Tara Ison - Rockaway

“And for my teeth, too.” Bernadette taps her upper lip with a finger. “I am losing so many teeth, here.”

“I’m sorry. Do you really have to fly back to do all of that?”

“It is less money for me at home.”

“Ah.” Sarah nods sympathetically. She feels reproachable for her sound teeth, her waste of light.

“But it will be good for visiting my family,” Bernadette says, measuring rice into a saucepan. “My daughter Nissa is graduating from school as a doctor.”

“That’s great. Congratulations. You must be really proud.”

“And my daughter Celeste has the new little boy I have not seen yet. It makes me lonely for him.”

“You must miss them,” Sarah says. How can someone be lonely for someone they’ve never met? she thinks.

“Yes,” Bernadette says cheerfully. “Very much. I will show you photographs?”

“Sure, yeah.”

“It is hard for a mother, when she is not with her children. Even when they are grown, and off living their own lives. But, perhaps it not as hard for the child?” She looks at Sarah, a small, closed-lipped, questioning smile that makes her nervous.

“Oh, I don’t know about that,” she says. “I miss my parents. I mean, of course I miss them. That’s totally normal, right?”

Bernadette adds a stream of cloudy water to her rice, sets the pan on the stove. “And how is your painting coming? It is happy for you, being here?”

“It’s great. I’m getting so much done. The open air, all the light. The quiet. .”

“Avery and I were discussing this. We would love to see your work.”

“Well, that’s really nice of you guys, thank you, but—”

“But an artist must be ready to do this. It must be the right time, for showing the work to others. We understand.”

“Yeah. Exactly. But sometime, sure. Thanks.” She puts her knife down in the sink, scoops her red pepper on top of her pasta.

“Ah, you are having that on your noodles? I see.”

“Oh, let me get out of your way, now,” Sarah says quickly, taking her plate upstairs to her room.

THE HOUSE PHONE rings the next day as she’s slicing strawberries for her afternoon snack. After this, she thinks, you will take a good, vigorous walk on the beach, before that fog comes in. Get your blood moving. And then you will get to work. Get productive, take full advantage of this important—

“Hello?”

“Is this Sarah?”

“Yes?”

“It’s Marty. You know, Julius’s friend.”

“Oh. Hi.”

“I’m having shabbes dinner with friends tonight, they live down the street from you.”

“Uh huh.”

“It’s the last night of Passover, too.”

“Oh, yeah, that’s right. Damn, I forgot.” She suddenly pictures her parents, going through the motions of a seder without her, alone. A lonely lamb shank, two hard-boiled eggs. Store-bought gefilte fish, a sad, sodium-filled can of chicken soup. Waiting for her to call and check in, Happy Pesach, Mom and Dad! Or maybe they didn’t even bother having a seder this year, with her gone. She sees them sitting alone at the kitchen table, eating one of the low-fat casseroles she’d prepared, labeled, stocked their freezer with. She feels sad, guilty, the dull start of a headache, doesn’t hear the silence on the line, and then:

“Well, you want to come or what?” His voice is softer, freer of Brooklyn than Julius’s.

“Um. . I’m just putting my dinner in the oven.”

“Take it out.”

She thinks of her greasy hair, her still-unwashed body. “What time?”

“Not till seven-thirty or eight. We’re still shooting. I’ll pick you up.”

“Okay. Not before seven-thirty,” she says, calculating.

“It’s shabbes, Sarah. We can’t eat before eight, anyway.”

He hangs up, and she figures if she cuts short her walk she’ll have plenty of time to shower and dress for dinner, to do her hair. She’ll come up with a new ritual to inspire the perfect painting. No more chocolate, maybe. Or no more wine, that’s good, be disciplined, keep your head clear, yes.

HE IS DRESSED nicely in black jeans and a linen shirt, his jaw shaved free of bristle, but still wears the black knit cap.

“We’re walking?” she asks, following him down the sidewalk.

