• DECEMBER 1996 •
Ever since she was a young girl, my mother had been terrified of being pronounced dead on a Friday afternoon. Her fear came from an old family story. Her mother, Esther, had a younger brother, Samuel, who died at the age of twelve. The boy had been sick for a long time with a vague illness. He closed his eyes on a Wednesday night and still hadn’t opened them by three o’clock on Friday afternoon. A group of men congregated around his bed, debating what to do. If the boy was dead, they were required to bury him within twenty-four hours, but they had to act immediately because they were prohibited from interring the body over the Sabbath. Samuel’s father, Jacob, pulled back a curtain and studied the gray and gloomy sky. The December sun would set in less than two hours. He held a small pocket mirror under his son’s nose. It remained clear, unclouded by any sign of life. The men exchanged somber glances, a rabbi nodded, and Jacob wrapped his son in a prayer shawl and buried him before the sun went down. For many years, Ruth had a recurring nightmare in which young Samuel opened his eyes inside the pitch black coffin, shouted for help, and pounded his fist against the lid, and all to no avail because the mourners had departed.
On the last Friday morning of her life, her mind in a slight morphine haze, Ruth reminded me not to let anyone bury her until after she had been dead for a full twenty-four hours. We were in a bright hospital room. Seamus was the only Orthodox Jew left in the family, and she knew very well that he would wait until after the Sabbath to bury her if she died by the end of the day. I held her hand and told her she didn’t have anything to worry about. She still looked anxious, so I added that I would chain myself to her body if necessary. She laughed wheezily. Then she squeezed my hand and looked at me emotionally. “Seth, darling,” she said, “I hope I was a good mother.”
“Yes, of course you were.” Tears slid slowly down across her temples. “Despite everything, I always felt loved,” I added.
“Thank you, sweetheart,” she said, and I finally felt that I had said the right thing, had reminded her of the one thing she did well—she had loved her children absolutely, unconditionally. Then I whispered in her ear that I loved her.
When she woke up Saturday morning, I was so relieved that I permitted a prayer of thanks to rise from my lips. She died later that afternoon.
RACHEL WAS COMING! We had not seen each other in twelve years, since her mother’s funeral. When Sarah was married in 1986, I had sent her an invitation to the wedding, but she had called me up and asked if I expected her to pretend to be my girlfriend. I had replied that it would certainly make my mother happy if she did. Then she said that she wasn’t comfortable pretending to be my girlfriend anymore. “Let me get this straight,” I’d said. “Pun very much intended, by the way. You couldn’t bring yourself to come out to your mother, but now you want me to out you to my mother?”
Rachel hung up on me.
We went two years without speaking or writing to each other. Then I sent her a long letter, apologizing for not dealing well with her relationship with Lucinda. I explained that for five years I had known I was the most important person in her life and it was difficult for me not to be connected to her in the same way anymore. I told her about my job, about Molly. When she wrote back, she reminded me that she had pledged to be my friend for life and she still meant it.
On Saturday night, I drove to Newark Airport to get her. She had made her reservation the day before when I told her I didn’t think my mother would survive the night. At the airport, we embraced for a long time, then stepped back and studied each other.
“You look exactly the same,” Rachel said.
“You look better,” I replied.
“Liar,” she said, laughing.
Actually, I was hoping she would say that I looked better. I wondered if she remembered our last night together in Chicago when, lying in each other’s arms, she had stroked my face and told me I was going to look so handsome when I was older. The morning I turned forty, I faced myself in the mirror and thought that Rachel had been wrong about everything—my personal life, my career, my looks, especially my looks. I had pouches under my eyes, a deeply lined forehead, and the skin around my Adam’s apple had become ringed with age. My nose, with each passing year, became more pocked and porous.
Driving out of the airport, I asked Rachel if she wanted to come back to my mother’s apartment for a drink. With Ruth’s death imminent, I had come down to New Jersey the week before, and I had been staying in my mother’s apartment, the apartment I grew up in, drinking my way through the dust-coated bottles of liquor Ruth kept under the kitchen sink. Rachel said that she was really exhausted and just wanted to go to her hotel and lie down. I was still disappointed that she was staying at a hotel. Before she came east for the funeral, I had told her she was welcome to stay with me. Rachel had replied that she didn’t want to put me out. I had said that I wouldn’t be put out. The apartment had two bedrooms, I reminded her. Of course I was really hoping that we would share the same bed. After all, who wants to sleep alone the night before he buries his mother? Rachel, no doubt aware of what I really wanted, had thanked me all the same and said she’d prefer to stay in a hotel.
After saying good night to Rachel at her hotel, I drove back to the apartment and immediately poured myself a drink. Sarah and I had already divided up our mother’s belongings. Seamus had said he didn’t want anything, shocking both Sarah and me. The two of us had easily split up everything. I just wanted Ruth’s books and records. Sarah wanted our mother’s bed, the china and the jewelry, which she offered to share with me because it was worth money. “No, no,” I had said. “Those are things you can pass down to your children. Who knows if I’ll ever have children?” Sarah had said I could always change my mind if I did have children someday.
Drink in hand, I went to the bookshelf, trying to decide which books I wanted to keep. Her collection was eclectic—e. e. cummings, Harold Robbins, Herman Wouk, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Thomas Wolfe, Shakespeare, Henry and Philip Roth, Theodore White, Abraham Joshua Heschel. I had read practically every book on the shelf by the time I had graduated from high school. I looked through one of the Harold Robbins novels, A Stone for Danny Fisher, recalled how avidly I had read it when I was fifteen, and decided I would simply keep every book. I put back the Harold Robbins and removed my mother’s copy of Pride and Prejudice for the time being.
