• SEPTEMBER 23, 1993 •
For her sixtieth birthday, Ruth planned a surprise party for herself. The guests were told to come at eight thirty, but by three in the afternoon Ruth had decided that eight thirty was all wrong. I had just arrived from the airport and was pressing my ear against the door. Sarah was attempting to provide Ruth with plausible excuses for staying away from home until eight thirty, but my mother complained that all her ideas sounded too phony. She told Sarah they wouldn’t be having this problem if Sarah had planned the party for seven thirty like she had told her to. I changed the position of my ear and closed my eyes, hoping to divine other voices, other secrets, but all I heard, of course, was my mother’s plaintive voice and my sister’s sober one.
I rang the bell and the voices stopped. Ruth opened the door, her face so drawn that it looked six inches longer than usual. Even the capillaries running across her eyeballs appeared agitated. For a second I wondered if she actually recognized me, but then I realized she was staring at the tiny scar over my right eye where she had struck me with a heavy enamel cup more than twenty-five years before. Blood had splashed into my eye, and Ruth had shrieked and draped herself over me, as if someone else had pitched the cup across the table and she was protecting me from further harm. The scar was hardly visible anymore—a pale pink apostrophe in the middle of my eyebrow—but Ruth sometimes would brood over it as if it were some hieroglyph, recording all the sins and slights of my childhood.
“You couldn’t have come last night?” she said.
“Happy birthday,” I said, briefly kissing her.
I embraced Sarah lightly, careful not to press too hard against her belly. She was six months pregnant with her second child. She had a five-year-old daughter named Vanessa; Seamus, four years younger than me, already had two children: four-year-old Zipporah and one-year-old Avi. Seamus still lived in the same town we had grown up in, and all the children were spending the day and evening at his house. Sarah, Aaron, and Vanessa lived an hour away from our mother’s apartment.
Both women appeared dazed, as if I had just interrupted them in an act of violence or intimacy.
“Is there a problem here?” I asked.
“We’re just trying to come up with a believable reason for Mom to be out of the house until eight thirty,” Sarah explained.
I turned to Ruth. “Is that all? I don’t think anyone really cares, Mom.”
“I care!” she declared.
“Mom,” Sarah said, “I really think Seth is right about this one. Just say anything. Say you were at the dentist’s or the doctor’s.”
“Sarah, no one comes home from the dentist’s at eight thirty on a Saturday night. Oh, this whole thing is going to look staged!”
“Mom,” I exclaimed, “this whole thing is staged.”
She shot me an annoyed look.
“Look, Sarah planned this whole event because you wanted her to, and now you’re acting like she’s trying to ruin your birthday.”
Sarah glared at me.
“Is that true, Sarah?” Ruth asked. “You’re doing this only because I want you to? Well, then you can forget it. Tell the guests anything you want, because all I know is that I wouldn’t show up now for all the tea in China!”
“Mom, Mom,” Sarah pleaded. “Seth meant we’re doing this because we love you. Right, Seth?”
Both women turned to me. “I have a great idea,” I replied. “At seven thirty we’ll put my overnight bag in the car, and Mom and I can go somewhere for an hour. Then we can walk in together at eight thirty, like Mom has just brought me back from the airport.”
A triumphant look transformed Ruth’s face. “Oh, yes!” she cried. “Oh, Seth, darling, I know I can always count on you to save the day!”
RUTH LEFT FOR AN APPOINTMENT at the beauty parlor not long after I arrived; Sarah and I went for a walk with Benny, our mother’s beagle. Benny pulled Sarah along in the wake of his firenzied interest in every frozen turd along the curb. I ran after them every now and then to catch up. The houses on our street were uniformly small and drab, the patchy yards scattered with overturned tricycles, clotheslines, doghouses, outdoor furniture left to rust.
But after about ten minutes, we were in a completely different neighborhood of stately old Tudors and stylish ranch houses. Benny slowed down in front of a house with a grand, sweeping lawn. He circled a figure of a little black jockey statue holding a lantern that had been there for as long as I could remember.
“Go here, Benny. Go here,” I urged from behind a telephone pole.
He stopped circling and gave me a sorrowful look.
“Go wherever you want, sweetheart,” Sarah said to him.
He lifted his leg and peed against the jockey’s ankle. Then he looked up at Sarah.
“Yes, darling, that was wonderful,” Sarah said.
This was our aunt Rhoda and uncle Barry’s house. I caught up to Sarah and Benny.
“Are you angry at me?” I asked.
“Not too angry.”
“I’m sorry if I caused you any grief back at the apartment.”
“Don’t worry,” she said, with a dismissive laugh. “I’ve been getting grief all weekend. This morning she wanted me to call all the guests again and remind them to be on time. She also can’t decide which outfit to wear, and for some reason that’s my fault too. Plus she’s upset that Marcy is spending more time with Vanessa than she is today.”
