself?” He turns back. “Rose, please, talk to Fran. We were scared for your safety.”
“You should be scared for your safety,” Kenny says, reaching down into his sock and pulling out his air rifle.
A woman screams.
“Put that away!” June demands. Kenny sheepishly obeys. “It’s just a BB gun,” June tells the dispersing crowd. Only Sage remains fixed at the open door, in her itchy pink dress, pining for Mommy.
June shoves Kenny’s shoulder with all her strength. “You think you’re in some fucking movie? Why would you bring a gun to my house?”
“The place creeps me out.”
“Then leave.”
But Rose insists he stay, her “knight in shining, grazie.” Kenny’s reminded Rose of something she needs to do up in Gary’s old room. If June and Kenny would assist? “Careful, Red, my elbow.”
Five minutes later they’ve gotten only as far as the foot of the stairs. Sage is still behind them, wailing, her plea shortened to “Mom, Mom, Mom.” On about stair three, she’s switched to “Sue.” By six, she’s on to “Sue Ainsley,” soon to morph into “Sue Ainsley Gibson.” Then “Sue Ainsley Gibson Glassman, Sue Ainsley Gibson Glassman…Mommy.”
“Humdrum rhododendron,” Rose says.
* * *
Sue has kept walking, over Sage’s chalk-drawn princesses, past the DEAD-END STREET sign, toward the beach. As if the morning weren’t strange enough, Sue has come home to find Rose, in a checkered dress, standing atop her stoop. It’s the first Sue has seen of the woman’s boxy back and pancake butt, and, frankly, it’s jarring. She hurries on till her shoes hit sand. Then she drops the books the rabbi has given her and just stands there, unsure what to do next.
Umbrellas flap and ripple against the newly greenish sky. The beachgoers labor to tame them and flee. Too bad Sue’s iPod is out of power. Some ragtime would accompany this jerky slapstick nicely. She likes watching the wind flip the book pages to suggest an invisible reader. Ed? The small muscles near her armpits still twinge from the weight of them.
An object, a flip-flop, grazes the top of Sue’s head scarf. Here’s Tim again, apologizing. Blacky bounds after the shoe.
“Why are you here?” Sue asks but thinks, Why am I here? She plucks her soggy handkerchief from the pocket of Dan’s sweater and spits and spits.
“Um, I got bored waiting for you under the piano so…checking the waves.”
“Still there?”
Tim nods. “Erratically.”
Blacky’s already back with the flip-flop. He drops it at Tim’s feet. One’s bare. On the other, Tim wears the second sandal. Sue can’t control a smile.
“Something wrong with a tennis ball?”
“Lost at sea.” Tim looks different. The blustery air lifts his fluffy hair up and sideways into a little halo.
“So much weather out there,” said Mindy, the rabbi’s Russian wife, chasing Sue out the door with the scarf. The sweet woman even tied it on over Sue’s earbuds. Zeppelin, “What Is and What Should Never Be.” It went perfectly with the hot, gray day and the baby’s heavy-metal kick.
The ritual (the transaction) had been set to take place in the rabbi’s home office/gym with smiley Mindy and a plump Filipino housekeeper attending. Fresh from the shower, Rabbi Larry glistened.
“Do you believe Jesus Christ is the Son of God?” he asked Sue.
“Have we started, then?”
“You tell me.”
“Do I believe Jesus Christ is the Son of God?” Sue repeated, a stalling technique she’d learned from Dan. Incredibly useful, that. Also the phrase I’ll look into it. “You want to know, do I believe Jesus Christ is the Son of God?”
Behind the rabbi, the dimpled housekeeper slowly nodded her head yes. Sue thought of how Estelle’s nurse had, right at the end, called out, “Tell my daddy I love him!” and of her own cryptic father, now off teaching North American studies in South America. “Show me ten righteous people!” was all he said to the news that Sue was both converting and pregnant.
“I believe Jesus Christ was…a great human being.”
“A great Jew,” Mindy amended.
“Yes, yes.”
