There’s a sudden break from the monotony of April’s showers just in time for Passover—Becky and Lana’s favorite holiday. They love haggling over the price of the afikomen, the hidden matzah for the children to find after the meal. And they always do, because friends and relatives, bloated to their gills and thrilled to be finally standing, give away the most obvious hints. The highlight of the evening is hearing the girls try to top last year’s price when selling the crumbled piece of unleavened bread back to Ben, who sits at the table, stone-faced and official, trying to conceal his laughter. I am always impressed by Louise’s enthusiasm and dedication in making her home a traditional Jewish home. No one would ever figure my mother-in-law a convert, and yet I’ve heard it said that women who convert to their husband’s religion work especially hard to be taken seriously in all aspects of that new life.
Yesterday, for the first of the two seders traditionally held in the Pearls’ rotunda-style dining room, I’d dressed the girls in matching navy jumpers, which they wore with white lace peasant blouses underneath. Even I was grateful for an opportunity to dress up for a change, although I had to paint and deliver a dozen T-shirts in order to splurge on my own new outfit: a creamy doeskin shirt, and a calf-length denim skirt, which I wore with faux lizard boots. On sale, on sale at Macy’s. I could actually hear myself explaining, my father’s frugality attached, like a price tag, to whatever garment I was wearing. I also imagined Louise with thoughts of her ancestors during the great potato famine saying: “Boots? Who would ever dream of leather boots?”
But tonight, the second night of the holiday, we are already an hour late for dinner. Donny, who said he’d be back in no time, is still at the Bells’. We were getting dressed when Paula called saying she found one of the four kissing garomis dead—the big orange fish we had jokingly given our first names. Charlie had flown to DC for an emergency conference and might have set the thermostat too low. I envisioned the poor fish floating at the top of the tank, its mouth pursed and frozen in one final smooch. I wondered which of our namesakes had kicked the bucket.
Donny, who’d professed to be an expert (he had one goldfish in college), helped the Bells set up their aquarium, and now he was out the door in seconds. I had never seen him move so fast. I thought, Hey, where’s the fire? We’re talking about a goddamn fish.
“It’s Passover, Donny, and we’re supposed to be at your folks in an hour.” I shouted after him, but he’d already pulled out of our driveway, tires screeching around the Belgian block curb of Daisy Lane and headed to the Bells’.
Another half hour goes by, and I’m slumped on the den couch, still waiting. Warned not to mess their matching navy velour pants sets, Becky and Lana march like majorettes around the patio, twirling toy batons. As soon as the sun exits behind the clouds, they clutch their upper arms, trying to keep themselves warm. I should probably get up to bring sweaters, but I can’t move. There is a gnawing in my stomach that isn’t hunger—hunger subsides with nourishment. This feels like a permanent void.
Although the girls are just yards away, completely visible through the mesh of the sliding screen, I can’t see them. My eyes begin to sting, and I touch the corners of my lashes, pressing my fingers against my lids. “Not today,” I say out loud. I do not want to cry. This is a joyous holiday. The children are wonderful and healthy. I have a roof over my head. But loneliness has crept in and taken me by surprise, most likely, the only way it could. I look over at the built-in log bin, where just a few pieces of kindling remain. Before it became the log bin, it was a small aquarium with beautiful, exotic fish of our own. Fish, that Donny had sworn he would never, ever neglect.
The phone startles me when it rings. I jump from the couch. It’s Louise checking on our whereabouts.
“He’s where?!” she practically screams into the phone. I answer in a slow staccato rhythm.
“He’s helping our friend, Paula, with their new aquarium.”
“Why can’t her husband take care of this? Don’t they know today’s a holiday?”
“The husband was needed in Washington—the wife, Paula, called asking for Donny’s help.”
There is an abrupt pause on Louise’s end. Then quickly, as if she’d discovered some grave error while balancing the books at H. Pearl and Sons, she changes her tone.
“Oh, I see, well I’m sure he’ll be home any minute. Why don’t you call over there?”
“No, I don’t want to! He should know better than to keep us waiting like this.”
“You’re right, dear. I’ll tell everyone we’ll be starting a little later. When you get here, you get here.”
An hour later, Donny honks for us in the driveway. Getting in the front seat, I avoid his face and his look of pure, unadulterated innocence. I don’t want to hear, to know, to see. I am a puppet. Just drive me to the goddamn holiday dinner, I would like to say, but I can’t find my voice.
We are finally gathered, all together, under the glittering lights of the Pearls’ crystal chandelier. Ben is conducting the service and, trying to make up for our lateness, he is inventing an abbreviated version. I look across the table and study Donny as if he were a specimen pressed between thin glass slides in a bio lab. Remembering the dissection of the earthworm, I stifle a gag when the ceremonial plate of bitter herbs is passed around for me to taste. Donny’s brother, Bobby, wearing a black yarmulke pinned to his ponytail, reads from a portion of the prayer book—the Haggadah. He is up to the part where he dips his pinky onto the red wine while shouting out the names of the plagues. Locusts are one, but he forgets sly husbands who habitually show up late.
