Stanley Elkin - Mrs. Ted Bliss

So Mrs. Bliss’s first reaction to her son’s new piety was mixed not just with suspicion but with a certain sort of anger.

Especially after Frank made them all sit through the long seder supper, unwilling to dispense with even the most minor detail of the ritual meal. He didn’t miss a trick. Everything was blessed, every last carrot in the tsimmes, each bitter herb, every deed of every major and minor player, one grisly plague after the other visited by God upon Egypt. It was a Passover service to end all Passover services. Indeed, Mrs. Bliss had a hunch that there wasn’t a family in all Providence, Rhode Island, that evening that hadn’t finished its coffee and macaroons and gotten up from the table before the Blisses were midway through their brisket and roast potatoes.

May seemed imbued with more baleboosteh spirit and just plain endurance than Dorothy could imagine herself handling during even the old golden glory days in Chicago with the gang. She wore her out, May, with her hustle and bustle. And for at least a few minutes Mrs. Bliss actually considered herself the victim of some clumsy, stupid mockery. As a matter of fact she was almost close to tears and, though she slammed down her will like someone bearing down on the brakes with all her weight and just managed to squeeze them back (she wouldn’t give Frank — or May, who might have put him up to this — the satisfaction of volunteering to help clear away the dishes), she could almost feel the strain on her face and only hoped that no one noticed. She sat through the remainder of the meal with an assortment of smiles fixed to her face like makeup.

When it was finally done she was one of the first to pile into the living room, and found a place for herself in the most comfortable chair. She took some great-grandchild onto her lap like a prop and started to rock the kid, who was already half asleep.

I’m going to get away with this, she thought. I’m going to act like everyone here expects me to act and come away scot-free without giving a single one of them the satisfaction of believing they ever got to me.

And would have, too, if her pious son hadn’t seen through to the depths of her heart.

“Something wrong, Ma?” Frank said in a low voice at the side of her chair.

“You’re the spiritual leader here,” Mrs. Bliss said, “you tell me.”

Her son looked genuinely puzzled, even hurt. He’d been a good boy. Quick in school, responsible, considerate to the family, never demanding on his own behalf — they had to remind him that what he wore was wearing out and that he needed new clothes; they had to ask him what he wanted for his birthday; throughout high school they raised his allowance before he ever asked — she’d never had occasion to punish him, or even to yell at him. Her heart went out to him. This was the young man who couldn’t do enough for her, who was always on the lookout for special gadgets to make her life more comfortable and, though he seldom wrote, called even when the cheap rates weren’t in effect. He called as if long distance grew on trees.

So of course she was sorry she had spoken harshly. Of course she could have bitten off her tongue rather than speak without thinking or cause him pain.

Only she hadn’t spoken without thinking. She’d been thinking for a long time, for years as a matter of fact, whether she knew it or not. And though this was hardly the time (the first night of Passover when the Jewish people sat down together to celebrate their deliverance), and certainly not the place for it (her sole surviving son’s new home where he’d be making a new life, which, let’s face it, he was no spring chicken, so how many new lives could he expect to make for himself from now on, and his mother didn’t think he’d be asked to take another job so quick), there were plenty of good reasons to get what had been eating at her and eating at her off her chest.

“What?” he said, following her down the hallway as she sought the spare room where they’d put her up as if it were a neutral corner.

“What?” he repeated. “What?”

“You’re so religious,” said Mrs. Ted Bliss. “How come you couldn’t say Kaddish for your father? How come I had to depend on Manny who volunteered to say it for him?”

“Ma.”

Maxine was standing in the doorway, looking in; George, her husband, was.

“I begged you,” Mrs. Bliss said.

“Oh, Ma,” Frank said.

“No. A stranger. A stranger you despised, that you humiliated in my home, my guest — you saw him, Maxine, you were a witness — that you gave him five dollars that time like you were throwing him a tip.”

“Five dollars?”

“You don’t remember the pocket calculator?”

“Come on, Ma. He makes me nervous. Sticking his nose in everywhere it don’t belong. All right, maybe I wronged him, I admit it. How is he, anyway? I haven’t seen him in years. I’m sorry if I hurt his feelings. If you want, I’ll write him an apology. I’ll call him up. We’ll make friends.”

“How is he? He’s old. Like everyone else. And don’t write him, don’t call him up. He probably forgot. What’s done is done. Let sleeping dogs lie.”

“What’s done is done? If what’s done is done, how come you introduce a topic I haven’t thought about in years? If what’s done is done, how’d you happen to drag this particular Elijah into my house with you in the first place? Come on, Ma, is this really about Manny? Is it really even about my father?”

“Oh, you’re such a smart fella, Frank. You’re such a fart smeller,” said Mrs. Ted Bliss.

“I haven’t heard that one since I was a little girl,” Maxine said. “Daddy used to say that one all the time.”

“My father said it, too. I think it was the only joke he knew,” George said.

“That’s old,” said one of Frank’s new Rhode Island colleagues, “that’s an old one.”

“If you don’t mind,” said Mrs. Ted Bliss, “family business is being conducted here.”

“Sorry,” the colleague said, “I came for my son.”

He reached out to the child Mrs. Bliss had been rocking in her lap in the living room. The little boy had apparently followed her into the room with Frank.

“ ‘Fart smeller, fart smeller,’ ” the kid squealed, “Great-Grandma Dorothy called Great-Uncle Frank a fart smeller.”

Why was he calling her his great-grandmother? Who were these strange children, these outlanders, who apparently just latched on to the nearest, most convenient old lady and assumed some universal kinship? How could parents let their kids get away with stuff like that? Didn’t they realize how patronizing it was? It made Mrs. Ted Bliss feel like someone’s Mammy. (Though she felt for the child, too. How needful people were to belong, to be cared for.)

Her grandson Barry had squeezed into the room with the others. The auto mechanic slapped his tochis and guffawed.

“You mind your manners, Grandmother,” Barry said, “or we’ll have to wash out your mouth with soap. Strictly kosher for Passover. Ha ha.”

“Please,” Mrs. Bliss said, and again she was close to tears.

“Mama, what is it?” Maxine said.

“Give her some air, for God’s sake,” George said, and began to shoo people from the room.

It was a good idea, Mrs. Bliss thought. Why hadn’t someone thought of it earlier? “Yes,” Mrs. Bliss said, “give me some air. Stand back there,” she giggled, “make room. Oh,” she said, “I’m so full. Everything May put out was delicious. The brisket was sweet like sugar, she’ll have to give me her recipe. But so much? You could feed an army.”

“A question is on the table, Mother, I think,” Frank said.

“What question was that?” Mrs. Bliss asked wearily, sorry she’d taken her disappointment public.