I had not been in contact with Molly for years, but after two stiff drinks, I was on the verge of calling her, certain that I still remembered her telephone number. I dialed it, deciding to leave things to chance: If it was the right number, then I would know I had done the right thing. A man answered and I put the phone back down. I called Rachel at her hotel.
“Rachel, can I come over and sleep with you?”
“Seth, no.”
“I don’t mean sleep sleep with you. I mean like sleep next to you.” As I said this, I knew how fraudulent my words sounded. Of course I was hoping to score some sympathy sex.
“I don’t think that would be a very good idea,” Rachel told me.
“Come on. I slept with you the night before your mother’s funeral!”
“Yes, and remember how badly that turned out?”
“I promise I won’t tell Lucinda.”
“Seth, I’m not saying no because I don’t want to.”
“Really?”
“Yes, and that’s why it’s a bad idea. Get some sleep, Seth. I love you.”
“I love you too,” I replied, and put the phone down.
I HAD TOLD SEAMUS THAT I wanted to deliver the eulogy for our mother; we had been in her hospital room just after she had died. “Absolutely not,” he had said. “My rabbi’s doing it.” I had been angry, but I wasn’t about to face Seamus down with our mother’s body between us. I knew he didn’t approve of the “Mom stories” Sarah and I loved to exchange. Perhaps Seamus was remembering the one time he and Ruth had come to see me do my comedy routine. I acted out my version of the deathbed dilemma over young Samuel, yukking up the Yiddish accents of the old men. In the twist I added to the story, Samuel suddenly awakens, but the old men are so caught up in their Talmudic tête-à-tête that they don’t even notice him when he tries to get their attention. Finally, he rises from the bed and shouts out that he’s alive. The old men stop their discussion and turn to look at him; then they tell him to shush and go back to debating whether or not he is dead.
My mother had laughed heartily, but Seamus, like Queen Victoria, was not amused.
The funeral was on Long Island, where all of Ruth’s family was buried. I was surprised to see my ninety-six-year-old grandfather at the funeral home. His mind had been gradually splintering apart for the last ten years. He was on the arm of his other daughter, my aunt Rhoda, who cared for him day and night. Before senility set in, my grandfather had been cold and manipulative. He had expected his daughters to compete for his love, and Ruth had been no match for Rhoda.
I went over and kissed him on the cheek.
“Hello, Poppa,” I said.
“Do I know you?” he replied.
I removed my glasses and brought my face close to his. “I’m Seth, Poppa. Your grandson. Ruth’s son.”
“Oh, Ruth. How is Ruth? I haven’t seen her in so long.”
Rhoda said, “Ruth is dead, Daddy. I told you this morning. She died yesterday.”
“Ruth died? Does Esther know?”
“Daddy, Mother died thirty-five years ago.”
My grandfather stared at the ground and placed a hand on top of his scaly, liver-spotted head. I imagined he could feel the brain cells whooshing out like steam from a kettle.
“What about Rose?” he asked, referring to his second wife.
“She died twenty years ago, Daddy.”
Rhoda whispered to me, “I always tell him the truth, not that it matters to him in his condition. I could tell him that everyone is living happily on the Riviera and he wouldn’t know the difference.”
I wondered why Rhoda just didn’t tell him everyone was wonderful, but she spent the most time with him and I figured she knew best. Then Rhoda said to me, “The woman who came with you. That’s the rabbi’s daughter, right?”
I told her she was.
“Is she still a lesbian?”
My grandfather looked up at Rhoda. “Who did you say was dead?”
“Ruth,” I said, trying to be helpful. “She and Esther are together now, Poppa.”
He gave me a perplexed look. “Do I know you?”
Rachel and I found our seats in the front row of the small chapel. I stared sullenly at my mother’s coffin as the young rabbi of Seamus’s congregation droned on about her life. He described her as a loving mother, a devoted grandmother, a woman who led “a good Jewish life.” He kept repeating that phrase, and I knew he was running out of things to say.
Ruth’s casket had already been lowered into the ground by the time we arrived at the cemetery. She was next to her mother, Esther (1912–1962); next to Esther was the plot reserved for my grandfather. Then came Rose (1915–1976), who was next to Esther’s father, Jacob (1885–1955), who was next to his wife, Dvorah (1888–1933), who was next to her son, Samuel (1914–1926). Seamus, Sarah, and I stood together on the lip of the open grave and chanted the mourner’s Kaddish: “Yisgadal, ve yiskadash . . .” Sarah and I tripped over the familiar Hebrew words, trying to keep up with our brother. I concluded with a resounding amen and then announced that I had something to add. Seamus looked at the ground and brought a hand to his brow. I reminded the other mourners that my mother had loved her biblical name, and then I recited Ruth’s declaration of love to Naomi: “Your people shall be my people, and your God my God. Where you die, I will die, and there I will be buried. Nothing but death shall divide us.” Sarah squeezed my hand and pressed her head into my arm. Seamus smiled at me, no doubt relieved. I wondered if he had any memory of our visits to the cemetery when we were children, and how our mother had fashioned those words into her own personal Kaddish. We had kept just far enough away that her words were a dim murmur as she recited them over her mother’s grave; somehow we had known not to disturb her rare moment of privacy and grace. When she got down on her knees and plucked the grass along the borders of the grave (I always suspected she was just trying to get a little closer to her mother), I would go off in search of interesting headstones. I liked trying to conjure a complete life from the thin line of numbers engraved on a tablet. I was especially drawn to families who had all died on the same day (fre? disease? car accident?) and to children, like Samuel, who had died before their parents. (I closed my eyes and wondered what it felt like to lose your child.) On two or three occasions I had found husbands and wives who had died within days of each other. I always presumed one of them had died of sheer grief, and I had tried to imagine how two people could love each other that much.
