“We’re even then. Sandy—Sarah—do you really think Mom will be all right?”
Sarah shrugged and went to the window. Always, she had loved that view of their garden. A huge oak grew just below their bedroom, the seasons marked by its outstretched branches. Barren and sere in winter, they knew that the tender unfurling green leaves meant the onset of spring. Now the heart-shaped leaves fell in showers of gold and russet as summer’s greenery surrendered to the chill winds of encroaching fall. Sarah studied the foliage as though she would commit it to memory. Autumn did not come to Jerusalem. The heat of summer plummeted, without easement, into the punishing cold of winter. She loved the life she had chosen but she missed the seasons of her childhood, she missed her sister and brothers, she missed her mother and now, and forever, she would miss her father. Weighted by sadness she opened the window, breathed in the cold fresh air and, very gently, closed it again.
But Lisa was staring at her, waiting for an answer. Would their mother be all right? She turned from the window and idly lifted a small glass bird from her bedside table. Once she had collected such miniatures. It startled her that her mother had kept so many of them, but then their girlhoods, hers and Lisa’s, were enshrined in this room with its faded posters and dusty college pennants.
“I don’t think it will be easy, but she’ll manage. I’m going to try to persuade her to come to Israel. She could teach a master class in ceramics at the Bezalel Art Academy, spend time with the children, help me with my designs.”
Sarah sighed at the thought of the pile of orders for the long gowns favored by the women of her community she had left in her Jerusalem workroom. Her fabric designs were popular and the demand for them kept her family economically afloat. Moshe helped, of course, but it had been understood when they married that he was a student, that he would always devote himself to Torah study. It would be wonderful if she and her mother could work together, a childhood dream fulfilled.
“Honestly, Sarah, do you think she’d find it soothing to chase after your kids?” Lisa asked harshly. “Actually, I think she might enjoy coming to Russia with me when my adoption plans are finalized. We could spend some time at The Hermitage, tour St. Petersburg.”
Lisa’s voice drifted off and the sisters looked at each other and smiled ruefully.
“There we go again,” Sarah said. “Back to elementary school. Fighting over Mommy. Will she go to your dance program or my violin recital? Will she take us shopping together and, if not, which one will she take first? Will she come to me in Jerusalem or go with you to Russia? We’ll have to talk about it tonight at dinner. Peter and Denis have their own ideas, I’m sure. But Lisa, we’re too old to worry about sharing her.”
“Well, we were born into it,” Lisa said. “We probably fought each other for priority in her womb. Too bad she never even wanted to be shared. It was always Daddy who had exclusive claim to her. She and Daddy locked together in the center of an enchanted circle, the four of us dancing about them. I remember how we kids ate our wonderfully well-balanced meals promptly at six and then watched as she set the table with candles and wineglasses for the not-so-well-balanced dinners she and Dad shared when he came home. Hugs, smiles, kisses and then we were shooed upstairs and they sat and talked, their voices so soft we could hardly hear them even when we sneaked down and stood in the doorway. Is that how it is with you and Moshe?”
“No,” Sarah replied gravely. “We always have dinner with the children.”
She reached for her sister’s hand. She understood how it had felt to stand always on the periphery of their parents’ impenetrable intimacy. Fingers clasped, the sisters made their way downstairs and joined their brothers in the dining room.
Elaine had changed for dinner, choosing a soft wool dress of brightest blue, twisting her thick dark hair into a loose bun, her color high, the long silver earrings Neil had bought her in Santa Fe gracefully dangling. The table was set as she had set it each Friday night of their childhoods, the only night when the family had had dinner together. The polished silver glinted, the crystal glassware sparkled, the golden glazed dishes of Elaine’s own design were circlets of sun on the woven sky-blue cloth. The siblings smiled at each other. Even in the simple act of setting a table, their mother was an artist, her aesthetic instinct flawless. And the dinner, of course, was delicious, the hens roasted to perfection, the casserole of rice and lentils delicately flavored, the pale green asparagus offset by the bright verdancy of the blanched broccoli. They sat in the seats that had been theirs in childhood, the brothers facing the sisters, Elaine smiling down at them from the head of the table, all their eyes averted from their father’s empty chair.
