Emily walked toward the laundry room. She’d send the thesis tonight. She had no choice. But what would she include in it? Sonja might have been in love with someone else instead of her uncle, might have been in love with her own half-brother. Her life was modelled after Greek tragedy, or could have been. Emily had followed the connections. She’d found out more about the family, but now she felt worse. Plus, math had betrayed her. Family traditions and the scientific method too. Maybe secrets were secrets precisely because nobody should know them. Maybe the very idea of connection was a false one. What did anyone know about anyone else, really? Maybe she wasn’t lonelier than other people. It could be that she was just a little more honest.
Emily slowed when she saw the open laundry-room door, crept into the room, to where Jonah was folding clothes.
“So what did the letter say?” he asked after a moment.
“I wish I hadn’t found it,” said Emily, hanging onto the doorway.
“I have rugelach.”
“Oh God,” said Emily. “I can’t break Passover now. I did something horrible, so now I have to do something that isn’t wrong.”
“I didn’t mean that you should eat it.” Jonah opened the bag quickly. “I thought we could throw pieces of it into the water bucket. Like on Yom Kippur.”
“When we throw pieces of bread into the river? And think about our sins?”
“Oh,” said Jonah. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize that’s why we did it. It was Jazzy’s idea.”
“Jazzy wanted to throw bread in a bucket?”
“She has bad days sometimes. I think she wants to get rid of worries too.”
Emily pulled out a pastry. “I think it’s perfect, Jazzy. This is exactly what I need to do.”
“You can tell Jazzy anything,” said Jonah. “You know that.”
Emily ripped off a piece of rugelach and threw it into the water. She turned to Jazzy because maybe Jonah was right, maybe that newspaper had been telling her to confide in inanimate objects all along. “I found papers in the book,” she told the lamp. “They were personal identity papers, folded inside. So I took the letter to Doran. I suspected that it talked about a terrible thing that our family did to his. I knew that I shouldn’t show it to him, but I asked him to read it to me anyway.”
“What happened?” asked Jonah, and then he picked up Jazzy and held her in front of his face. “I mean… What happened to Doran’s family?”
Emily threw another piece. It clanged off the side of the bucket. “When the people in their town went after the Jews, Doran’s father gave Grandma Ayala his papers. They traded names. And then Doran’s family died, and they never traded back.” Emily ripped another rugelach apart. But some sins were too big to assign to bread.
“That sounds like Doran’s family did something good, “said Jonah, “not that your family did something bad.”
“You don’t understand,” said Emily. “They didn’t make it out.”
“Your family didn’t kill them,” Jonah said mildly.
They threw pieces of pastry in silence.
“So how’s the flu?” asked Jonah.
“It’s progressed. It’s basically Ebola now. Speaking of my potential firing, how is the lodge doing?”
Jonah shrugged. “Better than you’d think, I guess,” he said after a minute. “They get a lot of sentimental traffic, after obits especially.”
“Everyone remembers the lodge in their obit.”
“It’s not what it was. People don’t have to stay here. Jews can go other places now.”
“So how does it keep going?”
“The money comes from their investments,” said Jonah. “You won’t get fired though.”
“The thing is, I used to be on a track. You do well in high school, get into a good university, then grad school. But that’s done now. I’ll never just know what to do again.”
“Maybe you just need to think bigger with your math. When the Marx Brothers were kicked out of vaudeville theatres, that’s what they did. They shot for Broadway, and they broke through. Maybe you should do the math equivalent of that.”
“How did you know about the Marx Brothers?”
“Moshe lent me Harpo’s autobiography.”
Emily laughed. Of course he did. “Maybe I don’t need to think bigger. Maybe I should just think different.”
“What do you mean?”
“Do you think there could be a future here? What if we tried to bring in younger guests? We can make this place a safe haven for lost people.”
“Finance is a kind of math,” said Jonah. “Isn’t it?”
Abruptly, Emily remembered her dream, felt Harpo’s hands pressed against her back. “I dreamt about Harpo Marx last night.”
“Yeah, why do you love him so much?” asked Jonah, putting the iron away.
