Chapter 7

Lee woke me from a dreamless sleep at 8:30 Thursday morning. "Happy Thanksgiving!" His casual demeanor lightened the descending darkness over being with my family later.

I smiled. "Happy Thanksgiving." I lay in bed staring out the window at the fog shrouded morning and stroked Face, who stood almost frozen, pressed up against the side of the bed. The dog was totally satisfied, at peace. I envied her.

"Want to go see Love Letters Saturday night. It's at the Canon Theater in Beverly Hills, and it's closing the end of month, so it's this weekend or we miss it. Charlton Heston plays the lead, and even though he's a right-wing NRA nutcase, the reviews say he's pretty good. My pick, my treat."

It did sound like a treat. Local theater was usually excellent in L.A., with famous actors often playing the major roles, but way too expensive on my meager budget. "I haven't been to a play in ages," I mused aloud.

"Is that a yes, then?"

Almost every part of my wanted to say yes, but I didn't. Among his other indiscretions, Lee was clearly a lavish spendthrift, even though he was in massive debt with a half a mill tax bill, which made him at least frivolous, but more likely dangerous with money. And I felt weird about him taking me to something so extravagant. We weren't dating. The smarter part of me knew I should avoid adding to my mounting debt since I had no way of repaying Lee's generosity at the moment. Think, my intuition warned— With everything given, something is owed.

Lee sighed. "Look Ray, I get you want to keep it just friends right now, and I'm fine with that. Come see the play with me Saturday night. We can enjoy some theater, share a good meal, some stimulating dialog and pretend to be witty." His voice was lilted with humor. I could practically see his adorable grin through the phone.

I laughed. “Okay.” I needed something to look forward to, a light at the end of another Thanksgiving of my mother's pinched expression of concern reserved for me alone, or my sister's sublime superiority she'd married into financial security and had graced my mom with three gorgeous grandkids. "I'd love to go see Love Letters with you Saturday night."

"Great! I'll reserve two tickets then." He paused. "One request."

"Go on."

"Would you wear a dress?"

So much for just friends. Clearly his interest was more than friendship. Reality mocked me that, of course, it had been his agenda since we'd met.

"Any dress. It doesn't have to be fancy or anything, just proper attire for the evening. And besides, you'd look stunning in a dress." He said it matter-of-factly, but I was sure I felt sexual innuendo traveling the line with his words.

“To date, only my mother has ever instructed me on what to wear,” I said as evenly as possible. “Which invariably led to discord between us, and likely the beginning of our rather contentious relationship.”

"Don't get riled. It's just a suggestion. The Canon Theater is pretty posh and people don't come in jeans. It's Beverly Hill on a Saturday night and everyone will be dressed to the nines."

Face rested her head on the bed and stared up at me with her big, brown eyes in hopes of getting more strokes, but I was done. “Thanks for the fashion tip on appropriate theater attire,” I teased as I picked up my phone and took it with me as I got up, went to my work area and sat cross legged on the drafting chair.

“OK, OK I get it,” Lee said with humor. “You have my solemn oath never to suggest attire again.”

“Smart man.” I set the cradle in my lap and the receiver between my ear and shoulder. “And he can be taught,” I added jokingly, as I began inputting the copy I'd handwritten into PageMaker on the Mac that sat on the small table I'd built to match the height of my drafting table. We confirmed racquetball for tomorrow and disconnected.

I held the phone in my lap and stared out the side window at my neighbor's front yard. Morning dew on the pines, bushes, and enormous green lawn glittered with pinpoints of white light as the sun broke through the fog. Did Lee really see me as potentially stunning? I swept my hair away from my face, letting the soft strands run through my fingers, and for a second I touched beautiful. I could dress to impress, and in my head I played the scene, walking up to Lee in slow motion in the mid-length, maroon lace my sister gave me, imagining his drop-jaw expression. I couldn't help smiling then. Even though part of me suspected it a lie, being seen as beautiful made me feel beautiful.

