4
DAD ARRIVED CARRYING BAGS OF CHINESE FOOD. FIRST WE LIT the Shabbat candles because it was Friday and that ritual still mattered to him, the idea of bringing light into dark and separating the workweek from the weekend.
In the old days, when Nate was small and Mom was around, we’d have a proper meal with challah and wine, and an endless debate about the prospects for peace in the Middle East. Sometimes Mom and Dad would rehash the odd news stories they’d seen on TV or heard on the radio—they’d always heard the same stories, even when they listened to different stations or watched different channels—so they filled each other in and took turns correcting each other.
Most of the time they seemed to somehow balance each other—she with her pragmatic optimism, he with his quixotic romanticism—both of them with these bursting hearts. But on Friday nights, their dynamic tended to swing to one of the extremes: from joyful bliss to blowout. It was never clear at first which way things would turn.
One Shabbat in particular I remember, Dad brought home extra appetizers and extra sparkling wine and extra cake. He handed Mom an oversized bouquet with purple flowers and curled ribbon from the florist, and he kissed her, a real kiss, as he entered.
“Ew,” I said. I was probably twelve then.
Nate was too little to notice, only six or so.
Dad created a spread and filled our glasses as he proposed a toast “to new beginnings.” For a few minutes, it was so much fun, all of this novelty, all of us laughing and joking. I even got to taste the wine. But then the whole thing started to feel a little strange. It wasn’t normal to have this many appetizers in our house. And we didn’t usually make toasts before the prayers.
Nate said he felt sick to his stomach pretty soon after Dad raised his glass. Maybe he had an inkling something was off.
Dad smiled and took a sip of his scotch. “You ready for the news?”
“Yes!” we all said.
“I’m leaving my job.”
Mom’s face was white, almost instantly.
“Everything is going to be fantastic! I’m telling you,” he said. “I’ve got plenty of leads for other things, much better things. Believe me.”
“You’re leaving or you left?” she said.
He didn’t say anything for a second.
“With no discussion?”
“What’s to discuss? This is a good thing!” he said. “I promise you it is. We’re celebrating here.”
She looked around the table and took Nate out of the room without another word.
She didn’t talk to Dad for the rest of that evening.
Later that night, I found her sitting awake on the stairwell, staring out into nothing. Biting her nails.
It startled me to see her there. For as long as I can remember, I’ve had to get up a minimum of two times in the middle of the night—for water or the bathroom, or just to walk around—but it was almost always just me in those moments.
“Are you okay?” I said.
I’d never seen her like that. She worried, of course. I knew she worried. But not outwardly in that way, so I could feel it so concretely. Most of the time she was so joyful, so ready to laugh at herself, that you just wanted to absorb her energy by being near her. Everyone did.
I sat next to her, and she pulled me close.
“You want to know the secret of marriage?” she said.
“You think I’ll ever get married?”
“I think you’ll do whatever your heart desires,” she said. “Just remember, the quality you love the most in someone is the same one that will drive you craziest.”
“That’s the secret?” I said.
“It’s a good one to remember.”
“Are we going to be okay?” I said.
“Of course, peanut.” She took a deep breath and gave my hand a squeeze. “This too.”
It was her favorite line: This too shall pass. It was cheesy and cliché, something her grandmother used to say, but it worked enough that night to make both of us feel better.
The roughest patch did pass eventually. After a couple of months, Dad found more work. He always went to some kind of office, first recruiting and then consulting before getting a job in sales.
But what does your dad do? Marni Masterson asked me once during lunch.
“He works in business,” I said.
As what?
“A businessman.”
It was all I ever knew. He didn’t like talking about work, so I didn’t press for more.
When Dad mentioned the office, it always seemed his mind was elsewhere—plotting, maybe, or daydreaming about the big windfall, the creation of his own company.
He never found another foundation position as good as that one he gave up.
The Friday-night fight became its own ritual, as Mom began to notice Dad’s penny stocks, and then miracle weight-loss drugs, and pricey supplements with too many claims for healing taking up too much space in the medicine cabinet.
“It can’t all be true,” Mom said.
“But what if it is?” Dad said.
And then, one Friday night Mom didn’t come home.
As hard as she tried, she couldn’t plan for everything.
It was a car accident on a random day in November. There had been intermittent freezing rain. Road conditions were unexpectedly slick. The police report said something about a deer and a patch of black ice. She had been unable to avoid hitting either.
All of it seemed wrong. She couldn’t kill a spider, let alone a doe. And it wasn’t cold enough for ice.
For a while, I half believed some force was going to pluck her from her grave and return her to us. In the afterlife, the gatekeepers, or whoever was in charge, could have only apologized. We didn’t mean to do this so soon, they might have said. Two accidents is too many for one family. If we’d known how much you were leaving behind . . .
But that was years ago. I was fourteen when she died.
Since Nate had left for college, we’d lit the Shabbat candles, said the Lehadlik Ner to welcome in the weekend, and then retreated to the living room to eat in front of the TV.
DAD POURED his scotch and grew progressively more vocal as we watched Jeopardy!. He dominated in any questions related to history, geography, religion, and science, but I always beat him to the buzzer in the arts, animals, and pop-culture categories.
He sat in his recliner with his legs up, Harry on his lap. He pretended he didn’t like Harry, but he never kicked him off his chair, and they fell asleep together most late nights watching the news.
After Final Jeopardy, we cracked open our fortune cookies.
Doors will be opening for you, Dad’s said.
“You see?” he said with a big grin. “You never know what life will bring.”
I rolled my eyes. “You’re taking your fortune cookie to heart?”
“Why shouldn’t I?” he said. “The cookie knows. Did you call that woman today about the interview?”
“I will,” I said.
He sighed. “What does yours say?”
You have a yearning for perfection.
“The cookie knows,” I said. “That’s what you just said.”
“Well, nobody’s perfect.”
There was a lightness in his tone. He didn’t mean anything by it and yet—
“I can be a perfectionist,” I said. “You don’t think I’m capable of perfection?”
He put down his cookie and gave me a more serious look.
“Of course you’re capable, sweetheart,” he said, lowering the volume on the TV. “You’re capable of anything.”
I wanted the conversation to end.
“Tomorrow’s Saturday,” he said after a while. “What do you say we feed the ducks?”
“What ducks?”
“At the Nature Center.”
I couldn’t remember the last time we had gone there.
“You can bring your sketchbook,” he said. “And the doors will open for both of us.”