I snuck around the back of the house and through the cold, empty garage, where robbers or raccoons were probably waiting to attack me. I knocked on the Shabbos goy’s door. He was pulling his T-shirt over his head when he answered, and I couldn’t help but notice the thin line of hair that traveled a few inches up from the waist of his jeans. Otherwise, his chest was completely smooth. My father’s chest was so hairy that it looked like he was wearing a black sweater when he undressed.
“You shouldn’t be here, June,” the Shabbos goy said, his shirt still covering his face. When his head emerged from the collar, he said, “Oh, Barbara.”
It was the first time I’d heard him say my name. Piles of clothing and packing boxes littered the floor.
“Oh yes I should be here.” My anger and hurt toward my mother had morphed into something else; now I was her fierce protector.
He pulled down his shirt. I’d never seen his hair out of a ponytail before. It fell around his shoulders, which were broad for a such a stringy man.
“I don’t care about you.” I glared at him. I’d never seen his face up close. He had blond stubble in the cleft of his chin, a big Adam’s apple, and a finely sculpted nose with delicate nostrils.
He stuffed a sweatshirt into a duffel bag.
“Did you hear what I said?” I walked over to him and kicked the duffel. “I said I don’t care about you.”
“I’m sorry about all this, Barbara.”
“I’m sorry about all this, Barbara.” I mimicked him like a six-year-old, so angry that I couldn’t find my own words.
“I really am,” he said lamely.
“You better be.” I kicked the duffel again because it felt so good the first time. A black-and-white photo fell out of the side pocket. The Shabbos goy and I lunged for it, but I was shorter, so I got there first.
The photo was creased and torn around the border. My mouth slackened as I examined the image of a young girl, probably thirteen or fourteen, standing on a bluff, the lake rippling in the background. She was laughing, her head thrown back, her skinny arms clutching her sides. A teenage boy, maybe fifteen or sixteen, was wearing her sunhat tugged over his ears. The Shabbos goy snatched the photo back, but he was too late. I recognized the hands and smile and tilt of her long neck.
“Who’s the boy in the picture?” I asked. I’d only seen a few photos of my mother as a girl.
He started gathering the other items that had fallen across the floor.
“Answer me.” My breath caught in my chest, and I couldn’t get it out. I started to hyperventilate.
He led me by the elbow to an overstuffed brown chair, then went to the kitchen and returned with a glass of water. “Relax, Barbara,” he said in the sweetest voice, and I hated myself for seeing how my mother could love him.
After a few minutes, I could breathe again. “Please tell me why you have an old photo of my mother.”
He tucked it into his pocket. “You’ll have to ask her,” he said in that nice way.
“Oh, so that’s what adulterers do? They share pictures from when they were young?”
“It’s up to your mother to tell you about this,” he said, his lips set in a firm no.
We both knew that my mother wasn’t going to tell me her secrets. Or maybe she would now that I had climbed into that tub and waded into the darkness that had been pulling her away from us.
“Take care of her.” He walked to the door and opened it for me.
“Oh, don’t you worry. I will,” I answered, my voice full of accusation and love. I walked out his door and back down the Schines’ driveway. The Shabbos goy had confirmed my new role as my mother’s caretaker. Now I’d always know where to find her in the middle of the night.
The first week after the Shabbos goy left for Wyoming, my mother came downstairs and flitted around the kitchen filling bowls of cereal for me, pouring my father cups of coffee, and scrambling eggs for both of us. The second week, she sat at the kitchen table in a dirty nightgown and watched us fix our own breakfasts, commenting absently that I was so grown up. The third week, she took to her bed.
That Shabbos, my dad and I walked to shul without her. The rebbetzin saved a place for me, and the women looked at me with concern. I told them nothing about my mother. I’d been designated the keeper of her secrets and her pain.