“He never hurt anyone, for one thing.” Emily remembered watching A Night at the Opera for the first time. She was little, and she followed Harpo’s madcap antics like it was the only thing that mattered in the world. When the credits rolled, she felt like she’d been changed. Sure, she was quiet. But maybe that didn’t mean what the adults always said. Maybe she wasn’t deficient. Maybe she could be supercharged and hilarious and adorable, and maybe from that moment on, being quiet could just mean that she got away with things more. And her life had changed. Just like that. She wasn’t awkward and wrong-headed anymore. She had her own little world happening, and people watching her had wanted in. People had started paying attention. “Even when he was acting mischievous, he was really cute. Who could stay mad at him?”
“I could get a wig,” said Jonah.
“What?”
“It wasn’t his real hair, you know.”
“I knew that.”
But Jonah was rifling through the clothes in a hamper. “I saw this raincoat, exactly like the one he used to wear.”
“Raincoat?”
“I think I might be missing the point though.”
“Some people know exactly what to do,” said Emily, “and did you know that he never felt sorry for himself?” Emily always felt sorry for herself. She wanted to be as confident, as good, as the man her great-grandmother used to tell her stories about. “I love Harpo.”
“That’s why I bought his coat.” Then Jonah put on a funny old raincoat. He raised his hands, and he looked just like Jonah in a ruined old trench coat. Emily started to back away, but he rushed forward and took her in his arms and hoisted her up just like Harpo had done in the dream.
“Dance?” he said.
“What?”
But Jonah was already spinning her, just like Harpo used to do to pretty girls in all the movies, a weird kind of waltz. He spun her more and more wildly, and Emily laughed out loud. She tripped over the ironing board and it fell with a clatter, but Jonah just held her tighter. And he was laughing too, breathlessly. She’d never seen him laugh like this, all lit up and sweaty.
“Jonah!” She could hardly see the room anymore, it was all swirling by so fast. She felt like they were standing still and the whole world was spinning around them.
They slowed, then stopped.
“Hey,” said Jonah, when they’d both caught their breath again. “Do you want to go for a walk?”
“Can I invite my grandmother?” said Emily, because Harpo’s wife, Susan Fleming, had said something like that when they were dating. He’d written about it in his autobiography.
“What?” said Jonah.
“Never mind.”
Emily heard footsteps on the stairs above her head. It was probably Blima, running down to see what was happening down here. They’d been making a lot of noise, she suspected. So she squirmed free of Jonah’s arms and ran out of the room, onto the deck, and down onto the grass. She turned. Jonah was tearing after her, just like she’d wanted him to do. She led him down to the broken-down dock.
Emily didn’t think before she threw herself into the water, just felt a rush of air and then she was swimming. She looked back and saw Jonah swimming behind her, his arms moving crisp and fast, gaining on her.
Then he caught up, and she put her hands on his shoulders, and they were slick, and hard like a house. And then they were treading water together, and, just as suddenly, he’d grabbed her, and she was hugging him, and she could feel the muscles of his back working. There was a rumble of distant thunder and a strong arm around Emily’s torso, and a kiss. She wasn’t even kicking anymore. She wasn’t afraid of going under, Jonah held her so tightly. She wasn’t even afraid of what the dark clouds might bring, even though they were gathering above them like a fist.
Then he disengaged. Jonah crawled up onto the dock and helped her, hoisted her up by the arms, making her overbalance, right on top of him, her body a tent over his bigger one. Then she collapsed and felt him oof, then felt him laugh, and then she was shaking up and down, up and down, as his chest rose and fell. She sat up again, straddling him, and pressed her hands on top of his hands. She could fit both of hers inside one of his. Then she touched his arm. It was brown like toast, but all the little hairs on it were bleached white. He was beautiful.
She bent toward him, and watched her wet hair fall over his face. He blinked a bit. She bent farther, and touched her lips to his. He held his breath. Then she kissed him, a very chaste kiss like the kind a child gives, and his lips were soft and tasted like salt. She liked it. She licked them now, then kissed him again, then paused. She was reminded of Harpo again. She didn’t know why. “Blima gave me a letter from Harpo Marx,” she said. “She said it was a love letter. But it only had an L on it. The letter L and that was it.”
“That’s funny,” said Jonah.
“What is?”
“L for love.” Jonah reached an arm around her and pulled Emily on top of him again. “L is a love letter because it’s the first letter of the word love.”
“I get it,” said Emily, and finally she did.
Jonah wrapped his arms around her.