by Zoe Heller
One of the girls tapped her on the shoulder now. “Ro,” she said, “don’t be mad. I just wanna know why they doing that.”
“Well,” Rosa said, “why do you think, Malisha? What do their signs say? ‘No Dead Babies for Oil.’ What do you think that means?”
But Malisha squinted. “I don’t know.”
“They’re saying that the real reason our government wants to invade Iraq is to get hold of its oil reserves…” Rosa paused. “Do you know what oil reserves are?”
But Malisha was no longer listening. She and the other girls were pointing and giggling at an elderly white woman walking past in a Rasta cap.
“Oh, my God she’s wearing a tam! She thinks she’s a Rasta!”
“Rasta lady! You like Bob Marley?”
Rosa tried to duck her head, but it was too late. Jean had already spotted her. “Hoo! Rosa!” she cried. “Hello, Rosa! Over here!”
The revelation that Rosa was acquainted with this bizarre creature inspired such joyous mirth among the girls that several of them fell to the ground, convulsed with laughter, as Jean approached.
“Rosa, darling,” Jean said, kissing her on the cheek. “How fantastic to see you!”
“Hi, Jean,” Rosa said. “Girls, this is Jean. Jean, this is Malisha, Chantelle, Danielle, Chianti…”
Jean smiled with the special goodwill that middle-aged white liberals reserve for young people of color. “Hello! It’s good to see you young ones at an event like this. We’re depending on you, you know, to lead us out of the mess we’ve got ourselves into!”
The girls stared at her.
“Your mother is just over there with Hannah, you know,” Jean told Rosa. “You must come and say hello.”
“Well—I shouldn’t really leave the girls.”
“Don’t be silly, Rosa, I meant all of you.”
“Yeah!” Chianti cried. “We gonna see Rosa’s mom!”
“No, really, Jean,” Rosa said, “it’s not such a good idea. Mom and I are not on great terms at the moment.”
Jean grasped Rosa’s bicep. “Rosa, dear, don’t be a stick-in-the-mud. Come with me.” Her papery hand had surprising strength.
“Yeah!” The girls were dancing around in excitement now. “Rosa’s mom! Rosa’s mom!”
Rosa sighed. “All right. Come on.”
Hannah was asleep and Audrey was reading a copy of Mother Jones when they walked up.
“Look who I’ve got here!” Jean said.
Audrey glanced at them over her reading spectacles. “Oh, hello.”
“This is my mother,” Rosa told the girls, pointing stiffly at Audrey. “And this” she bent over and planted a kiss on Hannah’s slumped head “is my grandma.”
The girls leaned against one another, suddenly shy.
“Well, now!” Jean said. “Who wants to come and get a Coke?”
“Can we, Ro?”
“If you must.”
“Good!” Jean said. “Why don’t you stay here and take a breather, Rosa? I’m sure I can handle these ladies by myself.”
Left alone, Audrey and Rosa did not speak for some time. Audrey went back to reading her magazine. Rosa turned her attention to the stage and the old black minister who was thundering at the microphone.
“The President, in his wisdom, says ‘you’re either with us or against us.’ Now, you must forgive me because maybe I’m not so bright, but I have to ask, Who is this ‘us’ he’s talking about? And how does a man who lost the general election, who lied his way into power, have the teme-ri-ty to talk so confidently about ‘us’?”
The crowd cheered, and across the meadow, yellow NO BLOOD FOR OIL placards bobbed up and down. Audrey looked up sourly. “This is a very uninspiring event, I must say.”
Rosa smiled. For all her alleged dedication to collectivist principles, Audrey had never much enjoyed collective action. Her political opinions functioned for her much as arcane tastes in alternative music had once functioned for Rosa’s eighth-grade friends: they were a badge of specialness; they served her temperamental need to be a member of a glamorously embattled minority. She proselytized for her causes, but she did not really want to gather adherents, any more than Rosa’s school friends had wanted their beloved indie bands to become chart-topping successes.
