Jewish Mothers Never Die: A Novel (26 page)

“How about the fact that you reminded her how much Woody Allen admired your sons?” Jeanne chimed in. “Rather insensitive on your part, don’t you think?”

“Perhaps I did brag a bit,” Minnie admitted. “But is it my fault if, in
Manhattan
, Woody Allen’s character cites Groucho as the one thing that makes life worth living, before Sinatra and Brando, before Flaubert and Cézanne. Did I tell Woody Allen to say he was a Groucho Marxist? Did I write the screenplay of
Stardust Memories,
where a participant at a film festival claims to have written the complete filmography for Gummo, though he was never in a single movie? Is it so unbelievable that Woody Allen was a fan of the Marx Brothers? Why did Nettie have to take that the wrong way?”

“She’ll be back eventually,” Pauline said with the shadow of a smile. “She knows as well as I do that between our arguments and our apologies, we get along wonderfully. Just look at me: I’m staying, which just goes to show that it’s impossible to leave you all.”

“Have you heard this joke?” Rebecca asked, laughing already at the punch line. “What’s the difference between French leave and a Jewish goodbye? In the first case, you leave without saying goodbye. In the second, you say goodbye but you never leave.”

Minnie grabbed Pauline in her arms and spun her around the room, humming a tune. Rebecca began to sing “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” at the top of her lungs, jumping and swaying in all directions.

“It feels so good to dance and sing and think about nothing! But have you even heard of the Rolling Stones?”

Pauline Einstein placed a mahjong set on the card table. Minnie rolled up the carpet, put on a foxtrot and danced with Rebecca. Amalia Freud, Jeanne Proust and Louise Cohen set up the mahjong, carefully counting out tiles. Mina took out a sheet of paper and wrote the names of the players to keep track of their scores. The dice were thrown and the game began.

Minnie and Rebecca went from tangos to the Charleston without missing a beat, laughing all the while. The only sound coming from the card table was the periodic announcement, in a serious tone, of a new set of tiles: pung, kong, mahjong.

Jeanne sighed noisily several times.

“If Jeanne is sighing, that can only mean one thing,” Minnie observed, stopping the dance and catching her breath. “She’s worrying about Marcel again.”

Rebecca halted as well but kept time to the music with one foot.

“But we agreed! No more talking about the children!”

The End