Either Rabbi Schine or the rebbetzin, or sometimes both, called my father every day, and the rebbetzen, the Brisket Ladies, Mrs. Katz and Mrs. Pincus, started showing up every few days with brisket and petrified vegetables. We accepted their meals and their concern graciously, although nobody in our house had much of an appetite. One night, I overhead my father talking on the phone, his conversation sprinkled with words like “depressed” and “psychiatrist” and “emaciated.” I hoped he didn’t know why my mother was in such bad shape.
When I walked by my mother’s door the next morning, I heard her whimpering. I didn’t go into her room to comfort her, but I ditched school early and stopped at the Shorewood Library to load up on books by James Michener, her favorite author, and Jane Austen, mine. I’d figured out the perfect antidote to my mother’s funk. As soon as I walked into the house, I ran up to my parents’ room and knocked on the door. She didn’t answer, so I let myself in. She was in bed dozing, her ivory sheets tangled around her waist. Instead of one of her pretty nightgowns, she was wearing an old Oxford shirt of my dad’s, unbuttoned enough to reveal her pale skin pulled tightly over the birdlike bones of her chest. The room stank of cigarettes and dirty scalp. I emptied her ashtray, then stretched out on her chaise longue and thumbed through Michener’s Kent State: What Happened and Why, the perfect bait to reel my mother back into life. I cleared my throat often, hoping to wake her. Finally, she stirred.
She sat up in bed and rubbed her eyes. “What time is it?”
It was one of those dark winter afternoons when the sun set before suppertime. I glanced down at my watch. “Four forty-five.”
“You need to do your homework, Sweet B.”
Her voice sounded hoarse and flat, but I didn’t care. She’d called me Sweet B. “Are you hungry? I can heat up some soup.”
“You’re such a good girl.” She grabbed her pack of cigarettes and lit up.
“Do you want to go to visit the rebbetzin?” I asked, hoping that the Schines’ apartment would lure her out of her bed.
“I’m a little tired today.”
I sat with her while she finished her cigarette, and when she got up to use the bathroom, I arranged the library books on my father’s side of the bed. “I checked out some books for you, Mom.”
She climbed back into bed and pulled the covers over her thin legs. “Michener,” she sighed. “I’m going to pick one after I take a nap.”
She went back to sleep, the books untouched. I sat on the chaise longue until I heard my father enter the house. I ran off to my room and pretended I was deeply engrossed in my physics homework when he came upstairs and stood in my doorway, still in his wrinkled white coat, which now looked a size too big. My mother had stopped ironing his coats and feeding him.
“Are you okay?” Even his voice was losing its heft. He walked over to me and lightly pinched my earlobe, like he had when I was a little girl with a mom who read me books about my hero Chaim Pumpernickel.
“Are you?” I asked.
He looked down at his shoes. I’d been so busy worrying about my mother that I hadn’t noticed the defeat in the way he held his shoulders and the purple circles under his eyes. He blinked hard. I thought he might cry. I looked at him again, and I thought I might cry too. He smiled at me. Like Mrs. Isen’s, his olive skin had turned sallow and his eyes were flat.
He knew about my mom and the Shabbos goy.
I stared down at my notebook and reread my study question over and over until the words started to blur. Does a free-falling object still have weight?
“You seem tired, Dad.” I couldn’t look at him anymore.
“I’m okay. I’m worried about your mo
m, Bunny.”
I was dying inside for my father. I knew in my heart that he was too loyal to leave my mother, especially when she was sick. Once she started feeling better, maybe my parents would fall back in love. Then again, he never missed an opportunity to go on about the lies of Haldeman and Ehrlichman, so maybe he wouldn’t be able to forgive my mother for hers.
“Me too,” I said.
“Let me do the worrying. You need to go to school.”
The school must have called him about my absence. I felt sick with guilt for making him fret about me. I pulled at the loose seams of my bedspread. “Okay.”
He patted my shin. “I’ll make us my specialty. We’ll take a night off from the brisket.”
“Thanks, Dad.”
“I almost forgot. This came for you.” He reached into his pocket and handed me an envelope before he walked into the hall. I heard him open the door to my parents’ bedroom. A few minutes later he was banging pots and pans around in the kitchen, making me matzoh brei, even though Passover wasn’t for another few months. I opened the letter.