Manischewitz was poured, blessed. A contract put before the convert, the ger, for Sue/Sarah to “autograph.” Then the rabbi rose from the exercise ball he used as a desk chair and handed Sue a pen. He squeezed her shoulder with a pumping motion while she bent, sweating, over the paper. The too-sweet wine (the first alcohol she’d had in months) made her gag.
“Now for the summer reading!” the rabbi said. And the housekeeper hustled over. In her arms were the books currently at Sue’s feet in the sand—the Bible; Exodus; The Aleph, Bet, Gimmel of Jewish Cookery. He did not appear to notice that Sue hadn’t signed the contract, that she couldn’t bring herself to sign, that she had, in fact, succumbed to confusion.
“So, are you going? In?” Tim interrupts her thoughts.
“In?” There’s an idea. Immersion is a conversion ritual, one of several the rabbi took it upon himself to edit out. Of course, this usually happens in a pool, not the ocean. There are rules. But…“Why not? Yeah. I like that! DIY Jew?”
Tim’s flustered. “Going in to your party, I meant. The house.”
“This first,” Sue says, propelling herself toward the ruffled, frigid waves.
Tim’s hand leaps to his throat for a phantom whistle. Old lifeguard instinct, he explains. Very pregnant woman, bad weather, riptide. “If I were you, I’d think twice.”
* * *
One step, long rest, another step, long rest, is how it goes with Rose. They’re on number eight when Sy appears below them demanding to know “where you think you’re going?”
“Straight to hell!” Rose calls down. “Wanna come?”
Kenny says they’d make a good couple.
“Me and the cripple?” The old lady’s amused. She mimics Sy’s distinctive hobble.
June reminds her to watch where she’s walking. The green carpet is loose and torn in places. “You could trip.”
“No more tripping!” Kenny laughs softly, wildly.
“Wait!” Rose says, grabbing June’s wrist. “You little thief! That’s my bracelet!”
“I—I found it in the bathroom.” After her weekend of lies, the truth feels awkward in June’s mouth.
She waits for Kenny to cross-examine her about Jake Leibowitz but he starts to sing instead. “‘I’mmm coming up…so we better get this party started.’” Happy! And when June offers the bracelet back, Rose snorts and waves her off. “It’s a handcuff. But if you happen to see my good knife—”
“This?” June asks, holding up the pocketbook. “You already found it.”
Rose smiles blankly, blinking.
Forty-five minutes later, the old woman is finally lying in bed, hugging that giant white purse. Does she want a nap? No. But June does. Some water? No. But June does. Drinking from the bathroom tap, June overhears Rose tell Kenny to do her a favor and check the back of Gary’s closet for some red boots with white stitching.
June’s head slams on the faucet. She recalls burying the red boot (and the gun) last night but had forgotten the score she’d composed out of sand. Heavenly Blue. Magnificent.
Naturally, Kenny will say that he can’t find the red boots. He knows as well as June that the one with the gun is under the sand and the other is still in the closet, empty. June left it there herself yesterday by that creepy boot box marked Gary’s Box of Pain. Inside—two pulled teeth, some dental headgear, parts of an arm cast, a lice comb, and t
he saddest middle-school note ever penned: I’d rather die than go out with an ugly ginger like you.
“I don’t know, Rose. I’m just not seeing any red boots,” Kenny says. Coming from inside that closet, all the way in the next room, the half-truth sounds muffled and far off.
“Well, they can’t walk off by themselves, can they?”
“What if they can?” Kenny’s tone is serious, hilarious.
In the bathroom mirror, June works to arrange her face into an acceptable expression. One eyelid twitches in a one-one, two-one, one-two rhythm. Her skin looks like salami.
“Keep hunting!” Rose urges. “We’ve got to find that gun.”
Kenny gasps. “Gun?” June can tell he’s stepped out of the closet to give depth to his performance.
“It’s my husband’s gun,” Rose says. “I know, that’s no excuse. I’m a dummy! How could I be such a careless dummy?”
“Don’t worry, Mrs. Impoliteri,” Kenny says kindly. He tells her he won’t stop until he finds it. (Not.)
“It’s inside the right boot.” Rose frets on. “I think…I’m not sure. Oh God. What if it’s not there? What if I left it somewhere else? A loaded gun should not be in a house with children.”