The three of us each had a turn casting a spadeful of earth onto the casket, and then we stood around in the sunshine accepting more hugs and condolences. Some of the more remote relatives attempted to introduce themselves, but I surprised them by revealing that I knew everything about them.
“Oh, Cousin Sandy! Yes, of course I remember you,” I said to a cousin of my mother’s I probably hadn’t seen since I was thirteen. “You’re Mimi’s brother. Do you still own that shoe store with her husband, Bill, in Hempstead?”
“Why, yes . . .,” he said, as if he had just learned these facts about his life.
I turned to Sandy’s wife. “Selma, how are you?”
“Oh, I’m fine, doll, just fine,” she replied, appearing moved by the illusion of familiarity I had created.
“How are your daughters, Susan and Mindy?”
Seamus scrolled his eyes up into his head.
“Is this your wife?” Selma asked, looking at Rachel. She and I were holding hands.
“Former wife,” I explained. “But we’ve stayed very close friends.”
Rachel cast me an incredulous look. Selma looked sad and perplexed.
“We were too young when we met,” I continued. “We were just college students.”
Just as Sandy was saying we had to get together soon, Selma pointed to a black woman accompanied by two black men.
“Who’s that?” she whispered, even though they were a good twenty feet away. “Your mother’s girl?”
She was referring to Alice, Ruth’s closest friend and coworker for more than thirty years.
“Yes,” I whispered back to Selma. “But Tara is lost.”
Rachel burst out laughing.
“Now you know why we divorced,” I said to my not-so-amused cousins. “She caused a scene every time we went to a funeral.”
I excused myself and went over to Alice.
“I’m so sorry, Seth, honey,” Alice whispered into my ear as we embraced. One of the men with Alice was Freddy, her husband. I didn’t know who the other man was, but I was surprised to see that his eyes were red from crying. He wore a faded blue satin yarmulke.
“This is my cousin, Elijah,” Alice said, introducing him to me.
“Oh, so you’re Elijah,” I said. It had never occurred to me that Elijah might be black. “My mother kept a postcard you sent her by the side of her bed when she was in the hospital,” I explained. Ruth had kept a veritable shrine by her bedside—letters, photographs, a locket, an old menorah. On the front of the postcard was a picture of a woman standing barefoot in a field at sunset, holding a sickle. On the back, someone had written: “If I keep you alive in my heart, not even death can divide us. May the Lord keep faith with you. Elijah.” I had asked my mother who Elijah was and was disappointed when she said he had been our mailman years ago. I had been hoping she would tell me a story about Elijah being some secret lover.
Elijah nodded slightly.
“Thank you for thinking of her in such a beautiful way.”
Whether it was remembering the words that Elijah had written to my mother or the long, difficult morning finally catching up with me, I was overcome at that moment; tears coursed down my hot, splotchy face. Elijah turned away to press a handkerchief against his eyes.
Everyone returned to their cars, but Seamus was still saying goodbye to Alice, Freddy, and Elijah. He briefly embraced each one of them, then tramped back to where his family was waiting. The plan was to meet up back in New Jersey at Manny’s, a restaurant where Ruth and Alice had been regulars for over three decades.
As Rachel and I drove away from the cemetery, I said, “I apologize for last night.”
“No need to,” she replied.
“I was actually surprised you came out here for the funeral.”
We were not nearly as close as we had once been, time and distance eroding our connection. Rachel didn’t reply; I looked over and noticed she was crying.
“Rachel, what’s the matter?”
“Oh, Seth, Lucinda and I are going through a hard time.”
She told me that she and Lucinda wanted a family, and Rachel was the one trying to get pregnant because Lucinda was seven years older. On the morning she was scheduled for her third and last IUI procedure, Rachel and Lucinda had a brutal argument. Rachel wanted Lucinda to accompany her to the clinic but Lucinda refused to skip a department meeting. She didn’t see any reason why Rachel needed her to come. Later, Rachel was lying on the examining table in the clinic and the technician, a young Filipino woman, was having trouble inserting the tube into Rachel’s uterus. The pain was unbearable. “Fuck this,” Rachel finally shouted. “Go get a fucking doctor to do it!” Eventually, the donor sperm was shot into her through the tube, and then Rachel was left alone in the room for thirty minutes, her legs and her life up in the air. Tears slanted down across her temples. She had never felt so alone, so angry. She wanted Lucinda to be in the room sitting next to her, holding her hand; she needed to know that Lucinda wanted a child as much as she did. She thought about how she had done all the sacrificing from the very beginning of their relationship. She had turned down an attractive offer from a prestigious East Coast university and accepted a position at a second-rate school in the Bay Area so Lucinda wouldn’t have to leave her tenured job at Stanford. Lucinda had a lighter teaching load, a higher salary, and numerous leaves; Rachel’s career, her scholarship, had stagnated while she taught four brain-numbing classes a term. She had sacrificed her career, and now she was sacrificing her body—powerful drugs were injected into it, blood was drawn out it, her belly was slit open for a laparoscopy—and Lucinda couldn’t skip a fucking meeting!
“That’s difficult,” I said after Rachel had told me all of it. “Sometimes I wonder whether Molly and I might be married now if she hadn’t miscarried. I mean, if not for some chromosomal abnormalities, my whole life might have turned out differently.”
Rachel put her hand on my leg, and we rode in silence, two longtime friends and long-ago lovers, both of us motherless, both of us middle-aged, and wondering if we would ever be parents.