Abe Zelman had died two years before. Since his death, Ruth and Marcy had been engaged in a mighty battle for the affections of little Vanessa, a battle in which my mother was heavily outspent. Marcy’s latest salvos were the entire American Girl doll collection with all the accessories and a life-sized Steiff teddy bear from FAO Schwarz.
“She’s also hoping Jimmy Conroy is going to show up tonight, and she’s anxious about that too,” Sarah said.
Jimmy Conroy, the principal of the school where Ruth had taught second grade for the past thirty years and where my siblings and I had all gone, had been her on-and-off-again lover for most of that time. The state of their affair had always depended on the vagaries of Mr. Conroy’s relationship with his wife, his six children, and his church.
“Do you think he’s going to show?”
“He’ll try. I called him this morning. His wife knows about the party, and she’s giving him a difficult time.”
“You called him and he told you that?”
“Sure.”
I realized that I wouldn’t even recognize Jimmy Conroy if I saw him on the street.
“Seth, could you also try to get along with Seamus tonight for Mom’s sake?”
“I’ll try,” I said, without enthusiasm. Seamus and I had not spoken in five years.
“You know it goes both ways, Seth.”
“How does it go both ways?” I said angrily.
“I mean you could have called him or sent him a note after his children were born.”
“Well, he could have called me after Molly left me. He must have known what bad shape I was in. A call from my brother would have been nice. But of course he couldn’t call me because he didn’t recognize my relationship with Molly. I mean, he wouldn’t even come to my fucking wedding.”
“Look, Seth, just try for Mom’s sake. You don’t know how painful it is for her that the two of you don’t speak.”
“All right, I’ll try.”
We walked a couple more seconds in silence, and then I cried out, “You know, I lost a baby! Don’t you think he ought to have acknowledged that?”
“Of course I do,” she said.
“By the time he’s my age he’s probably going to have six children. A whole household of little Tovahs and Zalmans and Yaels.”
Sarah said, “Seth, Mom’s also upset because you forgot her birthday again.”
“Forgot her birthday? Where am I now? I’m here for her birthday.”
“Today is Saturday. Her birthday was yesterday. She’s upset because you didn’t call her.”
“Because I knew I was coming home today.”
“Come on, Seth, you forgot to call her.”
“Fine, fine. I’ll apologize.”
She didn’t respond, and I put my arm through hers.
“Sarah, I’m sorry, but I never know the right thing to say to her.”
“Tell her you love her,” she implored me. “She just wants to hear you say it.”
“All right, all right.”
Sarah was silent for couple of seconds, then said, “You’re going to have to say it at some point.”
“I know,” I replied.
Two weeks before, Ruth had been diagnosed with Stage III lung cancer. Inoperable, but treatable with chemotherapy. The five-year survival rate was five percent. None of us knew how many months Ruth had ignored the symptoms—bronchitis that wouldn’t go away, wheezing, shortness of breath. Her doctor had wanted her to begin chemotherapy immediately, but she insisted on waiting until after her party.
“She claims that the last time you told her you loved her was the night of our bar and bat mitzvah,” Sarah said.
“She remembers that?”
“Apparently. Do you?”
“Me? I’m the boy who remembers everything.”
“Except for your mother’s birthday.”
THE TELEVISION WAS NO LONGER in the living room; Ruth had moved it into her bedroom years ago. When we returned from the dog walk, I went into her room to watch a baseball game. Lying down on her bed, I was enveloped by her stale, sad odors—the bitter residue of tobacco and the gamey scent of the dog. Then I looked at the lace canopy above me, at the beautiful firetwork spiraling down the four posts, and I was reminded that this bed was the closest thing we had to a family heirloom. It was the bed where my mother had been born and conceived her children, the bed she and my father had slept in for the eighteen hundred and thirty-one nights of their marriage, and the bed she had often shared with me, Sarah, and Seamus in the months after he left. On those nights, she hummed lullabies in our ears and, in place of a prayer, always recited the same poem:
Ample make this Bed—
Make this Bed with Awe—
In it wait till Judgment break
Excellent and Fair
SOMETIMES IN THE MIDDLE OF the night she would rearrange us, shifting around the sheets, toys, and small bodies, saying softly, “Come on, kiddos, ample make this bed.”
When I had last told her I loved her, on the night of my bar mitzvah, I was lying next to her in this bed. Eddie had fed just three weeks before. As I chanted from my portion of the Torah that morning, with the sun shining through the stained-glass windows of the synagogue, I had watched rainbows of light skate across the sacred parchment and felt as if the beams were refracted through my joyful heart. Eddie was gone, and Zelda was safely ensconced at an all-girls boarding school until I was old enough to come for her. I chanted my haftarah like a songbird released from the ark.