“I’m surprised you brought your girls to this,” Audrey said.
“What,” Rosa replied quickly, “because now I’m such a religious freak I wouldn’t be interested in world affairs anymore?”
Audrey shrugged. “Something like that.”
“Actually, this is my last outing with them.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’ve handed in my notice.”
“Oh, yeah?” Audrey said, struggling to sound indifferent. “What’re you going to do instead?”
“You’re not going to like it.”
“You’ve got a job at Morgan Stanley.”
“I think I’m going to go to a yeshiva in Jerusalem.”
Audrey gazed out at the park in silence. When at last she spoke, she sounded surprisingly calm.
“Why Judaism? That’s what I want to know. Why did you have to choose the most reactionary religion? You could have decided to be a Buddhist or, I don’t know, a Hindu.”
“What is the reactionary part you’re referring to?” Rosa demanded. “Caring for the poor and the sick? Honoring your marriage vows? Trying to live honestly and decently?”
Audrey looked at her. “Oh, go on, Rosa. If it was living honestly and decently you wanted, you could have stayed a socialist.”
“Really? Where did socialism ever get me? Where did Dad’s socialist values get him in the end?”
“Your father’s done more than you’ll ever do to make the world a better place.”
“Including lying to his wife and family for the last six years?”
Audrey laughed. “What do you think? That he had it off with that woman because of his politics?”
“Well, his politics certainly didn’t stop him, did they?”
Audrey threw down her magazine. “Oh, don’t be such a baby, Rosa! There’s no system in the world that can keep a man’s dick in his pants. You think Jewish men don’t fuck around on their wives? When you discover that one of your rabbis has been giving one to Mrs. Feingold, are you going to feel ‘betrayed’ by God too?”
Rosa screwed up her face in distaste. “Do you have to talk like that, Mom?”
“Tell me this. Does the Jewish religion stop Jewish soldiers from shooting Palestinian children?”
Rosa was silent.
“What? Are you going to tell me Jewish soldiers don’t shoot Palestinian children?”
“I used to have a problem with Israel,” Rosa said. “But I’ve been reading a lot on the subject and I’ve been talking to some very informed people, and I see now how much of the anti-Zionist argument is rooted in anti-Semitism.”
Audrey gaped at her. “You’re pro-Israel now?”
“I believe in Israel’s right to exist. I believe in its right to defend itself against its enemies. If that’s Zionism…”
“I don’t know what to say to you anymore, Rosa. Really, I don’t.” Audrey buried her face in her hands. Several moments passed. At length, she raised her head. “Are you going to go the whole hog with this thing? Follow all the rules, I mean?”
“Yes, well, I’m going to try. I know a lot of the rules seem pretty out there, Mom—especially when you look at them out of context. They’re not always easy for me to accept. I struggle with a lot of it, but—”
“Well, so,” Audrey broke in, “perhaps it’s not right for you. Just because it’s right for them you know, these friends you’ve met, it doesn’t mean it’s right for you.”
“But Mom, if it’s the truth, it has to be right for me, doesn’t it? If you thought you’d found the truth about something, would you walk away from it just because it wasn’t the truth you particularly wanted or expected to find?”
Audrey shrugged. “I can’t
answer that. The truth would never reveal itself to me in that way.” She pointed into the crowd. “Here they come.” Jean and the girls were making their way back now. Each girl was carrying a Coke and a T-shirt printed with the slogan AGITATED AGITATOR AGITATING.
Rosa turned back to Audrey impatiently. “But what if it did, Mom?” she asked. “What if the truth did reveal itself to you in that way?”
Audrey continued to observe Jean’s approach. “Silly woman,” she muttered. “She’s gone and bought them all T-shirts!”
“Mom!” Rosa wriggled with impatience. Sometimes, as a little girl, she had been so desperate to catch her mother’s wandering attention that she had actually placed a hand on Audrey’s cheek and pushed her head around to face her. “Mom! Are you listening to me?”
