FORTY-FOUR

IT’S KIND OF FUNNY TO have your birthday the day before your bat mitzvah. My family and I celebrate and stuff—and it’s a bigger celebration than normal since the relatives that live far away are already in Brookside for my bat mitzvah.

We don’t have a fancy dinner or anything, the way my mom originally wanted, but the people at Antonucci Café, the Italian place close to the beach, let us use their back room for no extra charge.

So it’s festive and fun, and they even bring out a yellow cake with chocolate frosting and everyone sings me “Happy Birthday.”

We’re getting ready to go when Bubbie pulls me aside. “You’re so beautiful. Do you know that?”

I smile.

“You don’t know how beautiful you are,” she tells me.

“Um.” I never know what to say to that.

“Listen, I have a surprise for you.”

I expect jewelry or something and I look at her hands for a shiny, nicely wrapped box. But they’re empty.

“I was going to wait and tell you tomorrow, but it’s going to be too crazy.” She pauses. “Zeyda and I decided . . . you know, we’re getting older, and we miss you and Gemma, and you’re getting older, too, and . . .”

“What?” I ask, impatient.

“We’re moving closer to you! We found an apartment ten minutes away and there’s lots of stuff going on in the community and it’s going to be great!”

“What? This is the best news ever.” I stand up on my tiptoes and wrap my arms around her neck. “This is seriously the best bat mitzvah gift in the world, Bub.”

She smiles. “I had a feeling you’d be excited about it.”

After we get back from Antonucci Café, we all change into pajamas and my mom and I sit at the kitchen table and finish the place cards. Originally we were going to have the calligraphy lady do them, and she was going to calligraphy the invitations, too, but that was another bat mitzvah thing left in the dust.

“I’m not sure we still need these, really, since it’s no longer a sit-down meal, but it’s always helpful to know where you’re supposed to sit, isn’t it?” she asks me, eating her third mini Snickers of the day. We are hitting the Halloween candy pretty hard this year. “We’ll ask the custodians at the temple if they can put them on the right tables before the service ends.”

“It’s good to have them so nobody feels excluded. I loved how we had assigned lunch tables in elementary school.”

“Exactly.” My mom finishes writing Eleanor and Steven Feldman on a card and then she looks up and smiles at me.

Oh God. I don’t even want to imagine all the weird details Eleanor Feldman knows about me.

“What?” I ask after a few seconds of my mom sitting there and staring at me with that weird mom smile.

“I’m just so proud of you.” Her voice catches. “The way you handle everything, and look on the bright side, and you’re just so wonderful.”

“Thanks, Mom.” I look down at the stack of place cards and the list of people attending my bat mitzvah. It’s kind of amazing how far people will travel just to be here with us. “And I don’t know if Dad told you this, but I can’t be that way all the time. I can’t always be calm and positive. It doesn’t work or make sense. It’s probably not even healthy!”

“I know,” she says. “I’m sorry it’s been so hard on you. I’m sorry it took me so long to say sorry. It’s not your job to cheer everyone up or calm anyone down. It was never your job.”

The phone rings, startling me and taking me out of this emotional moment. “Hello?” my mom answers.

She always nods while the person on the other end of the line talks. It’s kind of funny since the other person can’t see her.

Nodding. Nodding. More nodding.

And then my mom says, “Oh yes, nice to hear from you. I’d lost your note for a while, and then just recently found it under a stack of papers. Things are a little hectic here with my daughter’s bat mitzvah coming up.”

“Uh-huh. Uh-huh,” my mom replies to whatever the person is saying. “How about we wait a little while? This weekend we’re very busy. So I guess next weekend would be okay?”

She nods again. “Great. Touch base with me the day before.” She smiles. “Oh, I’m glad.”

When she hangs up the phone and comes back to the table, she turns to me, sighs a deep sigh, and then gets back to the place cards. I wait for a few minutes to see if she’s going to explain what happened on that phone call.

She doesn’t, though.

And I obviously know what it’s about. But I still need to ask.

My heart pounds a little bit. Sometimes it’s hard to ask a question if you’re not really sure you even want to know the answer.

“What was that all about?” I unwrap another mini Snickers.

“Nothing, really,” my mom says, writing out the place card for Zoe Krieger.

“Well, it was obviously something,” I press.

She sighs her deep sigh again. “Some people fell in love with our house, and they want to buy it. But I don’t think it’s for sale.”

“So how can they buy it if it’s not for sale?”

“They can’t.” She looks up at me again. “We’ll let them come and look, and maybe make an offer, but I don’t think we’re going anywhere. This is our house. We belong here.”

I wait for her to say more, but she stays quiet after that, writing all the place cards for the camp friends table.

I like that I have a camp friends table. That I have a whole group outside of school that I care about, and that cares about me.

“Are things any better with Dad’s job situation?” I ask her, all hesitant.

“Not yet. But they will be.” She looks over the list again. “I don’t want to jinx it, but I think good things will come through. I really do.”

I wonder if it has to do with that dinner at Vintage 25 they went to a few weeks ago. Maybe it was the magical twice-baked potatoes everyone talks about.

I get what she means about not wanting to jinx things, so I don’t ask anything else. Sometimes you just need to trust the universe that things will work out. It kind of ties into my bat mitzvah speech a little bit, but there are certain times in life where faith is really super important, I think.

And this is one of those times.

We continue with the place cards, and I wonder if I should tell her that I stole that letter from the people who want to buy our house. That I crumpled it up and hid it.

But I don’t think I need to. I put it back where I found it. And maybe it was a good thing that I hid it in the first place. If they had called right away, we might’ve sold the house, assuming that things were only going to get worse.

My Bubbie always says that everything happens for a reason, and to be honest, I usually roll my eyes when she says it because it just feels like an easy way out.

But now I’m kind of realizing that she may be onto something.

It can just take us a long time to figure out what the reason was.

I don’t have time to think about this anymore, though.

Speech brainstorms keep coming to me, and I need to quickly add them in.

There’s something exciting about the down-to-the-wire moment (whatever that means), crunch time and deadlines.

The feeling of making something perfect just the way you want it to be, right before it’s going to happen.

I guess I’m not really a plan-ahead type of gal—I think back to my mac and cheese method.

But I do make things the best they can be, right when it counts.