Washing the Dead (25 page)

The day before Tzippy was due home, I filled in for my dad’s receptionist, Frannie. I didn’t mind answering the phones, listening patiently while the moms figured out how to squeeze my
father into their children’s schedules. The ones from the northern suburbs had names like Marlene and Brenda and belonged to synagogues with pews and plush red carpeting. They lived in custom-built houses and shuttled their kids to and from Sunday school in their station wagons. Sometimes I wondered what it was like to have the pieces of your life fit together so logically.

Who was I kidding? I wouldn’t trade being part of the Schines’ world for anything. I fantasized about helping Tzippy prepare for her wedding. I’d spend my days at the mansion, just like when we were kids. We’d retreat to the nook and she’d tell me all about her new husband, and I’d tell her all about the Levensteins and how great she was going to be as a rebbetzin.

I was so excited to see Tzippy that I couldn’t fall asleep that night. The house was quiet, and I tried on my new dress. I practiced crossing my legs, smoothing the wool over my bare thighs. I sat in the dark in front of my window and watched the start of a new snowfall.

I was just about to change into my pajamas when I heard the stairs creak. The back door opened, and an engine thrummed. I peered out the window. Snowflakes danced around my mother, dotting the shoulders of her blue coat as she disappeared down the alley. I pressed my hands against the cold glass and opened my mouth to scream. Nothing came out. Inside I was shouting at my mother so loudly that I thought my skull would shatter. You’re a liar and a shamer. You shamed Dad. You shamed me. You shamed the rebbetzin. I heard the blue Dodge drive off.

I threw on my boots and walked up Lake Drive to Atwater Beach. I sat down on a wet bench overlooking the black lake. Flakes of snow settled on my face and bare legs. I held my palm up to the streetlight and looked for those lines, searching for the spot where they reconnected. I wanted to believe Simone, but if my mother was still seeing the Shabbos goy, then no rupture could be mended, not now. I might have sat there for ten minutes or an hour, I wasn’t sure. When I lost feeling in my toes and lips, I walked the half mile home.

My mother was sitting at the kitchen table waiting for me, an ashtray full of cigarette butts in front of her. She blew out a puff of smoke, narrowing her bloodshot eyes. Her nose was swollen from crying. “I’ve been worried sick about you.”

I glowered at her. I didn’t trust my words, so my silent rant continued. All I’ve done is worry about you, and you’ve cost us everything, and now you think I’m going to continue hauling around your filthy secret like a fifth limb. I started to hyperventilate, and then I felt as though my head was a carved pumpkin and someone was removing the lid. My mother put her arms around me and guided me upstairs to my room. I couldn’t believe that I actually felt comfort in her arms, but I did.

I lay down on my bed, and she returned a few minutes later with a glass of water and a brown paper bag. “Here, breathe into this if you get light-headed again. You’re having a panic attack.”

I nodded my head.

She smiled sadly. “They pass quickly.”

I clutched the bag and took a sip of water. “I can’t be a part of this anymore, Mom.” I still couldn’t breathe very well. “Did you hear what I said?”

She looked down at the bag and nodded.

I felt a shift inside, as though a long chain with a silver hook was scooping me from my bed, from my physical being. I was floating, suspended over myself like my own ghost. Something steely gripped my heart.

“I’m going back to San Diego,” I said as the decision came to me.

My mother looked up. “You’re going to skip Tzippy’s wedding?”

“I don’t know.” I took a deep breath. Never yet had I broken the commandment to respect my mother. I had held my tongue, but I couldn’t any longer. Each word came out with force. “I will not walk into the Schines’ shul with you and your lie.” I paused. “Ever again.”

The air crackled between us. I’d never mentioned her affair.

She rose and said softly, “Don’t throw away your friendship
with Tzippy over me.”

I wanted to say, You’re right, you’re not worth it, but instead, I spoke the vow I’d made to myself. “And I will not take care of you after he leaves you again.”