Elaine pointed to the bottle of wine.
“Will you pour, Peter?” she asked. Their father’s task, now assigned to his eldest son.
They stared down at their glasses. It had been Neil’s habit to offer a toast at such family dinners—wishes for a good Sabbath, words of pride to signify a graduation, a marriage, a celebration of achievement or simply a celebration of their togetherness in this room, at this table. Silence threatened them now and they were relieved when Denis stood and lifted his glass.
“To our family,” he said softly.
“To our family.”
They spoke in unison, nodded and sipped the golden liquid.
“Terrific wine, Mom,” Lisa said.
“Your father’s favorite,” she replied. “Golan wine. He ordered a case. A case.”
Her voice trailed off. A case. Who would drink that case of wine? She imagined herself sitting down to a table set for one, filling a single glass. A woman drinking alone in an empty house. Her fingers trembled as she lifted the wine to her lips and set it down without a single sip.
Her children looked away from her, looked uneasily at each other. Sarah nodded at Lisa who emptied her glass, refilled it and turned to Elaine.
“Mom, I know it’s awfully early to talk about this, but have you thought about what you want to do now?”
Elaine stared at her, as though the words had been spoken in a language she could not comprehend.
“Now?” she repeated in the dangerous tone they recognized—hot anger coated with icy calm, the sarcastic whip of maternal disappointment, rare yet painfully familiar. “Now. Now that your father is dead? Now, when his clothes are still hanging in the closet. Now, when we sit down at this table for the first time without him?” Her eyes flashed toward the empty chair, the unset place at the head of the table. “It’s a question that might have waited, don’t you think?”
“Mom, don’t take it like that.” Denis, the youngest, the acknowledged favorite, the child who could do no wrong, always gentle, always tender, perhaps too gentle, perhaps too tender, rose from his seat and went to his mother, placed his hand on her shoulder. “We’re talking about it now because it’s our last night together. We all take off tomorrow and we’re worried about you. Except for Lisa, we’re all so far away and we want to know how you’ll manage. We love you. We want to take care of you.”
“I can take care of myself.” The harshness of her tone startled her, shocked her children. She saw their faces blanch, their eyes glint, sorrowful and bewildered. But she could not staunch the rush of words, the outpouring of an anger left latent during the week of mourning, the days of loss. “I have my home. I have my work. I have my life. The rest of my life. Don’t worry. I won’t be a burden to you—not to any of you.”
Their voices rose in a flood of protest.
“You misunderstood. How could you think that?” Gentle Sarah, her serenity shaken, gripped her mother’s hand. “We want you to be part of our lives. This is the time for you to turn to us, for us to rely on you. We want you to be with us. We understood that you couldn’t travel to see us when Dad was bound by his patient schedule but now—now,”(bravely she repeated the dangerous word, the word that had so offended and yet could not be substituted for any other), “you have the leisure to spend time with us, to travel to Jerusalem, to
California, to Santa Fe.”
“Russia. Mom, you could come with me to Russia when I go there to get the baby I’m adopting. We’ve never traveled together. This would be our chance.”
Sarah heard the plea in Lisa’s voice and her heart broke for her sister who would be alone with her loss and her grief. As their mother would be alone. Lisa, at least, had colleagues and, of course, her snatched weekends and holidays with David, the lover who appeared and disappeared at will. But her mother’s work was solitary and independent. Her heart grew heavy at the thought of Elaine preparing meals to be eaten in solitude, listening alone to the music once shared, wandering through the large empty house that overflowed with memories but was shrouded in silence.
Sarah longed suddenly for the clamor of her Jerusalem home, the giddy laughter and mild quarrels of her children, Moshe’s gentle voice, the neighbors rushing in and out, their anger, their laughter, their concerns exploding about her, at once engaging and invigorating. She and Moshe were part of a community, unlike her parents who had cherished a privacy that excluded all others, even, she recognized wearily but without bitterness, their own children.
