It was an ominous morning. Emily had woken up to the sound of a door that slammed, and her entire body had jerked with the sound, the pressure change, like someone had shaken her roughly awake. Why hadn’t Ayala sent that letter? All night Emily had asked herself that question. Why was it hidden away? Was that a family game too? Withholding Love wasn’t cute like Wall Mouse or Finding Stuff. It didn’t seem like a particularly nice game if it was one.
Emily stumbled into the room of windows to find Jonah sitting on an easy chair, flipping through recipes. She watched over his shoulder. She didn’t want to think about the letter anymore. She didn’t want to worry about Doran or family secrets. “Is Passover really that bad?” she said.
“It is if you’re cooking.”
Emily put her hand on Jonah’s back. He felt so solid. She could feel his soft shirt, and under it his shoulder bones and muscle, and he smelled like dough and musk, and woodsmoke, somehow, and, bitingly, of oranges. If the Harpo and Groucho axes of personality were north-south, and east-west, respectively, then the Chico axis would be up and down, measuring impulse control. She dropped her hand.
She sat across from him instead. He had Jazzy, Emily saw. He’d propped her up in his lap.
“So how are things with your boss?” asked Jonah. “Are you still missing in action?”
“I raised the stakes. Yesterday, I told him I have the flu.”
“Will that work?”
“Russell has WebMD bookmarked. He checks it the way some people check their horoscopes.”
“I don’t think I understand why you’re doing it.”
“Yeah…” They were sitting together, talking. They’d connected as kids with silly games, but they needed to connect as adults. She needed to start a conversation, a real one, a human-to-human one between grown-ups, and she had to do it now. If Sonja and Doran could reconnect, then so could she. “What do you want to do with your life?” she asked.
“That’s a light topic of conversation.”
“I’m serious. Do you have life plans?”
Jonah put his feet up on the coffee table. “Pipe-dream plans, or real plans?” he said. “I guess it’s all the same. I want to open a café, a student hangout. A safe place for lost people like this was a safe place for the Jews.”
“That’s funny,” said Emily. They were talking. Maybe it was that easy. “It’s a good idea.”
“Sometimes I feel like I’m stuck, though. Like my life is blocked like a trapped sink. I feel like I need something to happen before I can actually do anything.”
“I know what you mean.” And she put her feet up too.
“What about you?” asked Jonah. “How is all this genealogy helping with your thesis? What’s really going on?”
“What do you mean?” asked Emily, putting her feet down again. “I told you. It’s an illustration.”
“Yeah, but it doesn’t really sound that mathy.”
“The problem is that all the other grad students have projects that show more insight than mine does. They can do more stuff.”
“So if you’re worried you’re not good enough—”
“I’m not worried I’m not good enough.” But she was. That was precisely her concern. And she’d wanted to talk about it, couldn’t figure out why she was getting so upset. But her throat was constricted, her face flushed, she could feel it, and she just wanted him to stop. “I showed the letters to Doran last night.”
“I hadn’t thought of that,” said Jonah. “Could he read them?”
“He translated the first one.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I don’t know,” said Emily. “I mean I just did.”
“You’re really into this letter stuff,” said Jonah. “Why you don’t study history instead?”
“You can’t just move from department to department,” she said. “And I’m not a historian. I’m a mathematician.” But she wasn’t that either. She wasn’t anything.
“If you’re not happy, then you should consider doing something else.”
“I am happy. I love math.”
“I’m sorry—”
“You’re the one who doesn’t understand the first thing about it. Did you even finish high school?”
And that was wrong of her, unforgiveable, and Jonah’s eyes widened.
And just then Blima walked into the room. Emily could feel Jonah stiffen. He squirmed to get out of the chair, and it took seconds and seconds. He was struggling with Jazzy, wasn’t used to getting caught, and this was all her fault.
“I didn’t know all the work was done,” said Blima as he scrambled to his feet, finally upright. “So the help could put his feet up.”
Jonah was already leaving. He hurried out of the room.
“I thought of some more names for you.” Blima took Jonah’s chair, and Emily was still buzzing with all the things she should have said, thrumming like a guitar string.
“You wanted some more relatives,” said Blima, unrolling a piece of paper. “So I made a list.”
Abruptly, Emily stood.
“You don’t want the names anymore?” asked Blima. “Oh. I see. You’re going to work on your thesis?”
“I’m going to read about Harpo,” said Emily. “I got, like, fifty books out of the library.”
“I thought you were behind on your thesis.”
“It’s research,” Emily muttered, gathering up Jazzy. “Harpo is connected to us. Anyway, he’s connected to everyone famous back then. I’m going to look at timelines. See if he affected their art or research or something.”
“I don’t see what that has to do with math,” said Blima. “You are studying math?”
“I’m studying connections, social interactions, and it makes sense that Harpo would have affected science too. You don’t discover new things by always thinking about the same old stuff. You need to put one thought next to a completely different thought, and see if you can connect them somehow. So Harpo would be important. He’d make people think in a whole new way.” That’s the argument she should have made with Jonah. She was trying to think in a whole new way. So it was math. It could be thought of as being slightly related, at least.
“It’s not natural,” said Blima.
“Well, it’s a new thing that I’m doing in my work. It’s part of charting connections and connectivity, figuring out how new ideas are formed. That’s the whole idea behind what I’m doing.”
“What I’m saying, darling,” Blima said slowly, “is that it’s not natural to love someone who’s dead.”
“What?” Emily had never thought about her love for Harpo in those terms before, but it was true, he was a man who was dead. She loved a man who was dead and buried, no, whose ashes had been scattered.
“It’s a thing against life,” said Blima, “against nature. You should never have more interest in the dead than you do in the living. You should think about real people more.”
“Whatever.” Emily turned to leave. Then she turned back. “Jonah isn’t the help.”
“Sure he is. He’s on the payroll, lovie. Don’t think that he would pay so much attention to you if we weren’t giving him money.”