After the services, we had a party at the VFW hall down the street from our apartment. A man in a pink ruffed shirt and a black vest played an electric guitar and sang popular songs. All of the girls, most of them Sarah’s friends, felt compelled to slow dance with me. I still had slight, iridescent bruising under my eyes from the surgery to repair my broken nose, the result of my fight with Eddie. Dancing with Cheryl Edelstein to “Little Green Apples,” I held her tightly and breathed in the scent of her hair. With my hands between her lower back and her ass, I began to stiffen up. Embarrassed, I moved a step back. Cheryl and I stared at each other, our faces hot and red. Then she pulled me back into a bear hug, twirled a lock of my hair around her finger, and whispered in my ear, “I’m only letting you do this because you had brain surgery.”
My mother was not having a very good time. The invitations had gone out with the names Mr. and Mrs. Edward Lipper, and, apparently, her father and sister had not bothered to tell any of the other relatives that the marriage was over. It was as if they had decided that this would be my mother’s public humiliation for the shame of marrying Eddie, despite the fact that Rhoda had set them up by giving Eddie my mother’s phone number. Every time I looked in Ruth’s direction, she was holding a cigarette in one hand, a drink in the other, her face fixed in a pained, anxious-to-please expression as she explained about Eddie to another cousin, uncle, or aunt. Once I was standing close enough to her to hear her say, “I’m usually such a good judge of character. That’s what bothers me the most. I’ve always had such excellent judgment.”
That night Sarah was sleeping over at Cheryl’s house. When I went to bed, Seamus was already asleep. In bed I read Zelda’s letter for probably the hundredth time. I knew it as well as my haftarah. I began to touch myself, calling up visions of Zelda putting me in her mouth, but then I heard my mother crying in her bedroom. I waited a couple of minutes for her cries to subside, but they kept on, not loudly, but mournfully, incessantly, as if she had fallen to the bottom of a deep, black well. My mother had always warned me that I would cause her to have a nervous breakdown. Of all her dramatic declarations (May God strike me dead if I’m wrong! I’m sending you to reform school!), her threat of a nervous breakdown felt the most true, and I always wondered how I would know if she was actually having one. Hearing her cries that night, I understood that it was finally happening. I tried to think through the consequences. Would I have to call an ambulance? If I did, and she was hospitalized, where would my sister, brother, and I stay? My father wouldn’t have all of us, and neither would Rhoda for more than a day or two. We would surely be separated.
I went to my mother’s bedroom and stood in the doorway.
“Mom, are you all right?”
She shook her head back and forth on the pillow.
I went to her bed and lay down next to her. Finally, I said, “Are you thinking about Eddie?” She shook her head. Then I asked her if she felt bad that her life wasn’t more like Rhoda’s. She nodded. I told her that she was a much more accomplished person than her sister. She was brighter, better educated, more independent. Who cared if she didn’t have a big house and a husband? She squeezed my hand, but she was still crying.
“What is it, Mom?”
“Your father. I’m still in love with him.”
“I know.”
“He’s such a bastard.”
“I know.”
“He drives me out of my mind.”
“Me too,” I admitted, and we both laughed a little.
These were the truest words we had ever spoken to each other. I put my arms around her, and we lay together, bound by the knowledge that we were both in love with a man who would never love us back. I held her for a long time. When I finally asked her if she was feeling better, she nodded her head, then said, “Seth. Thank you.” She would get through the night; we would all stay together and continue with our lives. She pressed the back of her hand against my cheek. I kissed her on the forehead and then briefly on the lips. I told her I loved her and went back to my own bed.
NOW I NOTICED FOUR OR FVE little black-rimmed holes in the comforter, and I imagined my mother lying on her side in the dark, the end of her cigarette glowing dimmer and brighter throughout the night. On my last visit home, I was sleeping in the other bedroom when the scent of a burning cigarette woke me up. I looked across the hall into Ruth’s room. Benny was sleeping in the bed too. The television was on, as always, but Ruth was staring up at the ceiling, holding a cigarette to her lips. I watched the tip of my mother’s cigarette brighten and exclaimed, “I don’t believe this!”
“What? What?” she asked, as disoriented as if she had been in a deep sleep.
“You’re smoking in bed! In the dark! That’s what.” Benny leapt up and began barking at me. “Benny, shut up,” I shouted. Warbling nervously, he stepped backward over Ruth and, safely ensconced behind her, resumed barking at me.
“God almighty!” Ruth cried out in a highly irritated voice. “The television was on.”
“You weren’t watching it,” I replied. “You were half asleep.”
“I was wide awake,” she said. “I was thinking.”
“Mom, don’t you know you were endangering our lives? Do you have any idea how dangerous this is?”
Later that night I looked in on my mother again. She and Benny were snoring fitfully. The light from the television blanched her face white as a death mask.