---

The sweet, cloying scent of illness was veiled by the sharpness of cleanser in the antiseptic lobby of the Home. Chrome handrails lined the light pink walls. A hunched elderly man clutched onto the railing as he shuffled along in slow motion. Each step looked pained. Pasty white skin, his eyelids drooped over his small black eyes which seemed vacant, as if not only his body but his mind had abandoned him.

I took in the scene and was chilled to my core. Old scared me, sometimes worse than not getting there.

Grandma sat perched on the edge of the maroon love seat, her ill-fitting floral print polyester dress hung to her calves and gathered tightly around her short, crossed legs. She clutched the strap of her white vinyl purse between her bony hands resting in her lap.

"Well, it's about time," She sniped, as if I were late. It was 4:00 p.m., exactly when I was told to be there.

"You look lovely, Grandma." I leaned down and kissed my grandmother's soft white cheek. The old woman gave me a vain smile. At 84, she had flawless skin, virtually wrinkle-free, and her steel gray eyes were still rather piercing.

"And you look like you got your clothes at the Salvation Army. Why don't you dress properly?" She spoke in a clipped English accent though she'd lived in the States for over seventy years.

I wore my hole-free black jeans, and oversized beige cotton shirt, which I actually tucked in. I even put on a bra for the occasion. The woman was delusional expecting more than that. "You ready to go, Gram?"

She stood and straightened her dress, then squared her petite shoulders and rose her chin up. "I've been ready to get out of here since the day your mother stuck me in this place."

We walked to my Civic parked in the lot behind the building. I was annoyed by her bitterness, my mother's effort to her care more than sufficient in my view. It had been the right decision to have her committed. Gram almost killed herself overdosing on medication she'd mistakenly taken twice within minutes on more than a few occasions. She was losing her memory, and her once sharp mind could no longer manage life on her own.

It was getting dark, but bits of electric blue sky peeked through the thickening clouds. The air was crystal clean, sharp with moisture. A storm was coming. It was easy to feel in L.A., maybe because they're so rare. I settled Gram in the passenger seat then took a deep breath, sucked in the sweet wetness and released it slowly to shake off my growing anxiety.

"Try that lane, it's moving. Don't just sit here. Go around them. You should get off the freeway, the side streets are faster..." Grandma had a lot of suggestions though she'd never driven a day in her life. Between driving tips she talked incessantly about the ‘crazy' people she now lived with. She swore her roommate stole her ruby necklace, one she claimed she got on Safari in Africa, though she'd never owned one and had never been anywhere but England until her teens, then the States the rest of her life. She was sure her neighbor across the hall was coming into her room at night to watch her sleep, though had no explanation why. Then she was sure she'd forgotten something back at the Home but couldn't remember what, then couldn't remember where we were going. She remembered after prompting, but then didn't want to go to her evil daughter's who had stolen everything she owned and had her ‘put away.'

I pulled into my parents' driveway, alongside the row of rosebushes my mom and I had planted years back, a long narrow island of long-stem yellow and red roses that separated the neighbor's driveway from theirs. I stopped behind my sister's minivan, turned off the car, and looked at grandma who stared straight ahead, seemingly unaware we had arrived.

"You ready to go inside?"

"I told you, I'm not going in there. Why are we here?"

"For Thanksgiving, Gram, remember?"

"Well, I have nothing to be thankful for. Take me home."

"I'm sorry you feel that way." It was cliché and a lie and I felt stupid for saying it, parroting my mother's Pollyanna tripe. I considered telling grandma I know what hopeless feels like, and I too lived with a pervasive sadness and fear of the future, afraid of what's to be, or not to be. But there was no point really. Gram didn't acknowledge feelings, and she never showed fear. "Are you coming into the house with me or not?"

Grandma refused to get out of the car and I wasn't about to make her. She'd always been contentious, but she'd had a quick wit and delivered it with sharp humor, both of which left her years ago, as did the radiant beauty she once possessed. She was on the fringe of life now, on her way out and almost invisible. Surely she felt it too. Maybe so many old people lose their mind because the reality of their marginal existence is just too degrading. And terror consumed me right then, bearing witness to my future.