“How could you imagine that we would think of you as a burden?” Peter asked miserably.
“I’m sorry,” Elaine said. “I’m just tired. So tired.”
She sat very still and they saw at once that her anger had dissipated into a sorrow that she could not control. They understood that nothing they could say would comfort her but Lisa, courageous, determined Lisa, did not easily surrender.
“You may even find that you’ll want to live closer to one of us,” she said gently.
“We’ll see. It’s too early to think about that.” Her voice was flat but tears drifted down her cheeks and she lifted the sky-blue linen napkin to her eyes. She had been sad during the week of mourning but this was the first time they had seen her weep.
They sat for a few minutes in uneasy silence and then Sarah went into the kitchen and set the warming baked apples on a serving dish. They ate the cinnamon-flavored dessert, their favorite, their father’s favorite, slowly, as though its taste would restore their childhood to them.
“I make this for the kids almost every Shabbat,” Sarah said, “but it never tastes as good as yours, Mom.”
“Andrew likes it with brown sugar but I stick to the cinnamon,” Denis said.
“My kids won’t eat anything brown. Not potatoes, not brown rice, not baked apple.” Ruefully, Peter helped himself to another serving.
The lives they had so abruptly abandoned in the wake of their father’s too swift illness and death, reclaimed them now. Their thoughts centered on their homes in distant cities where the impact of their father’s death could be assimilated and where their own grief would not be subsumed by their mother’s overwhelming loss. The telephone rang. David calling Lisa. She spoke, softly, briefly and returned to the table, her cheeks flushed.
Elaine smiled.
“The recipe was your grandmother’s,” she said. “Your father’s mother.”
They nodded, reassured. The sweetness on their tongues was a legacy, a guarantor of continuity. Their grandmother’s recipe now prepared in their own kitchens.
“Remember, Mom, we’re always there for you,” Denis said.
“I know that. Of course, I know that.”
Her anger, inexplicable and unjust, had vanished.
They cleared the table together, carefully dealing with the leftovers, loading the dishwasher, straightening the chairs and restoring the dining room to an order that they knew would not be disturbed for weeks to come.
There was nothing more to say. Elaine went into the living room and sat in the half darkness. They kissed her good-night, their lips soft against her cheek and went upstairs, willing themselves not to think of their mother staring across the dimly lit room at their father’s chair, the mystery novel he had never finished reading still on the small table beside it.
“I can’t bear to leave her,” Lisa said softly to Sarah, as they undressed. “But I can’t bear to be with her.”
“I know.”
Silently then, the sisters lay down on the narrow beds of their shared girlhood and Lisa listened as Sarah whispered her prayers into the darkness.
The family parted the next morning, in a confusion of hugs and promises, searches for misplaced tickets and last-minute phone calls. Denis and Peter shared a cab to La-Guardia and Lisa drove back to Philadelphia. Elaine insisted on driving Sarah to Kennedy.
“Are you sure you want to make the trip back alone?” Sarah asked worriedly and immediately regretted her words.
But Elaine only smiled.
“I’ll have to get used to doing a lot of things alone,” she replied and Sarah nodded.
They embraced at the El Al departure gate.
“Mom, please come to Jerusalem soon,” Sarah pleaded, struggling against the onset of her tears.
“We’ll see,” Elaine replied. “We have time.”
Time, she realized, as she drove slowly northward on the sun-spangled highway, was something that she would have in excess over the weeks and months to come.
four
Lists. List upon list. Elaine bought a yellow legal pad because she found the light blue lines reassuring and marked each line with a number. Unflinchingly, she specified each day’s task, her eyes dry but her heart heavy. Still, her hands did not tremble as she recorded all that had to be done. Each numbered entry, each check of completion meant that she had her life, her new and bewildering life, under control.