Now I heard her tired, heavy steps approaching, and I turned on the television.
“I won’t disturb you,” she said. “I just need to get some things.”
She removed a blue silk skirt and a black cashmere sweater from her closet and, standing before the full-length mirror, held the outfit in front of her. Her gaze was enigmatic and sad, as if she were seeing her entire life in the mirror.
She noticed me watching her and asked how I liked the outfit.
“Great, fine,” I said, and immediately hoped she hadn’t noticed how angry I sounded.
She turned and faced me. “Is something wrong?”
“No, nothing,” I said. “You’ll look great.”
“Well, I’m sixty years old,” she said to the mirror.
“You might have a lot of years left,” I said, “if you don’t set this bed on fire.” I pointed to the holes in the comforter. “You promised me you weren’t going to smoke in bed anymore.”
“That’s from a long time ago,” she said, lighting a cigarette and returning the clothes to the closet. “Oh, I can’t decide.”
“Is that your one cigarette for the day?”
“Yes,” she replied, and brought out a white silk blouse and black skirt, held them in front of her, then regarded herself in profile. “Oh, I can’t decide!” she exclaimed.
I told her I liked the other outfit.
She retrieved the first one again and studied it closely, brushing the skirt with the back of her hand.
“So I hear Mr. Conroy might be coming tonight,” I said, thinking that this was also the bed in which the two of them had spent thousands of afternoons.
“Well, who knows?” she said. “If he comes, he comes—that’s my attitude.”
In the weeks since her diagnosis, she had been surprisingly calm, as if she had faced down or dodged the thing she had been afraid of all her life. I recalled, with shame, how, years before, Sarah and I had hoped her death would be sudden. We had both agreed it would be a nightmare if we had to attend to her while she died a slow, painful death. We had imagined the overwrought deathbed scenes. “Just tell me I was a good mother!” I would exclaim, imitating a refrain my sister and I had heard throughout our childhood. “That’s all I want to hear!” I’d continue, dramatically crossing my hands over my heart and sending Sarah into a fit of laughter.
“Well, I think that’s the right attitude to have,” I replied. She always referred very obliquely to her relationship with Jimmy Conroy, even though it had been common knowledge among her friends and colleagues for many years. I knew for sure that they were lovers when I was fifteen. I had heard them come in one evening and kiss for a long time, and when I heard Ruth sing out, “Oh, Jimmy, Jimmy, I love you too,” it was as if I had learned some fact about the world that I had already known in my heart. I knew because some mornings the scent of Mr. Conroy’s Vitalis blended richly in our car with my mother’s heavy perfume; I knew because when I was in elementary school, Mr. Conroy always inquired about my day with extra kindness.
Ruth stood before the bureau, one hand on her hip, meditatively twisting out her cigarette. Then she came over and sat in a chair by the bed, looking at me. I braced myself, expecting the familiar questions about whether or not she was a bad mother and was that why I didn’t call her on her birthday or come to visit more often.
“Sweetheart, did you happen to go through a box of old things in my closet?” she asked.
“A box of old things?” I repeated, though I knew exactly what box she was referring to. It was labeled “Memories,” and inside it were old diaries, photographs, birth and death certificates, hundreds of letters, the nearly fifteen-year-old manuscript of “A Stranger on the Planet.” I’d found the box on my last visit home. I hadn’t been sure what I was looking for—I already knew so much about my mother’s life—but being alone in the apartment I had felt a strong impulse to trespass and ruminate. When I found the box, I’d read through everything in it, as if the contents of my mother’s life formed a novel I couldn’t put down. Her story was familiar enough to me, but each page offered a small surprise— her thrill at discovering a rare pink lady’s slipper in the woods, or the electric shiver she felt in college when some boy simply touched her wrist.
“You know,” she said, “letters, photographs, personal things.”
I had removed one page from an old journal. Could she have noticed it was missing?
“No, Mom. I didn’t go through any box.”
I knew she wouldn’t be angry if I confessed; in fact, she’d probably be happy to know I was interested enough in her to go through her personal belongings. But I wouldn’t know how to explain myself—either the violation or the interest.
“I’m sorry I didn’t phone you on your birthday, Mom,” I said.
“Did Sarah say something to you?”
“Who?” I replied.
Ruth required a couple of seconds to register the joke. Then she laughed timorously, kissed me on the forehead, and went out.
About thirty minutes later, I went into the dining room. Sarah had put up multicolored balloons and banners. The two women were sitting at the kitchen table, where Sarah was doing Ruth’s makeup. Seamus was sitting at the table too, reading the newspaper. I hadn’t seen him in over five years. He had a neatly trimmed beard and kept his head covered with a stylish fedora. I gazed at the tableau of my family. My mother was staring straight ahead as Sarah, inches from her face, delicately combed her eyelashes. Ruth appeared serene, deeply calmed by Sarah’s hands. For a moment I felt myself transfixed by the mystery and beauty of Sarah’s ministrations.