I got out of my car and took a deep breath of crisp, wet air, then released it slowly as I went to the back of my Civic and lifted the hatchback, gathered the pie, and the green bean casserole I'd made this morning, then slammed the hatch shut and walked to my parents' Valley-ranch, single-story home.

Roasting turkey and smoky firewood wafted from inside as I stepped up onto the landing and then came through the iron screen door into the house I was raised, yet never really felt at home in. I passed the bookshelves neatly packed with encyclopedias and novels into the spacious, modern living room. A large open space wrapped around the centralized fireplace to the open dining area.

Dad tended the fire, poked an iron rod at the burning logs. Sparks flared and sucked up into the chimney. My brother-in-law, Larry, looked short and narrow standing next to my 6'3", 220 pound father, though both men looked remarkably alike, even with twenty five years between them. Each had speckled gray hair and short cropped beards and wire rim glasses. Dad wore navy Dockers and a long sleeve flannel shirt. As always, Larry looked like he'd just walked off the set of The Big Chill—Levi's, maroon Izod sweater, and those over-complicated sneakers.

"Hey." I announced. "Happy Thanksgiving." I set the food I'd brought on the slate bench that wrapped two sides of the fireplace, then kissed and hugged my father. He gathered me up in his big arms and drew me in against his barrel chest.

"Hello Baby." It was his only term of endearment for me. "Happy Thanksgiving." He released me and I felt abandoned midst the pack again.

"Hey Lar. How ya doing?" I inquired when he didn't.

"Good." That was it. Larry didn't turn my question around.

"Grandma's in the car and won't come out. Can you please go talk to her, dad?"

My father gave a heavy sigh and shook his head before handing the iron poker to Larry and going outside. Larry rested the end of the poker on the slate bench, held it like a staff and stared at the fire, clearly uninterested in engaging with me. He was a devout Jew, a conservative, directed, precise, with no interest in abstractions like feelings. And Larry dismissed most anyone who wasn't of like mind or income.

I collected my food and went into the kitchen. "Happy Thanksgiving everyone!" And that moment I felt glad to be there, to have family to be with. They were all I had, all I'd ever really had, as my mother so often reminded me. Everyone else came and went in L.A.

"Happy Thanksgiving," everyone said in unison, except Scott. My eight year old nephew sat at the kitchen table and consumed a finger full of the custard from the pumpkin roll he'd taken a scoop out of when he thought no one was looking.

Carrie sat in front of baby Adam strapped in the portable car seat on the kitchen table. She was feeding him spoonfuls of mushed up yams that dribbled out the side of his mouth. The gross factor didn't seem to faze her. Her mass of flaming red hair was pulled back into a tight braid and hung down her back practically to her waist. She wore a Spanish style gauze dress with a colorful, rather loud floral pattern of red roses, and mid-calf tan cowboy boots with sharply pointed tips.

I set the food down on the stove top above the oven where my six year old niece, Jessie, stood basting the turkey. Mom stood behind her, hand over her granddaughter's and together they squeezed the soft plastic ball, sucking up gravy into the tube then squirting it back on the bird.

"Happy Thanksgiving, Auntie Ray." Jessie looked adorably cute in her black velvet dress, her long, strawberry blond hair pulled back in a high ponytail.

"Happy Thanksgiving, baby." I whispered as I bent to kiss my niece's head, and before fully straightening I received my mother's quick kiss on the cheek. Mom was barely five feet, and shrinking with age.

"Happy Thanksgiving, Dolly." My mother had three terms of endearment for me. Dolly, Face, and ‘my baby,' as I was her last born. "Is Grandma giving you grief?"

"She still in the car. Dad went to get her."