WHEN WE ARRIVED AT MANNY’S, I was happy to see Alice and Freddy were joining us. A line of people came over to offer condolences—Sammy, the waiter; Jules and Leon, the countermen; Rhea, the woman who worked behind the cash register; and many of the other regular patrons—Bob Robinson, Ruby Herzon, Ted Krell. Jules and Leon pulled together four tables to accommodate our large party. Everyone, except for Alice, who always ordered the same lunch, sought refuge behind their menus.
Seamus’s two children, Zipporah and Avi, were sitting directly across from me, next to Sarah’s children, Vanessa and Jason. I clowned around a little with Sarah’s kids, who knew me because I always stayed with Sarah during my visits to New Jersey. But neither of Seamus’s children would look in my direction, though seven-year-old Zipporah did lift her eyes for a microsecond, compelled, no doubt, by the same curiosity that did in Lot’s wife. I wondered what they had been told about me. Seamus was not a rigid zealot. His orthodoxy was a suburban, contemporary variety: He kept his beard closely trimmed and covered his head with a handsome, wide-brimmed fedora.
The lunch crowd was enormous, and Sammy the only waiter, so we sat for an interminable amount of time after everyone had put their menus down.
Finally, Alice said, “I’m glad to see you two boys are getting along now. I know how much it meant to Ruth before she died.”
“Amen,” Freddy said quietly.
Seamus and I both pulsed arterial red. We weren’t worthy of this pronouncement. The brotherly affection Ruth had witnessed during the last six months of her life was mainly an act for her sake. I still wanted Seamus to apologize for not sending me condolences when he had learned that Molly had miscarried and then when she left me, for placing orthodoxy before love and family, but of course he wouldn’t. Now that our mother was dead, I wondered what would keep us connected.
SAMMY FNALLY CAME TO THE TABLE to take our orders. His hands had a chronic tremble and a heavy Star of David lay against his sallow chest. When he got to Alice, he said, “The usual?”
“Sammy,” she replied, “is that a Jewish thing?”
“Is what a Jewish thing?”
“Asking questions you already know the answers to.”
I was surprised to see that Seamus was smiling; perhaps he had caught this act before.
Sammy considered the question for a couple of seconds. “If I do it,” he concluded, “then it has to be a Jewish thing.” And he went back to work.
We all laughed, but my laughter suddenly turned into a high-pitched honk. Everyone looked at me as if I were possessed. Zipporah stared the longest. Her eyes gleamed with tiny triangles of light, which, to me, revealed a very avid nature. I winked at her and she immediately looked down.
Sammy returned to the table, bringing complimentary bowls of mushroom-barley soup for everyone.
“Thanks, Sammy,” Alice said. “You’re a good Jew.”
He placed a bowl of soup in front of her, and replied, “I’d like to know who told you there were any bad ones.”
Before eating their soup, Alice and Freddy both bowed their heads and prayed.
After lunch, I asked Seamus if he would come back to the apartment with me.
“What for?” he asked.
“I want your advice about what to do with some of Mom’s things.”
“Seth, I thought we already did this.”
“Seamus, just go,” Deborah said.
“Oh, all right,” Seamus replied, as if, as I suspected, he depended on Deborah to tell him the right things to do in life.
Everyone embraced and kissed good-bye until later that evening, when we would all reconvene at Seamus’s house. Rachel told me that Sarah had offered to drive her back to her hotel and gave me an especially tight embrace. Then Seamus and I drove to the apartment.
“I remember Rachel from your college graduation,” Seamus said. “She’s a nice girl.”
Apparently Seamus didn’t know that she was a lesbian.
“Because she’s Jewish?” I asked.
“Seth, don’t start in with me.”
“All right, Reb Seamus.”
“Don’t make fun of my name, either.”
We drove the rest of the way in silence.
Seamus had avoided our old apartment since Ruth had gone into the hospital. I understood that it held memories that were just as bad for him as they were for me, but I also remembered bathing with Seamus in this apartment; I remembered the scar on his leg from a skin graft, the constellation of birthmarks across his back, the way his tush was pocked and puckered from injections our mother had given him for an early childhood illness. Recalling these details made me feel deeply intimate and connected with my brother, but I couldn’t imagine communicating such feelings to him.
Inside, Seamus kept his coat on, apparently anxious to go as soon as possible. Despite his beard and hat, he looked exactly like Ruth, and seeing him standing in the living room I longed to hold my brother’s face in my hands. Since I had no hope of doing that either, I asked him if he knew Elijah.
“Yes, we’re friends,” Seamus answered.
“You’re friends? Really?”
“What’s the matter, Seth? You don’t think it’s possible for me to have a black friend?”
“No, but—”
“But you think I’m closed-minded, don’t you?”
“No, Seamus, I don’t think Mom brought us up to be closed-minded.”
“That’s right,” he said emphatically, as if this were the one thing we could agree on.
“Did Mom introduce you to Elijah?”
“No. He’s a clerk at the post office. I see him every week when I mail my bills and buy my stamps.”
“So he just introduced himself?”
Seamus reddened. “He told me that he and Mom were friends and that I looked exactly like her.”
“I knew it!”
“Knew what?”
“Seamus, don’t you think he and Mom were once in love?”
“Seth,” he sighed, “stop it.”
“Stop what?”
“Telling dumb stories.”
“Seamus, come on. Her second marriage ended twenty-seven years ago. Do you think she just stopped being interested in men?”
“Yes.”
“What?”
“Yes, considering the men she was married to, that’s what I think.”
Didn’t he know about Jimmy Conroy? Or did he pretend not to know? I wondered if I could have scored a knockout by telling him all about Jimmy, but then thought better of it.
“Well, I don’t believe such a thing,” I said. “I even think I remember seeing Mom and Elijah together. Remember that time we went to a Christmas party at Alice’s house, circa 1966?”
