A. Homes - May We Be Forgiven

The pizza is like salty cardboard with melted rubber on top. I eat the whole thing.

My first night home, George’s psychiatrist calls. “Sorry to have been out of touch,” he says.

“Me too.” I take a breath and am about to tell him about the hospital, about the man who died, about everything, and then stop myself. A personal caution light goes on.

“I had a small event,” I say.

“I hope it was pleasant,” he says.

“It wasn’t a wedding,” I say, and say no more.

“I was hoping to talk about your family.”

“I was in the hospital.” Despite my desire not to say it, it slips out like a leak, like a thing sneaking away; it comes out on an inhale, a swallowing of the words.

“Pardon?” he says, not having heard.

I say nothing.

He continues: “As you recall, we spoke about the need for a more complete family history. I have some forms I’d like to e-mail you. They ask for information about your family, where they were born, how they lived, illnesses, hospitalizations, incarcerations, death.”

“All right,” I say.

“Have you given further thought to visiting with some of the older relatives? We’d like to know more.”

Call it the wake-up call of mortality. “I’d like to know more as well,” I tell the doctor. “Go ahead, send the forms and I’ll get on it.”

“Wonderful,” the doctor says. “Once we complete this process, we’ll think about a second stage, about bringing you up for a day or two, but we’re not quite there yet.”

“Is there any further news regarding his legal situation?”

“It’s not my area. Perhaps the case coordinator can help you with that.”

The call is aggravating enough that it gives me a strange rush of energy. Off the phone, I think of my mother, realizing it’s been weeks since I visited.

I call the nurses’ station on her unit. I ask if I might speak with her.

“She’s not available right now,” the nurse says.

“What does that mean, ‘not available’? Shouldn’t she be in her room, it’s almost bedtime.”

“She’s at a dance class.”

I am incredulous. “Not only is it nine-thirty at night, my mother is bed-bound.”

“Not anymore.”

“Really,” I say, genuinely surprised.

“Yes. It’s a combination of factors. One, we got a new therapist, and your mother has taken a shine to her, and so we put her in a wheelchair and brought her down the hall; and then a young doctor has been with us doing some research, and your mother elected to participate in a study, so we’re giving her a new cocktail, and while she’s not exactly flying around, she’s doing much better.”

“Is she walking?”

“Crawling,” the nurse says, with pleasure. “She’s down on the floor, crawling everywhere, and seems to be loving it. We have to be careful not to trip over her … and I’ve put some of my son’s hockey pads on her knees and elbows. I can send you a photo if you like?”

She e-mails me a photo and, sure enough, it’s Mom, on the floor, crawling down the hall, like a crab scurrying.

I call Lillian, my father’s youngest sister, and she grudgingly agrees to allow me to visit her.

“Is there anything I can bring you?”

“Some borscht from that place on Second Avenue.”

I don’t tell her that I’m an hour and fifteen minutes from Second Avenue. “How much do you want?” I ask.

“One of the large,” she says. “Actually, make it two — I’ll put one in the freezer.”

“Anything else?”

“Well, if you’re going, just get me whatever else looks good.”

My mother phones back. “The woman at the reservation desk helped me make the call,” she says. “She told me you were hunting me down.”

“I called to say hello and she told me you were at a dance class — is everything okay?”

“Everything is great, I’m getting my moves back,” she says.

“I’m going to go visit Lillian,” I say, and before I can explain she cuts me off.

“Is she not well?” my mother asks, filled with concern.

“I just want to see her. I have some questions.”

“Yeah, well, I have a question or two as well,” my mother says, snapping back to her usual self. “Where are my pearl earrings? And the matching bracelet that your grandmother gave me, which Lillian borrowed to wear to a party, and then decided it all belonged to her?”

“I can certainly ask her about the jewelry,” I say.

“Don’t ask,” my mother says. “Just do what she did, go into her jewelry box and take it. Then tell her later, when you’re safe at home.”

“I’ll see what I can find out.”

“And while you’re looking, see if there’s a little necklace with a ruby in the center and some diamonds — I never can remember if I lost that one or if your father hocked it to go to the track.”

“Did Dad do things like that?”

“All men do things like that,” she says.

Nervous about driving since the stroke, I call the driver who took us to Jane’s funeral and ask if he’d be willing to take me to Lillian’s, wait, and then bring me home. He tells me it’s what’s called a “time job,” seventy-five bucks an hour, four-hour minimum — I sign him up. He picks me up right on time; we swing by the 2nd Avenue Deli, which is now no longer on Second Avenue, and head out to Lillian’s on Long Island. I have the guy park a couple of houses away, hoping to avoid having to discuss my circumstances with Lillian.

Walking slowly up her driveway, I have flashbacks to summer birthday parties, Fourth of July sparklers, hot dogs. The houses on her street used to be uniform, split-level brick, every house the same, distinguished only by what year Pontiac or Buick was parked in the driveway. The houses now are bastardized versions of their former selves. Some have had additions, renovations, making them look like they grew room-sized tumors; others were leveled to make room for postmodernist steroid monsters. Double-height living rooms and grand entry parlors have replaced the beloved bay windows that gave every home of the 1950s and ’60s a unique fishbowl effect. I unpack the grocer-ies at Lillian’s kitchen table, wondering, could the ancient, almost crispy oil-cloth table covering be the same one she’s had for thirty years? Lillian puts things away like a scurrying mouse. She’s tiny, maybe four feet tall, and shrinking fast.

“What happened to you?” she asks. “You’re all banged up.”

“Car accident,” I say. I can’t bring myself to tell her about the stroke; it makes me feel old. “Beautiful flowers,” I say, nodding towards the vase on the table.

“I’ve had them for years,” she says. “They’re plastic; I wash them once a week with Ivory. This you should keep.” She hands me back a container of kasha. “I won’t eat it. This too,” she says. “Can’t have poppy seeds, no seeds, nuts, or small kernels — that means no popcorn at the movies, no pistachios. I’ve got trouble with my gut.”

The way she says it, I’m tempted to make some crack about “hardly makes life worth living,” but, given my recent experiences with how precarious life is, it’s starting to seem like something I shouldn’t joke about.

“Your brother should be ashamed,” she says.

“Yes,” I say.

“Is he?”

“No. I don’t think so.”

We sit at her dining-room table. She makes me a cup of tea, Lipton, strong and incredibly good. “Do you take sugar or do you want Splender?”

“Sugar is fine,” I say. It’s sugar that’s been in the bowl so long it’s lumpy, sugar that many generations of wet spoons have touched, celebratory sugar, infected sugar — old sugar. Lillian comes out of the kitchen carrying an artifact, the blue metal tin marked Danish Butter Cookies that if I didn’t know better I would swear had been in the family for generations — when the Jews left Egypt, they took with them the tins of Danish Butter Cookies. And tins, which as best I could tell never included Danish Butter Cookies, traveled from house to house, but always, always, found their way back to Lillian. In every family or tribe there is a keeper of the tin, whose job it is to intone annoyingly, “Don’t forget my tin,” or “How could you forget my tin? No more for you. I don’t bake without the tin. What’s the point, the cookies will rot.”