"Well, she wouldn't come in if I went out there." Her aged, sun baked skin glowed with beads of sweat that ran along the side of her gaunt face onto the brown plastic frame of her large glasses. "She only listens to your father." She took the baster from Jessie, pushed the turkey back in the oven and shut the door, then wiped her forehead on her shirtsleeve. "Go wash your hands, Jessie Rose," she instructed her granddaughter. "Then see if you can help your mother with the coleslaw."

"I'm feeding Adam now, mom." Carrie was in a huff. "I'll get to it in a minute. I told you I should have brought Mariana to help."

Mom didn't respond. She busied herself and tuned out, a technique she'd honed to avoid conflict. She got a carton of whipping cream from the fridge, poured the cream into a plastic bowl then set up the electric mixer.

I retrieved the coleslaw my sister brought from the fridge and took it back to the kitchen table. A baby bottle filled with dressing was on top of the cabbage mixture and I poured it over the shredded leaves until the bottle was drained. Jessie sat down at the table next to her older brother and started coloring, but within moments they were fighting, Scott hording the markers regardless of his sister's shrill protests. Carrie ignored them. Like our mother, Carrie had the ability to shut out what disturbed her. But the kids bickering annoyed the hell out of me.

"Knock it off, you guys." I spoke loudly to be heard over the mixer. "Scott, give your sister half the pens. And Jess, don't grab. Ask." I got Jessie's attention, but Scott grabbed the only pen Jessie had out of her small hand. She tried to grab it back nearly knocking a stack of dishes off the table. "Stop! Now! Both of you." The last bit sounded like I was screaming because mom had switched off the mixer. I grabbed half of Scott's markers and set them in front of Jess. Carrie looked up from feeding Adam and narrowed her eyes at me, but at least the kids stopped fighting.

"This is ridiculous, Mother." Carrie stood, wiped her son clean with the cloth she kept on her shoulder. "There is nothing for the kids to do here anymore. You don't even have cable. They don't want to be here. And I don't blame them. They can entertain themselves all day at home. We should just have Thanksgiving at my house from now on."

"No way," I protested. I'd never felt welcome in Carrie's home, always the unwanted guest she felt she had to invite. I looked at mom standing at the counter near the sink, poised with the mixer over the bowl of whipped cream. I recognized my mother's pinched expression and felt her rush of distress. "We've had it at home since we were born. Thanksgiving should be here."

"You have no idea what a total hassle it is dragging three kids everywhere." Carrie picked her son up out of the car seat and held him to her. "You only have yourself to worry about, Rachel. It's harder for everyone having it here. If you won't think of me, then at least think of mom."

I stared at my mother. "I am." Mom looked down, busied herself with the cream. Thanksgiving was the only holiday our mother still hosted. She'd mentioned many times how much she enjoyed preparing for it, looked forward to “having the whole family safe in the nest,” even if just for a night. Carrie had co-opted all birthdays, Hallmark occasions and every Jewish holiday from Hanukkah to Passover at her 5,600 square foot McMansion in Agoura Hills. Maids and caterers graced these parties which made it easier for all in some ways. But what Carrie didn't get is that everyone needs to feel needed, and slowly but surely she was robbing our mother of purpose, and pleasure.

"So, I hear you're dating that new guy you've been playing racquetball with." The words seemed to fall out of mom's mouth as if to fill the exaggerated hush.

I glared at my sister. When she called this morning to check on what I was bringing to dinner, I'd mentioned Lee helping me make the apple pie, and his invitation to see Love Letters— a defensive counter to Carrie's condescending comment that since I wasn't involved with anyone [and had the time], I should have cooked more. "Well, we're not exactly dating…"

"What do you call it then?" Carrie held her son and stroked his back in slow circles. "You've been playing racquetball for almost a month like every other day with him. And he's taking you to Love Letters Saturday night, in Beverly Hills. If that's not meant to impress, I don't know what is." Adam laid his little chin on her shoulder, looked at me, and burped. "I'm going to go put him down, mom."

"Night, beautiful." I whispered softly as he passed, his saucer blue eyes half-mast. And I was sucked into the black hole of want as I stood at the table tossing the coleslaw.

