DEGAN AND I DRIVE TO KITCHENER to drop off some of the wedding paraphernalia. Dad comes out to the driveway to meet us. “What a lovely ceremony,” he says, before we can even get out of the car. “Your friend Shayna’s voice is gorgeous!”
“I know. Isn’t it?”
“If I were her age I’d ask her on a date.”
Degan and I exchange glances. What would that mean to Dad, to be young again, and dating a Jewish girl?
I remember our conversation at the photography exhibit: “Did Gumper want you to marry a Jew?”
“Of course not.” It would have ruined all the effort that had been put into hiding.
There’s a dull thud in my head from the previous night’s festivities, which included dancing, followed by singing around the bonfire until the sun began to rise. Thankfully, we’ve planned the perfect honeymoon: a full week at the cabin with nothing to do but relax. I can’t wait to get there and fall asleep in my new husband’s arms. But Dad says, “Come into the house. Just for a few minutes. My present to you is inside.”
In the living room, I find an old blue trunk in the centre of the rug. The kind of cumbersome, heavy case you’d see in a film about hoboes or orphans. “Do you know what it is?” Dad asks.
“No.”
“It’s the trunk that Granny and Gumper brought with them across the ocean to Canada.”
I pause, and look more closely. Frayed leather handles, stickers plastered to its sides. The initials MB are inscribed in black cursive on the top. “Marianne Bauer?”
Now Dad looks closely. “Oh, you must be right!”
Granny’s mother’s trunk. The trunk of a woman who went to the gas chamber.
Never have I experienced my great-grandmother so tangibly. She is no more than a ghost, but suddenly I can see the items she would have packed inside, the pale cashmere sweaters separated by tissue paper, the elastic and cotton of women’s underthings. Dad has arranged for a glass top to be secured on the trunk so we can use it as a coffee table. It will be there, from now on, in our living room. The metaphor isn’t lost on me: I’m being given her baggage. The grief of it, and also the gift.
Degan and I spend our honeymoon opening the incredible pile of presents we have received. We loll in bed throwing hundred-dollar bills in the air like a couple in a lottery commercial. We tear open boxes containing pots and pans, blankets and pillows. More cookbooks than we’ll ever be able to use. Among them, from Shayna, is The Essential Book of Jewish Festival Cooking. The book is laid out holiday by holiday. Shavuot is up next, and now I’ll know exactly what to cook.
The final gift we open is from Uncle Paul: a beautiful Bohemian crystal punch set. In my mind’s eye I picture the wedding ceremony, Shayna’s Hebrew song and Paul hanging his head. I feel chastened, like a very young child.
The second I am married my motherhood instinct kicks in. It has been simmering, just below the surface, for months, and the wedding is like a starting gun going off. Degan and I spend the first days of our honeymoon in bed. We get up around noon and make a breakfast of pancakes and mimosas. Then we go back to bed.
Later we go out and play tourist in a little tourist town on Georgian Bay. We stop for hot fudge sundaes; the ice cream parlour sells pottery imported from Tunisia. Degan sees a tiny blue and white dish that he likes. “We can use it for haroset at Passover,” he says. Haroset is the goopy substance that represents mortar at the seder.
The drive back takes us along the edge of the Beaver Valley, fields and farmlands sprawled out below us, dappled with long evening light. The fresh breeze blows through us from the car’s open windows. We arrive home and stand in the tall grass at the side of the cabin. The river is fragrant with watercress growing in the muddy reeds. The light deepens; in the far trees the fireflies appear, one by one, like tiny lanterns.
“It’s Friday,” Degan says. “Shabbat.”
“Oh? Are you sure?” I’ve lost track of the days.
He takes me by the hand and leads me inside. The cabin is cool and dark. He lifts a bottle of wine off the shelf, then wrestles with the cork until it makes a resounding pop. We don’t have challah, so I set out two pieces of pie, instead. I light the candles and we both cover our eyes. We’ve worked for several days at memorizing the Shabbat blessings, and it is a relief to be able, finally, to recite them by heart. Even if Degan never converts, even if I never do, we have turned a corner where ritual is concerned. I gather the light three times around my head. The wedding has given me courage. I can do what I want. I won’t be stopped.
We take our plates out to the porch, the late-May dusk seeping in through the screens, the sound of crickets in the tall grass. We eat our meal. After, Degan retires to the couch, where he reclines like a prince and reads.
“I’m bagged,” I say. “Off to bed.”
He says, in his pouty baby voice, “Can you do something for me first?”
“Of course.” I think he’s going to ask me to get him another piece of pie.
“Can you bring me my haroset dish so I can see if it matches with our Shabbat candlesticks?”