January 14, 1974
B”H
Dear Barbara,
Happy Birthday!! Did Mrs. Kessler make you skip around the room and wear the striped birthday hat? Ha, ha. I’m mailing this early so you’ll get it on your big day. I’ll be thinking of you all day.
Did your mom tell you that my parents found me a match? I saw a picture, and he has reddish hair, like yours. He’s a Rashi scholar and comes from a family of seven girls. I hope he’s not too serious. All of this talk about a wedding makes me nervous. The only thing that calms me is knowing that you will be there to catch me if I faint like you did in Mrs. Kraven’s social studies class, but then it was because the room was too hot and I hadn’t eaten breakfast. My mom said that this shadchen did a good job of fixing up Sari and the rest of my cousins, and they seem happy enough. What if she makes a mistake with me?
Write soon, and tell me all of the news of the shul. I miss you.
Your best friend,
Tzippy
I didn’t have the heart to remind my father that tomorrow was my birthday. Eighteen. I was old enough to vote and drink and not make a fuss over a forgotten birthday. Being an adult was overrated. I couldn’t stop taking care of my mother if I wanted to, but that didn’t mean I didn’t yearn for my chocolate cake baked from scratch. I wanted to lick the beaters and bowl clean.
We ate dinner without talking much, and while I was getting ready for bed, I noticed puffy circles under my eyes. I was catching a cold, and my head ached. I wrote Tzippy another letter I would never send. It was Tuesday, after all.
January 17, 1974
B”H
Dear Tzippy,
I still can’t believe that you’re getting married. I guess you’ll set a date soon. Mira has a boyfriend. His name is Howie, and she met him at a BBYO bagel breakfast last December. He doesn’t go to our school, so Mira and I still eat lunch together. We don’t see each other after school anymore, but that’s okay. I feel like I need to be home anyway.
Mira and I got into a fight yesterday at lunch. I asked her to please stop sucking the white part of the banana peel from the skin because everyone would laugh at her. She said that we always sat alone at the lunch table anyway, and that if I cared so much about being laughed at, then I should stop dressing like Moon-Schine Girl. I didn’t even cry when I reminded her that Moon-Schine Girl was old news. Now I answer to Zitface.
My dad knows about the Shabbos goy. He looks so sad. The only good news is that he didn’t leave my mother and the Shabbos goy is finally gone. He moved to Wyoming. I hated what my mom was doing, but it hurts to see her in so much pain. These two feelings are rooted around my heart like a wishbone.
I can’t wait until June. Everything will be fine by then, and we’ll have the whole summer to figure out our new lives.
Your best friend,
Barbara
By April, I was working for Mrs. Kessler only once a week. My mother needed me more, so I came straight home from school. She was no longer spending the days in bed, but she rarely left the house. My father never asked me to do the grocery shopping or keep her company, but I think he was relieved that someone was taking care of her.
A week before Passover, I was walking to the Schines to help Mrs. Kessler, and as I turned up the driveway, I noticed a figure wandering along the bluff. It was a gloomy day, and it was easy to spot my mother’s baggy cornflower-blue coat against the gray horizon. She moved her hand to her mouth periodically to puff on her cigarette.
I stiffened. She so rarely went out that she must have come here for a reason. When she passed the carriage house, I thought she’d look toward the window for the Shabbos goy, but she didn’t. She kept walking toward the bluff.
I broke into a jog as I imagined her flapping her skinny arms, cigarette between her fingers, the tiny orange ember releasing smoke into the air. A bird in a blue coat. I wanted to shout, but my throat closed up, so I ran harder until I almost reached her. She stood with her back to me, shoulders slouched and her hands hanging limply at her sides.
“Mom?” I called out softly.
She turned around, and I shuddered. I hadn’t seen her outside of the house, where she’d drawn the shades in every room. In the natural light, she looked pale, but something else about her caught my eye. I recognized the tilt of her head, the distance between her body and the lake behind her. No flowered dress or hat, but this was exactly where she stood in the photo that fell out of the Shabbos goy’s duffel bag.
