And now they come together – what might have been
and whatever was – and the two become one….
– Yehuda Amichai
A tall woman bundled into a fur-trimmed coat braced herself against the wind that was sweeping through Rutherford Park.
“I’m not crazy,” she said out loud. “Please don’t call me crazy, Faith. Hershy’s already read me the riot act about this. And no, I wouldn’t let him come with me. This is just between you and me. I had to come back here tonight. For you. There’s no way I could go to a party. Even if it’s at Erica’s. Even if she means well.
“Just look at those stars, they’re bright and hard like diamonds. On account of it’s so cold and clear. Like last year, but even colder. And no fireworks this time.
“You know how I’ve always been fascinated by stars. They represent all that’s out there, all that’s unattainable, all the vast reaches of what I’ll never know. All those things I’d like to understand, like Nietzsche’s theories and the big bang.
“Where are you Faith? Where are you really? I mean I know you’re in Beaconsfield, in the ground, under the snow. And I think I’m over, or mostly over, thinking about your crumpled little body down there.
“Maybe you’re aware of the recent activity around you. Moish was buried near you a couple of weeks ago. The old guy apparently collapsed in shul on a Saturday morning and died of a cerebral haemorrhage the next day. As the new cemetery committee chair, Marty thought you were lonely in that corner by yourself. The logic escapes me, since you and Moish didn’t have much to do with each other, but now you have him for company.
“I went to Moish’s funeral, mostly to see you. I need to repeatedly drive it home to myself that it’s really really true. But actually the hardest place to believe you are dead is right there. There’s no stone yet, just a little marker with some dried-up flowers from the summer. (Al says placing pebbles on your grave is barbaric. For your birthday, he took you roses, and some of those magenta geraniums you were so excited about last spring.) But it still seems as impossible, as unbearable as on the day it happened. That you’re down there. In the frozen ground.…
“But maybe you’re up there with the stars, in the ether?
“Or maybe you’re somewhere near me right now, in which case I needn’t be talking quite this loud.
“That’s why I came tonight, or one of the reasons. My New Year’s resolution is to stop talking to you. You’d be the first to say it’s sick. You’re dead five months and five days, and there’s been not one day out of the 158 (I counted them up today) that I haven’t talked to you. Usually in the car, when I’m alone, but sometimes at home, when Hershy’s in the basement watching TV. (I think he’s overheard me a couple of times. I’ve caught him staring at me sideways when he thinks I don’t notice. For all I know he’s preparing to put me away.)
“You’re pretty much up to speed from my reports about what’s been going on—.” Here Rhoda paused in momentary confusion, appalled at her own turn of phrase. She could no more tell a lie to Faith on the other side of life, than she could have done if she were there in the flesh. She’d just pointed out two minutes earlier that it wasn’t normal to talk to a person who had died five months and five days ago. But that wasn’t the only reason she had to stop talking to her.
She had been censoring herself with Faith ever since a Saturday in early November, but she didn’t think she could keep it up much longer.
What had happened was this. After checking out a great Lancôme promotion at Holt Renfrew, she popped into the Première Moisson on Sherbrooke for a takeout of their fabulous tomato flan for supper, and to her consternation—
Don’t go there now! She’ll read your mind in a sec.… But maybe where she is, it doesn’t matter anymore? Maybe she doesn’t even care a bit.
She began talking extra fast, gulping down the frigid air in great slugs.
“Have I said how much I miss you? The whole world misses you. A witless cowboy is about to take office in the White House and a second intifada is raging in Israel. Erica is carrying on and on about how we need your leadership now, more than ever. She’s like a broken record about how you kept the spirit in her when the Scuds burst into flames in Tel Aviv during the Gulf War. She says she was watching it live on TV and was on the phone with you at the same time and she was completely hysterical and you talked her down. She says you were true to your name, you had faith that we would all come through it. One way or other, the Jewish people would survive.
“Faithie, there’s a great hole in the world without you, but it still keeps on going on and on and round and round. No one seems to care enough that you’re gone. Maybe I’m as bad as everyone else with my new coat and these nice new boots I got on Boxing Day—do you like them? But at least I’m not at a party! Erica said we had to come together, raise a toast to better times ahead, life is for the living—that’s what her mother always said. Etc. Well sure. Klara Molnar was quite the philosopher of survival! A Communist when it suited her one day, and a Catholic the next. Life at all costs and nothing but life!
“You know what? I don’t think life’s just for the living. The dead add heft to our lives. My father’s still a big part of me. He’s in my thoughts and heart every single day. I would maybe even say that I continue to have a relationship with him. The living have a responsibility to all of you. That’s what I think!
“The rabbi’s running around like a regular Energizer Bunny now that he’s managed to breathe life back into the building project. Guess what? Melly coughed up the dough for us after all! Rumour has it that he was inspired by the Rabbi’s Rosh Hashanah sermon. Apparently he’s hedging his bets about which way salvation lies. And, wonder of wonder, he’s paid Erica the money he owes her. Even though she’s walked away from the project. Nobody can figure that one out.
“One theory is that those paradoxical, contradictory concepts Nate preached about from the Amichai poem—love and hate and laugh and cry and forgive and forget and remember—people are saying that Melly took them as a sign that he should give to us as well as to the Kabbalists. Frankly, I don’t think Melly Darwin has a gift for poetry. I doubt very much that it was Amichai or the rabbi who inspired him. I think it’s more likely his accountant or lawyer.
“The shul’s going to be demolished next month. Everything is being scrapped except the stained glass. The rabbi’s got his way after all, and his head will swell to three times its size—well, maybe only twice. Having the Kabbalists across the street will keep him in line.
“As for Erica, the scare over the recurrence seems to have focused her. That life of hers that’s been reprieved: she wants to put it to use. She’s writing in a white heat, finally, finally working on a new novel. She’s very coy about it, but when I really press her, she says it’s about the many faces of love. Could she actually mean to write about Marty? Or, here’s an original thought! Maybe it’s about you?
“I wish you could see her and Marty together. You’d get such a kick out of them. Saturday mornings they sit primly on opposite sides of the sanctuary, making googly eyes across the room at each other. After services they exchange restrained cheek kisses at the buffet table, for the diversion of all who care to follow the unfolding of this little romance. The clincher comes on Saturday night when, I have it on good authority, they fall upon each other at Marty’s love nest at the Rockhill.
“When I remind her that Marty isn’t her physical type at all, she smiles a demure smile and says a woman’s tastes can evolve. And then she dimples up and adds that such developments are just part of life’s rich pageant.”
Rhoda clamped her lips shut. If her heart ached because Faith wasn’t able to see how good Erica and Marty were together, she could take a measure of comfort from some events that were also most likely veiled in the hereafter. Presumably Faith hadn’t seen Al that particular afternoon at the back table in Première Moisson with his arm flung over the shoulders of a very cute girl. The girl he was bringing to Erica’s party tonight.
It’s not because of Al and his little grad student that I’m not going to that party. I’m not going because I’ve never had any use for New Year’s and I made one exception—and that night, that millennial night will always be summed up by my memory of Faith, her eyes sparkling, her cheeks pink, welcoming the year which is now coming to an end and in which she came to an end.
“Faith, I can’t stay any longer, my toes are falling off. I just have to tell you one more thing. Erica’s editor, Paul, the one who had the chutzpah to jilt her, is—I have to admit—redeeming himself. He’s gone and hooked up with a very likable woman and apparently managed to knock her up on the first try. They act like they’ve invented pregnancy. Apparently, anyone who comes within walking distance is subjected to ultrasound images of the baby.
“If it’s a girl, they’re going to call her Faith.”