I met her eyes and saw the fog rolling in, but she wanted to say something to me first. “Oh, Barbara. It’s so much more complicated than that.”

I was exhausted. I closed my eyes and seconds later drifted off, wondering if she’d come back and sleep on the floor next to my bed, and despite everything, wishing that she would.

My mother wasn’t there when I woke up in the middle of the night, chilled, my new dress gathered in a damp heap next to my bed. I took a hot shower, whimpering like an animal. When the water turned cold, I wrapped myself in a towel and put on pajamas that my mother had washed for me that morning.

The house was still and dark. I found my wallet, retrieved the grocery-bag scrap with Simone’s number, and crept into my father’s study to use his phone. I almost hung up when a man answered. It had to be Daniel. His voice was inviting and distracted at the same time.

“I’m sorry to be calling so late. May I please speak with Simone? This is Barbara, we used to meet on the beach in La Jolla, and she said she needed a live-in babysitter and that I should call if I wanted to come back to California, which I do, which is why I’m calling, but I can always call back if this is a bad time, and I sure hope I didn’t wake Ollie. I could also just give her my number and she can call me back. I know it’s long distance, but I can hang up right away and dial her back.”

There was silence on the other end.

“Um, is anyone there?”

“I’m here,” Daniel answered with a smile in his voice. “Are you done?” He laughed, and I had an odd sense that he would have listened to me for as long as I rambled.

“I’m done.”

“Okay, then.” He paused. “Simone, for you.”

“Thanks, babe,” she said. I recognized her voice, confident and a little raspy.

I put it to Simone straight. “I’d like to work for you if you still need help.”

I woke up the next morning to the smell of banana muffins baking in the oven. Did my mother think that making me my favorite breakfast was going to erase what happened last night? I picked my dress up from the floor and hung it in the bathroom, and then I crawled back into bed and stared out the window, watching the wind blow the snow off the branches of our oak tree. I folded my hands over my chest and lay still, but my brain was speeding all over the place, trying to figure out what to do next.

After the front door shut and my mother’s car engine started, I went to my father’s study and booked a flight for myself. It would cost me a chunk of my earnings from working for the Levensteins, but I didn’t care. I dressed quickly and walked to the mansion to see Tzippy, the wind biting at my face as I trudged over the icy sidewalks.

Rabbi Schine was in the front hall when I entered the mansion. I greeted him without looking in his direction. I didn’t want to find pity in his face, because I wanted to believe that he didn’t know that my mother hadn’t quit seeing the Shabbos goy.

“Barbara,” he said.

I stared at my boots.

“We’re glad you’re home.”

“Thank you, Rabbi Schine,” I muttered, still not looking up.

“She’s in the bride’s room,” he said kindly, and I hurried off. The bride’s room doubled as a place for mothers to nurse their babies. There was an old couch with juice stains from when Tzippy and I were little and played here during services. Tzippy was sitting in front of the vanity, clearing crayon shavings and crumbs that had accumulated since the last wedding. Our eyes met in the mirror. Hers sparkled, and her skin glowed. This was not the scared girl who had cried to me in Mrs. Kessler’s room.
She held her shoulders back, and her smile was radiant. She looked womanly.

She sprang up from her chair and ran to my arms. We held each other for a few minutes. In my reflection in the mirror, I could see the sadness making my whole body droop.

“Tell me all about San Diego.” She held my hands in hers and gave me the full force of her attention.

“It’s beautiful,” I said.

“So isn’t Sari a honey pie?”

“She is, but she was really sick, so I didn’t see her that much.”

“And Benny?”

I missed Benny. “He’s very cute, but this is your day. What do we need to do to get ready?”

“My mother just told me that we have twenty more people coming. We have to bake.” She rolled her eyes.

“Okay.”

“I told her that I’m getting married in a few days, and she not so gently reminded me that I was going to be a rebbetzin and I had to put the needs of the community first.”