“I don’t know. I would have been six years old then.”
“That was the day a cop pulled us over because Mom ran a red light. She had drunk too much eggnog at the party, and when the cop accused her of being intoxicated, she told him that she was Jewish and hadn’t realized that eggnog had alcohol in it.”
Seamus glared at me. “Seth, is there anything you don’t remember?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
I recalled that the cop actually let my mother go after she pleaded with him that if she lost her license she wouldn’t able to drive to work and support her children. He called a cab and then graphically told her about all the drunk-driving accidents he had seen, many of them involving children. He told her a story about a little girl who had gone hurtling through a windshield. The little girl’s mother had had an open bottle of beer next to her. “What type of mother would do something like that?” the cop had said, just as the taxi pulled up.
“John Coltrane’s version of ‘Ev’ry Time We Say Goodbye’ was playing on the phonograph,” I continued. “Mom and this black man were dancing together, holding each other very closely. Mom was smiling and her eyes were closed. She looked like she was having a nice dream. I’m sure that man was Elijah.” I also remembered how her bare arms had gleamed with a thin film of perspiration, but I decided to leave out this detail.
“Seth,” Seamus said, “you were ten years old in 1966. How did you know you were hearing John Coltrane?”
“Seamus,” I replied, “some things you just know.”
“You don’t know,” Seamus said. “Elijah was our mailman.”
“I know he was the mailman. But they still could have been lovers.”
“Elijah is a religious man. He has a family and goes to church every Sunday. Sorry to disappoint you.”
“I’m not disappointed. They still could have been in love.”
Seamus gestured dismissively with one hand and straightened his hat with the other one. “You know, Seth, I came here with you because I thought you wanted to have a heart-to-heart. But I have to go now.”
“Wait! I did. I do,” I said.
“Then how come you’re going on like this about Mom and Elijah? Why do you always have to turn everything into such a megillah?”
“Just hear this,” I said, putting my hand on my brother’s arm. The John Coltrane version of “Ev’ry Time We Say Goodbye” was already on the record player because I had played it about fifty times over the last two days.
I turned it on and the music, velvety and mournful, actually appeared to calm Seamus. He closed his eyes and his rigid posture relaxed. My brother and I had not embraced in years, not even on this day, the day we had buried our mother. I put my arms around him and began to sway with him to the music. Seamus held me tightly; I felt my brother’s wet, bearded cheek against my own. “Oh, Seth,” he whispered, “I can’t believe she’s gone.”
AT SIX O’CLOCK, I left to get Rachel at her hotel. I brought my mother’s old copy of Pride and Prejudice with me. Driving to Seamus’s house, Rachel asked if I had had a good visit with my brother.
“Yes. We slow danced to John Coltrane’s version of ‘Ev’ry Time We Say Goodbye.’”
“Oh, all right,” Rachel replied.
“I’m totally serious,” I said. “But I guess you had to be there.”
The front door to the house was open when we arrived. Rhoda and a clutch of my elderly second cousins were standing just inside the door. The cousins included Marcia from Great Neck, Milton and Pearl from Hempstead, and the twins, Jenny and Jeanette, of Rockville Centre, who had lived together for the last thirty-five years, ever since Jenny’s husband had died and Jeanette’s had fed. I introduced Rachel by name but not by relationship. All my cousins said it was nice to see her again, presuming they had probably met her at some point. Then Marcia marveled at how much I looked like my mother. I replied that I thought Seamus looked more like Mom than I did, and this sparked a five-minute debate about who looked more like Ruth. Then Jeanette said the person I really looked like was Zeyde Jacob. Jenny told her she was completely out of her tree—how could she remember what Zeyde Jacob looked like when she couldn’t even remember to turn off the lights inside the house? Jeanette pressed her lips into an angry line. Rhoda interjected that different people remember different things, but Jeanette wasn’t about to be mollified and she proceeded to describe how my face was an exact reproduction of Zeyde Jacob’s. While all this was going on, I noticed my grandfather sitting in a chair on the other side of the room. I asked Rhoda if I ought to go over and say hello to him.
“Sure, doll, go ahead.”
“Do you think he’ll remember who I am?”
“Who knows? I live with him day and night, and it’s a complete mystery to me what goes on inside his head.”
I excused myself, seized Rachel’s hand, and went over to my grandfather. I pulled up a chair. He stared vacantly past me, his mouth wide open, rivulets of saliva running down his chin. I reached in my pocket, pulled out the yarmulke supplied by the funeral home that morning, and dabbed the saliva away.
“Hello, Poppa. How are you?”
He stared at Rachel and me.
“How’s the family?” he asked.
Behind me, I could hear Jenny and Jeanette still arguing over nothing.
“The family’s great, Poppa. Couldn’t be better.”
“How many children do you have now?”
I was my grandfather’s only childless grandchild.
“Two, Poppa. A boy and a girl.”
The old man’s eyes went out of focus for a moment. Then he fixed his sight on something just over my shoulder. I turned around and saw that it was a mirror draped with black cloth.
He bent close to me. “Did someone die?”
I could have said anything. I could have said that nobody had died, or I could have named one of the dead from long ago— Esther or Samuel, Jacob or Dvorah.
I took hold of his hand.
“Poppa, do you remember your daughter Ruth?”
“Sure, I do!” he said, his dentures gleaming. “How is Ruth? I haven’t seen her in so long.”
“She’s fine, Poppa. Couldn’t be better.”
I planted a kiss on his cheek and Rachel and I headed for the drinks table.
“It’s strange to think that’s the same man who tyrannized my mother for so many years,” I said.
“He’s so sweet now,” Rachel commented.
“Just imagine. We’d be the happiest family in the world if no one remembered anything.”