“What are you doing out here?” She looked as though I’d woken her from a deep daydream. She took a long drag of her cigarette, dropped it on the ground, and crushed it with the tip of her boot. She turned back to the water.
“Mom? Hello? Are you here?”
“Where else would I possibly be?” she replied, not to me, but to the miles of open water in front of us.
After a few minutes, she started back toward the mansion, and I followed. Instead of heading up the driveway, though, she went to the kitchen entrance. When she opened the door, I wasn’t sure if she was looking for the rebbetzin or the Shabbos goy. The kitchen smelled like ammonia. The door shut behind us, and my mother stepped toward the pantry. A surge of the electricity I’d felt in the mikveh seemed to radiate from her body.
“Mom, this isn’t a good idea. Let’s go upstairs to the Schines instead.” Somehow I knew she was in no shape to go back down to the mikveh. She’d fall in and drag me with her. I felt exhausted from the energy I was expending to keep her out of harm’s way.
Mrs. Katz popped out of the pantry, mop in hand. “June!”
“Hello, Malka.” Mrs. Katz was once called Muriel; she was one of my parents’ first recruits.
“I’m doing the first round of Passover cleaning.” Mrs. Katz pointed to the floor and looked at my mother eagerly. A few months ago, my mother would have praised Mrs. Katz for her service to the shul. My mother never mopped our floors, much less the shul’s. Once I overheard her telling my father that she’d grown up with maids and that was why she didn’t know how to clean a floor properly. My father didn’t follow up and ask her more about her servants, like I would have. He simply hired her a cleaning lady whom she let go after the Shabbos goy left. Now it was up to my dad and me to scrub toilets and mop floors.
My mother said nothing. Through Mrs. Katz’s eyes, I saw the knotted hair and the shoulder blades poking through her coat. Mrs. Katz, with her full mouth and giant breasts, only made my mother look more anemic.
“How are you?” Pity draped Mrs. Katz’s fleshy face. She looked nothing like the adoring woman who’d trapped my mother in long conversations at the kiddush lunch table.
My mother reached into her pocket and pulled out a cigarette, but she didn’t light it. “I came in for a match.”
I saw the outline of her lighter in her front pocket and wondered if she’d been such a skilled liar before her affair.
Mrs. Katz reac
hed for a box of kitchen matches on one of the top pantry shelves, slid it open, and held it out to my mother.
My mother took the whole box. “I better not smoke in here.”
Mrs. Katz looked down at her apron and fiddled with the string. “You take good care of yourself, June.”
We filed out of the kitchen with barely a goodbye. I waited until we were on the street to say a word. “Mom, were you going to go down to the mikveh again?”
She lit her cigarette and took a long drag. “No, Sweet B. The rebbetzin has to supervise our visits,” she said, as if I was a recruit and she was informing me of a Jewish law.
The wind blew her smoke into my lungs. She wasn’t going to tell me more. I was relieved that Mrs. Katz had stopped us from walking into that pantry and down the steps to the mikveh, but I felt that pull, too. We walked home in silence, the tacit agreement that I’d keep what I knew of her secrets and lies between us. I let us into the house. She tossed the box of matches on the table, flung her arm around me, and drew me in, both clinging to me and comforting me. Minutes later, she disappeared upstairs, not even bothering to take off her coat and boots.
On a rainy day in May, I came home to find the rebbetzin in our kitchen. The dishes had been washed, and it smelled like chicken was roasting. Two teacups and saucers sat on the table.
“Sit down, my Barbara.” She pointed to a chair.
“I should go—”
“I just came from checking on your mother,” the rebbetzin assured me.
I sat down, although I wanted to dash up to my mother’s room and see her for myself.
“Let’s have a cup of tea.” She poured hot water into the cup belonging to the saucer my mother used for her ashtray and placed a Lipton bag and the sugar bowl near my hand.
Washing the Dead Page 9