"Well, are you seeing him or not?" Mom handed each of the kids a whipped cream coated circle of blades. She used to give them to Carrie and me. My mouth literally watered as I watched Scott and Jessie lick off the cream.

"We're just friends, mom. We go out to dinner after racquetball sometimes, and we've hung out the last couple of weekends, but I really don't think it'll go anywhere."

“Why not? And how do you know this after a month?” Mom's thin, painted red lips stayed in a tight, flat line. "What's he do?"

"He runs his own company shipping freight. He's a consultant, sort of like me, but a lot more successful."

"And what's his name?"

I had my mother's attention, and smiled. "Lee."

"Does he have a last name?"

I knew why she was asking, of course. "Messer. Lee Messer."

"Messer..." She contemplated aloud as she scooped the whipped cream into a crystal serving goblet. Then her countenance filled with lightness and she smiled. "Isn't that Jewish?"

I shook my head, annoyed. I refrained from denoting him an atheist, afraid of dimming her brightness I was momentarily basking in. "What difference does it make, mother? A last name doesn't brand him a believer, and if he was I couldn't be with him. I'm still an atheist, mom."

"Then you're an idiot." She said it deadpan, like the words just fell out of her mouth without filtering through her brain. She didn't intend to be mean. It was almost an expression of endearment. She meant ‘idiot' sort of like ‘my beautiful baby…' "You condemn yourself to the fringes and then complain you're lonely. And I know you are. What woman wouldn't be still single at 33?" My mother had a way of proceeding from instinct rather than intellect, and was clueless how cutting her words were. "Why can't you just accept who you are and embrace your community like your sister. I guarantee if you did, you'd find the life you're still looking for." She shook her head and turned away to put the filled goblet in the fridge then went to the stove and stirred the pot of matzo ball soup.

"Living among the faithful whose belief in money supersedes the moral gospel they espouse isn't the community I'm looking for, mother." I sighed and shrugged my shoulders to shed my mounting tension. "And over scheduling every minute of the day with extraneous activities so I don't have time to think, or create anything, isn't the life I want either. I don't want to be Carrie, mom."

"I don't want you to be your sister, Rachel. I want you to be happy, and taken care of." She stared at me like she was stating the obvious, then her expression softened to empathy and she frowned. "My beautiful Face, why do you always insist on the hardest path."

I'd blown it again, pushed my mom away. Non-conformity was disruptive to the woman's psyche. And Lonely crept in, abandoning me to the outside again from the chasm now between us. I set the coleslaw aside, near Jessie. My niece was coloring a house with stickish smiling people inside. Scott's picture showed planes dropping bombs and people on the ground getting blown up. He looked up at me.

"I don't believe in God, grandma." He stared at me as he spoke to her.

"Oh, of course you do." Mom glared at me over the stove top but spoke to her grandson. "You don't know what you believe at eight."

"I did. I knew from the beginning of Saturday school what the rabbis were preaching was a bunch of crap." I was being combative, to be sure, but my mother was so dismissive, I felt the need to validate my nephew's pejorative statement. “And if religion is so damn important to family togetherness, why did it break up ours?” She'd chased away her first child, my half-brother, when Keith converted to Born Again Christianity to marry.

"You shut up now, Rachel. Don't encourage him." It was hard to see my mom's brown eyes glaring at me behind the large glasses, but I felt her irritation.

Mom busied herself, and I felt bad I'd come back at her so aggressively. Her reaction to Keith's conversion had fundamentally scared me. Though she didn't disown him exactly, she made it impossible for him to attend family occasions by proselytizing Judaism whenever we got together. She'd speak tirelessly on tradition, history, the culture Keith was born into regardless of his newly adopted beliefs, deeply offending his wife, who married my half-brother on the condition he convert to Christianity. The first and last time Keith brought his family to Thanksgiving, mom cornered his 4 year old son— her first grandchild— in the kitchen and preached to him that he was really a Jew, instead of the Christian my half-nephew was being raised. I feared the battle to come when, if, I had kids, since I had no intention of raising them with any religion.