For each plague he dips, then drops the wine onto his dinner plate. But with the zest of someone who has spoken at too many anti-war rallies, Bobby keeps missing the plate, dousing my mother-in-law’s ivory embroidered tablecloth from Budapest, and the sleeve of my doeskin shirt. Not wanting to make a scene, I slip into the kitchen for some seltzer. Gussie, in her holiday whites, waits for the signal that food can be served. The counter is covered with shimmering platters filled with my most favorite foods, potato kugel and brisket, but I’ve lost my appetite. She notices me dabbing my shirt and shakes her head. “That won’t do no good, child. Might as well cut it up into rags.”
“All right, Gussie, just tell me where Pop keeps the Pepto?”
“What, you carrying again?” Gussie asks, her large palms lifting a bowl, moving it out of the way to reach into a cabinet for the bottle. I chug the thick pink liquid right from the bottle, pretending it’s a Bud.
“Don’t think so,” I answer, patting my flat belly and thinking of my nearly nonexistent sex life.
“Well, that’s good since you already got your hands full.”
“The girls are wonderful, Gussie, what are you talking about?”
“I’m not talkin’ about your girls. I’m talkin’ about your boy in there tryin’ to be a man.”
Just then, the saloon doors swing into the kitchen. In marches Louise followed by Bobby’s common-law wife, Melody, and Donny’s sister, Ivy, a college freshman, who appears a bit wobbly on her feet. She bangs into me, sending a heap of tzimmes into the bodice of my blouse. I instantly recall what the buttered carrot and prunes dish symbolizes: a bother, a muddle—just like me.
“Now look.”
“Sorry, sis,” Ivy slurs. She loves thinking of me as her older sister. I wish I could return the favor at this very moment, give her a strong dose of older sister, but I control myself. Louise and Melody have food on their minds; they don’t notice me pressed against the butcher block rubbing seltzer all over my shirt, swigging it from the bottle while contemplating one of Gussie’s salient zingers. I slink back to the dining room more apprehensive than ever.
Ben gives us the green light to eat, and the prayer books are laid aside. I help serve the string beans almondine and cut up some brisket in tiny manageable pieces for Becky and Lana. Too much goes on for anyone to notice the topography of my plate. As usual, I use it to serve up the girls’ food so it appears full.
Through the flickering flames of the Sabbath candles, Donny’s eyes find mine. I am surprised by my glare, telegraphing the message I’m still furious he left us waiting today, nearly two hours—because of some stupid dead fish. Then a fierce pain presses against my lids, forcing me to widen my eyes, to really look at Donny. He grins at me—a taunting grin, which in the past might have eased my discontent, even softened me. This time though, I don’t give in. Just as Gussie said: I see a child sitting across from me. I already have two children.
“Alex?”
“What?” I answer, startled.
“Don’t think I didn’t notice,” Louise whispers, her chin grazing my shoulder. “Darling, you hardly ate a thing.” She ladles a mound of sweet potato mousse onto my plate, just missing my fist that jerks up and nearly punches her jaw. I smear the glob over muddy beef gravy, watching it congeal and harden, like the paint on one of my many abandoned palettes.
Donny and I drive home in our own exodus of traffic, while I conjure up images of hordes of Jews fleeing Egypt. Neither of us has uttered one word since we got in the car. Louise said she’d be taking the week off and offered to have the girls sleep over. Hesitant at first, I said yes. Donny reaches over to take my hand, but I pull away. His exasperated exhale inflates more anger. He puts the car in park and stares at me. It hardly matters; we’re at a complete standstill on the turnpike.
“Come on, Al. I don’t want to fight with you.”
“Fight? We don’t fight. You just go your merry own way, doing sneaky things while I just, just …”
“Get really pissed off?” Donny says.
“You bet. I do have a thimble of self-respect left, believe it or not.” My voice cracks and tears drip onto my, no longer special, doeskin shirt.
“Tell me what you mean,” Donny says, jolting the car into drive.
“Never mind, I’m so damn tired,” I say, wiping my nose on my sleeve.
“And … I’m more than a bit confused.” He uses a tone wholly unsympathetic that cuts deeper.
“Okay then, so I’ll tell you. Do you know what it feels like to think that you’re missing some vital, intrinsic element in your personality that will make your mate love you, truly love you? And that, day after day, no matter how hard you try, you are just not good enough?”
Donny stares ahead into the blinding taillights leading us back home. Immediately, I wish I could take back the question. Why does honesty have to be so demanding?
