It was best not to invite them. Too much bad memories for everyone.
Wendy and the children, David and Jules, were included, of course, although I worry about Wendy and her behavior towards Ruth and Bethyl. Something about my new happiness seems to make her angry and she makes every interaction a battle. In the beginning I believed the sorrow of Moses’s death caused her to resent my joy. As time goes on, I see that it is Wendy’s manner to destroy what is good in the world and perceive it as her enemy.
The wedding reception took place in the synagogue basement, which is lavishly decorated for the occasion. Wendy dressed like a meshugener in something fit for maybe a circus. Her nebish boyfriend drank too much wine and had to be put to bed, like a child, in the car outside the synagogue. Wendy and I loaded him in through the side door of her van like a potato sack after he fell from the chair he sat on in the reception hall.
“You obviously spent a lot of money on a wedding to this woman. How did she talk you into that?” Wendy says as she catches her breath with me on the parking lot sidewalk.
“Ruth is a wonderful woman and I wanted to please her with a good wedding. This is a nice way to start a marriage, no?”
“It’s not like you to spend money on anything, never mind a frivolous thing like a party. I’m starting to worry about you … about this woman, and her control over your finances. Will she be writing my checks now?”
“After all this time I take such good care of you and the children and the nebish here, and your good-for-nothing husband before him, now you complain I spend a little money on myself to make a good wedding?”
“I’m just saying—”
“You’re worried that you won’t be inheriting all the money when I die, that I spent too much on the wedding, no? Maybe you counted on a better inheritance and now that there’s another woman, another family I care for, you think there will be less for you?”
A light drizzle of rain has begun and the hot asphalt gives off steam that rises like a hot shower. The rain mingles with the dirty street. This smell always reminds me of Paris, where it seemed to rain constantly. Wendy’s voice draws me back to the moment.
“You say family. You’re not supporting her daughter as well, are you?”
“And what if I am? It’s my money to do with as I wish. Bethyl is a good girl. I will take care of her as long as she likes. She’s a scholar. She wants to be a rabbi. Imagine that, a female rabbi?”
“She’s highly unattractive, nearly as old as I am, and I don’t see a guy around. It’s good you don’t mind taking care of her; you’ll be doing it for the rest of her life. Speaking of taking care of, the dishwasher broke. I need a couple hundred to replace it.”
I am wondering how long it would take for her to bring up something she needed me to pay for.
“Yes. Why don’t you bring Jules and David for dinner sometime this week and I can settle it then.” I don’t argue that washing the dishes without the machine won’t kill her. It’s not like she doesn’t have time for these things. Today I will let her think I believe she really needs this machine to wash the dishes.
On that day, five years ago, I am mostly joyous. Wendy and the nebish were there making fools of themselves, of course. But the one true dark spot that day was my deep worry for my granddaughter. For you, Jules. Do you have a memory for that day? I wonder.
We stood at the buffet table. The table held an enormous selection of foods. Steaming roast chicken with aromatic spiced carrots. Ruth had insisted we offer fish with the meat and we also had fresh lox, bagels, whitefish, and capers. There is Ruth’s homemade noodle kugel, the cinnamon smells mingled with the fresh challah from our favorite bakery. The same bakery had supplied our grand wedding cake and the sugary rugelach, halva, and specially ordered hamantashen pastries. My mouth watered at the luscious smells and succulent sights.
Noticing you didn’t have a plate in your hands, I passed one to you. You hadn’t seen me beside you, even as I called your name, and you startled when the dish appeared in front of you. You turned your eyes to me. It is then that I notice the pain. I saw the familiar torment in you, that same shadow I carried for many years.
“You’d better eat something, Chavalah. You’re so little I think you might blow away in a big wind.”
“I’m not hungry.”
I am thinking of a time when food had no taste for me.
“Sometimes it is good to eat even when our minds don’t remind us to do it. Look at all this good food. Surely those desserts tempt you?” I lean in closer to her ear. “I won’t tell your mother if you eat only desserts today.”
“Edgar Allen Poe said ‘death is but a painful metamorphosis and our present incarnation is temporary.’ Do you believe that?”
The answer I want to give is not an answer for an eleven-year-old child. My true answer will have to wait. And so I kneel and say, “In the afterlife there is no hamentash or noodle kugel, so I think while we are temporarily here, we should avoid this painful death and eat to stay healthy.”
I waited for a smile that did not come. Instead, a solemn nod and a half-hearted placement of a single rugelach on your plate. My heart, which had only recently been replaced, burst with pain at your suffering. After this day, your happiness became the thing I prayed for at shul.
Every prayer from my lips is this prayer, until this day, September 19th, 1977. This is the day my prayer is answered. I receive a phone call from you, late in the day, after school.
“It’s in January at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. A student exhibition. I found out today. I had to sign a real artist contract and everything! I hope you and Ruth and Bethyl can come.”
“This is extraordinary, Chavalah. Congratulations. We will come to the Boston Museum to see the dedicated artist’s creation. We will celebrate with a fine dinner in your honor.”