Audrey turned to her. “You want to know what I’d do if the truth revealed itself to me and it wasn’t the truth I wanted to find?”
“Yes.”
Audrey smiled. “I’d reject it.”
CHAPTER
23
When Karla woke at six, Mike was already up and creeping about the room in his underpants. Today was the day of the state and city elections; in an hour or so, the two of them would be setting off for one of the union’s phone banks to help get out the vote. Mike was full of nervous tension, she could tell—rasping away at his hair with his military hairbrush, tapping into his Palm Pilot, opening and reopening his closet door to check if he’d laid out the right pair of pleated khakis the night before. She lay, with her eyes closed, listening to the insect-like scritch-scratch of his pottering. At last, she heard the bedroom door close and from across the hall, a faint squeaking of faucets, succeeded by the hiss of not quite adequate water pressure. She climbed stealthily out of bed and went to the window. The sky over the sepia-toned city was a cold, unclouded blue. The meteorological disaster she had been fantasizing—the snowstorm or typhoon that would keep her from having to assist the governor in his widely predicted victory—was nowhere in sight. She sighed and was about to climb back into bed when the phone rang.
“It’s me,” her mother said. “I’m at the hospital. They want you and your brother and sister to come in. They seem to think your father is dying.”
Joel had had pneumonia for the last ten days. The antibiotics initially prescribed had failed to deal with the infection and further tests had since established that he was suffering from a drug-resistant super-bug. Large doses of a costly “super-antibiotic” were now being administered but the infection had not responded and the doctor on duty at the ICU this morning had just informed Audrey that he did not expect Joel to last the day.
Mike was still showering when Karla went into the bathroom. “That was Mom,” she said. “The doctors think Dad’s at the end. They’ve told us to come in.”
“Oh, shit.” Mike poked his head out from the curtain. “Are they sure?”
“I don’t know. I’m just going on what Mom said.”
“What are we going to do?”
Karla felt suddenly ashamed, as if she had willed her father to stage this crisis for her benefit. “I have to go,” Karla said. “I can’t not, Mike.”
“No, of course not.”
Karla looked at him. She could see that he was horribly torn. He had been working toward election day for months. He didn’t want to bail out now and miss the culmination of the campaign. She smiled forgivingly. “You don’t have to come this minute, you know,” she said. “No one’ll hold it against you if you come by later, after the polls are closed.”
“Yeah…but what if I’m too late?”
Karla recoiled. There was something ghoulish about Mike’s longing to be present at his famous father-in-law’s death rattle. He spoke as if he were passing up courtside tickets at a Knicks game. “Don’t worry,” she said, firmly. “It’ll be okay. You should go.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
Rosa was already at the hospital when Karla arrived. Audrey had spoken to Lenny in Pennsylvania, and he was coming in by train that afternoon. Throughout the morning, the three women took turns sitting with Joel in his ICU room, wearing the regulation masks and flimsy plastic aprons provided by the hospital. It was received wisdom among the nurses with whom Karla worked that long illnesses were useful in preparing people for the eventual blow of their loved ones’ deaths. A slow fade was said to be preferable to a bolt from the blue because it gave relatives the time to “reconcile themselves to the loss” and because, when the patient did finally depart, a seminal part of the mourning process had already been accomplished. Karla, who had cheerfully collaborated in the propagation of this verity for many years now, was mildly outraged to discover quite what bullshit she had been spouting. If anything, she thought, the length of Joel’s illness had encouraged in her family a bizarre sort of insouciance. Joel had survived for so long and returned from the brink so many times that they had come to think of death as a rather incompetent adversary—a bungling pantomime villain, wheeled out by the doctors from time to time to give them all a spooky thrill, but always safely vanquished.