“I’m fine,” she assured Lisa who called regularly. “I’m getting things organized. There is a lot to do but really, I don’t need any help. I can manage.”
Lisa did not insist. She would not invade the intimacy of her mother’s final leave-taking and she knew that she could not bear to touch her father’s things.
The logistics of death, the disposals and cancellations, the forms and formalities, filled Elaine with a helpless fury but her lists gave her ballast. She would do what had to be done. She had not lied to her daughter. She could manage. She would manage. After all, she had no choice.
She wept as she discarded Neil’s toothbrush, his straight razor, his comb and brush. She pressed a dollop of his shaving cream onto her hand and then onto her cheek, oddly comforted by the familiar odor. She wiped it off with one of his initialed handkerchiefs, a birthday gift from Lisa, and tucked the linen square into her pocket, removing it now and again so that she might press it to her lips.
Day after day she packed Neil’s possessions into cartons, marking each one carefully. His winter clothes for Big Brothers. His tuxedo and dress shirts for the synagogue thrift shop. His shoes, each pair neatly boxed, because he had been a careful man, went to Goodwill along with the contents of his sock drawer. She closed that carton carefully, remembering the beauty of his feet, the curve of the arches, the long tapering toes. She smiled at the memory of how, during the early days of their marriage, she had massaged them gently, an intimate and private prelude to their lovemaking.
Neither of them had known any measure of privacy in their childhoods. She and Neil had grown up in small apartments, sleeping on living room sofas, doing their homework on kitchen tables. They had granted their immigrant parents absolute access to their lives. They had pleased them with their excellent grades, their practical choices. They told them where they were going, when they would return home. Their mothers and fathers had lived with so much uncertainty, so much anxiety, that they, Neil and Elaine, dutiful son, dutiful daughter, spared them any further worry. But they had determined, in that first rush of marital independence, that they would not repeat that intrusive pattern. Their children’s lives would be their own. Even now she would not intrude upon her sons and daughters. She would not ask them to help her dispense with the remnants of their father’s life. That was her job, her responsibility.
Pajamas and underwear filled black plastic bags which she carried to charity bins in the supermarket par
king lot, waiting patiently as each bag shot its way down the chute. That final thud reassured her. She had done her duty and stood sentinel over the last vestige of Neil’s most intimate garments. She transported his winter coats and jackets to a homeless shelter in a distant suburb. She would not want to see a vagrant wandering through her own town wearing his camel’s hair coat, his red-and-black quilted shirt, his heavy olive drab jacket.
She wrote thank-you notes to the friends and relatives who had attended the funeral, visited during the mourning period and sent messages of condolence. Lisa had urged her to use printed cards.
“That’s not my style,” Elaine had replied.
She composed each note carefully, struggling to find the graceful phrase, to exercise the control that was so important to her, although too often she sat with her pen poised over the blank sheet of monogrammed stationery.
She cancelled subscriptions, writing polite letters to the various psychoanalytic journals, to the obscure quarterlies and The Economist, wondering if it was necessary to tell them that Dr. Neil Gordon had died or if it was enough to simply tell them that they should remove his name from their rosters. She puzzled over their opera and theater schedules, so carefully selected, so eagerly anticipated, and decided, at last, that she would keep those tickets. She would invite friends to accompany her. That, of course, was what women without partners did. They joined forces with other women, established coalitions of the solitary. She wondered, as she fingered the rainbow-colored sets of tickets, who might join her at the Met, who might sit next to her at the Roundabout Theatre. There was Serena Goldstein, a college friend who had been widowed the previous year. Perhaps she could ask Mimi Armstrong, the newly divorced gallery owner with whom she worked. Audrey, a neighbor whose husband was often away on business. They would meet for dinner, attractive, well-dressed women who lived their lives without men.
Elaine sighed, wearied suddenly by the thought of the new relationships she would have to nurture, the new role she would have to play.
“I am a widow,” she said aloud and the word hung clumsily on her tongue.
Open Doors Page 5