The pure elation in your little voice erased my worries. I heard the sound of a happy young girl. This is a new sound that I will cherish. This is the sound of a young girl without a shadow.
Twenty-two
Jules, 16 years | February 3rd, 1978
HELLO AND GOOD-BYE
THIS YEAR HAS become my favorite year in high school and not because of the museum exhibition.
Leigh and Timothy and I have become great friends. Somehow the balance of Timothy in our lives creates a perfect triad of fun. Last fall we started sneaking out in the middle of the night to ride our bikes. I climb down the trellis from the widow’s walk. I could probably go out the front unnoticed, but I do it to avoid the horror of potentially waking Wendy. She becomes a witch when we wake her up, and it embarrasses me when she screams in front of my friends.
I think I also do it to be like Leigh and Timothy. They have to sneak out at night. Timothy sneaks out through his back sliding door. Leigh escapes by tiptoeing down her creaky stairs.
David and I have never had a curfew. Wendy brags to her friends that she never has to make curfews because the kids we hang out with have parents who do, and who are we going to hang out with when they go home?
My classmates voted me Class Secretary in this, my junior year, because Leigh wrote me a funny, sarcastic speech to read that talked about all the ridiculous things I would do if I won. It had nothing to do with anything because being a class officer has nothing to do with anything. Leigh wrote it as a big joke. I read it like it was a joke, and the class voted me in like it was a joke, I’m sure. Still, I feel surprised. I’ve never been one of the popular kids in my class. I keep to myself. I don’t like attention, and when it I get it, besides making me feel embarrassed, it scares me, because I worry it might bring attention to Wendy and Jack and the illegal activities going on and that we could get busted or something worse.
I feel like a social misfit, because other than Leigh and Timothy I don’t understand most of the kids in my school. The things they talk about, sports and TV for instance, don’t interest me.
I also don’t understand high school humor—dunking kids in toilets, th
rowing them in lockers, pinning things to the back of their shirts, making up nasty nicknames—it all seems ridiculous to me. I’m often the target of a joke I don’t understand right away, and when I get it, if I get it, it never seems funny to me.
I spend more time trying to figure out what someone has really meant, or why they’ve really said it, than is ever necessary. Leigh constantly tells me I “think too much.” I can’t control it. Anyway, student government is wicked pissa because I’m allowed to skip math class once a month for meetings. We never work on anything at the meetings except making decisions about the prom.
We decided the junior and senior class will celebrate their proms together this year. Since I have absolutely no interest in the prom and don’t plan to go, it doesn’t interest me to sit and listen to my classmates debate the life-changing matters of prom themes and decorations.
Timothy got voted Senior Class Vice President, so he attends the meetings with me. He brings powdered donuts from the bakery table in the cafeteria and I bring chocolate milk cartons I swipe from the lunch counter. We sit in the back row of the classroom during the meetings and shoot the shit about our days.
Today we’ve already scarfed the donuts and the chocolate milk.
“Are you even gonna go to this thing?” Timothy asks me.
“Prom? I … don’t … I don’t know.”
I don’t have a date and I don’t want to be a third wheel with Leigh and her Boy-Du-Jour. I’m certain the guy she currently calls her boyfriend isn’t the guy she’ll be dating in May. She goes through boys like socks.
“Are you?”
He smiles. “If you’re my date.”
I’m shocked and—curiously—embarrassed. Timothy has never suggested anything remotely resembling a date before. I’ve never even considered the possibility of something more than a friendship with him. My face burns, I’m starting to sweat, and I’m sure I’m a deep shade of scarlet. He kindly glances away and softly says, “We could go hang out like we’re going to any dance. I didn’t mean to suggest anything … I mean … Jules, it doesn’t have to be …”
He’s fumbling, and I realize I’ve misread an invitation he meant to be light-hearted and now he’s trying not to offend me. “Oh, totally. That sounds perfect.”
Timothy picks up my tone and says, “Yeah it would be lots of fun.”
Now he’s serious again. “But if there’s a better offer, you have to promise me you’ll tell me. I don’t want you feel like you can’t renege on this.”
I’m laughing now. “Timothy … I’m practically socially retarded. No one is going to ask me and I’m not interested enough in anyone to ask them. But the same goes for you.”
I lift my eyebrow at him and he’s laughing now.
“Deal,” he says.
We’re quiet, thinking our own thoughts and pretending to listen to our classmates debating how to raise money for the night.
After the meeting ends I walk back to our neighborhood with him. Leigh joins us until her turnoff. Being with the two of them, I realize how lucky I am to have them in my life. I feel a sense of happiness and collectedness.
“I love you guys.”
Leigh hugs me and says, “I love you too, Jules.”
Timothy and I say good-bye to Leigh and start to walk away. Leigh calls to us, “Hey, did they come up with a prom theme yet?”
“No,” I say, and I realize we haven’t told her. “But Timothy and I decided we’re going.”
Leigh doesn’t respond at first.
“You mean together?”
“Yeah,” I say. I’m smiling like, Isn’t it funny?
She nods and turns away. She calls over her shoulder, “Talk to you later, you guys.”