The hours went slowly, but the day went fast. Lenny turned up from the station just before three, weeping copiously and needing money to pay his cab. Soon afterward, Hannah was brought in from Brooklyn by her home help. Audrey had tried to stop her from coming, insisting that she was too frail to be exposed to Joel’s infection, but Hannah had refused to be put off. Lenny was sitting with Joel when she arrived. She unceremoniously turfed him out and proceeded to spend the next hour alone in the room.
When Audrey finally delegated Karla to go in and see if she had fallen asleep, Karla found her grandmother sitting, without mask or apron, singing Joel “Rozhinkes mit Mandlen,” an old Yiddish lullaby.
Unter yidele’s vigele
Shteyt a klor vayse tzigele
Dos tzigele is geforn handlen
Doz vet zayn dayn baruf,
Rozhinkes mit mandlen
Shlof zhe yidele, shlof.
“Nana?” Karla whispered.
Hannah turned around.
“I want to kiss him before I leave,” she said. “Could you help me?”
“I’m not sure that’s a good idea, Nana. You really should have the mask on. You don’t want to catch—”
Hannah closed her eyes. “I’m ninety-three, Karla. It doesn’t matter what I catch. Just do me a favor and help me up.”
Karla hesitated a moment. Then she walked over and carefully hoisted Hannah out of her wheelchair. The old woman leaned over her son’s bed railing and placed a kiss on his forehead. “Good-bye, my sweet boy.” She glanced around at Karla, gesturing that she wished to be lowered back into her chair. “Okay,” she said, “you can take me home now.”
“Are you sure, Nana? This may be the last—”
“I know what it is,” Hannah said. “I’m done here.”
After Karla had accompanied Hannah and the home help downstairs and put them in a cab to Brooklyn, she returned to the ICU. Rosa was standing in the hallway, talking to a man in a dark suit.
“This is Rabbi Weiss,” Rosa said. Her eyes were shining. “He’s going to give Dad a berocha.”
Karla glanced suspiciously at the man. A laminated card hanging from a chain around his neck identified him as Officer of Rabbinical Services at NYU Medical Center.
“What do you mean, a berocha?” She asked.
“A blessing. He’s going to say a blessing for Dad.”
Karla shook her head. “No, Rosa, you mustn’t. What will Mom say?”
“It’ll only take a minute. It’s really a beautiful blessing, Karla. Mom’s not even going to know. She’s down in the cafeteria with Jean and Mike.”
“Rosa, this is crazy.”
The rabbi raised a hand. “If this is going to cause family problems—”
“No,” Rosa said quickly. “It’s not.” She handed him a mask.
“I don’t understand. What’s the point?” Karla said, suddenly infuriated. “Dad was n
ever religious. And he’s in a coma. He’s not even going to know it’s happening.”
“God will hear the blessing, even if your father cannot,” the rabbi said.
Rosa grasped Karla’s hand. “Please, Karla, don’t be upset. This is something that means a lot to me.”
“This isn’t about you. It’s about Dad.”
Rosa let go of her hand. “I’m sorry if you object, but I’m going to do it anyway, okay?”
Down in the cafeteria, Audrey and Jean were poring over that day’s edition of the New York Post. Mike was at the counter getting tea for Audrey.
“Your mother’s had a bit of a shock,” Jean explained as Karla sat down. “There’s this thing in the paper…” She pointed to a small item at the bottom of the Page Six column. Karla read it over Audrey’s shoulder. It was headlined “Too Many Reds in the Bed?”
Which ailing lefty lawyer is having trouble keeping the peace between his wife and his mistress? It seems the two ladies ran into each other recently while visiting the legal lothario in the hospital and the missus became so irate that she started throwing punches. (Some things, even socialists don’t like to share.) The young lovely at the receiving end is said to be so peeved about the attack that she is thinking of pressing charges…
Karla clutched her brow. “Oh, God, Mom. I don’t understand. How could they know about that?”
“How do you think? That fucking Berenice planted it.”
“You don’t know that,” Jean said. “It could just as well have been a nurse, or—”