“They only live a few blocks over. I walked here.”

They cross the main boulevard, away from the fancier oceanfront properties and the darkening eastern sky, wind through the neighborhood of modest homes pressing close to the street, children’s toys and aluminum lawn chairs left out on porches, bathing suits hung out to dry. They pass families walking along, on their way to synagogue, she assumes, from their yarmulkes and dark suits, the women dressed in long sleeves, long skirts, hats or fancy scarves covering their heads. Even the children, solemn and formally dressed, walking beside their parents like tiny sedate adults.

“So, who are these people? Where we’re going?”

“Itzak and Darlene, their kids. Itzak and I grew up together.”

“Like you and Julius?”

“No, I knew Julius later. Itzak and me, we used to steal Abba Zabbas from the dime store, you know? Cut school and go smoke grass. Sneak out to the city, go to the clubs. That was music. You ever hear of the Cedar Bar? The Village Vanguard?”

“No.”

“No? Wow. Early, mid-sixties, Itzak and me, we’re just kids, right? We’re maybe fifteen, sixteen, we’re sneaking into these basement clubs, we’re hearing Al Cohn, Howard Hart. Miles Davis. Wild.”

“I’ve heard of Miles Davis,” she says.

“Itzak’s Hasidic now. Really beautiful.”

“Oh?” Who is this person? she thinks. What am I doing here? “I feel funny, not bringing anything. I’m a bad guest.”

“You could’ve brought the wrong thing, though. Even the wine, it has to be kosher.”

“I thought of that. I would’ve brought a bag of oranges, or something.”

He shrugs. “Hey, whatever.”

She feels dismissed, somehow. Irrelevant. “So. . when did you start keeping kosher? Julius said it was a new thing for you?”

“Couple of years ago.”

“Sort of a. .” she is about to say midlife crisis , but stops herself, “. . spiritual awakening?”

“I had stuff to figure out. Think about.”

“Looking for answers?”

“Looking for questions.” He smiles, nods at a young couple pushing a stroller. “ Shabbat Shalom ,” he tells them, and they smile, murmur back: “ Chag Sameach .”

“See, that’s nice,” he says quietly to Sarah. “All the young people living here now. They’re moving back and settling down, starting their own families. We got all these kids growing up here together, the Jewish kids, the Irish and the Hispanic and black kids, they’re all out on the playground. The old people, they sit and watch. Everyone going to shul or church on Sunday morning. A real community. It’s beautiful. It’s got this energy, you know? When people come together like that.”

“It’s so different from where I grew up. Nobody talked to anybody. Everybody just drives around in their car.”

“So, this is good for you, yeah?”

“Oh sure,” she says. “You can really feel the energy here. Like you said.

He nods. She doesn’t know what else to say. They walk in silence, as she feels the fog limpen her hair.

ITZAK LOOKS LIKE an Old World photograph of someone’s dead great-grandfather, in blacks and beiges, elaborately yarmulke’d, with sepia-tinted teeth and long gray beard wispy as a cirrus cloud. The house is decorated with Judaica. Sarah expects his wife to be shrouded and bewigged and haggard from childbearing, but Darlene is trimly dressed in a sleeveless blouse and slacks, with her own curly bobbed hair. Their teenage son Jonah is wearing a Nine Inch Nails T-shirt, and joke-pleads with his father about the promise of a new videogame; their daughter Gwen, skinny and miniskirted, her right ear triple-pierced, is a freshman at NYU, studying psychology. They invite Sarah to sit in the place of honor and she readies herself, steels herself for the endless and obligatory ritual— Why matzoh? Why bitter herbs? Why do we recline? — but there is no wine-stained Haggadah in sight, no painstaking array of bitter herbs and chopped apple-and-nuts; the family simply sings in Hebrew one quick and ebullient prayer she doesn’t know, and Itzak announces That’s it, everybody, let’s eat!