Then they all noticed me at the same time.
“Reb Seamus,” I said. “Long time no see.”
“Don’t call me that,” he replied and looked back down at the newspaper.
Ruth appeared distraught.
“All right, Mom,” I said. “I think it’s time to go get me at the airport.”
IN THE CAR I SUGGESTED TO RUTH that we stop somewhere for a cup of coffee. She said that she was concerned one of the guests might see us.
“You don’t want to go anywhere? You just want to drive for an hour?”
“Why not? I like driving.”
Ruth drove onto the highway, heading east, as if she were actually going to the airport. We were silent for many minutes; Ruth kept glancing at the side and rearview mirrors, as if we were being followed. Then she asked if Molly and I kept in contact. She hadn’t brought up Molly’s name in a long time. I told her no, that I had not seen or heard from Molly in years.
“Well, maybe it’s better that way. Just to move on with your life. God knows I would have been better off if I had done that with your father.”
I didn’t tell her that for months after we split up, I would call Molly in the evening, telling her that I loved her, until, finally, Molly said it would be better for both us if I didn’t call her anymore. I didn’t tell my mother that I still occasionally walked down Huron Avenue, hoping I would run into Molly.
“What about you and Rachel?”
“What about us?”
“Do you keep in touch with her?”
“We’re still friends. We write and call occasionally.”
“Do you think you’ll ever be more than friends again?”
“Mom, I have to tell you something about Rachel.”
“Yes?”
“She’s a lesbian.”
My mother looked out the window. “Why?” she asked quizzically.
“Because that’s the way God made her.”
“Didn’t you sexually satisfy her?”
“Probably not, considering she’s a lesbian.”
“Well, that doesn’t change anything. I still love her like a daughter. Would you tell her I said that?”
“Yes,” I said, even though I knew I wouldn’t.
“I don’t judge anyone. I’ve made my share of mistakes.”
“I don’t think Rachel would view her being lesbian as a mistake.”
“Oh, gee, Seth, give me a little credit. You know that’s not what I meant. I’m a very open-minded person.”
“I know you are, Mom.”
We were on the turnpike, but she was driving very slowly in the right lane.
“Mom, why are you driving so slowly?” I asked.
“I’m just thinking.”
She drove another minute in silence, past the exit for Secaucus, where the industrial odors—something like burning tires—were always strongest. My mother once told me that Secaucus used to be a place where pigs were slaughtered and that we were probably catching a whiff of the old pig industry. I knew that couldn’t be true, but a part of me still believed it every time we drove this stretch of the turnpike.
“Did you know I had an abortion once?” Ruth said.
“You did? When?”
“Years ago. Do you remember that time when you were ten and Jimmy Conroy came to the house in the middle of the night to bring all you children to Rhoda and Barry’s house?”
“Yes . . . that was because of an abortion?”
“I began to hemorrhage in my bed a couple of hours after the abortion and I phoned Jimmy. He called an ambulance, then brought you and your sister and brother to Rhoda’s house.”
“Oh, Mom, I’m so sorry.”
“Well, the most difficult part was just trying to find someone. Abortions were illegal then. So I went to Uncle Barry’s brother, Leslie. He was my internist, and I thought he might know someone I could go to. But he just started yelling at me, saying didn’t I know that I was asking him to be an accessory to a crime? Then he said he was going to call Barry and let him know what I was doing.”
“What an asshole!”
“What an asshole is right. He began dialing Barry’s number right in front of me, so I pulled the telephone cord out of the wall.”
“Good for you, Mom.”
“Alice helped me find someone,” she said, referring to her friend and colleague of three decades. “A cousin of hers. A black doctor in Patterson. I met him in his office and had to give him six hundred dollars up front. He said he didn’t do the abortions in his office. I would have to go to his house the next night.”
My mother always told the same two or three stories, cloying and overdramatic ones like “Was Anybody Praying?” Why had she told me this story, and on this night? Was it her way of letting me know that she was open-minded? Or perhaps she had always wanted to tell me, and my revelation about Rachel had provided her with an opening. Perhaps she wanted me to know that she still had secrets and mysteries, that I didn’t know everything about her.
“Mom, I can’t imagine how difficult that was for you,” I said.
“The most difficult part was the week after, during Yom Kippur. I sat in the synagogue wondering if God was going to punish me for ending a life.”
“You did what you needed to do, Mom, to keep us together.”
“Seth, look,” she said. “I want you to understand something about Jimmy and me. We knew each other for three years before we acted on our feelings.”
“Mom, that’s all right,” I said uncertainly.
“I always wondered if you thought I was—well, you know, wanton or irresponsible, because of my relationship with him.”