“Yes, Alex, I think I do,” he answers. I shrink back into the cold leather cushion and close my eyes.
The next morning, I awaken after Donny has left for the factory, feeling slightly disoriented. There are no familiar sounds like the children’s nasal breathing heard down the hall. I’d forgotten I left Becky and Lana with Louise. I rub my eyes and the ensemble of silver frames on my dresser comes into focus. There’s Donny and me, prideful and rigid as a young bride and groom, and Becky, swollen and bruised, a one-day-old prizefighter. And a cherished picture of Lana on her first birthday, cheeks coated in vanilla frosting. I’d always paid attention to the minute details of each and every passing day. How then did seven years rocket past me? It’s as though I’ve been catapulted from a cannon and missed the billboards advertising a life—one, which, coincidently, belongs to me.
I drag myself out of bed, knowing if I fall back to sleep, I’ll awaken dry-mouthed and logy. I brew fresh coffee and scramble up some eggs. Without the girls running around under my feet, I take my time, actually eat sitting down. I pry open a jar of apricot preserves and spread some on a toasted English muffin. It is so quiet I notice my sighs between each crunchy bite. I look around the kitchen like a nosy unwelcome guest checking for fingermarks and neglected crumbs. The sun beats through the picture window, enveloping my body like a heated cloak. And then there’s a familiar guilty pang—an aching disconnection. I look toward the rosebushes for a sign, wondering if my future is as predictable as the buds beginning to sprout in our garden.
I use this leisure time to work on back orders of T-shirts. In between I take a few breaks, lie across the shaggy rug, and stretch. I brace myself against the sliding glass door and try a headstand. I move my knees and legs slowly upward until I’m stick-straight. My brain fills with blood until I no longer feel my limbs. Actually, I don’t feel anything except a strange pressure in my skull. Could this be an embolism? The phone rings five times before I answer.
“Alex, I’m so glad I caught you,” my mother says, sounding out of breath.
I’d failed to reach her for a couple of days and felt awful that she and my father had no place to celebrate Passover. They settled on a seder for ten bucks a head at their local JCC. I visualized them dining in a pungent-smelling room, packed with ailing and aging strangers eyeing one another, all slightly humiliated that some child or relative hadn’t recued them. Now, I take the dour tone of her voice as an attempt to manipulate me for having a poster-perfect life without her. But then I hear a fissure in her speech, a holding back—not true to Miriam’s style.
“I’m sitting here stunned,” she continues. My heart does an unexpected drum roll.
“What’s happened, Mom? Is Daddy okay?” I hear myself yell, as if saving a child from a speeding truck.
“Your father’s fine. He’s out buying extra copies of the Herald.”
“Why? Why extras?”
My mother finally releases her grip. “Rob Woodman dropped dead last night … a heart attack.”
“Oh God, no, I don’t believe it. He was only …”
“Thirty-five.”
There’s a throbbing in my neck that shoots directly to my throat. I begin pacing the room, looking for my image in every reflective surface.
“Poor Sophie, and the kids. He was crazy over those kids.”
“Yes, honey, it’s a horrible tragedy, and everyone here is shocked. Dad and I saw Rob at a condo meeting two days ago. And now he’s laid out in a box down the road at Kronick’s Chapel on Lincoln Road.”
I imagine Rob squeezed into a plain pine box, his head and neck distorted. He’s wearing his palm tree shirt, the one he wore the night I saw him in his driveway with the tall, skinny girl. His eyes are open—the color of swirled aqua marbles. Rob wouldn’t want to miss a thing. But for some weird reason he appears happy. Come to think of it, Rob laughed all the time, either with you or about you. And now he is a was. In an instant, anyone is capable of becoming past tense.
“Where did it happen?”
“Rumors are spreading through the building faster than mildew.” My mother clears her throat and whispers, “The housekeeper told our doorman he was with the nanny. Supposedly, the girl was so terrified she ran into the street, wrapped up like a cocoon, wearing only a sheet.”
“But where were Sophie and the kids?”
“In the Bahamas for spring break … obviously, without their nanny.”
I conjure up my car ride in Sophie’s jazzy Targa, and how I nearly crashed into a barrier of privet after spotting Rob and the waiflike figure in the driveway.
“Is there news yet about his funeral?”
“With the holidays, I imagine the family will wait before they can, you know, put him in the ground.”
I’m immediately reminded of my lack of religious training, all rituals involving birth and death. “That’s horrible having to drag the thing out. I’ll try to make arrangements to come down. It’s only right.”
“No, dear, don’t put yourself through that. People will understand. You, too, have small children who depend on you.”