* * *
Tim shows Sue the line of foam traveling out to sea. This riptide is slow-moving, but that could change quickly. It’s baptism Sue’s after. Tim gets it; he likes it. “But when those currents surge, it’s like a bathtub unplugged. You’ll be sucked right out to meet your Maker.”
“Meet your Maker!” Sue hasn’t heard that in a while. She rubs her crystal-ball belly. Soon she’ll be meeting her new child face to face. Not that she’s equating herself with God, but…
“Why not?” Tim says, distracted by the sight of Blacky digging by the remnants of last night’s fire. What’s that red thing he’s got in his mouth? Looks like leather.
“My heart is whacking,” Sue confesses, still moving toward the water despite Tim’s warnings. “I feel like I’m forgetting something…but something I knew.”
“Do you really need to go in now? It might get hairy…” Tim glances over at the lifeguard chair. The red (No Swimming) flag should already be raised but there’s no sign of it happening. Guard one swings his whistle around and around. Guard two is hunched inside his orange windbreaker, napping. Tim understands. He’s been there, but…it’s insane when you consider it. A pair of woodenheaded teenagers put in charge of people’s lives? Kid people, old people, the unborn? Tim points to Sue’s midsection. “What about the—” For some reason, he can’t get his mouth to say baby.
“Oh, you’ll save us, worst case,” Sue says.
However misguided, her trust in him is thrilling, an unexpected triumph on top of his other spectacular news. Peg said yes! He’s bursting to tell a Glassman. Peg and the kids are moving in! And it’s not a dream. He triple-checked this morning. But Sue began liking him only ten minutes ago, so Tim’s cautious. For sure, she’s still no fan of Blacky.
“What is with your dog?”
Over the years, Blacky has dug up some truly offbeat footwear, but this is his first cowboy boot. Tim yells for the dog to “drop it!” No chance. Tim pulls off his flip-flop and nails the dog square on the snout. Blacky goes on gnawing. The red boot looks familiar, too, rodeo-style, white stitching…
“Don’t let me overthink this,” Sue says, having made it to the shore. Tiny perforations in the wet sand glitter beneath her feet. If she asked, Tim would tell her that’s how sand crabs give themselves air. But she doesn’t ask, so he reminds her about the party instead. “Everyone’s up there expecting you. Your mom, your cousin. Dan made you a mountain of food.”
“I’m starving!” Sue says, as if just now remembering. Along with giving her the head scarf, the rabbi’s wife had chased her down with a batch of homemade Russian teacakes. Sue pulls the container from her bag. The buttery cookies are buried under a hill of powdered sugar that swirls up in the wind when the lid’s removed. With his eyes still on the churning ocean, Tim right away inhales three, then exclaims, “Powdered sugar, the poor man’s cocaine!”
Sue removes her sweater—well, Dan’s sweater. None of hers fit at this point. The wind plasters her dress to her various bulges. Stalling, chewing, she tells Tim the rest.
Six, maybe seven, blocks from the rabbi’s house, while eating these very cookies, Sue was struck with remorse. Her iPod had mysteriously jumped from Coltrane to Mahler but that couldn’t explain it. Something just felt…wrong.
“Something’s wrong.” Sue panted when the rabbi’s door opened a second time. There stood Larry himself, fisting a clarinet. He thought Sue was in labor.
“Mindy! Mindy! My car keys!”
Once that drama was shut down, Sue finally confessed that she’d never signed her contract. Wasn’t sure. Didn’t like the way her father-in-law operated. (In exchange for Sue’s express conversion, Sy had whipped out his Star of David checkbook to fund the temple’s new handicapped bathroom.)
Here she hesitates, holding Tim’s gray gaze. “Maybe I shouldn’t be telling you this.”
“What?” He plays along. “I can’t hear you. The wind.” It has intensified. Even Blacky walks around the boot to turn his back to it.
“Come in, please, breathe,” the rabbi urged. “I can’t understand a word you’re saying.” He slid the clarinet under his arm to relieve Sue of the books.
“No. I got them.” The burden seemed necessary, a sort of first trial. “If I could just do this the right way, a real way,” Sue tried to explain. But she was struggling to breathe, to believe.