“Wanton? Of course not! Why would I think something like that?”
“You can be very disapproving sometimes.”
“Only about cigarettes, not about sex.”
“What?”
“It’s a joke, Mom.”
“Oh.”
“Mom, I’m glad that Mr. Conroy’s been in your life. I really am.” I thought of the night when I was fifteen and had heard her sing out, “Oh, Jimmy, Jimmy, I love you too.” I wanted to tell her that I had been secretly thrilled to hear her words that night, to know she had a life other than the one I saw every day, to know that someone loved her.
“Well, it hasn’t been ideal.”
“Was that why you married Eddie? Because of Mr. Conroy.”
We hadn’t mentioned Eddie’s name since just after they had divorced, treating him like a nightmare that had come and gone.
“Oh, who knows? Mainly it was my own stupidity, but I suppose that was one reason. Rhoda and Barry gave me such grief about Jimmy. I thought if I got married, they’d finally approve of me.”
“Well, it couldn’t have been easy to find a husband with three young children.”
“I suppose.”
Ruth turned off the highway and negotiated a maze of arteries and ramps to reverse our direction. The landscape was complexly ugly, a netherworld of refineries, power stations, swamps, bridges, and low, toxic hills over which seagulls slowly circled. I had spent my entire life bracing myself against the tide of florid emotions that always seemed about to burst forth from my mother, but now I felt myself engulfed. I looked out the window so that she couldn’t see the tears that had welled up in my eyes. I thought of my fifteen-year-old manuscript in a box in the back of her closet. She knew my stories and I knew hers, but we kept them stored away, in our hearts and in closets.
She reached across the seat for my hand. “God forgive me for saying this, but I think of you as the child of my heart. Of all my children, you’re the one that’s most like me.”
CARS WERE LINED UP ALL ALONG OUR STREET. Ruth looked in the rearview mirror and said she was embarrassed to go in because her eyes were red from crying. I told her she looked fine, not to worry about it. Getting out of the car, we shut the doors loudly. All the lights went off inside the apartment.
We were showered with shouts and light and confetti. There were perhaps twenty people, old friends and colleagues of my mother’s. Her eyes brimmed with fresh tears, as if the surprise were real.
“Oh, wow!” she cried. “Oh, wow! We just came back from the airport.” I tried to stand behind her, but she put her arm around my waist and pressed her forehead against my shoulder.
“How do you like this son of mine?”
Rhoda and Barry came over to greet us. Both were fit and tanned, having just returned from their annual golf vacation in Hawaii.
“How’s the birthday girl?” Barry said, regarding Ruth over the top of his spectacles.
“Say, you didn’t really just come from the airport,” Rhoda said to me.
I looked at Ruth, whose face had become alarmed and anxious.
“Certainly I did,” I replied.
“I’m sure I saw you and Sarah pass by the house with the dog this afternoon.”
I put my hand on Rhoda’s forehead. “Rhoda, have you been feeling all right?”
Sarah draped an arm around me in a show of sisterly love, then, without anyone noticing, pinched me painfully.
“Sarah,” Rhoda said to her, “please don’t let the dog go to the bathroom on my statuary.”
“Sorry, Aunt Rhoda,” Sarah said.
Sarah excused herself to attend to things in the kitchen.
I wanted to hide out in the kitchen with Sarah, but on my way across the room I found myself belly to breast with Deborah, Seamus’s wife. She was just under five feet tall and had a round, peachy-complexioned face. I didn’t realize how long I had been staring down at her shiny blonde hair, wondering whether she was Orthodox enough to wear a wig, until she said, “It’s real, Seth. Do you want to pull it just to be sure?”
“So, you know who I am.”
“Don’t be a clown. Of course I know who you are.”
“Look, can I ask you a question?”
“Shoot.”
“Did Seamus actually sit shivah for me when he heard I was marrying out of the faith?”
“Oy, Seth, you have to get over this. Really. Both of you are acting like children. You think this is a matter of principle, but it’s just whacking off.”
“Excuse me?”
“You heard me. All this righteous anger is just self-indulgent, no different from whacking off. It just leaves you lonelier.”
“You know, Deborah, I think Seamus is very lucky to have found you.”
“I know he is.”
I located Sarah in the kitchen. She was rinsing glasses in the sink.
“What happened between you and Mom in the car?” she asked me.
“Nothing. Why?”
“She looked very drained when you came in.”
“She always looks that way.” I gulped a Dixie cup of champagne.
“Don’t you think you ought to go a little easy on that?”
I looked into my empty cup, as if it contained an answer to her question.
Rhoda put her head inside the kitchen door. “So?” she said conspiratorially.
“So, what?” I replied.
She glanced back into the living room, as if spies might be shadowing her. Then she stepped into the kitchen, holding a plate weighted down with ribs and tortellini.