Timothy and I wait there for a second, then turn to walk up the hill to our neighborhood. “Is it me,” he says, “or did that seem to shake her up a bit?”
“I think, well, maybe she’s … wondering what we meant. I mean, I felt surprised and confused at first, maybe she’s feeling … you know, the same.”
I’m lost and wondering if maybe Leigh still has a crush on Timothy and I missed it. I don’t want to say any of this to him, though, because if it’s true I don’t want to betray Leigh’s feelings.
I have the idea he might like teasing Leigh a bit. They dated for a minute when Leigh and I were freshmen and he was a sophomore, but it fizzled. Leigh said it burned out because she wasn’t attracted to him after all. Timothy never talked about it. I wonder what happened, but I never want to butt in and be nosy about it.
“Do you want to go to prom for real?” I ask.
“Yeah. Do you?”
“Yeah. I guess … yeah. It’s just that I didn’t see myself going and I talked myself out of it, you know?”
I wonder if he regrets his decision to ask me.
“Let’s go and see what it’s like,” he says. “I wanna be able to say I went and enjoyed it. Or if I don’t … I can move on.”
“Hey, that’s me you’re including in your good time or you’re moving on,” I protest.
“I didn’t mean it like that.” He chuckles.
I laugh back. We say good-bye at his house and I walk on around the corner.
I’m surprised to see Wendy’s car in the driveway. She rarely comes back to the house during the day. She’s been taking a full semester of classes at Northeastern to finish her degree and usually goes to her friends’ houses after class. She decided to focus on psychology. It makes sense, since she’s nuts, that she wants to immerse herself in crazy.
Jack’s been gone for about a month, sailing someone’s boat around the Panama Canal to California. When I walk in I find her sitting on the couch reading The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan, which I know is old because I took it off our shelves when I was little and read it.
“Did you have majorette practice?”
“Um, no … I haven’t had a practice since Homecoming—you know, last November? There are no more football games until next September. We’ll march with the band for the Memorial Day parade, but that’s it for the year. You don’t pay attention to anything in my life, do you?”
I know I’m being a bit dramatic about it, but she never fails to totally push my buttons when she reveals how little she cares about me. My good mood is sinking, as it usually does when I’m dealing with Wendy.
She shuts her book with a snap. “Don’t be rude. I’m trying to talk to you and find out what’s going on with you.”
“Why?” I challenge. “What do you want?” I’m suspicious now.
Wendy pats the spot on the couch next to her. “Sit with me.”
I hesitate and sit in the white, fur-upholstered, double chaise.
“Talk,” I say roughly.
I’m not sure when I started talking to Wendy like this, but it’s become our normal pattern of communication. I never give an inch with her. Of course, she never gives an inch with me, either. We’ve just fallen into this awful pattern of bitchiness with each other.
“Tell me what’s going on in your world. I want to know. I want to know what you’re studying in class, what kind of artwork you’re doing now, if you have a boyfriend?”
At this question, a burst of air escapes from my mouth in an annoyed “Pfffftt.”
“No boyfriend? Do you like anyone?”
“Why the sudden interest? Is this a therapeutic practice theory you’re testing out on me?”
It’s weird that she’s asking this question today of all days, but I’m sure it’s coincidence. For the past few months, she’s been trying to slide psychology weirdness into our interactions. One day she’ll tell me my behavior displays an “adolescent Electra complex” and the next day she’ll tell me I was “self-actualized” at the age of eight.
“You never share anything going on in your life with me. I have no idea what you’re thinking or how you’re doing,” Wendy says as her volume rises.
“Do you care?”
“What do you mean, do I care?” she practically
screams.
I stand to leave then turn to face her. “I can’t talk to you. All you do is yell. If you cared about me, you’d pay attention to me and my life. You’d have a clue what I’ve been doing—like I haven’t been carrying around a baton, so how could I be at majorette practice? All you do is party, get high, and slide in around here once in a while. I cook my own meals. I keep the house clean. I do all the laundry and the dishes. I take out the garbage and I shovel the snow. What do you do around here besides sleep, read books, and polish your nails?”
Wendy sits on the couch saying nothing. I turn to go upstairs.
“I don’t do drugs.”
I turn back to her.
“You don’t do drugs?” I repeat incredulously.
“No. I don’t do drugs and I don’t want you to tell other people I do. And … if I’m such a good-for-nothing mother, then you won’t miss me if I go away for a while.”
Ah, this is what it’s all about.
“I leave on Monday for the Virgin Islands. I’m going to meet Jack and sail with him for a while.”
“What do you mean ‘a while’?”
“What do you mean, what do I mean? You just said you take care of everything around here, and you obviously don’t need me. So I’m going away for a while. You’ll be fine,” she says matter-of-factly.
“You’re right,” I say and turn quickly to walk up the stairs. Although it infuriates me, I burst into tears when I’m inside my room.
How typical. She wants to cozy up so she can go on a vacation with Jack and not feel guilty about taking off.
I hate that I still want her to express genuine interest in my life after all that she’s done to hurt me.
The Belief in Angels Page 24