We got to work in the shul’s kitchen. I was relieved that Tzippy and I were using it because I didn’t want to bake in the Schines’ apartment. I couldn’t face the rebbetzin after what happened last night.

“Are you going to tell me about your husband already?” I teased.

Tzippy smiled with her whole face, and we sat on the counter and dangled our legs like we did when we were little. “His name is Zev.”

“Okay. I know his name is Zev. Tell me more.”

She blushed and then started regaling me with every detail she knew about her fiancé. When she came up for air, I asked her if she was still scared.

“No, excited.” She chattered on while we sifted flour, cracked eggs, and chopped almonds.

“You’re quiet,” Tzippy said.

“I’m concentrating. The last time we made almond cookies they didn’t turn out very well.”

We didn’t talk much as we spooned the dough onto enormous cookie sheets.

“Tzippy!” the rebbetzin called down to the kitchen.

Tzippy excused herself and darted up the steps to her apartment. She seemed young to be a rebbetzin, and soon as she was out of sight, I felt the divide between us grow. Her whole life was mapped out. She would marry her prince and become a leader of her shul, just like her mother. I looked around the kitchen and then up the steps. All of this, the kitchen, the apartment, her parents, she had everything. She didn’t need me to come to her wedding; her life was perfect. I could taste the bitterness in my mouth.

Tzippy came back downstairs breathless. “I have to go with my dad to pick up Zev’s parents from the airport.”

I’d always been allowed to tag along with her, but this time I knew I had no place with her family. I had no place with mine either. “I have to go, too.”

“Can you come by tomorrow?”

“I’ll be here,” I said, knowing I wouldn’t.

Tzippy walked me to the door and kissed my cheek. The air was colder here by the lake, and I bundled up. I was almost down the driveway when I heard Tzippy calling after me.

“Barbara, Barbara.”

I turned around. She was running toward me in her stocking feet and long wool skirt, one hand holding her grandmother’s veil on her head. The white lace billowed in the wind.

“I forgot to show you this,” she said, panting.

She stood so close that I could feel her breath on my hair. I already missed us, who we were, who we would never be again. I wasn’t jealous anymore. I loved her again, more than I ever had.

“Lucky Zev,” I said.

“And you’re going to catch me if I faint, right?”

“I’ll be here to catch you, Tzippy.”

“Good. It’s freezing out here, see you tomorrow.” She laughed
and ran back toward the mansion, her veil trailing behind her. I watched her kiss the mezuzah on the front door and go inside. She shut the door behind her as my eyes watered from the cold.

When I got home, I went straight up to my room and packed. I decided to leave my wool dress and my other long skirts behind and take the two pairs of jeans I wore when we went sledding. I crawled under my covers and slept until morning.

The sun was just beginning to rise when the cab arrived. The wind chill must have been well below zero, but I left without a coat. I wouldn’t need one in California. “Mitchell Field,” I told the cabbie.

A light flicked on in my house, and seconds later my father stood on the front steps, robeless, looking old and foolish in his orange striped pajamas, his slippers covered with fresh snow. He didn’t try to stop me. He just raised his hand, but I couldn’t really see him, so I couldn’t tell if he was waving goodbye or shooing me away from home.

I wanted to trudge back up the driveway and hug my father, not because I felt sorry for him, but because I loved him, as I did my mother. Plain and messy as hell.

13

October 2009

I
decided to take the Shabbos goy’s advice and ask my mother the questions that tormented me. I had to. I’d been driving by the mansion every day for two weeks and dreaming of the mikveh and my uncle’s crippled legs at night and torturing myself with visions of an increasingly sullen Lili hospitalized for depression.

I phoned Jenny on my way to work to see if I could stop by and visit my mother on the way home.

“How are you doing?” I’d called to check in on Jenny a few times after her father’s funeral, but we’d carefully avoided the topic of my mother.