“So where’s your mother’s boyfriend?”
“You mean Mr. Conroy?” I asked.
“Right, right. Him.”
“He said he’ll come if he can,” I told her.
“Well, I’m not holding my breath. I’ve tried to introduce your mother to some very nice men, but is she interested? Of course not!”
“Aunt Rhoda,” I said, “the last man you introduced her to had one foot in the grave.”
“Who? Mr. Pearlman? He’s a wonderful man. He would have been very nice company for your mother.”
“How old is he? Seventy-five?”
“Look, at her age your mother can’t be too particular.”
Then Rhoda asked me about Rachel. Rhoda had never met her, but no doubt my mother had been dreaming up a scenario for her sister about how I would finally marry the rabbi’s daughter and live happily ever after. Normally, I would have been angry at my mother for putting me in this position, but instead I felt furious, finally, with Rhoda.
“How come you don’t ask me about Molly?” I said.
“Because that’s been over for five years.”
“So? I haven’t been with Rachel since college. It wouldn’t have anything to do with the fact that Molly’s Catholic?”
“Yes, I admit that I’d prefer you marry a rabbi’s daughter. What’s wrong with that?”
“Well, I’m not going to marry the rabbi’s daughter.”
“Why not? Is she married?”
“No. She’s a lesbian.”
Rhoda put her hand to the side of her face. “Oy vey iz mir. Do you know why? Was she molested as a child?”
“No. She had a beautiful childhood,” I lied. “But I didn’t sexually satisfy her.” I felt Sarah give me another painful pinch.
“Look, I’m sorry to hear that,” Rhoda replied. “But you know sex isn’t everything in life.”
“To some people it is,” I said.
“Seth, doll, I have news for you. If you keep up that attitude, you’ll never get married. You’ll end up just like your mother.”
“What’s so bad about ending up like my mother?” I asked.
Rhoda appeared genuinely dumbfounded by this question. “Look, all these years she’s been carrying on with a married man. Everyone in that living room knows about them. How she can live like that I’ll never understand.”
“Is that all you can say about our mother, Rhoda?” I asked. “She raised three children. She’s taught hundreds of other children to read. She’s loving and generous. She has friends who value her. But all you and Barry ever do is treat her like her life is one big embarrassment.”
“Say, look here. I only want what’s best for your mother. You know that.”
“Like hell you do,” I said.
The lines of her mouth went rigid before she banged her way out the door.
Sarah turned to the sink, gripping the sides of it, her back shuddering.
“Sarah?” I said. I touched her shoulder and she turned to me, pressing her wet cheek against my neck and holding me more tightly than anyone had held me for a long time.
THE LIGHTS WENT DOWN, and a chorus of “Happy Birthday” rose up as Sarah and I came out of the kitchen bearing the candlelit cake, which looked like a small field of swaying fire. We put it down and stood off to one side, but Ruth brought her three children over, pulling Seamus and me close together. All four of us leaned into the heat and brightness of the flames. “One, two, three,” Ruth counted, and we exhaled in unison, one capacious breath sending the fire sputtering and lurching. Ruth ran out of breath, and Seamus stepped back. Sarah and I raced to blow out the remaining candles. We were bent over, laughing, gasping, when the doorbell rang, freezing everyone for a moment. I reached for my drink and swilled it down.
Someone opened the door and accepted a delivery of thirty-six roses. People commented on their splendor and beauty as they were handed up to Ruth. She appeared a little embarrassed by so many flowers, by this extravagant gesture of love and regret. She read the card that accompanied them, and I noticed a chain reaction of yearning passing from one guest to another, everyone joined together in a silent prayer for Ruth’s happiness, everyone secretly encouraging her. She put the flowers down and smiled bravely.
Alice unfolded a T-shirt emblazoned with the word “SUPER-TEACHER” and signed by Ruth’s twenty-eight second graders. She praised Ruth’s diligence in teaching for thirty years. She estimated that that came to nearly one thousand students, “or about two thousand shoes that needed lacing at one time or another.” Everyone applauded as Ruth dramatically kneaded her lower back.
More salutations and gifts were sent her way: Rhoda and Barry wowed everyone with a five-hundred-dollar gift certificate to Lord & Taylor. Sarah handed up her present. Ruth read the card and said, “Oh, honey, that’s beautiful. Just beautiful. Can I read this out loud?”
Sarah nodded and Ruth read: “Dear Mom, I can’t give you anything you don’t already have. I can only return some of the gifts you have shared with me. I love you. Sarah.” She opened Sarah’s present, a leather-bound edition of Edna St. Vincent Millay’s collected poems. She paged through the book until she found the poem she wanted, and then she read it aloud:
My candle burns at both ends;
It will not last the night;
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends—
It gives a lovely light!