I spied Avi and Zipporah sitting at the kitchen table, looking at a book.
“Come,” I said to Rachel, “I’m going to try to get my brother’s children to like me.”
“You go yourself, sweetie. I need to just be myself for a couple of minutes.”
They were looking at a book of illustrated Bible stories. I squeezed myself in between them. “Who remembers me?” I asked. They exchanged shy, uncomfortable smiles.
“Zipporah, you know who I am, don’t you?” I said.
“Uncle Seth,” she replied quietly.
“Yes!” I said brightly. “The one and only Uncle Seth. So, who’s your favorite uncle?”
She looked puzzled for a moment. “We just have one uncle,” she answered.
I wondered if she was referring to Aaron, but I brazened it out and exclaimed, “Then it must be me!” I clapped my hands against my cheeks.
Her lips pursed into a coy smile.
“Avi, am I your favorite uncle?”
He looked to his sister for an answer. A small knitted disk of a yarmulke was fastened to his short hair with a bobby pin. A choo-choo train motif ran around its border.
“That’s a nice kippah,” I said.
“You know kippah?” Zipporah asked.
So I had been described as some type of apostate, a family member who did not live by the Torah. They might read their book of Bible stories and think of me as a Cain or an Esau, a wayward, bitter brother.
“Of course I know kippah,” I replied, and placed the one that was still damp with Poppa’s saliva on my head. “I never go anywhere without one.”
The children laughed at me and then returned to their book. I went back into the living room and saw Seamus bent over Poppa, whispering in his ear. I was standing by a table laden with scotch. I poured myself a drink and waved Seamus over.
“Does Poppa know who you are?” I asked him.
“It’s difficult to tell.”
“But you speak to him anyway?”
“Sure. Might as well. You never know what gets through to him.”
“Sort of like praying to God?” I said.
Seamus eyed me warily, then seemed to decide that my comment was sincere, that I really was interested in how he prayed.
“Yes, you could say that,” he answered.
I pulled Mother’s battered paperback copy of Pride and Prejudice out of my back pocket.
“Here, Seamus,” I said, holding the book out to him. “I want you to have this.”
Seamus turned his head sideways to read the title. “What? Is this supposed to have some big message for me?”
“No, no message at all. I know you don’t want to keep anything from the apartment, but Mom read this book from cover to cover during a game at Yankee Stadium in 1968. The Yankees beat the White Sox four to two. Mel Stottlemyre pitched into the seventh inning, when he was relieved by Jack Hamilton. Here. It would mean a lot to me if you took this.”
“Thanks,” he said, accepting the book. “I’ll try to keep all that in mind.”
Then I added, “I also thought Zipporah might like to read it when she’s older. You can tell her it was Mom’s favorite novel.”
“Why can’t you tell her yourself?”
“I can? You mean that?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Oh, Seamus, thank you! Thank you very much!”
Seamus stared at me as if I were some intractable mystery.
“Seth, can I tell you something that I’ve always wanted to say?”
“Sure, of course.”
“You’re my brother, and I love you, but you are a very strange man.”
I burst out laughing. “Oh, Seamus, thank you. Thank you very much.”
“Well, you are,” he said, laughing back. “Why can’t you come right out and tell me you want Zipporah to have this book? Why do you have to do some song and dance about a baseball game almost thirty years ago? Or like the way you were playing games with Sandy and Selma at the cemetery this morning, or creating this big megillah about Mom and Elijah. I don’t even know how to explain it, Seth, but you do things like that all the time.”
“You mean like acting funny when I’m really sad?”
“Exactly!” he exclaimed, as amazed as if Poppa had suddenly become lucid. “So you know you’re doing it?”
“Usually, yes.”
Seamus’s face went slack with sorrow. “Seth, I know we’ve had our problems, but you don’t have to keep me at arm’s length at a time like this.”
I could feel the vein between my eyebrows beating violently.
“Tell me what’s on your mind,” Seamus said.
“I really wanted to eulogize Mom this morning,” I replied, my voice trembling badly. “How could you not have trusted me?”
Seamus pressed his lips together and bowed his head. I placed my hand against the side of my brother’s face.
“I would have given a beautiful eulogy!” I cried.
“I know you would have, Seth. I know you would have. I apologize.”
Just then the doorbell rang. From where I was standing, I could see out the picture window. Alice, Freddy, and Elijah were standing at the door.
“You better go, Seamus. Elijah is ringing your doorbell.”
“Not just yet,” he said. “Deborah will get it. I have something for you too. In my study.”
I followed Seamus to a small room with a desk and a computer. On the walls were photographs of his children and his ornate ketubah, or marriage contract. He opened a box on his desk and a pulled out a thin paperback book. I needed a moment to register the title.
A STRANGER ON THE PLANET
By Seth Shapiro
ON THE COVER WAS AN illustration of a boy in his bar mitzvah suit and tallis, looking out at the ocean. A woman, his mother, was standing several feet behind him.
Seamus could see that I was flummoxed.
“Mom wanted me to have copies of this story privately printed,” he explained.
“How many copies?” I asked.
“One hundred twenty.”
“One hundred and twenty? Is that a Jewish thing? Mom used to say she hoped I’d live one hundred and twenty years.”
“Yes, it’s a Jewish thing. Moses lived for one hundred and twenty years. So it’s a hopeful number. We all hope that we can attain the longevity of Moses.”
“So . . .,” I said. “Did you read the story?”
“Yes.”
“What did you think?”
“I think you treated Mom much better in that story than you did in real life.”
“My ex-wife—remember her? the one you never met?—said something very similar to me one time.”
He lightly raked his fingers through his beard and sighed.