“This problem, I have also during my pregnancy with Noah,” the rabbi’s wife, Mindy, commiserated over black tea too bitter to drink. “Some jerk in the movie once told me if I was breathing too loudly.”
“That you were breathing,” the rabbi corrected.
“I gave the point. Why pick?”
“Because you’ve been in this country for too long not to speak properly.”
“Pick, pick.”
The rabbi’s wife was a mail-order bride from Sochi circa 1968, or so Sy had told Sue. She could easily imagine how her father-in-law had, in turn, described her. The stubborn shiksa who wouldn’t convert even after getting knocked up. The red-haired vixen who’d given his wife a heart attack. (“You finally broke her heart” was a sentence Sy actually uttered to Sue at Estelle’s funeral.)
“Pick, pick.”
It was plain to see that Larry and Mindy had been having this same argument over and over for decades, just as Sue and Dan fought about Sy. Like endlessly burping up the taste of the same lunch. Arguing about Rose had, at least, given them some diversion. But even that argument involved Sy. One way or another, it was time for it to stop.
Petite and bejeweled, Mindy had ushered Sue into her mint-green living room, insisting she put up her swollen feet, eat. Teacakes were Mindy’s specialty but she had also baked babka and a honey cake to rival Estelle’s. Sue braced herself for another maternity horror story—how bad Mindy tore birthing Noah or the botched epidural that paralyzed a friend. But effusive congratulations followed. Apparently Sue had passed some kind of test. The rabbi burst into the room, contract in hand.
Tradition dictated that he had to make three attempts to dissuade her from converting. To this end, he pretended not to have met her, gave her no guidance on preparing to convert, and performed a half-assed ceremony from which any sane person would flee. That she could not bring herself to sign the contract only spoke to her integrity. And, more important, she had come back! “For the sake of heaven!” His dark eyes glittered out from his hairy face. “Finally, you are ready.” He sat down.
“I doubt that,” Sue said through a mouthful of spit.
“Doubt’s the way,” Mindy gushed, nodding at her husband. “He’s the fraud who gets a little too cozy with knowing.”
“Don’t look at me,” the rabbi protested. “I’m not cozy!” He pulled the lumbar pillow from behind his back and threw it p
layfully at her head.
“Sure, Larry!” Mindy laughed and threw it back at him. “You reflect plenty. On your golf swing!”
They flung the pillow, and soon more pillows, back and forth between them. They got up and ran around, throwing and ducking, working themselves up into a kind of zany jubilation that made Sue miss Dan. Mindy and Larry were all right. Individually and, after all, as a couple. They tried. They were good people. But they hadn’t gotten Sue any closer to spirituality than had the pretty cross on the church or the sounds in her bedroom walls. Letting herself out, Sue caught the housekeeper with the clarinet in her mouth, trying, failing, to make a sound, and she paused to give her a few pointers.
Now, on the overcast beach, a loud, low-flying jet skywrites an illegible message. As signs go, a rainbow would have been preferable, but this’ll have to do. Sue kicks the books, hands Tim her bag, stares down the army-green waves. She is only feigning bravery. Worse, she can’t shake the sense that she’s missing something.
“A bathing suit?” Tim asks.
“I know! Witnesses! I’m supposed to have three. Would you mind? I mean, do you have any friends?”
* * *
Sy has Dan in a headlock. “This is not the celebration we planned.” Who told Sue’s mother, Louise, she was coming to a baby shower? What’s with those pink balloons, the chair with ribbons, those gifts! “You want to know why Rabbi Larry and Mindy aren’t here? Because your wife balked! Balked or tricked him. After all that, Sue didn’t even convert! At the very least, someone owes them an apology.” Sy twists Dan’s head to face the picture window and have a look-see who.
With Tim at her side, Sue stands on the empty beach, her black dress and head scarf puffy with wind. Dan frees his neck from his father’s foul armpit. The zigzaggy border that portends his migraine has begun to shimmer at the edges of his vision. This is Dan’s biggest fear, and yet here it is outstripped by an intense admiration for his wife. He should never have asked her to convert. Apology daisies are overdue! Sy too should be ashamed, Dan tells him.
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