I silently accompanied her reading, for I remembered Ruth reciting this poem many nights to Sarah, Seamus, and me. My mother reached over some boxes and squeezed Sarah’s hand. Behind me, I heard Rhoda whisper to Barry, “Is that the whole poem?”
Seamus gave her a menorah, then I stood up and handed her my present: an antique amethyst brooch. She opened the case and held the brooch up like a small trophy, and I realized that everyone was waiting for me to say something. I raised my cup and looked at my mother’s expectant face. “To a wonderful mom. . . .” Then, in a rush, I added, “Thanks for all your lovely light!” I rapidly drained my champagne and put my arm around Ruth to let all the guests know that the speech was over.
Everyone applauded, but I felt dizzy and made my way down the hall. The bed in my old room was covered with coats, so I lay down on Ruth’s bed. I put a pillow over my head, afraid that the room was going to begin revolving, the bed spinning faster and faster.
I felt a hand on my foot. Lifting the pillow, I saw Sarah standing by the bed with a cup of coffee. “I thought you might need this,” she said.
I leaned back against the headboard, sipping. “I guess Mr. Conroy isn’t coming,” I said.
Ruth’s laughter rose up over the din. “Doesn’t sound as if she’s very upset about it,” Sarah replied.
“Actually, we were discussing him in the car. Mom was concerned I thought she was wanton.”
“Wanton?” Sarah repeated, incredulous.
“That’s the word she used. Can you believe it?” I set the cup down.
“The sad thing is she probably believes it. She’s slept with three men in fifty years. God, I had slept with four boys by the time I was eighteen.”
“Yeah, that’s what I told her.”
She laughed and conked me on the head with a pillow.
“She told me she felt a hundred times better after hearing that,” I said, grabbing her wrist and placing her in a light headlock.
“Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!” She freed herself, still laughing. Then we both leaned against the headboard. Sarah tilted her head against my shoulder.
“Sarah?”
“Yes?”
“Do you remember that time Jimmy Conroy woke us up in the middle of the night and took us to Rhoda and Barry’s house?”
“How old were we?”
“Ten or so.”
“I try not to remember those years.”
“That’s probably a good idea.”
I remembered him gently waking us up, telling us that our mother was in the hospital but that she would be fine and that he was taking us to our aunt and uncle’s house. I remembered sitting with my brother and sister in the spacious backseat of Mr. Conroy’s station wagon and Sarah—who usually never let a tear come to her eyes, even when I socked her in the back or yanked her ear—crying hysterically. Her tears had begun when we saw the bloodstained carpet outside our mother’s bedroom and continued after Rhoda put us to bed in her guest room, in two single beds on opposite sides of a night table. Sarah was crying more quietly by then—an eerie, rhythmic moaning. Then I heard her choke out my name. I lay very still, my heart vibrating. She said my name again, keening it, pleading. I put my feet on the floor, which felt as strange as the surface of the moon, and climbed in next to her. She put her arm around me, and I could feel her body heaving with grief, as if she knew our mother would not recover.
“May I?” I said, my hand just above her belly.
“Of course.”
I placed my hand on the small mound.
“Can you feel anything?” she asked.
“No. Am I supposed to?”
“Sometimes you can.”
“I don’t think I’ll ever be a father,” I said.
“You still have plenty of time. I mean, you are a man. You don’t have the ticking clock problem.”
“I wasn’t thinking of the problem as biological.”
“You’ll find someone, Seth. I’m sure of it.”
“I don’t think so. Molly was my best chance. She loved me for all the right reasons, but I didn’t love her well enough. I’m not sure if I’m capable of loving anyone very well.”
“I don’t think that’s true,” she said softly. “Don’t think that way.”
“All right. I won’t. I promise.”
Sarah told me she needed to get back to the party. It had become very lively. My mother’s voice was especially loud and joyous. In three hours, after everyone was gone, my mother would be lying in this bed, her cigarette gleaming on and off through the night. But I imagined her standing in her bathrobe in the backyard of our old house in Massachusetts. On the page I’d taken from her old journal, she’d said it was the happiest morning of her life. The date was June 15, 1956, five months before she gave birth to Sarah and me, six years before her husband left her, years before she fell in love with Jimmy Conroy, before she struck me with a cup, before she combed the streets of Patterson in search of an abortionist and then almost bled to death in her bed. She and my father had moved into the house in January, and the winter had been brutal; old drifts of gray snow had remained on the ground through the end of April. But on the morning of June 15, the clear morning air vibrated with the trilling of birds. Ruth stood in the middle of the yard, overjoyed to feel the warmth of the sun on her face. She stepped out of her wet slippers and shuddered from a series of our convulsive kicks inside her. She squeezed the ground between her toes and cradled her belly. Her fingertips slowly navigated its entire surface. All was well: all wondrous and alive.