“Seth, I owe you an apology. It was bad of me not to have called you when you lost your baby.”
“Thank you, Seamus. That means a lot to me. It truly does.”
I paged through my story. It was actually bound and typeset like a book, on book-quality paper.
“Do you think Zipporah might like to read this too, when she’s older?” I asked.
“Yes, I think she would like that very much.”
WHEN WE RETURNED TO THE LIVING ROOM, I saw that Rachel and Sarah were sitting next to my grandfather. Both women were crying. I went over to them.
Poppa fixed his gaze on me. “You! What are you doing here?”
For a moment I was dumbfounded. Then I realized that Poppa had mistaken me for the person I most closely resembled.
“Oh, no, Poppa,” I said. “I’m not Elliot. I’m Seth, your grandson.”
Poppa looked at the ground and put his hand on top of his head. Then he looked back up at me.
“You know what your father did?” he asked in a whisper.
“Yes,” I said. “I know everything.”
Poppa turned to Rachel. “My poor Esther never recovered. Did you, darling?”
“That was a long time ago,” Rachel replied. “I’m doing much better now.”
Esther had died before my father abandoned us. I wondered if, over time, my grandfather had conflated the two events in his mind, refashioning family history so that his wife’s death was caused by the great injury done to his daughter.
“We’re all doing much better now,” Sarah said.
“What about Ruth?” Poppa asked. “I didn’t think she would recover from such a shock. She was always so anxious.”
“She’s fine, Poppa. Just fine,” I said.
“Oh, I hope so. I haven’t seen her in so long.”
“I’m going to visit with the grandchildren now,” Rachel said to Poppa.
“All right, Esther, sweetheart,” Poppa said. Sarah stood up too.
“Rose, my dearest,” he said to Sarah, “come back soon.”
“I will, darling.”
As we walked away, Rachel said, “He thought I was his wife Esther. He kept telling me how much he had missed me.”
“He thought I was Rose,” Sarah said.
“You don’t look bad for a woman who’s been dead for nearly thirty-five years,” I commented to Rachel.
“Don’t, Seth,” Sarah said. “It was so sad.”
I looked at Sarah and Rachel.
“I’ll tell you what’s really sad,” I said to them. “I’m looking at the only two women in the world I really love and I can’t sleep with either of them.”
“Don’t get Freudian on me, Seth,” Sarah replied.
Rachel laughed, then said to Sarah, “I think the comment was meant mainly for me.”
“Am I that transparent?” I said.
Both women answered, “Yes!”
“Do you know what your mother said to Seth after he told her I was gay?” Rachel asked Sarah.
“Oh, God,” I said, putting my face in my hands.
“She asked him if it was because he hadn’t sexually satisfied me.”
Sarah laughed loudly. “That sounds exactly like Mom.” Then she turned to me and said, “Actually, I remember you saying the same thing.”
“I plagiarized the line from Mom.”
Seamus came over and asked what we were laughing about.
“Just telling Mom stories,” I said.
He appeared concerned.
“You don’t want to hear them,” Sarah added.
“Good,” Seamus said.
Rachel looked at the three of us with a big smile on her face.
“What?” I said.
“Your mother really did do something right.”
Sarah’s eyes welled up and she embraced Rachel tightly. “Thank you,” she said when she pulled back. “Mom would have been so happy to hear that.”
Sarah said she was going to step outside for a moment. Rachel said she needed to pee. I said I needed another drink. I went over to the drinks table and poured myself a scotch. Alice cast me a reproving look from across the room. She and Freddy had become born again about twenty years ago and they no longer drank alcohol or danced. Freddy made his way over to me and clapped me affectionately on the back. “Seth, my man, you feel like some company?” This was Freddy’s style when he thought I was in trouble. Freddy had been one of the men my mother had enlisted to help me when I younger. Freddy would stop by the apartment with a basketball under his arm and say to me, “Can you run with me, my man?”
“Sure, I’d love some company,” I said. “Can I pour you something to drink?”
“Maybe some club soda.”
I handed him his soda and held up my glass of scotch. “Cheers,” I said.
Eyeing my glass, he said, “That’s a helluva way to live, brother.”
“Look, Freddy, I appreciate your concern, but I’m fine.”
“Don’t tell me you’re fine. None of us is fine.”
“All right, all right,” I said. “I hear you.” On the other side of the room, Alice was putting on her coat.
“I think I’m on your wife’s bad side,” I commented.
“You know Alice loves you. You just worry her, that’s all. But you come to Manny’s tomorrow, usual time, and she’ll be glad to see you.”
Freddy gave my arm a light squeeze, then went to join his wife. I went outside, looking for Sarah. She was standing in the backyard, leaning against the railing of the porch, holding a burning cigarette in her hand. I leaned back next to her. It was a clear night with a numinous moon. For a minute we both looked at the sky. I watched a star blink on and off, like the very pulse of the universe.
“Since when do you smoke?” I asked.
“I don’t. This is just my private way of remembering Mom.”
She then did a spot-on imitation of Ruth, placing half the cigarette in her mouth and inhaling until her eyes bulged.
“Give me that,” I said. I took a deep drag on the cigarette and then exhaled Ruth style: head turned, one eye shut, blowing the smoke out of the side of my mouth.
We both laughed.
“This is the first time in my life I’ve tried a cigarette,” I said, coughing.
“Congratulations.”
“Did you know that Mom had Seamus privately publish one hundred twenty copies of a story I wrote in college?”
“Yes.”
“Did you read it?”
“Yes, it’s beautiful, Seth. It really is.”
“Why didn’t she tell me she was having it privately published?”
“She had this strange idea that you stopped writing because of a letter she sent you about that story. I think she was always hoping you would write again.”
