Cathleen Schine - They May Not Mean To, But They Do

“They’re very busy, Mom. They have a lot of homework.”

And birthday parties, Joy thought. It was mathematically impossible, the number of birthday parties those little girls went to. Homework and birthday parties, a balance of a sort. “I know, sweetheart. They work so hard. So do you.”

“Yeah,” he said, mollified. “We do.”

Joy hadn’t seen or heard from her grandchildren in over a month, but that was not why she asked about them. Danny was prickly about his family, as if any inquiry were a veiled criticism. She had asked about the girls because she had suddenly pictured them, like two kittens, their big eyes and silky hair, the way they snuggled into each other like kittens, then batted each other away. They were beautiful, sweet, eccentric girls. It was only natural that she missed them. Only natural that she asked about them. She understood they had their lives and that their lives were imperative and irresistible in that way that a child’s life is.

“I’d love if they called. You know, just to say hello.”

He laughed unkindly. “You sound like Grandma Bergman. Your finger broken? You can’t dial a phone? I mean, you can call them, too, Mom.”

Joy could not explain this to her son, would have been too ashamed even to mention it, but when she did call his house, everyone there was always so busy. It made her feel awkward and intrusive, out of step.

“Grandma Bergman,” she said. “Them’s fightin’ words.”

But there were circles under his eyes, his shirt was wrinkled and his tie rumpled, he’d been up since five, and still he made time for this visit. She got up to spoon out his ice cream herself.

She stood at the door watching as Danny, large and wilted and fiddling with his phone in his pocket, waited for the elevator, and she was glad for once that the elevator was so slow. She could not take her eyes off him.

“Your briefcase is so heavy, Danny. You should get one with wheels.”

He laughed, walked back, gave her another hug. Over his shoulder she could just make out the elevator door opening. She said nothing, holding her big, tired son in her arms. The door closed and the elevator began its slow ascent to some other floor. A high floor, she hoped, her face against his chest. Maybe the penthouse.

That night, Joy pressed her back against the cushions of the sofa. It was late, after 3 a.m., but it was not dark. It was never dark in New York, and tonight the cloudy sky reflected the city lights in a pale green glow. It was quiet, though. Those few hours when all the creatures of the city, the screeching, roaring buses, the howling ambulances, all seemed to take their rest, when the garbage trucks had not yet trundled out of their caves. She could hear Walter changing Aaron’s colostomy bag. God bless you, Walter, she thought. May the lord bless you and keep you and shine his countenance upon you.

But who will pay you? Not the lord. And there was no version of arithmetic in which Joy and Aaron’s social security was sufficient for the parade of helpers each day. It seemed almost Victorian, having caretakers. As if she and Aaron were large estates. She would have to go back to work soon, that’s all, maybe go back to full time to help make ends meet at Bergman House. How she would find the strength she did not know. Even with the caretakers there was so much she had to do for Aaron. She wasn’t complaining, she told herself stoutly, just being honest, though how she longed to complain sometimes, to let loose and curse the gods. She had tried it out on the children. The response had not been entirely satisfactory.

“I’m lonely,” she had said. “Even though Daddy is right here and even though I never feel as though I get to be alone.”

“You should get a dog!” Danny had said. “That would be perfect!”

Oh, Danny, another helpless creature to tend to? Yes, dear, perfect. And Molly! When Joy said her head was muddled and she sometimes was so tired she could not breathe, but so worried about the cost of the caretakers that she could not sleep, Molly suggested she go to the 92nd Street Y’s poetry readings. Poetry. They meant well, they did. But they fuck you up, your son and daughter, Joy thought, pleased with her clever Philip Larkin allusion, 92nd Street Y or no 92nd Street Y. They may not mean to, but they do.

The light in the synagogue was far too bright for a holy place. The atmosphere was meant to be one of velvet darkness illuminated by sunlight streaming from windows high above, like the church they had visited on their trip to Paris. There were ten rows of chairs divided by a center aisle, six chairs on each side. Sixty in all, but only half of them filled: Rabbi Kenny would be disappointed. Ruby chose the fourth row, the two seats closest to the aisle on the left. She wanted to be able to see.

“Won’t the rabbi be surprised to find us here,” her mother said. “I’m surprised, too.”

“Aren’t you glad? Don’t you want me to be Jewish?”

“You are Jewish, you know, already.”

“That’s kind of racist, Mommy.”

“Some people think Huckleberry Finn is racist. Do you?”

But Ruby was not to be lured back to Mark Twain.

“Tonight is Shabbat,” she had said when she got home from school that afternoon. “The service starts at seven, so we should eat early.”

“What service, sweetie? Is there a memorial for someone at school?” Every now and then, a terrible tragedy struck one of the families at school and the other families got together to raise money or protest a law or clean a flooded basement apartment.

“The Shabbat service, Mommy.”

Daniel was worried. “Ruby, I know you feel bad about the slingshot, but the rabbi understood it was an accident. He’s an awfully nice guy. He wouldn’t want you to punish yourself, honey. And Mommy and I would never make you go to services. I had enough of that when I was little, believe me.”

“You’re not making me. I want to.”

“I understand that you feel guilty, but…”

“Daddy, I’m going to shul. It’s not guilt. It’s inclination.”

“No one has the inclination to go to services,” he said to Coco when they were alone in the kitchen. “Especially not a twelve-year-old.”

“I had a Joan of Arc obsession. And I was a Taoist.”

He groaned. “I can’t do it, Coco. I can’t sit there and listen to that stuff. I did my time. I had my bar mitzvah.”

“It’s your ADD. It’s a wonder you can sit through a movie.” Daniel was constantly jiggling his legs and rattling the change in his pocket. He paced, too, up and down or in tight circles if the room was small.

“Don’t blow the candles out, Daddy,” Ruby said to him as she left the house with Coco. “You have to let them burn down. I read it.”

* * *

“Here he comes,” Ruby whispered. The bandage was gone and there was no scar that she could see. Rabbi Kenny came up the aisle greeting the congregation on his way to the bimah. “Mrs. Simkowitz, hello, how did Lev’s Series Seven exam go? Mr. Krauss, you look so much better. And…”

He stopped when he got to Ruby and her mother. He smiled broadly.

“Are you armed, Ruby?”

Ruby held her hands out, empty.

“It is an honor to have you both here. Welcome.”

Ruby listened to the prayers. A secret language, a secret alphabet, secret incantations. She could have been in a room of whirling dervishes or monks in saffron robes, it was that exotic, that exciting. Her mother mumbled along with some of the prayers.

“Wasn’t it beautiful?” Ruby said afterward. “Did you like the singing? The songs sounded so sad.”

“The cantor has a beautiful voice. She seems a little glitzy for a cantor.”