"You two at it again?" Dad scowled at me as he came into the kitchen. I felt the familiar twinge of fear, not just from his size, but growing up I'd felt the wrath of his temper. "You still fighting windmills, baby? Don't confuse your mother with facts, Rachel."

Mom stuck my tongue out at him in a coquettish kind of way, just the tip, childlike. Dad laughed.

"Grandma and Larry are cowering in the living room so they don't have to listen to you two go at each other. And I don't blame them." Dad went to the liquor cabinet above the utility closet in the pantry and got the big bottle of gin, brought it back in the kitchen and made martinis.

"We almost ready to sit down?" Carrie came into the kitchen and dad handed her his first completed drink. "Thank you, dad."

"Dinner will be ready in ten minutes." Mom opened the oven and pulled out the turkey. My seemingly fragile little mother was impressive to watch, straddling the open oven door and hauling that heavy bird onto the stove top. Could have made the cover shot for the November issue of Good Housekeeping. The turkey was golden brown, dripping with juice, and it smelled fantastic.

"For you, my dear." Dad handed mom a martini.

Mom wiped her hands, then the sweat from her face on the dishtowel and then took the wide rimmed glass with a gracious, "Thank you, honey." She leaned back against the counter and contentedly sipped her martini. "Why don't you girls start serving the salad."

Carrie put her drink on the linoleum counter top and got the salad from the fridge. "Jessie Rose. Please go into the dining room and get everyone to sit down for dinner. Scott, go help your sister, please." Her tone was as stern as her expression and her son only hesitated a second then followed his sister from the kitchen.

Jessie took her drawing to show off, but she and her brother left their mess of markers and pad pages scattered on the kitchen table. I began collecting them to make room for serving the salad. Carrie set the salad bowl on the table and glared at me.

"My children are Jewish. I'm raising them to have an identity and a community, both of which you seem to sorely lack. So keep your fucking mouth shut about what you believe, whatever the hell it is, or isn't, around my kids." She didn't give me time to respond. She grabbed her half-empty martini and walked out of the room.

I watched my sister disappear into the dining area. The satiny fabric of the heavy white drapes that covered the back glass wall of the living room glowed warm and shimmered with firelight. I heard Larry ask his wife if she was OK, and Carrie say "dandy," but she was "just so tired of her" (my) "crap."

Then grandma piped in with, "You're all full of crap."

I looked at my mom. She glared at me, then emptied her martini and put the glass in the sink behind her. Her displeasure wrapped her like a shroud and she transferred it as she spoke. "Please serve the salad now, Rachel Lynn."

I did. I turned my back on my mother and put salad onto plate after plate until the kitchen table had no space for more, then carried them two at a time and served everyone before sitting to eat. Larry was touting his lucrative new strip-mall development in Malibu. Carrie beamed proudly at her husband. Dad nodded with respect. I shook my head but held my tongue. It was foolish to question the need of another 7-11 obstructing the views and scarring the fragile ecosystem along the coast to people who viewed personal wealth as social progress. I knew my opinion was unwelcome among them. Like grandma, I too was almost invisible, or at least wanted to be. And I no longer felt glad to be there. We hadn't even gotten through the salad this time before I wanted out.

My craving to get high grew exponentially as I crawled along in traffic on the 101 in the rain after dropping grandma off. Brighter than twilight from the streetlights, with five lanes of unfettered highway, and it was beyond irritating how inane L.A. drivers became when it rained. My ire rose with every ten minute mile, and I felt a desperate need to shed the evening.

I called Lee a hundred times in my head, imagined him bringing over some smoke, hanging out and playing Tavli all night. Talking. Laughing. Sharing... Safe with someone who actually liked me. But as I pulled in my driveway doubt crept in. Inviting him over at 10:00p.m. might imply I was asking him to stay the night, and I had no intention of sleeping with Lee. Intercourse with him would not fulfill me, or enhance the connection we already shared. It would only complicate the friendship I was hoping to maintain.

-