I inhaled deeply on the cigarette and then handed it back to Sarah.
“Seamus said I was a lot nicer to Mom in that story than I ever was in real life. Do you think so too?”
She let the cigarette fall to the ground and meditatively ground it out with her shoe.
“I remember one time when we were eleven,” she said, “and we were fighting in the backseat of the car somewhere on the turnpike. Mom pulled over to the side of the road and ordered you out. We came back about ten minutes later—that was about how long she needed to go to the next exit and turn around. It was the middle of summer, but you were shivering from fright, and you had peed in your pants.”
Sarah’s eyes were filled with tears.
“I have absolutely no memory of that,” I said.
“I remember it like it was yesterday.”
“I can’t believe I don’t remember something like that.”
“Maybe your memory is more selective than you realize.”
We looked up at the night sky, mainly, I think, to avoid eye contact, but perhaps we were also wondering if Ruth was somewhere out among the stars, looking down on us.
“Can I say something really strange?” I asked.
“Everything you say is strange,” my sister replied.
“I know, you’ve told me that maybe a zillion times. . . . But I miss Dad,” I said. “I feel like we’re really orphans now.”
“I know what you mean,” she said.
“Do you think about Dad at all?”
“Not much. But sometimes I think I’d really love for him to see my children. Maybe because they’re the one thing in my life I’m really proud of.”
I looked back up at the stars to hide the fact that I was crying.
“Oh, Seth. I’m sorry.”
“Forget about it. . . . I actually ran into Dad in Cambridge.”
“You did?” she exclaimed. “When?”
“Years ago. After Molly and I split up.”
“How was it?”
“Strange. I had sent him a condolence note when Hortense died, and he scolded me for writing just two sentences.”
“Jesus! What did you say?”
“I told him he had miscounted. I wrote three sentences.”
Sarah let out a mirthless laugh. “Let’s go in. I’m getting cold.”
INSIDE, I WENT OVER TO the couch where Zipporah and Avi had moved with their book. When I sat down between them, Zipporah’s brow furrowed.
“What’s the matter, honey?” I said. “Don’t you want me to sit next to you and Avi?”
She looked anxiously around the room, as if she were afraid of being seen with me. Then she cupped her hands to my ear and whispered, “Uncle Seth. You’re not supposed to sit on the couch.”
I cupped my hands to her ear and whispered back, “Why not?”
She sighed with frustration.
“Because,” she whispered, “you’re in mourning. You have to sit on one of those wooden boxes.”
Feeling left out, Avi put his mouth to my other ear. He didn’t have anything to say and just breathed warmly into my ear.
“Can’t I mourn after I visit with you and Avi?” I asked.
I said this lightheartedly, but she looked deeply vexed. Was she afraid that if I violated Jewish tradition I would be banished again back into the world of the dead, or wherever she thought I had been until six months ago?
“You’re right, sweetie. I’m going to sit on that box and mourn properly. Can you and Avi join me? I really don’t want to sit on a box all by myself.”
“OK,” she replied.
The three of us moved to the other side of the room. I sat on a crate, and the children stood on either side of me. I opened their book to read to them from the story of Ruth, a story of loss and love, of living among strangers.
I noticed Rachel standing over us, holding a crate in her hands too.
“Do you mind if I join you?” she asked.
“Sit,” I said.
She set her crate down and sat on it. Avi stared at her. “Hello,” Rachel said. “What’s your name?”
Avi turned to me and said, “Is this your wife?”
“No, that’s my friend, Rachel.”
“Are you Jewish?” he asked Rachel.
“Yes,” she answered. “Are you?’
Avi was tongue-tied, but Zipporah laughed. “She’s kidding with you, Avi. She knows you’re Jewish.”
I began reading to them, but after just a page or two I realized that Zipporah was looking out the big picture window. I looked out too and saw Seamus deep in conversation with Elijah. Alice and Freddy were standing nearby. Under the moonlight, my brother’s tzitzit glowed luminously against his black trousers. I looked around the room. Rhoda was whispering into Poppa’s ear; Sarah and Aaron were sitting on crates, their children on either side of them; Jenny and Jeanette were eating off each other’s plates. Everyone was here except my mother. For the first time all day, I missed her in a way that made me dizzy with dread. I was here and she was in the cold ground, sealed inside a pitch black coffin. It was the same dread I had felt so many years before on the night of my bar mitzvah, the night I held my mother in my arms, kissed her on the lips, and told her I loved her, because I was afraid she would disappear down a deep, dark hole and we would all be sent to live in different places.
I looked back out the window. Seamus was nodding, apparently in agreement with something Elijah was saying. Then he bowed his head and placed a hand over his face. Elijah pulled him close and the two of them embraced, rocking and swaying in each other’s arms.
Zipporah leaned casually against me, extending an arm across my back. I prayed that she would live another one hundred and twenty years, and that she would always remember this night, remember all of us who were here.
Date: October 18, 2002
Subject: Bat Mitzvah, Books, Stories, etc.
To: zippyjew@yahoo.com
From: sshapiro@BBA.edu
Dear Zipporah,
Well, I hope your father doesn’t stroke out when all the boxes are delivered to your house later today. He didn’t want any keepsakes from Nana Ruth’s apartment when she died, but I’m sending you all of her books now. I read them all by the time I was your age, so you better start reading. Anyway, the books aren’t my actual bat mitzvah present for you. I’m also sending you a story I wrote many years ago. That’s my real present. Nana Ruth would have wanted you to have her books, and I know she would have wanted you to read this story. It’s a story about our family, a story about longing for solace and connection with something that’s been lost.
Much love, many kindnesses—
Your Favorite Uncle (AKA Seth)