Talk of death, any death, sends me scuttling back to infancy. My mother is well aware of this. While growing up, an event like this rarely invaded my parentally controlled, sterilized life. If it did, the result would be many sleepless nights and fears of any recurring trauma.
“Call Sophie when you can and what you say is this: ‘I’m terribly sorry to hear of your tragic loss.’”
These are words my mother has written in perfect calligraphy, dozens of times, on custom-designed note cards, painstakingly selected for acquaintances, friends, and family members, including the wives of heads of state. In her dining room, on display, is a gold-framed thank-you note from “Jackie” sent soon after JFK’s assassination.
“Thank goodness, dear, you can’t afford one of those live-in nannies,” my mother says, jarring me. Right then, she validates the decision I made, in August, not to tell her about Donny’s midnight ride with the babysitter. Fury sinks back in, like the dull ache from an old fracture. I try shaking it off, but notice I’ve left a Sharpie resting on a pale blue shirt. The ruby ink spreads bloodily through the back of the shirt, leaving its mark on the surface of our kitchen table.
“Mom, I have to go. Call when you hear more.”
“But dear, you didn’t tell me. How was Louise’s dinner last night?” I hear the envy in “Louise’s dinner,” not to mention how my mother shifts gears faster than anyone I know.
“Fine, Mom, it was fine. Everyone loved your ambrosia recipe. But I must try and catch Donny. He’ll be leaving the factory any minute.”
“Don’t tell him now, honey. Let him drive home with a clear head,” Miriam says, protecting her son-in-law, which, to my recollection, she has never done before.
I call, but Donny’s already left work. Filled with an overabundance of nervous energy, I must call someone and punch in Paula’s number, which I’d glanced at once and memorized. The connection seems perfectly clear: if it weren’t for Sophie and Rob, the Pearls and the Bells might never have met. I almost hang up when I hear her low, struggling—“Hello.”
“Paula, it’s Alex.” I don’t presume she recognizes my voice, although hers is unmistakable.
“Oh hi, Alex, how was your holiday?” Paula had mentioned her mother was Italian, and her father a nonpracticing Jew. She and Charlie were married in a judge’s chambers—no church, no synagogue. Religion? No big deal.
“Yes, our holidays were fine.” Even though we were almost two hours late. “Donny told me Charlie had to rush back to DC. That’s too bad.”
“It was okay. My folks took the kids for the weekend, so I got the chance to do some spring cleaning.”
“Oh, so, they weren’t home to witness the unfortunate demise of your fish?” My heart’s a locomotive picking up speed and puffing out invisible smoke.
“No, and thanks to Donny, they’ll never have to know. Wasn’t his idea to drive to Pet Land for a replacement, clever?”
I rush through the stale silence before I puke. “Yes, well, Donny’s very inventive that way.” I smother the revelation that while I was sitting home and waiting to go to his parents, Donny was fish-hunting with Paula. I think of strangling him and then remember Rob.
“Paula, I have some very sad news. Rob Woodman died last night.”
She responds in that London foggy way of hers, as if this happened years ago, and she’d forgotten.
“Oh my, this is awful. How?”
“He suffered a massive heart attack.”
“Gosh, that’s so frightening. I think Peter and Cheryl were out with them just last weekend. I’m surprised they haven’t called us.”
“Maybe they tried Charlie. Is he back in town?” I’m already wondering how Charlie Bell reacts to terrible news.
“Actually, he’s flying home right now, hopefully in time for dinner.”
I envision Charlie walking through the door, throwing down his bulky lit bag, and dipping Paula in his arms. Ravenous, he searches for something to eat. Tiptoeing toward him, Paula presents an ornate sterling-silver well-and-tree platter full of bloody roast beef.
“Listen, why don’t the two of you come over tonight, say around eight? I haven’t mentioned this to Donny yet, but I know he’ll be happy to see you both.”
“Um, I guess that would be fine, if Charlie’s not too tired.”
Tired is nothing! Tired isn’t dead. “I thought it might be good if we got together. You know, for Sophie and Rob.”
“They were certainly a very unusual couple or maybe you didn’t know,” Paula says flatly.
“Know what?”
“For one thing, they have, I mean had, a crazy relationship—some call it an open marriage.”
Have I been entombed, residing here on Daisy Lane? So, even Paula knew what I failed to completely digest. I let her words settle in while trying to stay focused on the facts of Rob’s death, rather than rumors of his extramarital activities. No need to share with her now that I’d witnessed one in the making. As Paula dreamily singsongs, I recollect thoughts about Sophie and Rob: His late-night business meeting, which he attended in shorts. Her mentioning his chauffeuring their au pair to rock concerts, malls, and movies. Sophie had said over and over again, smiling that devilish smile of hers, “You’ve got to keep them happy, Alex, or they will pick up and leave.”
I was certain she meant the nanny.